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mind could be driven away with strong morning tea, with a good brushing of his teeth; if the emptiness in his belly could ever be filled. Descending the steps back into the house, he met Ammaji leaving with her milk pail, her white sari in messy folds about her. She looked like a pale sea creature washed on to the shore, marked by the tides, crumpled and creased.
    Ammaji looked at her grandson’s tired eyes. ‘Didn’t you sleep?’ she asked. ‘How will you last the day?’ She pinched his cheek with tender reproach.

3
    In the courtyard down below, Mr Chawla began his morning exercises. Determined to start the day in a purposeful manner, according to schedule and habit, he spat out the last remnants of sleep and inertia in a perfectly aimed rainbow spray of spittle. He stood in a patch of sunlight where the shadows cast by the jamun tree could not reach him. Still, at the spot where the Red Cross crate had landed the night of his son’s birth, there was a large gap that marred the tree’s otherwise elegant proportions. Mr Chawla bent forwards to touch his toes, then backwards to form a perfect arc, one taut and tight enough to catapult himself into the sky.
    ‘Ommmmm.’ He let his voice fly in triumph over the rooftops. ‘Ommmmmm,’ he roared, teeth gleaming in the morning rays. ‘Ommmmm.’ He informed the world that he, Mr R. K. Chawla (B.A., Pass), head clerk at the Reserve Bank of Shahkot, was ready for a new day. The air vibrated as if shot through by arrows. He was forty years old, hale and hearty. And if he was balding a little and had a small belly … well, he liked this look; it added importance to his words and inspired respect. He stepped out into the world firm-footed and sure, putting to shame the sorry young men who drooped about the town, ignoring their responsibilities. Slapping his chest and swinging his arms, he jogged up and down around the courtyard.
    Later, as he oiled himself with coconut oil in the small bathroom, he shouted from behind the closed door: ‘The tooth powder is almost gone. You could buy some more from Diana Stores.’ Or: ‘Why don’t you go and see if Lakshmiji’s fever is better?’ Or: ‘The drain must be unblocked. Don’t come complaining to me when we’re overtaken by the world’s largest cockroach population.’
    He hoped to inspire his family to seek out a day as full of promise and activity as his own would be. When he took a bath, he crashed the metal buckets together loudly and poured water over himself in energetic mugfuls, flooding the entire bathroom so that miniature waves sloshed through the gap beneath the door. When he emerged, smooth-cheeked and fresh, redolent with Lifebuoy soap, he stirred the house into such a commotion the family thought they’d need the rest of the day to recover.
    His shirt needed to be ironed. His shoes had been discovered dusty, dirty and unpolished. His socks upset him because they gathered in folds about his ankles instead of snapping with the satisfying sound of good elastic to a desirable mid-calf level. Ammaji and Pinky ran up and down trying to carry out his demands.
    While trying to coordinate all the various activities needed to solve these problems, Mr Chawla read out bits from the newspaper as was his custom. ‘What did I tell you?’ he said, delighted. ‘Another corrupt politician! Before we are properly out of one international scandal, we are in another. Our politicians are growing careless. They are opening more Swiss bank accounts than they have Gandhi caps to distract us with. Not one truthful politician in the whole country. Yes, our parliament is made of thieves, each one answerable to the prime minister, who is the biggest thief of them all. Look how well he’s doing.With each new photograph he is fatter than before.’
    Kulfi, though, was not interested. She sat by the window, thinking of the deep-scented, deep-hearted world of peppercorn berries, of cinnamon bark, of the flowerbuds of cloves and