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in a great hurry. Did you think what would happen to Sowmya here? Who will marry her now? The brother got married and the sister is still sitting at home.”
    “She hasn’t gotten married for ten years,” Neelima cried out. “How long were we supposed to wait? We waited two years but she was not getting a match. That isn’t my fault.” She stood up and rushed outside to the veranda.
    Sowmya used the edge of her sari to wipe her face of sweat and probably tears. The heat in the room was increasing by the minute and the fact that all the windows and doors were left open was not helping. Added to that, the slow creaky fan on the ceiling was barely moving the air around.
    I stood up nervously and went to check on my new aunt. She was sitting on the steps that led to the well from the veranda, her face buried in her hands.
    I sat down beside her and put a hand on her shoulder tentatively. “Are you okay?” I asked, as I swallowed the paan .
    She reared her head up. “I hate them all,” she said passionately. “Anand married me. He asked me to marry him; he pursued me. And now they are blaming me for Sowmya?”
    “There’s no one to blame,” I told her. “But I think what you said really hurt Sowmya.”
    If anyone could understand what Sowmya was going through it would be Neelima. After all, Sowmya was alienated by her own family for being unmarried and she had nowhere to go. All through my life I had heard people say things to put her down. First, it had been because she was overweight and then because her hair was falling out, which made my grandparents nervous that she would soon go bald. She took care of Ammamma and Thatha , ran their house for them, and they treated her as if she were a burden. Forget gratitude, Ammamma and Thatha made her feel like she was a load they couldn’t wait to dump on some unsuspecting “boy.” I wondered how they would survive once Sowmya did get married. Who would cook and clean? Who would make sure the maid came and did her work properly?
    “I didn’t mean to hurt Sowmya,” Neelima apologized. “But I am going to have a baby and no happiness from their side. Why?”
    “If you have a son, you will have them kissing the floor you walk on—they will have their heir then,” I joked but I also knew it was true. My grandfather was obsessed with perpetuating the line of Somayajulas. He wanted a son’s son and that was why Nate, the only grandson, was not qualified to be heir.
    Neelima wept some more at my joke. “They told Anand that our son would never be the rightful heir because of me. I am not the right woman to bear their heir,” she sighed sadly. “That is why Lata is pregnant again.”
    “What?” It was preposterous. How could Lata be pregnant again?
    “They are hoping she will have a son and he will be the grandchild to carry on the family name.”
    For an instant I wanted to tell her that she was mistaken, that Thatha was not such a chauvinist, or so old-fashioned, and then I remembered that he was all those things, that he was capable of asking his “pure-blooded” daughter-in-law to bear another child, to bear a son. Burgeoning hope crushed, I realized that he would never accept Nick; he would never accept even the idea of Nick and me. What was I going to do?
    “So she’s pregnant . . . like, now?” I asked, wanting to be absolutely certain.
    Neelima’s head bobbed. “Almost four months gone and they want to do a test soon to find out the sex of the baby. Have you seen the way she treats your grandparents? She doesn’t even let her children come here to see them. But now”—she took a deep breath—“now they are all best friends. And my baby has no right to be born. She says that I might have a miscarriage.”
    I patted her shoulder in a weak attempt to assuage her. It was an impossible situation, a pointless one. What difference would it make to my seventy-plus-year-old grandfather if he had a grandson or not?
    But the Indian in me understood him.