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slice of medium-rare roast beef and shut her eyes the better to savour it. Never had she tasted the natural flavour of meats, fish and vegetables quite this way—always eating them drowned in delectable concoctions of spices at home.
    On Sunday—a day as scintillating and balmy as all the days she was to spend in Denver—they drove along winding roads through greenly rolling country to an abandoned mining town that had flourished during the gold rush.
    Guiding her tour with enthusiasm, blossoming beneath theadmiring yellow gaze of his beloved and the interest shown by the sophisticated woman in a sari, David gave Zareen her first taste of the history of the land. So tied-up and tangled the day before, his tongue became fluent and he brought the Wild West vividly to life. His fumbling movements too were replaced by the surety that was natural to his compact body. And David, who had despaired in his dark bout of gloom the night before of ever impressing Zareen, was as surprised as she was.
    When Feroza, agile in jeans, asked Zareen to climb the steep struts after her into an old steam engine, David tactfully suggested: ‘You’d better not, in that beautiful sari.’
    ‘At least you have more sense than my daughter,’ Zareen said tartly, and intercepted a look between them—of David’s delight at winning her favour and Feroza’s bemused surprise—and a gesture Zareen was not meant to see: gloating at having scored over Feroza, David cocked a snook, and though Feroza tried to look hurt by the sudden switch in her mother’s allegiance, it was plain to see she was pleased.
    Each day the next week Feroza dropped her mother off at one or another of the gleaming shopping malls. To Zareen’s dazzled senses they were pieces of paradise descended from the sky, crammed with all that was most desirable in the world. Shooting off at a tangent she darted between the garment racks and the cosmetics counters—the jewellery, linen, toy, shoe and furniture displays—like a giddy meteorite driven mad by the allure of contending cosmic bodies. Feroza fetched her late in the evening from some designated spot, usually an ice-cream parlour. Eyes glazed by the glory of thegoods she had seen and the foods she had tasted, Zareen climbed into the small car with large shopping bags.
    The results of her first shopping spree were manifest that very evening. The tops of everything—counters, tables, window sills—sprouted tissue boxes as if she had planted a pastel garden of fragrant Kleenex. She went from tissue box to tissue box plucking tissues with a prodigality that satisfied a deep sensual craving; and chucked them away with an abandon she never thought she could indulge.
    Feroza’s dressing table, and bathroom shelves blossomed with a dizzying array of perfume bottles and cosmetics, and the floor level of Feroza’s two long closets rose by at least two feet in a glossy flood of packages containing linen, lamp-shades and gadgets. The hanging spaces were jammed with new blouses, trousers, skirts and jackets.
    Feroza discreetly moved her clothes to David’s closet.
    Enchanted, Zareen made her daily debut in the kitchen, modelling her new clothes, and was as delighted as a child by the flattering comments from whoever happened to be breakfasting. She spent hours chatting with Laura and Shirley. They ferried her around occasionally when Feroza or David were busy, and she treated them to ice-cream cones, and the junk food she brought home. She bought small gifts for everyone.
    David and Feroza, exhilarated by their success, relaxed some of their self-imposed restraints. David held Feroza’s hand; and, glancing at her mother, Feroza permitted it to be held. She rested her head on David’s shoulder when the ride was long, and occasionally hugged him in a sisterly fashion infront of Zareen. Light-headed with delight, David let his hair, and even the stubble on his chin grow. His confidence too blossomed; and with it the gamin sense of