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only after a time does it drag. She wends at a foot’s pace, does not look up or about and, Jamun recognizes at once, is not going to any specific place. Feebly trying to give her existence the slip, at least for a time. Dinner will wind her in, or the responsibilities of feeding a family, so she befools herself. For when she doubles back, her husband, ramping against his stomach ulcer, will have sated his jaws with whatever his fingers fumble on in the fridge before reverting to his divan. Burfi, study and dinner mopped up helter-skelter, will be in Kuki’s house, clipped round-eyed to their TV. Jamun the gourmandizer will have guzzled once with his father and once alone, hating Burfi for having (while moseying past the table, aware that only Urmila and Jamun have yet to eat, and that his mother will never bleat over the dole of a leftover dinner) crammed down the best of the mutton. If there
is
mutton, when Urmila eats alone, wretchedly, she gets much gravy and many potatoes.
    Her footfalls are uneven in the dispersed blue-ivory light that makes Jamun feel that he has slipped on sunglasses at nightfall – a tread more rickety than expected of her age, incarnating her infirmities and her cheerlessness. She does not trudge very far. She squats on the culvert by the lane, within earshot of the cigarette-wala from whom Burfi has lately, cloak-and-daggerly, started buying Gold Flake Filter Kings, parroting the adult world. She shows no wonder at seeing Jamun. Sluiced with sobbing, her face is voided and sacramental, as a landscape after a cloudburst.
    ‘Come, sit.’ Jamun sits, wondering whether any of the ambulant louts are going to be offensive about his mother perched alongside the lane.
    ‘I rise at four-thirty every morning. Long before the sun. Every morning. Holidays, Sundays, nothing, no variation. Four-thirty, in the murk I ooze out of a bone-wearying sleep. Lurch in the kitchen, warm the milk, make tea for myself, skullpulsing. Scared of going to the toilet because of my piles. How to explain, and who shall listen? Every morning, how to express, that I blench at the thought of the lavatory, the abasing ignominy, the pain. In there, twenty minutes, now and then forty, face gnarled with exertion, once in a way tears, my calves and hams bubbling with fatigue. Five-thirty or so, back to the kitchen. Yell myself hoarse for Aya, who shall never descend before seven – from time to time she shrills at me not to disturb her. Tea again for your father – nowadays for Burfi too, he avows that he’s come of age. Wake the two of you up, beseech and plead, please get up, you’re going to be late for school, please wake up, your tea is becoming cold. Then wait, for you both to be indulgent with me and forsake the snugness of your cots. Possibly yet another intolerable visit to the lavatory. Pour out for your father his tea, detail the two of you for your baths etcetera. Bawl for Aya afresh. Screech at each of you through the doors to wash properly and not to fool yourselves. Whip up your breakfasts – eggs, porridge. Pack your tiffin boxes, lay out your school uniforms. Try to parry your vexing questions on your clothes – Ma, where’s my left sock? Ma, why’s Burfi not loaning me his other shirt? Park the bucket out for the sweeperess, make over clothes to the laundry boy, fish up the exact small change for the milk boy. Exhort you two to mop up your breakfasts in the moments remaining to you, sweet-talk you into not leaving your tiffin boxes behind. Lend Aya a hand in scrambling some breakfast for your father and me – and herself, and her several playmates – clout the beds into shape. Stow lunch for your father and me, hand on money to Aya for the cooking gas or the shopping, check with her what to buy – pointless, of course, for she buys only what her chum-of-the-week craves to eat – endure Aya’s cactus patter on my stricken life while my temples flutter with the knowledge of the lifelong deficit of money,