The temple bell rang out now and again, faint but clear in the late afternoon sunlight. Harini paused and looked up at the faint flushness of the sky. She had been walking along by the temple pond, and now she looked at her own reflection in the lotus-strewn rippling mirror. She looked like such a typical village belle, with her neriyathu and her jasmine flowers and her long, plaited hair. She had her admirers among the village boys, she knew, but she couldn't possibly compete with a city-bred girl like Anita. Oh, why did that woman have to come here of all places, she wondered. And why, why did Madhavi Mami have to rent out a room to her? Now all the plans, the plans that had been made when she and Bhaskaran had been born, would come to nought.

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