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money, money.
    ‘Then office. Meanwhile, your father, lolling in bed, has sipped several teas and inspected the newspaper with disrelish, grieving once in a way, perhaps, that the tea has cooled. I batheand breakfast, virtually at the same time, scamper to the garage over the stabs of my corns. Forbear your father mouthing in assorted heinous ways that
I
delay him for office, the beast. Shut the doors of the garage after he sucks dry some
ten minutes
to back the car out – I stand and wait, my tummy tight with disquiet, wrath and worthlessness, why can’t he ever precede me to the garage, even one single morning, why do only
I
have to shut the doors after the car? He could save me ten whole minutes.
    ‘In office – borrow money and evade the loansharks. One or two peons will mince in, bank their hams against my desk, chomp paan and review my refunding power. In every chat, every exchange, I’m blemished – I’ve borrowed and have paid back or have to pay back, or I’ve wheedled to borrow, and he or she has begged off, perhaps with restraint, very likely without, but has noised abroad the titbit over the tiffin boxes: she’s
still
cadging. Or I will borrow in good time to repay an earlier loan – or I will doubtless borrow in the long run. All day this tingling – this guilt and fretting – muddling with the leaden routine of office. I hate money because of the domination that it – it
squats
over me. Lunch with your father, at which, over Aya’s vapid cooking, he recycles his strictures.
    ‘Back home at six. I long to finish everything, scurry through everything,
conclude
it – feeding, trudging, clothes, being – so that at the end I can anchor; but where is the lull? In place of stillness, I reap only Kuki’s mother designedly mistaking me for her sweeperess. Feed and distend once more your father – else the ulcer in his belly detonates through his jaws. Put up with Aya’s gripes against her chums. Pass over the lurching in my skull, speculate about dinner. Food, all the time, food – consider all day what to feed others, yet perpetually bear their censure, stinking of an open-mouthed belly. Aya might not have gone to the market at all – some tip-top alibi – her menopause that’s been obliging her now for some years, her kidneys, her breathing – meantime, she would’ve hobbled off for a matinée cinema show – nothing in the kitchen to cook. Tea yet again! And again the apprehensions of the lavatory. Your accusations against the day –Kuki cheated at badminton, and jostled your elbow so that your orange bar fell. Burfi not at home for hours on end, another wellspring of misgivings – who are these friends that he doesn’t bring home, are they lost souls or what? In particular that Assamese. But now the day is breaking up, and my corns are spiking me. What to ram into these greedy-guts? Who will help me to sate them? By and by, one of Aya’s fan club will saunter to the market. From his bed your father will cavil – I never check the accounts, so how am I convinced that he’s not swindling us? Of course I’m not convinced! But why doesn’t your father oversee the house himself? Oh, he’s shameless, hopeless. Make the beds, tidy the rooms. By the time dinner comes around, you’ll’ve mewled fifty times to me that we should eat like Kuki. Very likely, you’ll glide away to Kuki’s and cringe before his mummy, bob around her, bear with and even thrill to her churlishness about me – can’t I even sustain my own litter that it should cadge for grub in the houses of neighbours! By dinner time your father’s belly will’ve thickened with snacks. So I eat by myself. Exhausted, skull on pillow, sleep evasive, waiting for Burfi, where is that son?’
    Jamun glowers at his mother’s profile. He has from time to time been informed that his features are hers, and Burfi’s Shyamanand’s. Jamun is guilty and jittery that his mother has intuited right about Kuki’s mother. Urmila’s