It’s been a little more than a month.

I almost miss the grief. I miss the nights when I woke up, sobbing so violently I could barely breathe, feeling as though the world was ending, must end, because it would be too cruel for it to go on.

Now that I’m calmer and I know the world isn’t ending, all I can see is the long stretch of empty years before me.

The day Amma shaved my head for the first time was difficult. She started by cutting my hair. My braids lay around me in dark coils. There was almost a sense of comfort in seeing them – my ruined dreams given physical form. I’ve shaved it once more since then. What would I achieve by letting my hair grow out? Who would appreciate a widow’s hair? Who would even see it?

The mirazdar’s wife came to visit me after I’d had my head shaved. It’s a great honour – she never goes to any of the village houses, and she came all the way inside and looked at me and even brought her daughter with her. It’s a sign of the high regard in which everyone held Sundaram. She said as much; she said the mirazdar and the temple priest were shocked and saddened, and that they had thought very highly of Sundaram and had hoped he would take over from Ramakrishnan the temple accountant when he retired.

Amma told me I mustn’t cry in her presence, so I only nodded.

The mirazdar’s daughter is a girl – a woman – perhaps ten years older than I am. Her husband is a drunkard, and has never managed to earn any money, so they and their three children live with her father. I was always taught that my husband’s honour was mine, and so the wife of a drunkard ought to be drowning in shame, but she looked at me with head held high and sharp eyes that darted over me taking in everything.

Even the wife of a drunkard is better than a widow.

The mirazdar’s daughter didn’t speak until she was about to leave, and then she asked me what I planned to do.

“Will you stay in your father’s house?” she said, her voice as sharp as her eyes. “You have a brother, after all, and he’s married, isn’t he? It won’t be easy for you when your sister-in-law comes into this home.”

I wonder if she sometimes reflects on the same thing in her own case.

“What choice does my daughter have,” my mother responded for me, “unfortunate as she is?”

“There are greater misfortunes than widowhood that might come upon a woman,” said the mirazdar’s daughter. “Your daughter is young – she might marry again. That’s been the law for many years now. I’ve known people who have done it.”

My mother bowed her head. “For those such as you, that might be. The law hasn’t yet reached our house. Unfortunate as it is to be a widow, the names my daughter would be called if she had a second marriage would be far worse.”

“Ambujam,” said the mirazdar’s wife, “we must leave.”

Ambujam followed her mother, but she turned in the doorway to look at me, framed in the light of the sun that was shining as fiercely as the rain had fallen when Sundaram slipped on the temple steps.

“I will see you again, Arali,” she said. “I think we have a great deal in common.”

For a moment my face grew hot. Sundaram, whatever he might have done in the excitement of the moment, hadn’t been one to give in to temptation – certainly not as much as Ambujam’s husband, who, if rumours are to be believed, spends more time in the company of Mrs Gordon than in his own home –

But I won’t demean myself by repeating filth.

It would be a relief to spend my anger against Ambujam. She would make a fine target – the mirazdar’s daughter, with a reputation for unkindness and a tongue that can cut like a knife. But she’s far from the only one to have heard and repeated the rumour that Sundaram was drunk.

I go out now more seldom than I did before. I cannot bathe in the Kaveri, lest I pollute it with my ill luck, so Malar hauls a bucket up from the river every day – and when we argue, she lets me know how much effort it costs her. As much as I would like to go to the temple, in the hope of finding some solace for my grief in the place where Sundaram worked, I don’t dare. I fear being turned away.

That first week – looking back, it seems like another life. I think now I must not have fully realised my situation. It felt unreal, as though this disaster was happening to somebody else, as though, at any moment, I would wake up and find that it had all been a terrible dream. Amma and Appa, and Malar, and sometimes even Naviran, hovered around me with anxious solicitude, waiting for me to break down.

But I couldn’t cry. I knew that I was sad, or at least that I ought to be sad, but I didn’t feel it.

I even found that, after the first shock had worn off, I was comforted by the sound of rain pattering on the roof. It ought to have reminded me of that fearful night, of wet steps and Sundaram losing his footing, but instead it felt soothing. It still feels soothing. The heavy monsoon downpours have stopped, but it still drizzles in the afternoons. Sometimes listening to it is the only comfort I have.

About two weeks after that night, Sundaram’s parents sent word for me to visit them. Amma escorted me there, but she didn’t stay. She said she’d be back in a couple of hours, and she slipped away.

As I watched her go, I felt suddenly, inexplicably alone.

“My dear,” Sundaram’s mother said, “don’t look like that.”

“I – I’m sorry – like what?”

“As though you hadn’t a friend in the world. I’m your mother, too … or I hoped to be.” She took my hand in both of hers. “Come. There’s something I want to show you.”

She led me through the house to her room. We passed two of Sundaram’s sisters-in-law – my sisters-in-law, I reminded myself – on the way. One acknowledged me with the barest of nods, while the other simply looked through me as though I were invisible.

I tried not to let it sting. If Sundaram had been alive, I would have been a member of the household, not an inauspicious spectre to be avoided.

“Never mind them,” Sundaram’s mother said, shutting the door. “I wasn’t able to speak to you properly until now. I’m sorry. Arali, my dear child, I hoped to welcome you to this house as my daughter. I know Sundaram’s father spoke to you about that. This is your home, if ever you should wish it.”

“Thank you.”

“I want to show you something,” she said again.

She selected a key from the bunch at her waist and unlocked a small chest. From it she took a silver picture frame and handed it to me.

“My cousin made it,” she said.

I looked at the painting in the frame. It was a minute before I recognised the subjects.

“Is that … us?”

“It is.”

It was Sundaram and me, depicted with the flattering eye of an artist – or an aunt. The painting showed Sundaram with a straighter nose and broader shoulders, me with eyes a little too large to be real, and a demure smile I was certain I had never worn.

Excerpted with permission from The White Lotus, Aditi Krishnakumar, Duckbill.