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reactions of shock, as if they weren’t gifted with any foresight. But they never disagree with each other. Or at least, not for long.
    “He can come as Ram-ji, he can stay as Vaheguru-ji,” says Mem-saab. “This is just a TV play, Damini. You know this is an actor, not the real Lord Ram.”
    But even when you know the actor is just an actor, Lord Ram’s name and crown make him seem larger than the TV. And even when you know Sita Mata will be abducted by the ten-headed Ravan, and that Lord Ram will go to Sri Lanka with the help of Lord Hanumanand burn Lanka to the ground and rescue her, you have to watch out of respect, though this
Ramayan
is taking weeks and weeks to tell. The Punjabi song-story version Damini’s mother taught her takes four or five hours to recite, and she can recite the Hindi telling she learned from her father in eight hours.
    Maybe Leela and Damini’s grandchildren are watching TV right now. Once they’ve seen this show, will they need her song-stories? Mem-saab has not felt well enough to spend summers in Gurkot, and Damini has not seen her daughter or grandchildren for five years now. Who knows when she’ll see them again.
    Even if TV is just illusion, it’s what Mem-saab calls a ‘time-pass.’ And Lord Ram, Sita Mata and Lord Hanuman are familiar, serene and soothing. By the end of this week’s episode, Mem-saab seems to have forgotten her son’s slight to their relatives.

    “It’s only three weeks since Aman-ji began construction, but I can already see the new walls from down here,” says Suresh. He’s hunkered down beside Damini, both balancing on the low wall of the Embassy-man’s lawn. Gulmohar trees give some shade, but the sun still burns through the back of Damini’s sari blouse. She draws the end of her sari around her, mops her face, then covers her head with it.
    “It’s good that Mem-saab can’t hear the construction workers, but she feels the vibrations.”
    “Do you still bathe on the terrace?”
    “Not anymore. I told the women who carry the bricks and cement upstairs they could use my wash area to keep their babies safe. I have been washing Mem-saab’s clothes in her bathroom, and bathing there after Mem-saab has bathed.”
    “Toilet?”
    “Khansama’s, in his quarter.”
    “Where do you dry the clothes?”
    “In the back garden.” She can’t tell her son how much it bothers her to hang Mem-saab’s undergarments where any passing man can leer at them. Or that she’s been watching Aman every day, but he hasn’t called Sardar Gulab Singh to apologize. Sardar Gulab Singh ventured to visit twice more, but Khansama turned him away.
    “Cement dust is settling everywhere,” she says. She wants to tell Suresh that she ordered the sweeper to use a wet rag to wipe the painting of Aman’s late father above the mantle twice a day, hoping the old man’s steady gaze from beneath his white turban and bushy grey eyebrows would shame his son, but last night, when Aman was drunk enough to think no one was listening, he raised his glass, and said, “Hey, Sardar-ji”—he still wouldn’t dare call the old gentleman Papa or Dad—“What does your widow need with all this money?”
    But if she confides this, Suresh will say, “Sikhs are so greedy.”
    “You are serving Amanjit and Kiran at table?” he asks.
    “No,” she says. Because not once since Kiran and Loveleen arrived has the family sat at table with Mem-saab. Khansama has orders to serve Aman, Kiran and Loveleen morning tea in “their” bedroom. “They’re often out for lunch, cocktails, or dinner.”
    Every morning, Kiran wraps her satin dressing gown over a bosom as buxom as that new actress Madhuri Dixit, sits at her dressing table, and preens before the mirror as she applies a mask of gora-coloured makeup. Her sunglasses balance on her nose ring all day, even indoors. She looks petulant and irritated whether she’s talking to Damini or any other servant, and only smiles when Amanjit holds up a