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.“I’ll ask Charvi to talk to Ravi, then,” Kokila said thoughtfully as Ramanandam started to doze off.He chuckled.“You never give up, my little tigress,” he said before falling asleep.Charvi was no better than her father.“This is a personal matter, Kokila.If Chetana came to me, I could help.If Dr.Nageshwar Rao or Manikyam Akka came to me, I would try to talk to them and then ask them to talk to Ravi.But we shouldn’t interfere in someone else’s marriage and life,” Charvi said.“I don’t think drinking is.And going to brothels? He is really going to a prostitute? Well, everyone has their karma to contend with.”Kokila didn’t understand why Charvi couldn’t just talk to Ravi and see if maybe she could lead him away from bad women and alcohol.What was this nonsense about personal matters? Everyone at Tella Meda always interfered in everything, yet now they were pretending that they didn’t?“Just talk to him,” Kokila said in exasperation.“He’s your nephew.Just talk and see if you can’t convince him to start college, that’s all.”Charvi smiled.“You’re a good friend to Chetana.I’ll see what I can do.But he’s chosen his path.Only he can make the changes in his life to make the wrongs right.”Kokila didn’t say anything to that.Even though she agreed that only Ravi could change his life, she didn’t think that help was unwarranted.The strongest people needed help and Ravi was such a weakling.“I’ll try and talk to him tonight after bhajan—if he’s there, that is,” Charvi said in a placating tone.“Thank you,” Kokila murmured, and left Charvi to do whatever it is she did all day in her rooms.Lately, Kokila was starting to get frustrated with Charvi and everyone else in the ashram.The more she looked at the finances, the more she was depressed.Narayan Garu had not paid his “rent” in four months.Renuka hadn’t bothered to give Subhadra any money for eight months now.Ravi and Chetana had promised to put some money into the running of Tella Meda but they had not.Kokila now knew in intimate detail how much money Manikyam sent to her son without her husband’s permission and where that money went.But Kokila felt she couldn’t demand that anyone give money because she didn’t add any income to the Tella Meda finances either.She needed a job, she decided.She talked about it to Subhadra, who was instantly enthusiastic and had several suggestions.“You can talk to this woman, she comes to the temple every Wednesday afternoon and distributes raw ingredients for papads and takes back the finished product,” Subhadra explained.“You go there tomorrow.You can sit right here in Tella Meda and make papads.This girl, she’s eight months pregnant, her husband is a soldier, he’s in the war.She makes thirty packets every week and gets thirty rupees.It’s good money.”When Kokila asked Chetana to join her she was reluctant but went along with her to the temple on top of the hill all the same.It was the same temple where Chetana had married Ravi and the priest nodded at her when he saw her.“How is your husband doing?” he asked, and Chetana murmured appropriate words in response.“One of these days I’m going to say my husband’s a drunk who can’t get his lingam up at night.Maybe then they’ll all just shut up and stop asking me how Ravi is doing,” Chetana said angrily.Kokila wisely kept silent.These days it was better to not offer any marital advice to Chetana, as she would go into a rage.Charvi’s conversation with Ravi had never taken place and Kokila didn’t press the matter.She herself tried to talk to Ravi but he made a blatant pass at her, which made Kokila realize that Ravi was probably as unredeemable as everyone said he was.Maybe Chetana could save his soul but Kokila seriously doubted it.Kanka Lakshmi was a large, matronly woman who wore a hand-woven white cotton sari with an orange border.She sat on a chair while the women who made papads sat on the floor in a corner of the temple.Two large gold rings adorned her ears and a diamond nose ring flashed as she spoke.She wore gold bangles and a big thick gold chain, but it was not a mangalsutra.Kokila didn’t think the woman was married.A large dark man carried supplies into the temple and carted away the finished packets of papads to a three-wheeled yellow and black auto rickshaw at the bottom of the hill.Kanka Lakshmi spoke in a manly and stern voice.She chastised the women who hadn’t made enough papads and those who had ruined their ingredients and produced bad papads.She even fired one woman, accusing her of stealing ingredients and using them in her kitchen instead of for the papads.Radhika was eight months pregnant and the only woman who was praised for her good work.She rented a room in a house owned by an elderly couple near the temple.She was waiting for her husband to return from the war.The rumor, of course (which had already reached Chetana and Kokila, who had been at the temple for less than an hour), was that Radhika was carrying an illegitimate child and the husband at war was just a fabrication to cover up her sin.Radhika was a demure woman with beautiful fair skin.If you didn’t look at her belly, she didn’t look pregnant at all.Her arms and face were still thin and she had a healthy glow about her.She talked very softly and often smiled shyly.How anyone could think this woman was sleeping around and conceiving illegitimate children, Kokila wasn’t sure.She looked like a nice woman, a wife and a mother-to-be.Kanka Lakshmi asked Radhika to stay back with the new women who wanted to make papads.There were four of them, including Chetana and Kokila.“It’s very simple,” Kanka Lakshmi said.“Radhika, can you make some so that we can show these women how it is done?”Radhika immediately went into action.“I’ll make plain papads and then those with chili flakes in them, okay?” she said sweetly.She measured flour, salt, oil, a tablespoon of turmeric and water and poured them into a big steel bowl.Then she kneaded the mixture until it was a soft dough.“Now you have to roll out the papads,” she explained, and pulled out a wooden base and a thin rolling pin.Efficiently, she rolled out fifteen papads in no time, and then made more dough, this time adding red chili flakes from a packet.“We give you everything you need.If we want you to make papads with chili flakes or black pepper, we will provide you with the ingredients,” Kanka Lakshmi told all the women.Radhika made three more papads and then set the dough aside.“Sometimes if you don’t put in enough water or too much, the dough gets lumpy or dry, then you have to be careful and add more flour or water accordingly,” Radhika told the four women watching her carefully.“Now, you try,” she said to Kokila.Kokila hadn’t cooked much in her life but she had participated in all kitchen duties at her father’s house and at Tella Meda, so Kokila started out easily.“Excellent,” Kanka Lakshmi said when Kokila made papads and put them side by side to let them dry.“Once you are done, you leave them in the shade, never in the sun, and let them dry for a whole day.The sun will ruin the papads so don’t leave them outside without paying attention.And then you stack them one on top of the other and put them into the packet that we give you.”Kanka Lakshmi showed them how to seal the plastic packet with a burning candle.That seemed to take some effort to get the hang of but all four women were hired to make five packets of papads each for the first week.“If you do well, we’ll ask you to make more,” Kanka Lakshmi told them.“We give you enough ingredients for the papads, so don’t use them in your kitchen.I will not tolerate thievery.You get paid one rupee for each packet and there are twenty-five papads in one packet.I pay more than the others do.They pay only seventy-five paisas per packet.So, do a good job and you will make good money
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