Ashesh thinks back to the gods of his childhood—the needle-peaked Mahalakshmi Hill and the broader-peaked Pestle Hill next to it on the way to Surgaon. Mother and father to the local Warlis, these two hills had stood in his mind like guardians when he did his earliest paintings. The Warlis had turned the stones that had rolled off those hills into their goddess. They had gathered the stones in a pile, smeared it with sindoor, placed a mask on it and wrapped a sari around it. Gods reside even in stones. So this was their goddess. Not so the Kolhapur Mahalakshmi. The two goddesses shared a name but nothing else. That one was fair-skinned with large eyes and a chiselled nose. She was the goddess of Raja Ravi Varma's paintings.

Massive Back and friend get off at Portuguese Church. Ashesh looks at the man. He has a paunch and a bulbous nose. His eyes are bright, smiling. Ashesh feels drawn towards him. The man takes his place amongst others who fill Ashesh's memory.

Ashesh alights at Shivaji Park. He will have to take a cab from here to Lilavati Hospital. The air around Shivaji Park still stirs vague feelings of guilt in him even after all these years. This was where he had dreamt of another future. The daily walk from art school to Flora Fountain with Nasreen, the hope that their bus would come late, the ride on route 84, the welcome traffic jams that extended the sweetness of the journey and the inevitable end that always seemed to come too soon. They would get off at the Mahatma Gandhi Swimming Pool bus stop, downhearted about the coming parting. He could not have gone all the way to Bandra with Nasreen. Bandra was chock-a-block with her family, friends and neighbours. The slightest whisper in her father's ear about him would have led to her being withdrawn instantly from art school and married off.

After graduation, Nasreen would meet Ashesh in Anna's flat in Gamdevi whenever she could get away. But their dream was coloured now by reality. Finally it was here, in Shivaji Park, that Ashesh had hung his head and announced its end.