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had slipped straight out of their minds?
    Reena hoped to get at least some of the answers from Madhu. Madhu was the one her dad and aunt had turned to when they were in trouble. She was the one who had got them out of scrapes without Jacinta—Mai—knowing.
    Now all that remained was for Reena to corner Madhu when no one else was around...
    Her opportunity came that afternoon. One she couldn’t miss. The incessant rain had eased for once, and her mother, bored of sitting at home or visiting her husband’s friends, managed to coax Deepak to take her shopping in Dommur.
    ‘Would you like to come, Rinu?’ Preeti asked. ‘We’ll go by rickshaw so you won’t get wet or your dress muddied.’
    Though the rain had eased, there were dirty red pools of water everywhere. Preeti knew how Reena hated feeling her wet dress lick her bare legs knowing that mud had spattered all over the back, even when she was wearing the ridiculously expensive ‘special rain shoes which do not splash’ that the salesman had cornered them into buying in that shop in Commercial Street.
    ‘And after we can have masala dosas and gadbad at Aashirwad,’ Preeti continued, looking expectantly at Reena.
    Aashirwad was the restaurant they always ate at in Dommur. Climbing up the winding walkway, breathing in the vanilla scent of ice cream mixed with the sharp, salty aroma of idlis and sambar, marvelling at the impossibly long paper-thin crispy hot dosas and picking at the black mustard seeds in her green coconut chutney, made Reena feel as if in here, time had progressed in snapshots. She could see herself visiting as a toddler, sitting on her father’s knee, fascinated by the shiny stainless-steel tumblers of water and trying to grab at her reflection, even as her father pushed the tumbler aside and her face grew impossibly long and splintered. Then as a little girl in a polka-dot dress and ribbons in her hair, sitting wedged between her mother and father. For some reason, they’d always dressed up to go to Aashirwad. After their meal, her mother bought sambar and rasam powders, malpuris, thila ladus, holiges and raw mango pickle from the shop below to take with them back to Bangalore. Going to Aashirwad was a tradition and she was tempted, but she had more important work to do.
    ‘What do you do here anyway?’ her mother asked curiously, but before Reena could concoct an answer, continued, ‘God, if your dad launches into yet another lecture on the pedigree of the Diaz family, their distinguished roots in Taipur, I’ll kill him... You’re sure you don’t want to come? You might help prevent a murder...’
    ‘Oh go on, Mum, spend his money. That’ll be good revenge.’ And then Reena had her brainwave. ‘Why don’t you ask Mai? It will be good for her. Dad and Mai can reminisce while you shop.’
    Mai needed some persuading. She was getting very frail. Madhu helped her into one of her good saris—‘The Kanjeevaram silk one I wore for your Roce, Deepak,’ Mai said, a far-off light in her eyes as she relived the memory—and off she went, leaning on her son’s arm for the walk up the little path to where the auto-rickshaw was waiting.
    Once she’d waved them off, Reena, complimenting herself on a job well done and armed with her sleuthing handbook which hid the photograph nicely in-between its pages, went in search of Madhu.
    Madhu was washing clothes on the little granite stone by the well, in the shade of the tamarind and banana trees. The heavy thud of clothes hitting stone guided Reena there.
    Deepak had tried countless times to get Madhu to use the new washing machine he had had installed in the bathroom. But Madhu was having none of it: ‘I wash the clothes, rinse them and then scrub them again. Will that square little box do that? I am not using any fancy machines when my hands will do.’ Since then, the washing machine had sat forlorn in the bathroom gathering dust and chicken droppings where the hens perched on it when being