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began to walk briskly towards the man, who was now standing gazing up at a frangipani tree in full blossom.
    ‘Excuse me, do you think this is acceptable?’
    The man spun round, his reverie cut short by Susheela’s tone.
    ‘Every day I see you, helping yourself to flowers from my garden, as if this is some sort of free place for the public.’
    ‘Madam, these are for prayers. Not for selling in the market. What harm is there?’
    ‘The harm is that you are taking what is not yours. Every day you come here and just help yourself. Have you ever thought about whether I also need these flowers for my prayers?’
    ‘Madam, you should not deprive God of these small offerings, wherever they come from.’
    ‘God will be a lot happier with you if you keep your hands off my garden in the future.’
    Susheela turned around, picked up a couple of dead leaves off the path and walked back into the house. The door shut with a sharp click.

    Their lunches were packed. The
pongal
for their breakfast was ready. The coffee was dripping through the filter. Mala had paid the electricity bill the day before. She had washed the front steps first thing in the morning and drawn her standard
rangoli
: four diamonds intersecting in the middle of a large spiral. It was just after eight in the morning. Mala looked for a safety pin in the coin purse on the kitchen shelf and then glanced at her watch. Gayathri the maid was now ten minutes late. Girish liked her to be gone before he had his breakfast at a quarter to nine.
    A couple of minutes later the gate bolt screeched across the stone floor and a shadow passed along one of the tiny front windows. Girish had said that they could afford a maid for an hour a day. Mala would have to get her to run a broom across the floor, mop all the rooms, wash the clothes hurriedly and clean the previous evening’s plates and utensils. The rest was for Mala to manage.
    Gayathri gave Mala a practised smile as she walked to the bathroom. Nothing was said of the lateness. In fact, these days Mala said very little to Gayathri at all. When she had first started working there, Gayathri had tried to indulge in some banter. But Mala’s self-censorship had already begun to be a habit for her, one she was notgoing to break for the maid. Even though Mala knew that it was her place to assert herself, she felt uncomfortable in Gayathri’s all too corporeal presence. She could not stop herself looking at the audacious swell of the maid’s haunches when she crouched low to flick the wet rag under the dining table; her creamy brown belly that pushed through the thin fabric of her sari; her extravagant breasts scarcely contained by her sweat-stained blouse. How could she be so fat when she did physical work all day?
    Mala had little knowledge of Gayathri’s home life, having only got so far as to ascertain that she had no children. Gayathri’s response to a query from Girish about her husband was: ‘
Aiya
, he comes and he goes.’
    With that she had let out her long, throaty laugh, a perplexing noise that sounded like a series of quick hiccups, each being ambushed by the next.
    There was no evidence of scabrous entertainments in Gayathri’s life but there existed an air of gratification and an earthy zeal about her that Mala had not encountered before. She had once asked Girish if he thought Gayathri drank. He had immediately responded with an interrogation as to whether Mala had smelt alcohol on her breath, had she been acting strangely, was there something wrong with her work, had someone said anything? Well, why was she asking then?
    Mala regretted ever having brought it up.

    The letter was addressed to the Head of Customer Services at the regional electricity distribution company and ran to three pages of block text. The author, the Chief Executive Officer and majority shareholder of a small company based in the industrial corridor to the south of Mysore, was by turns deeply concerned, immensely frustrated and