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SHANTA GOKHALE

CROWFAL

Praise for the Marathi original, Tya Varshi

‘There are some incidents in this novel that touch the heart and others that demonstrate the writer's fine eye for detail. The prose is largely free of decorative devices. Yet when similes, metaphors and extended descriptions come, they hit the mark with fine precision.’

—Anuradha Potdar, Navshakti

‘While the writer's contemplative handling of issues like the creative process, violence, annihilation, loss and death add substance to the novel, her sense of irony prevents it from tipping over into sentimentality.’

—Sushama Karogal, Pratishthan

‘Tya Varshi sets the world of artists and their art in the larger world of self-serving politicians, land-grabbing builders, the media and the man in the street, creating a vivid portrait of Mumbai.’

—Anant Deshmukh, Lalit

Dedication

For Jerry
without whom this translation would not have happened

1

That day again. The day Siddharth didn’t turn up, twelve years ago. How time flies. Even when nothing else happens, time flies. She had once overheard Anna tell Ai the time for that had gone; and she had wondered where. She had also wondered how time was a girl when it went and a boy when you were getting late. Funny language, Marathi.

She smiles at the memory, looking out of the window. When she isn’t busy in the kitchen, when she isn’t reading, when she isn’t sitting in a darkened auditorium watching a play or a film, she looks out of this window, watching the light of the world fade away. That it should fade and disappear is inevitable. That Anima should watch silently feels equally inevitable.

There is a world set in her window frame. A gulmohr leans over from the left. Its brown bark is gradually turning black in the gathering shade, the rough ridges on its trunk losing definition. The few tired leaves left on its branches turn lifeless from bottom up. Beyond the tree is the rusted gate of the large, deserted maidan; and beyond that a cluster of cheery house lights. From amongst them rises the skeleton of a new twenty-storey building, growing inexorably every day. Only a few cars pass down this road. As they race by, their headlights swing into the window frame for a few brief seconds and then die out. The house lights beyond the maidan are recent company. Earlier there was only darkness.