The local woman is a higher-caste mother in the town of Bulashah. Though she is eager to share her food with the holy man who passes by, she berates Bakha for sitting on her steps, telling him he has “polluted” her home and wishing death on him. The local woman’s insistence on physical cleanliness even as she is morally contaminated epitomizes the higher-caste hypocrisy that shapes so much of Bakha’s daily life.