The year of the marriage proposal, Sivakami is ten. She is neither tall nor short for her age, but she will not grow much more. Her shoulders are narrow but appear solid, as though the blades are fused to protect her heart from the back. She carries herself with an attractive stiffness: her shoulders straight and always aligned. She looks capable of bearing great burdens, not as though born to yoke but perhaps as though born with a yoke within her.Spanning the lifetime of one woman (1896–1962), The Toss of a Lemon brings us intimately into a Brahmin household, into an India we’ve never before seen.Married at ten, widowed at eighteen, left with two children, Sivakami must wear widow’s whites, shave her head, and touch no one from dawn to dusk.
