‘It’s time to move. We have to leave in thirty minutes,’ Pulok’s mother came and said to the group. Then she went away to inform Pulok.

‘Let’s wait for Robin, Maa.’

‘Robin will go straight to the bride’s house.’

‘Why, what’s the problem?’ Pulok asked anxiously.

‘I don’t know.’

Pulok was worried. Robin had come to attend his wedding. Pulok wondered if he was in any trouble.

Everyone was waiting near the gate for Pulok. Dressed in his bridegroom’s finery, he bowed before his parents. Then he joined the crowd to leave amidst celebrations.

The gate of the Chinese Club had been decorated with banana plants, mango leaves, earthen pots with grains of rice, and incense. Men and women waited near the gate with earthen lamps to welcome the bridegroom. While the women sang wedding songs and the children threw fistfuls of rice at Pulok, Tung Chin’s mother welcomed the bridegroom.

Yiu Yi washed Pulok’s feet and wiped them with a new gamosa. Then looking at Pulok she asked, ‘How will we address you now, Pulok dada?’

Robin arrived just as the couple sat down in front of the fire for the wedding rites. All the friends gathered around him. Yiu Yi came running happily.

‘Why didn’t you dress as the bridegroom’s best man, Sipahi dada?’

‘Because he will be our Yiu Yi’s bridegroom. She is dressed up like a bride today,’ Tung Chin teased.

Yiu Yi’s plump pink cheeks turned red. Robin extended his hand to pull her cheeks. Avoiding his hand she ran away, light reflecting off her white gown.

‘I’ll have to leave today,’ Robin said. ‘I have to reach Tezu by tomorrow morning. Tonight I’ll stay in Saikhowa. I don’t know where I have to go from there.’

‘Is there really a war on, Robin?’

‘There have been skirmishes. That is why we are not allowed to leave our stations.’

Mei Lin’s father came in with Ho Fuk. The topic had changed.

A few tables had been arranged for the older people in a corner. Some played Mahjong, some smoked pipes and watched others playing. Some were engrossed in conversation. Ho Fuk and Mei Lin’s father joined this group.

‘We haven’t seen you in a long time. How are you?’ Tung Chin’s father asked Ho Fuk.

‘Everything is fine.’

‘You are such a big contractor! Everything is bound to be fine,’ Chi Fu Hai said, smiling.

‘Oh! I am not a big contractor at all. Things are a little better now – that’s all. Just remember our past. How difficult it was.’