Reshma enters like a whirlwind. In the next thirty minutes she will sweep, swab, wash, clean, cook and run to the next job. She has four children to feed. Plus another—her husband—if his fancy brings him home. Ashesh is expected to remove himself from her path during her operations. He dresses quickly, slips into his chappals, calls out to her as usual, ‘Close the door behind you when you leave,’ and steps out of the house. His mind is filled with two black diagonals and a grey unease.

There's very little traffic in the lanes and by-lanes of Gamdevi. Out there on Hughes Road the traffic runs like a river in spate. But on this street it's just the occasional car—long, sleek and washed—sliding noiselessly out of the gate of a bungalow to purr away down the road. Ancient trees, weighed down by dense foliage, flank the street, cooling old two-storeyed bungalows with their shade. There's still abundant space here for the breeze to play around. It plays now with Ashesh's straight, fine hair, ruffling it lightly. He smoothes it down, but soon realizes there's no disciplining it in the circumstances and lets it be.

Ashesh walks briskly. His eyes are fixed ahead but see nothing except two diagonals and the space within. He descends on to Vaccha Gandhi Street then turns left on to Pandita Ramabai Road. His eyes seek out, through habit, the figure of the man who sits on the step of a shop up ahead. He's tall and humped. His head is bent so low over his work that the end of his nose practically touches it. Ashesh has named him Framroze.

Framroze is doing what he does every day—sewing scraps of fabric together with the intense concentration of a man on a mission. When passers-by put coins or bread or biscuits before him, he doesn’t raise his head from his work. But if you give him cotton sewing thread or bits of fabric, he will look up. Anima did that once when she was staying over at the Gamdevi house. When he saw what she had put before him, he had raised his head slowly and looked at her with cloudy eyes. Then he had picked up her gift with a wrinkled hand and stuffed it into his bundle.

His clothes look soiled today. But there are times when he is scrubbed and gleaming. Who bathes him is a mystery. But Ashesh knows who cuts his hair. It's old Shankar the barber, probably the same age as Framroze. Shankar still makes home visits as before, carrying his kit with him, to cut hair, shave chins and administer brisk head massages. He used to do that for Anna in the old days. You just sent him a message and he’d come. Then the two had their routine conversation.

Anna: ‘How are you, Shankarrao? All well on Mt Kailash?’