The faces of the old buildings are changing. The aapana salawas and the Siripura Hotels are now three-storyed buildings with carpeted entrances, potted plants, polished stairways. The old carved screens which retained the privacy of those who ate and drank at the little tables, the steaming, hissing tea urns, the glass cases with their piles of stringhoppers, hoppers, cakes and buns have all disappeared. Everything looks more sleek, more expensive, filled with imported sweets, chocolates, biscuits. You need to have lots of money to walk into one of these shops. I had stood outside one of them once, gazing at the new building with its bamboo scaffolding. My lawyer, who stood beside me, had said: ‘You know, the man who put up that building had to pay three lakhs of rupees to get the last occupant out. That’s what they are doing these days.’ He gave me an oblique glance as he spoke. ‘You may have to pay your tenant at least ten lakhs before she agrees to go.’

Ten lakhs! But I can hardly afford to feed my family on what I earn and she has immense wealth herself, land, estates …. From where can I get even a lakh? My husband has only one pair of trousers, one pair of shoes that has been re-sewn three times at least. After twenty-five years of working what have I got? I can’t even afford the basic necessities of life.

‘From where can I get ten lakhs?’ I had asked the lawyer.

It is better to be silent; you avoid having to utter hot words, recriminations; but silence is a blunt weapon, others are armed against you with sharper, more lethal ones. Yet greed is sometimes the spade with which you dig your own grave, greed for a piece of earth, greed for four walls, greed for the lush possessions of others.

I spot an acquaintance who has returned from Nigeria. I don’t stop to talk, and she too appears not to see me. Wealth has imposed barriers so easily. Everybody finds it difficult to understand why I have stayed back. In the past I had no cause to complain. But now I am being edged slowly, slowly, towards the precipice of rejection; I am dispensable.

‘What are you doing here … why don’t you go abroad?’

Has it come to the final answer so soon?

‘We have to find work for you on the time table.’