With Lenin forbidden visitors for a month, Mariamma struggles under curious patients and snaps at a wounded toddy tapper, prompting Joppan to take over suturing. At home, Anna Chedethi tends to her, worried about her weight and spirits. Mariamma and Uplift Master retain a seasoned lawyer in Trivandrum, who says Lenin may face only a few years if unlinked to deaths, yet the prospect devastates her as she anticipates training in Vellore and a more distant, anxious future.

Restless after midnight, Mariamma turns to Philipose’s journals for comfort. She finds an anomalous entry about her seventh birthday: a first cake baked with Big Ammachi, a Parker 51 pen gift, and her own childish inscription. The page’s unusual format signals something momentous.

Philipose then confesses that after Ninan’s death Elsie left for over a year and returned already pregnant. He writes that loving Mariamma healed him and that he chose to be her father, affirming she is a gift from God. Mariamma rereads the passage, initially resisting, then accepts the implication that Philipose is not her biological father. The knowledge sickens and disorients her, and she wonders who knew—perhaps Big Ammachi—but finds no further entries.

Staring into a mirror, Mariamma questions who she is. Remembering her distinctive piebald streak of hair, she takes it as the final clue, ascends to the truth as Philipose once “climbed the highest palm,” and acknowledges the terrible knowledge she never sought.