They travel by night to Bangalore. They leave Hotell Arun at 8.30 p.m. and drive along straight roads with carefully planted avenues of shady tamarind trees. They pass through townships and villages on the way, villages that come alive as soon as the bus blasts its trumpet horn. Huddled figures wrapped in shawls disengage themselves from the shadows. The lights are bright in the little eating houses. The kaapi maker busies himself, the tumblers and lotas are arranged before him. The milk is boiling hot. The sugar dissolves instantly in the hot milk and kaapi. On a heated aluminium sheet food is sizzling, rotis are flipped over repeatedly to bake evenly; a passenger from the bus stands beside it, getting the onions sliced fine while condiments and spices from various bottles are sprinkled on the mixture. Everything is fried in one corner of the baking sheet. In another corner meat is being stirred about with a metal spoon, all this is then piled onto a plate and the roti cut up to be eaten with the fried onions and meat at one of the tables inside.

Calls of nature are answered in little alleyways. From a huddle of huts covered figures drift out. ‘Don’t come this way,’ an old woman wrapped in a shawl calls out, ‘the wind blows the odour in the direction of our houses … go elsewhere.’ People vanish into the shadows and are almost left behind till a blast of the horn brings them rushing back to clamber in. The bus sets off. A young man’s parcel of rice spills out. He is imperturbable, sits with a blank face, staring ahead as if the rice does not belong to him. The squishy mess lies at his feet. Not a single passenger grumbles or complains. The young man is clad in western attire—blue jeans and T-shirt—his hair is oiled and brushed, his moustache neatly trimmed. He detaches himself from the packet of rice that his mother must have packed for him. The conductor says, ‘Will you keep your mother’s house in this condition?’ The young man pretends not to hear. He is embarrassed. Later on, very carefully, he cleans up the mess and throws it out. Very little fuss is made. A man’s pride and self respect are preserved.