CHAPTER 1

Summary

• The chapter is set in 1900, in Travancore, South India and centers around a twelve-year-old girl who is about to be married.
• The girl and her mother lie together on a mat, discussing the impending wedding. The mother suggests that the wedding day is the saddest for a girl, and then falls asleep.
• The girl wakes up early, before dawn, filled with thoughts and apprehensions about her future, pondering upon the life she is leaving behind, including her late father's chair and her familiar surroundings. Her father, a priest, had wanted her to learn and not get married young.
• The marriage has been arranged by her uncle who has been eager to marry her off. The groom-to-be is a man of good means, but is forty and already has a child.
• Queries around why such a man would marry a girl of little means, without a dowry, leave her suspicious of a hidden secret. Her mother reassures her that their new home will not be so different.
• After her father's death, their home got passed on to her uncle, making her feel estranged in her own house.
• The girl feels that the saddest day of her life was when her father died, and can't imagine her wedding to be worse.
• The girl finds solace in her faith, recalling the words of her father about the presence of a divine pattern, even if it is not visible. She speaks to the void, claiming she will be alright and imagines her father's comforting reply.