‘No. That’s old news. There’s something bigger going on.’

‘Bachchu Kaka, I have a feeling you know what it is. Why are you behaving like a character in a thriller, dropping clues and then clamming up?’

Bachchu Kaka removes his spectacles, draws a handkerchief from his pocket and wipes them carefully. He lifts them to the light to make sure they are free of dust and settles them back on his nose. Clearing his throat, he says, ‘I’ll have tea now. Make it really light with just a bit of sugar.’

Bachchu Kaka gets up and hobbles to the window. Earlier, it was only the right knee that bothered him. Now the left one has decided to play up. Next month I will be eighty, he thinks. If Shankrya had been alive, we’d have gone together to the beach to celebrate. Spent an hour watching the sun go down. Gone over our histories for the nth time—the hows and whys of events and where we had gone wrong. Why did ninety per cent of our population not become free when the country did? Is idealism always defeated by its own people? Are ideals by their very nature sacred only to a few, while the rest pay lip service till the opportunity for self-service offers itself? We would have sighed together over these questions and agreed, as we always did, that we couldn’t set ourselves apart from ‘the others’. We were lips and teeth in the same head as the saying went. The thought would have silenced us. But Shankrya just upped and left, the coward. And here I am, alone. I always was, but it’s not romantic to be alone at eighty. It’s a bit pathetic . . .

‘Kaka, tea.’

‘How fast this neighbourhood is changing! Last time I was here there was a large open space next to your building. We could see the sea beyond.’ Bachchu Kaka turns from the window and sits down.

‘A builder’s trying to gobble it up. Imagine, this used to be a jungle once. Listen to this story. In the plague of 1896, eleven Parsi families are said to have sailed across the sea from Bombay to escape the epidemic and found themselves in this safe haven. They built eleven bungalows, seven here and four farther down. That’s where the names Seven Bungalows and Four Bungalows come from. Only one of the original eleven is still standing. Once that gets sold and the developer bulldozes it, the last landmark of nineteenth-century Versova will disappear.’

Bachchu Kaka sips his tea, his eyes fixed on the opposite wall. ‘Is that Ashu’s work?’

‘Yes, one of his old ones. He didn’t want to sell it or give it to me though I wanted it very much. I suspect this is Nasreen. Then suddenly some time ago he said if you still want that painting, you can have it.’

‘What exuberant colours! I hear he sells quite well.’