me right at the door,’ he said wearily. He came in, and closed the outer door with a soft click.
‘Another book,’ she said.
He walked past her and deposited the books on one of the jars that covered the old table in the living room. He went to the kitchen, reappeared with a steel tumbler of water and sat down heavily; he rested his elbow on the small fringe of available space on the table and drank. When he’d finished he set down the tumbler, rubbed his forehead, removed his spectacles, and pinched the top of his nose.
‘Are you feeling unwell?’
‘No.’
‘Then what happened?’ Her voice had become sharp, but she hovered close to him.
He waved towards the books. ‘The BMC moved the booksellers away today – took all the books and threw them into a truck. They’re taking them to a godown somewhere.’
‘Just like that?’
He nodded.
She went into the kitchen, came back with a bottle of cold water and a jug and refilled the tumbler, half with the iced water and half with room-temperature water. He closed his hand around the tumbler.
‘Maybe it’s for the best,’ she said thoughtfully, and put one hand on her hip. ‘We’re running out of space for all these books anyway.’
He stared across the landscape of clustered jars. The table was old, from the house at Dadar; it was good Burma teak, and beautiful when polished, but they’d never used it properly. Over the years it had become a receptacle for jars of pickle, bottles of sauce and squash, tins of drinking chocolate, papers, paperweights, and all kinds of other objects that, someone had reasoned, were about to be in use. What a waste, he thought.
‘Oh, I had to tell you,’ she continued. ‘Your sister called.’
He looked up. ‘Vimla?’
‘How many sisters do you have? Milind’s transfer order has come through. They’ll have to leave in a few days.’
‘Oh.’
‘And they just found out that Ashish can’t take his exams this year, he has to repeat.’
‘What? Why?’
‘Attendance,’ she said.
He put on his spectacles again, diverted for a moment. ‘Always something new with that boy,’ he said, almost admiringly. Fecklessness was not a quality one had been encouraged to develop, or that one celebrated in one’s offspring; still, it cut a certain dash.
‘So they were wondering if he can stay with us till next year.’
Mohan smiled. ‘Of course, where else will he stay?’
‘With your brother?’ However, she smiled.
‘Ha!’
Lakshmi sighed. ‘It’s going to be a lot of extra work. And also expense.’
‘But we have the money from the printing shop. And what Megha’s been sending, we haven’t even touched that.’ His income from his daily occupation had never been considerable; in recent years it had dwindled to a trickle.
She nodded, then frowned. ‘You know that I’m fond of Ashish. But it’s a big responsibility. We’ll have to make sure he studies, attends regularly when college starts. You’ll have to speak to him. Make him understand he needs to be sincere.’
Mohan snorted. ‘I’m sure his mother’s spoken to him comprehensively,’ he said. He drained the second tumbler of water, put it into his wife’s hand, and went inside to change his clothes.
Seven in the morning, Ashish thought he must be dreaming. He stood under the big notice boards and read the names of suburbs he had rarely visited: Belapur, Titwala, Vashi, Panvel, Andheri. It was too depressing.
Most of his possessions were in a large suitcase at his feet; he clutched a cardboard box filled with books, cassettes and compact discs that he had rushed around retrieving when his uncle arrived at six. His parents had been too harried to become sentimental; they would be flying to Indore in the afternoon and some of their things had already been sent by road. Ashish, with similar efficiency, had been plucked out of his life and sent to live with his aunt and uncle.
Now he stood inside the grand station, which was light, quiet, and almost cold at this hour. Pigeons fluttered in the sulight, high above the vaulted ceiling. A few red-coated porters passed at a brisk little jog; a long-distance train must have been arriving. Mohan had gone to buy a ticket for Ashish. He came back, put a hand on the boy’s thin shoulder and slipped the two-inch rectangle of yellow pasteboard into his shirt pocket. ‘Come, that’s our train. Can you run?’
They began an awkward trot. The elder man ran easily, despite the aged VIP suitcase he carried, and the boy skipped lopsidedly behind him, trying not to spill the contents of the carton, which slithered, skittish, and threatened to make a leap for freedom.
The wide platform was clear; the horn sounded; at the same magical moment the train began to pull out. Mohan heaved in the suitcase, jumped on, cried, ‘Here!’ He took the carton from Ashish and pulled him on by the wrist.
The heavy train was already moving fast. It drew away from the station and into the warm, bright sunlight just outside. Ashish looked down: this was the place where the tracks intersected, then separated again.
Saraswati Park was settling into its Sunday. A few people were outside the vegetable shop; a woman negotiated with a man who stood behind a handcart covered with large, green-striped watermelons; the rickshaw turned into the lane.
‘Take a right – up a bit – no, stop. Yes, here.’ Mohan dragged the suitcase out and paid the rickshaw driver, who stared unabashedly at the four-storey building. Its yellow paint was peeling. The name Jyoti was stencilled in dark red letters on the gatepost. Ashish staggered out of the other side of the rickshaw, still clasping the carton, and followed his uncle into the small entrance with its wall of pierced tiles. He had come here regularly as a child, but not recently; the last occasion he recalled was his cousin Gautam’s wedding three or four years earlier. Now everything came back to him: the names on the plate at the foot of the stairs (Gogate, Kulkarni, Gogate, Gogate, Prabhu, Kamat, Karekar, Dasgupta) and the double doors – the inner ones were open and the outer doors had a large ornamental grille from which Sunday cooking smells came into the stairwell. Withered garlands of auspicious leaves hung from the lintels, and, outside several of the apartments, pairs of sinister looking red footprints marked the time, years before, when the lady of the house had arrived as a new bride.
When they reached the third floor, panting, Mohan put his hand into the grille of number 15 and opened the catch. He turned to beam at his nephew. ‘Come,’ he said.
Lakshmi appeared, in her post-bath outfit of clean salwar kameez, her hair still loose. ‘Wait!’ she said dramatically to Ashish, who paused at the door, taken aback. She held a comb in one hand and raised it like a ceremonial item. The
