In Chapter 3, set in the narrative present, we are told how the family home in Ayemenem has deteriorated over the years. The last of the family still there, Baby Kochamma, in her eighties, spends her days in front of the new television, seldom bothering to tidy up the place, indifferent to the piled dishes and the scurrying cockroaches, relying on a most unreliable maid, a dwarf named Kochu Maria. Estha, coming in from a long walk in a steady rain, heads to his room, which he has reorganized and cleaned up. He prepares for a shower. Rahel arrives from the airport eager to reunite with her brother. As Rahel watches from his bedroom door, Estha, knowing his sister is watching, strips without shame. Rahel is impressed by her brother’s lithe and muscled frame, looking on his body as if he were “a naked stranger met in a chance encounter” (89). It is an awkward moment, Estha and Rahel “[a] sister a brother. A woman a man” (89).

In Chapter 4, the narrative returns to 1969 and the family trip to the airport in Cochin. After being waylaid by the parade, they stop at the Abhilash Talkies, a movie theater showing The Sound of Music.