Arumugham was not surprised when his wife hit him on the head during a quarrel, for she had been doing that for quite some time now, probably ever since he was dismissed from his job as a watchman for the sin of drunkenness a year ago. She had every right to express her dissatisfaction in such a rude way but the fact that she did it while the young man was watching them upset him. ‘I will kill her one of these days!’ Arumugham told himself, clenching his fist. But when she turned round to scan his face for an angry response in order to frustrate her, he grinned. It was a slow grin that wrinkled his dark face, even his smooth brow that separated his tiny eyes from the shaven head. He had not wanted to shave his head like a monk but she said that it was not possible to buy oil for the two of them for their weekly baths near the leaky faucet at the construction site. Oil had become very dear. Besides, he had lice in his hair. But lice she too had, juicy black ones as big as bugs creeping all over her scalp which he helped her kill, pressing them between the thumbnails in the long afternoons under the tree near the park and the sea.

They had been homeless for nearly a year. He liked the languor of this life but feared the monsoons and the days when no edible food would be found in the garbage heap outside the Ritz Hotel. Hunger always picked up quarrels with him and abused him again and again for having got drunk enough to lose a fine lucrative job. True, he had been irresponsible. Why, on paydays he used to stop at Anna’s paan shop and drink five glasses of hooch which went down like a sword of fire and made him confident. To remove the smell from his mouth, he ate two paans filled with brown chunam and tobacco bits….

‘We would have been living in our kholi at Sewri,’ said the woman, pointing to him, ‘if you had not got drunk and insulted the supervisor of the factory. What a good-for-nothing dog I married! Who would believe now, looking at me, that the son of the inspector, Chinna Thampy, asked for my hand once upon a time? I have lost both my youth and my beauty.’

‘I will believe it, Amma,’ said the young man who wore a red cloth tied round his head and was dressed like one of the many beggars who walked the city. ‘You are still comely. When I first saw you making chapatis under that tree with a real sigree and coal, I thought you were a well-to-do lady. You looked like a grihalakshmi. Now you are homeless but why should you think that you will always be so? One of you may get a good job soon. If you were to get an ayah’s job with some rich family, your problems would be solved. You will have only to look after the children, take them to parks and undress them for the night. My mother was once an ayah at a Parsi’s home. She used to get fifty rupees a month and three meals a day. And four saris a year.’

‘Three full meals per day!’ exclaimed the husband. ‘Why, I would myself work as an ayah if I got that! The Parsis are non-vegetarians. I will grow fat and handsome, eating good food.’

The wife and the other man laughed uproariously.

‘Why, you cannot be an ayah in a hundred years,’ said the young man. ‘Only women can become ayahs. Your wife can become one. But these days people are full of suspicion. Nobody offers a job to you unless you take some certificates with you. One day I went to a house at Colaba and asked for a bearer’s job but the lady of the house wanted my fingerprints to be taken. Like a criminal’s. I left immediately. I do not want to be insulted by the rich. I would rather die on the road than work for people like her.’

‘How do you live now?’ asked the woman. She had begun to like the man’s pride and also the fine lines of his face.

‘Sometimes I go to the seashore and help the smugglers lift their goods onto a lorry parked nearby. Just five minutes of work but it fetches me fifty rupees. If I get caught, I remain in jail for a year. Things are not bad in the jails. Lots of wholesome food and free medical treatment if you fall ill. I sometimes wish they would nab me again so that I can get some rest. The monsoons are coming. What are we, homeless people, to do? A jail will be an ideal place for the coming months. But the police are useless. All of them have been bribed. They will not catch any of us even if we dangle the goods before their eyes. What can be done?’

The young man chuckled pleasantly.

‘You can remain with us,’ said the woman. ‘My man has spoken to some shopmen about letting us sleep under the awnings. We shall eat whatever we get and pull on. The Rasna Hotel often offers food to the hungry. My man goes to collect it. Sometimes we get chapatis and samosas with pickles. You shall not starve, my good man, if you stay with us.’

‘She is a good hostess, is she not?’ asked the husband, scratching his shaven head. ‘She talks as if she owns a house and a larder full of food.’

‘Whose fault is it that I do not own a house?’ continued the wife shrilly. ‘You sold my ornaments. You lost your job. And we were pushed out of our hut. Who was at fault? You or I? Was I not always a dutiful wife to you? I have not slept around with other men like other women of the slum who waited for their husbands to leave for work to begin waving out to passengers on the slow train. I did not want to earn that kind of money. This good-for-nothing man of mine brought me nothing. Not even on Diwali day did he get me a new sari! I suffered in silence. But now I have turned bitter. I talk back to him. I even hit him when he irritates me.’

‘One day I shall give you the thrashing of your life,’ mumbled Arumugham. He did not want the visitor to consider him henpecked.

‘You will thrash me, will you?’ asked the woman. ‘Do it now, you dirty dog. I shall strangle you with my bare hands and go to the police station to announce the murder. I am not afraid of anybody. The jail will be a better place than this pavement.’

‘This is the best place in the world, Amma,’ said the young man sweetly. ‘You see the flowers of the park and the blue sea. And at night you lie watching the sky with all its stars. This is an ideal life in my eyes. I know a few songs about the sea. I used to sing in the electric train when I was a child and pick up some coins. Now they do not allow me on the train – I am too old for singing in the train….’

‘You are a singer?’ asked the woman, regaining her composure. ‘Will you sing a few songs to me? When I was a child in Tanjore, I lived close to a bhagavatar’s house. Every morning I woke up hearing his songs. He was very good. That was long ago. He must be dead by now.’

‘You have the soul of an artist, Amma,’ said the young man. ‘I knew it the moment I set eyes on you. You should be living in a wealthy house. You should be playing a veena with your long fingers, wearing white jasmine in your hair and gold ornaments on your person. You resemble the Goddess Lakshmi.’

‘When you talk like this, I feel sad,’ said the woman. She felt tears filling her eyes and flowing over her cheeks. She tidied her hair and hid her face in her hands. Her sobbing disturbed the husband, who looked up puzzled. What was happening? What was making his wife weep helplessly as she used to do once, years ago, when she had not lost her beauty?

‘What did you say now to make her weep?’ asked Arumugham.

‘I only spoke of music,’ said the young man.

‘You have upset my wife,’ countered the husband. ‘You had no business coming here to cause her unhappiness. Go away from here.’

‘I am sorry, Amma,’ said the young man.

‘You have misunderstood me. I was only praising your wife. I was telling her of her resemblance to the Goddess Lakshmi.’

‘We do not want you here,’ said the husband. ‘Take your bundle and go away.’

The young man rose to take leave. ‘I am going away, Amma,’ he said. ‘May the God Murugan protect you all your life.’

The woman suddenly stirred herself and stopped crying. ‘Wait,’ she cried, ‘take this with you. You can wrap yourself in it when the chilly weather arrives.’

She handed him a blanket, taking it out of her bundle carefully. It was frayed at the edges but good and warm. The young man took it and brushed his eyes with it to express his gratitude.

‘You are the Goddess Lakshmi,’ he said. ‘I shall always remember you with love.’

After he had walked away with the blanket slung over his strong shoulder, the woman’s husband turned on her in fury. ‘Why did you have to give the only good thing we had to a stranger? How are we going to put up with the rainy weather and the colder winter? Why did you give it to him? Tell me, woman, what is he to you?’

‘He is nobody,’ said the woman, laying out a piece of cloth on the ground and stretching herself to lie down, ‘but he spoke of music to me….’

‘You behaved like a person who has lost her senses. He cast a spell over you with his talk of the sea and the stars.’

She smiled and was silent.