came along – first, a man who wanted to fill out a passport application. When he had taken the completed form and gone, Mohan leaned back in his chair and watched the shadow pigeons take off, wheel wildly, then land in the shadow tree, and merge into its substance. Later, a shadow leaf would seemingly tear itself out of the tree and fly up, into the sunlit sky.
That afternoon he was coming to the end of his lunch – its components neatly laid out on his table, three different small boxes for daal, vegetable and chapatis – when a familiar figure, knife-thin, appeared in his field of vision.
‘Eh, Ashish!’
The boy approached, slowing as he got nearer the tarpaulin. Four men looked at him interestedly. He smiled in a measured but general way and came to a stop near his uncle.
‘Come, sit here.’ Mohan patted the stool next to him.
‘No, I just…’
‘Sit!’
Ashish sat down, reluctantly. But when he’d moved into the world under the tarpaulin, only a metre distant from the road, he began to look about him with curiosity.
Mohan waved towards him for the benefit of the other letter writers. ‘This is my nephew Ashish, my sister’s son. Studying at Elphinstone College.’
Khan smiled at Ashish and examined him closely through his tiny glasses. ‘You are studying…’
‘Yes.’
‘Which stream? Which year?’
‘Um, third year BA.’
A doubtful look passed over Khan’s face. ‘BA?’ he repeated incredulously, as though it was hard for him to believe anyone could be such a malingerer.
‘Arts,’ muttered Ashish.
‘Literature,’ said Mohan firmly. ‘He’s studying English literature.’ He put a hand on one of the boy’s thin shoulders.
‘Um, Mohan mama, can I have the key?’ Ashish murmured rapidly. ‘I don’t have one yet, mami said to get it from you in case she was still out.’
The boy from the tea house reappeared with another round of glasses.
‘At least stay and have tea with me,’ Mohan said. ‘Have you had lunch?’
Ashish looked embarrassed, and also unencouraging. ‘I’ll eat at home,’ he said.
Mohan hadn’t yet eaten his puran poli; he’d been saving it till the end because it was his favourite sweet. ‘Here,’ he said, putting it into the boy’s hand. ‘Eat this and have some tea. Anyway, I shouldn’t have all these things at my age, I’ll get fat.’ He patted his stomach and grinned.
Ashish, now that he had been forced into staying, sat quite contentedly and munched the puran poli.
‘You don’t know how busy it used to be, earlier. People coming all the time, we didn’t even have time for lunch until four o’clock,’ Khan told him. Ashish sipped his tea and nodded sagely.
‘Hm.’ Mohan cleared his throat. The boy, even as a child, had had a gift for sitting still and doing little that had easily allowed them to be close. Mohan watched a couple of buses turning the corner from the GPO towards Ballard Estate and seemed to see them as Ashish did: big harmless animals, some thing like oversized water buffaloes, their engines breathing and hydraulic brakes hissing as they turned. The boy looked at the curved frontage of the nearby buildings and Mohan’s eyes followed his and noticed, today, how the air conditioners were suspended from the facade in metal cages, like strange, rusting offerings.
‘So, what work did you have in town?’ Mohan asked.
‘I had to check something in the library,’ but he wasn’t carrying any books, ‘and I met a friend.’
‘Hm.’
Ashish’s tea was over, and his reverie had passed. ‘Well,’ he said, standing up, ‘I’ll go.’ He nodded at the other letter writers.
‘See you at home!’ Mohan called, and waved. He continued to look after the thin figure as it receded towards the station.
‘So you think he’ll pass this year?’ Khan asked. He pushed his spectacles up his nose and reopened the morning’s paper.
‘Definitely,’ said Mohan resolutely. ‘Very intelligent boy. And he’s studying hard, now.’ He cleared his throat and remained staring into the brightness for a while.
He reminded himself as he dressed that Sunday that lunch should go well no matter what. Satish was coming over for his birthday; Lakshmi had for days been planning what to cook, muttering to herself to use less salt since her brother suffered from high blood pressure; a present had been bought and wrapped. Mohan pulled out his Sunday clothes – a sort of t-shirt with a collar that Megha had given him, and old, comfortable trousers – and resolved not to be provoked by Satish. He put on his sandals without disturbing his wife, who lay sleeping under the fan. It was turning so frenetically in the early morning high voltage that the sheet covering her stirred, and exposed the instep of one foot.
As he went down the stairs he noticed the smell and coolness of the air. Sunday morning in Saraswati Park and all over the city was a time of languor. The routines and efforts of other days were performed, but at a smaller scale and a slower pace; suddenly, there was time to live.
He padded into the lane. The usual figures emerged from their gates, coming towards the shops for bread and milk; today they were dressed not in neatly pressed trousers and shirts but in voluminous t-shirts and shorts. An older man wore white kurta-pyjama. A couple of ghostly forms still promenaded at the end of the lane, taking their morning walk, but there was absenteeism, and a sense of festivity even in the movements of the stalwarts.
As he crossed the circle he remarked again the bizarre advertisements for the limb replacement clinic that sponsored the garden in the middle of the road. Three other men were waiting at the tiny snack shop that had recently opened and begun to sell idlis in the morning. Because it was the first Sunday since Ashish had arrived he bought jalebis too. When he got home, the brittle coils of fried translucent dough, sticky with syrup, sat in a tangle on a plate at the edge of the table, waiting for Ashish to wake up. Mohan boiled the new milk, hummed, and made tea for three.
Satish’s fingers were precise and long. They undid the package, carefully detaching the tape from the paper, which was dark blue with golden stars printed on it. He was sitting in the cane armchair; in this moment it had come to resemble a throne.
‘Oh, an alarm clock!’
Lakshmi’s face shone and then trembled slightly. ‘You said yours had stopped working,’ she said.
‘Oh, that old thing,’ Satish said. His voice conveyed that the clock had been incalculably precious to him, and was irreplaceable. He held up the plastic box that contained the new one, which was silver and sleek, with a white analogue face.
‘Such a nice new clock,’ he said. The glow from his sister’s face returned. ‘Looks expensive,’ he went on.
