He called out. There was no answer. The stench had grown worse; the foul smell that forced one to empty one’s stomach. He climbed the steps in the dark, feeling his way along the familiar stairs, meaning to knock at the door upstairs. As he turned the corner, his bare foot pressed softly, coldly, against something yielding and slick. He recoiled in disgust, switched on his torch, and looked. Ugh! A rat. Its body limp, dead, sprawled across the floor. Flies, disturbed by the torchlight, rose buzzing from its carcass. He hurried up the stairs, switched on the torch again. Why was Narayanappa lying on the floor, wrapped up like that—perhaps he had covered his face with a cloth, he thought, smiling grimly as he pulled at the covering, calling, “Narayanappa, Narayanappa,” and shook him. Again, that cold touch, like when he had stepped on the rat—he withdrew his hand sharply and shone the torch. The sight that met his eyes: eyelids open, sightless, staring. In the circle of torchlight, flies, maggots, stench.

## Chapter Six

In the agrahara, the eldest woman, Lakshmi Devamma, who had passed seventy, flung open the heavy front door with a loud “Dharo!” and called out, “Hey!” She stepped into the street of the agrahara, stood at the crossroads, and again called, “Hey!” Whenever she could not sleep, or when her mind was troubled, she would come out night after night into the agrahara street, wandering three times up and down, from top to bottom and back again, finally stopping in front of Garudacharya’s house. There, she would summon his sons, grandsons, and ancestors, call upon all the gods and deities as witnesses, heap curses upon them with vehemence, then turn back to her house, pull shut the heavy wooden door with a “Dharo!” and lie down to sleep. Especially as new moon and full moon approached, her cursing habit would grow more intense.

The most talked-about subject in the agrahara: her threshold, her temper. Both are spoken of from one end to the other. Her reputation had spread to all the Brahmin agraharas in the four directions. Some called her Avalakshana Lakshmidevamma, the inauspicious Lakshmidevamma, for she was widowed in childhood. If she appeared, mischievous boys and Brahmins would step back four paces and resume their journey, and she would chase them away, waving her stick, cursing them. But no one took her words seriously. The boys called her Hulitegina Lakshmidevamma, Lakshmidevamma of the anthill. Yet she was most famously known as Half-mad Lakshmidevamma.

Her story was a legend: married at eight, widowed soon after. By fifteen, her mother-in-law and father-in-law had died. The agrahara declared her born under an inauspicious star. Before she turned twenty, her own father and mother too passed away, leaving her alone. What then? The little property and jewelry she had were taken over by Garudacharya’s father, who brought her grandmother to his own house and cared for her. All his dealings were of this kind. Narayanappa’s father, too,