Opening
A new family takes shape as Dr. Kalpana Hemlatha (Hema) and Dr. Abhi Ghosh settle into parenthood with the twins, Marion Praise Stone and Shiva Praise Stone. The narrative then shifts into Marion’s voice, where childhood wonder collides with cruelty, secrecy, and the first fractures in an unbreakable bond.
What Happens
Chapter 16: Bride for a Year
Hema and Ghosh create a domestic rhythm around the twins, with Hema clinging to ritual—fresh cow’s milk, protective Hindu rites—to shield the boys from harm. An astrologer’s pronouncement that Ghosh cannot be the father needles her fears that Thomas Stone might reclaim his sons, underscoring the pull of The Weight of the Past and Secrets. Meanwhile, Ghosh steps up as Missing Hospital’s de facto lead surgeon.
Mid-amputation, Hema drags him home—he arrives braced for tragedy and finds a naming ceremony needing a “father.” The word thrills him. Later, when Hema laughs about his old proposal, Ghosh, wounded, packs to leave. She stops him; anger turns to passion, and they finally become lovers.
At dawn Ghosh proposes. Hema says yes—but only as a bride for one year, renewable annually. The terms puzzle him, but he accepts, grateful that his long love is returned. Their contract marriage becomes the scaffolding of a chosen family, a tender expression of Family, Identity, and Belonging.
Chapter 17: “Tizita”
Marion takes over the telling. He remembers being whirled through the kitchen in Ghosh’s arms, nursed-not-nursed by the cook Almaz, who lets him hold her breast for comfort while she works, and cared for by the nannies Almaz and Rosina. The act, neither quite maternal nor sexual, imprints a language of touch and security outside blood ties.
Rosina’s pregnancy links Marion, Shiva, and her daughter Genet “from the start.” Almaz hums “Tizita,” a ballad of longing whose notes lodge deep in Marion’s memory. As he grows, the song becomes the soundtrack of an Ethiopian identity lived in distance and ache, a private anthem of Exile and Homeland.
Chapter 18: Sins of the Father
Early on, the boys are “ShivaMarion,” a single unit dressed alike and moving as one. Around four, Shiva stops speaking, communicating with the jingle of his anklet, dazzling sketches, and quick calculations. In the household chaos, his silence barely registers until Mrs. Garretty alerts Hema.
Guilt-stricken, Hema imposes exacting lessons. Marion explodes—Shiva will speak when he’s ready—and bolts, feeling seen as his own person for the first time. Returning, he finds Hema teaching a complex classical Indian dance to Genet and Shiva. Shiva’s body blooms into a new language; Marion, watching from the doorway, feels excluded and betrayed. The first real crack in their fused identity opens, and Brotherhood and Rivalry steps in.
Chapter 19: Giving Dogs Their Due
The family thrills at Emperor Haile Selassie’s motorcade—until, moments later, guards beat an elderly woman who dares present a petition. The whiplash from benevolent image to sanctioned brutality scars Marion’s sense of power and justice. Soon, a private echo: Gebrew, the gatekeeper, suffocates Koochooloo’s puppies on orders from Matron Hirst, enforcing a cap on dogs at Missing.
Shiva, frantic, burns his hands trying to save the pups from a plastic bag tied to a car’s exhaust. Adults offer tidy reasons; Shiva answers with a single, cutting sentence that shames them all. He then unclasps his silver anklet and sets it down—discarding a childhood talisman and the sound that served as his “voice.” Innocence buckles under the weight of Betrayal and Forgiveness.
Chapter 20: Blind Man’s Buff
In the gray drag of rainy season, Genet proposes blind man’s buff. Marion and Shiva, guided by scent, win easily; later Genet lures Marion into a rematch—just the two of them—binding his hands and blindfolding him tight. The game turns intimate and primal, a hunt in darkness.
He finds her in the pantry, naked and crying. Feeling replaces sight; their first kiss and tentative touch unfold in a cocoon of secrecy—until Rosina walks in. Cornered, Genet fires back with the deepest cut of all: she knows Sergeant Zemui is her father and Rosina has been hiding his visits. The revelation detonates the room. What begins as a child’s game becomes a crossing into adult knowledge, desire, and the costs of secrecy.
Character Development
The section tracks a family’s formation while charting the twins’ first separations—emotional, moral, and sexual—as childhood certainties erode.
- Hema & Ghosh: Move from lopsided affection to mutual love and partnership. Their one-year-renewable marriage blends devotion with wary autonomy as they claim parenthood together.
- Marion Stone: Finds his narrative voice and his individuality beyond the twin dyad. Witnessing cruelty and unmasking secrets accelerates his loss of innocence; his bond with Genet shifts toward desire.
- Shiva Stone: Defines himself through silence, precision, and physical grace. Breaking his silence to indict the adults and removing his anklet marks a moral and personal emancipation.
- Genet: Emerges as wounded and willful—seeking closeness, wielding truth like a blade. Her pantry confession shifts every relationship around her.
Themes & Symbols
The chapters weave public violence with private “necessity,” exposing how ordinary people rationalize harm. The twins’ shared identity fractures as each child grasps for distinct selfhood, reorienting the family. Secrets—about paternity, about the past—govern choices and fears, while love insists on strange terms: a contract marriage, a comfort offered by touch, a kiss in the dark.
Family ties prove chosen as much as inherited; belonging is crafted from ritual, caregiving, and language—spoken or not. Memory becomes a homeland of its own: “Tizita” anchors Marion to place and loss, even as the state’s smiling pageantry gives way to the reality of power and its casual cruelty.
Symbols
- Shiva’s Anklet: Childhood’s music and a substitute voice; its removal signals moral awakening and self-assertion.
- Blind Man’s Buff: Sightlessness enabling truer perception—of pain, longing, and truth—until the blindfold comes off and the world grows sharper, harsher.
- “Tizita”: A portable homeland, binding the diaspora in remembered smells, songs, and grief.
Key Quotes
“Will you forget if someone kills me or Marion?” Shiva’s first clear words in years slice through adult rationalizations. He reframes the puppies’ deaths as a moral equivalence, forcing the adults to confront the human cost behind “pragmatic” decisions.
“ShivaMarion.” A nickname becomes a diagnosis: the boys’ fused identity. As the narrative progresses, the label chafes, and each act of divergence—dance, silence, anger—turns the hyphen into a fracture line.
“Together from the start.” Marion’s memory of Genet binds affection, fate, and complicity. The line foreshadows intimacy and rupture, suggesting that closeness can be both sanctuary and snare.
“Bride for only one year.” Hema’s condition codifies love and fear in the same breath. It protects autonomy while acknowledging the accident and necessity that forged this family.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
These chapters pivot the novel into a coming-of-age told by Marion, grounding the epic in a child’s sensoria and a young man’s moral awakening. The family solidifies even as the twins begin to part ways: Shiva through silence and embodied language, Marion through narration and desire. Public brutality mirrors private compromise, teaching the children how power operates—and how love, secrecy, and choice define belonging. The pantry revelation and Shiva’s broken silence set trajectories that will shape every bond that follows.