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come back with the last rotting wild potatoes of the season, sometimes with dried berries still hanging on brittle stems. The lotus seeds I ate alone, in the shade of a dune. Those I never took home. Perhaps that’s how I survived, on a handful of lotus seeds . . . But, Amma, I never told you about the rotting cow. You remember Radha, my friend who got sick and died? She ate cow meat . . .’ says Lata Bai still afraid to tell the whole truth. It wasn’t just Radha who ate the cow, she did too. Neither of them told. The villagers would have killed her before the drought did for eating the cow. Lata Bai ate only the hooves. Threw them into a grass fire which she kept going for five hours. The hoofs melted and as soon as they started to drip, she caught the drip on a stick, blew on it and popped it into her mouth. Radha wanted the meat. That’s why the day after Radha was dead and she wasn’t.
    ‘Yes, and you ate the hooves. I knew about those,’ says Lata Bai’s mother.
    ‘You did?’
    ‘Oh, forget it, Lata. We’ve all done worse things in our lives.’ It is clear this is the first time Lata Bai and her mother have spoken honestly of those days.
    ‘If you knew about the hooves, why did you give me my sisters’ food? That’s why they died, because I ate their food . . .’
    She physically bites down into those old images, clamping her jaw shut. Lata Bai remembers her youngest sister: two big-moons-in-the-water eyes looking around at the world. First lively, looking for anything that might help her live, a game, a laugh, a touch. Then looking around more slowly, for something to ease the pain. Lata Bai cut her sari in two, the only one she owned, and made a sling for her sister. Each time before she left to look for food by the river, she’d give her sister a huge swing. Her other sisters didn’t expire quite so quietly. They screamed their terrible screams and fought with her to the end, biting and kicking, opening her mouth to snatch their food back from inside her throat. When she woke, there was a bit of vomit beside her head where her sisters had managed to drag their food out of her body. Even after they died, they continued to visit her in her dreams and pull food from deep inside her gullet every night.
    ‘Because you were the strong one. You are still the strong one. I made that choice, and it was a good one.’
    ‘Nani, did you eat cow hooves as well?’
    ‘Ha, ha . . . no. I licked the dregs off the plates instead of washing them. At first the taste of the pickled soup was less bitter than the taste of shame. Later the taste of shame became less bitter than the taste of despair. Finally, the taste of despair disappeared and it was just the taste of pickled soup again.’
    ‘Hai, Mamta, I hope you never have to witness such days,’ says Lata Bai. ‘Three of my friends died, and one became sick with a disease that curled her legs right into her hips. As for the other two . . .’ It was around the time of her wedding that she heard about two others who had survived. They’d been sent to the city with one of their uncles where there was food to be had. They all knew what happened to the girls who went to the city. They eventually became prostitutes and turned up in the Red Bazaar.
    ‘Finally, the drought ended, and two months later your amma was married to your bapu.
    ‘You remember, that Seeta Ram of yours turned up with his elder brother. His face was covered with a red cloth that shivered slightly at the mouth every time he breathed. I lifted the groom’s veil just to check if it was really Seeta Ram beneath it. Those days there was a lot of switching of grooms, men who changed their minds often paid someone else to pick up their brides. His brother said your amma was too frail and sunken to be a good wife. But I said no, she is strong as a plough. And to prove it, I made her balance all our earthenware pots filled with water on her head . . . all six of them. Do you remember that?’
    ‘Yes,