As the officially designated poor-thing, Bilquis was also obliged to sit each evening at Bariamma's feet while the old lady recounted the family tales. These were lurid affairs, featuring divorces, bankruptcies, droughts, cheating friends, child mortality, diseases of the breast, men cut down in their prime, failed hopes, lost beauty, women who grew obscenely fat, smuggling deals, opium-taking poets, pining virgins, curses, typhoid, bandits, homosexuality, sterility, frigidity, rape, the high price of food, gamblers, drunks, murderers, suicides, and God. [79]
