‘All lies. God punishes liars.’

‘What did you say?’

‘I know your daddy was very rich and we were also very rich when you got married to dada. Then people drank and drank and all the money went away.’

‘And what else has your mother stuffed into your head?’

‘I never said mummy said!’

‘I know who is teaching you all this. But, yes, my father was very rich and my brothers are still very rich. We had big cars and so many servants. When I got married to your dada, they sent out invitations in ghoda gadis filled with dry fruit. My saris were all in Swiss lace and my petticoats of English satin.’

‘Have you put a new cover on my naram takiya, dadi?’

‘That pillow of yours, how much trouble it is giving me. Why you must insist on keeping it, I do not know.’

‘Where is it?’

‘I have given it to the mattress man to redo.’

‘But he will steal all the goose feathers from it!’

‘Then what can I do? To put a new cover I had to remove the satin of the old one, it was stained and smelling. And there was hardly anything left inside. I have asked the mattress man to mix it up with new stuffing and make you a new pillow.’

‘But dadi, it will not feel the same!’

‘Things do not, as you grow up. Now go and do your homework. I will finish praying and make you tea.’

‘I don’t want tea from you or anybody, I want my old naram takiya back, I want it back now.’

The lids fall over dadi’s eyes, click, click, click.

Her two baby sisters and mummy are sleeping in their room. She quietly changes, drinks water from the earthen matka in the dark and cramped corridor which doubles as their kitchen and goes through it to the third room with her school bag. She sets everything on the low table and kneels against it on the floor. She pulls out her science and geography books.

Rotation. Revolution.

The room’s door closes softly.

The earth rotates. It also revolves.

How can that be?

Something feels odd against her back; something goes up her dress and scoops itself into her cotton panties.

She is frightened, she makes to shout and a hand gently covers her mouth.

‘Hush, it is only me.’

He has got off the bed, closed the door, knelt behind her, his one hand is over her mouth, his other is doing things she does not understand; and there is something hard, hard, sticking into her back.

‘Hush, do not get frightened.’

She is bewildered. His tone and his hands do not match.

He is murmuring things as his hands seek to roam. There is something unfamiliar in his voice; not in the words but the pitch, pace and tone.

She wrenches herself free, yanks open the door, bangs it shut behind her, holds the door’s handle tight, tight, tight, and squeezes her eyes tight; but the sadness crouching in the corners of the corridor creeps up on her and she lets go off his door’s handle to run into their room.