‘I am praying hard so that we can leave this chawl quickly and go to a nice place, into a big flat.’

‘Big like a palace?’

Dadi laughs. ‘That you can ask your husband to get for you. We will have three rooms. One room for your mummy, daddy, you and your brother, one room for your dada and me, one room for your daddy’s brothers.’

‘I don’t have a brother, how can he sleep in my room?’ ‘He will come. High time, anyway, your mother took our family’s name forward.’

‘What, dadi?’

‘Havey bey minute chup chaap bes, keep quiet for two minutes and let me finish my prayers.’

‘I will not go to the new house without my naram takiya.’ She says this clearly from under the bed, holding her favourite pillow tight to her chin.

Defiantly: ‘Won’t go!’

‘Don’t be silly, you can’t take that torn pillow with you. Now let me finish praying or I will force you to go to school the next time you pretend to have fever.’

She crawls tighter under the bed and burrows in the folded bedding they stack there each morning after they all get up. She puts her naram takiya on her lap, like a baby, and pats it; soft and silky. Her mummy says her small pillow is filled with goose feathers and covered with English satin. Her mummy’s mummy made it specially for her with her own hands; it smells like her fingers, lavender. She stays out of her dadi’s way until her mummy comes home from school where she is a class teacher.

‘She is under the bed,’ her dadi sniffs. ‘Six years old and completely uncontrollable, I do not know how you are bringing her up.’

‘I will not go to the three rooms without my naram takiya,’ she yells.

When they load the haathgaadi with their few belongings, they do not take the bed; they stack the two chairs upended and firmly truss them in place. She climbs on top of the chairs on the handcart and perches, her naram takiya hidden under her so that dadi does not see and demand that it be left behind. The haathgaadiwallahs pick up the hand cart’s edges resting on the pavement, one man pushes, the other man pulls. The handcart rolls out of the area bearing her. She feels like a princess, she waves with her chubby fingers to the ghoshtwallah and the pavwallah and bald Dr Kamath who cured her of her double jaundice; and she waves at Derby Talkies where her mummy took her to see nice pictures. They are going to be very happy in the three rooms.

Click, click. Her dadi’s prayer beads rotate, the half-burnt incense sticks form a quivering pile of ash.

‘Dadi, what are you praying for today?’

‘You are back from school? Go have your wash, I will make you tea. Eight years old and she does not know how to light the stove. When I was your age, I made my own tea and washed my own clothes.’