Chapter Four

      When Ashish ambled towards the grocer’s at ten thirty the next morning the dosa man was already at his stall, under a tree near the roundabout. He was growling at two put-upon young men. One was sweating, and chopping onions; the other scrubbed the enormous griddle on which, at mealtimes, the dosa man would drop a splodge of batter, then, using a knife so large that it resembled a ploughshare, sweep it into a thin circle that sizzled while it crisped. For now, the lackeys sweated and the dosa man stood in the shade, arms folded; between blasts of sarcastic sounding invective he smiled to himself. He was very dark, with the brave moustaches, flourishing sideburns and bouffant hair of a south Indian film star.

      Ashish walked back from the grocer’s carrying a packet of semolina wrapped in newsprint. It was hot; the early freshness was gone and he smelled traffic fumes in the air and felt the sun on his face.

      He was exhausted. The first time he’d woken it had still been dark; he’d been startled by a moment of dead silence and then by the screaming. It was birds, he realized after the initial horror, shouting about something; perhaps, incredibly, the dawn. Not just the crows, pigeons and seagulls that he was used to, but many more: mynahs, koyals, and another that let out insane, rising whoops then waited for an answering burst of mad laughter.

      There was too much space in the room. He’d got up again, gone past the bookshelf, peered out of the window suspiciously and seen no one in the darkness below. This is where I live now, he’d thought, but it had seemed unreal.

      When day broke and he saw the first figures in the lane, walking for exercise, he felt better. The crisis seemed to have passed, and he slept in the pale, early light, his body cool and soothed under the fan.

      There was another memory of having woken, but this was more vague, like a dream one has when sleeping on a long-distance train: mashed memories of the sulphur-yellow overhead light, the swaying of the bogey, and the abiding sense of transit. When he woke it was with an erection, and in the middle of a confusing dream in which he and another boy, possibly Sunder, chased each other in the colonnade of the college.

      From another room, he heard his uncle’s voice, and his aunt laughing.

      He ducked into the bathroom, locked the door with relief and set about waking up.

      By the time Ashish had bathed, Mohan had already left for work. Lakshmi had discovered that there were ants frolicking in the semolina and sent Ashish out for more; she was going to make him breakfast.

      He let himself back into the house now, handed over the semolina, and sat at the table drinking tea and flicking through the newspaper.

      His aunt came to talk to him. ‘It’ll be ready in five minutes,’ she said, and her face lit up. She wiped her hands on the cloth she had been holding and sat down near him. He was fond of his aunt; unlike his mother, she had a soft face that seemed to crease easily. She was often vague, unless she was angry, and then she was extremely specific.

      ‘It’s changed a lot here, you must have noticed,’ she began to tell him sorrowfully. ‘Gopal building, that probably hadn’t been reconstructed the last time you were here.’

      ‘Oh yes, the white one.’ It was almost opposite, a six-storey tower that stood out next to the small, faded 1960s blocks in the rest of the lane.

      Lakshmi made a ‘what can you do’ grimace. ‘These builders are offering a lot of money – they pay you to let them redevelop and take the FSI and then they put up a taller building and sell the extra flats.’

      ‘Hm.’ Ashish drained his tea and, slightly bored, covertly eyed the newspaper’s city supplement, where the image of a popular film actress on the masthead had been misprinted; the blues and yellows were marginally separated instead of overlaid, and her famous smile, as a result, was scattered.

      ‘We’ve also had offers,’ Lakshmi went on. ‘But luckily the Gogates, you know, they own three flats, they don’t want to sell. None of us does really, at least not so far. You can’t tell when these people start offering more and more. And then there’ll be construction work going on endlessly – something’s going to start soon, in the empty plot, a builder’s already bought it. I don’t know if they’ll begin now, or wait till after the rains.’

      A toasty, pleasant smell came out of the kitchen. She got up and hurried inside; there were sounds of the lifting of a lid, and the scraping of a spoon. She came back with a plate of the hot upma, which smelled delectably of ghee and a roasted red chilli.

      ‘Here, eat well. You should, since you have so much studying to do,’ she remarked, and, unsure whether the comment was pointed or just another part of her morning conversation, Ashish nodded and picked up the spoon. His aunt put on her spectacles, frowned, and went back to the kitchen. She reappeared with a cup of instant coffee, picked up the city supplement, and moved towards the living room window.

      In his room, he half closed the door and wandered around, inspecting the drawers, the bookshelves, the old comics. Later, when lunch smells began to float down the corridor towards him, he panicked. His books waited officiously on the desk, next to a jumble of pens. He sighed and sat down. It was best to be methodical – first of all, he’d draw up a timetable.

      Half an hour later, he’d wedged his shoulders and elbows at awkward angles, the better to concentrate, and found a ruler. He was nearly done with plotting out the grid, which accounted for each day in half-hour units from six a.m. to midnight.

      ‘Ashish!’

      He threw out a medium-distance grunt.

      ‘Lunch!’

      Carefully, he finished colouring in the last of the green squares that denoted time allotted to bathing and ablutions in the morning, from seven to seven thirty.

      Lakshmi was probably a better cook than his mother; she was usually in a better mood, and that seemed to affect the food. And she was less stingy with the oil, salt and chilli; Ashish’s father, though he had turned fifty only last year, already had cholesterol, and the doctor had hinted darkly at ‘BP’.

      Ashish had hogged slightly too enthusiastically at lunch, and now he sat slumped at the desk and eyed the bed and its handloom cover, which was striped, with a prominent slub. It would feel reassuringly rough against his cheek while he slept; but he looked at the bright squares of the study timetable and sighed.

      He stared into the sun. A little later, some boys came out to play football in the lane. They seemed to be engaged in a strange dance whose purpose was to cover every inch of the lane with the ball, which slipped between them as though attached to their feet by lengths of elastic. It never got away, nor was it ever caught. Occasionally it flew up, and was knocked down by one of the players, who used his forehead; another dived for it. Ashish read:

      The date is out of such prolixity:

      We’ll