Anima, on the other hand, is deeply attached to umbrellas—the classic blacks with hooked wooden grips. The problem is that people’s taste for new designs has pushed this umbrella out of the market. If you get a black at all, which is rare, it has one of those short, thick, cylindrical grips with which Anima’s hand fails to form a relationship that could be called comfortable. She realized how worrying her plight in the modern world was when she forgot her twelve-year-old umbrella in an autorickshaw last year. Versova is a comparatively newly developed area where it would have been foolish even to ask for a replacement. So she had headed straight for Girgaum, where you could rely on some shops not having moved ahead with the times. Sure enough she had found her umbrella in a moth-eaten cavern of a shop near Prarthana Samaj. It was clear that the shopkeeper, being Marathi, had no interest in change. It was equally clear that he was not interested in commerce. He watched Anima laconically as she peered into the dark interiors of the shop for what she wanted. There they were—black umbrellas from ancient times gathering dust on a wooden shelf at the back of the shop. She asked to be shown them and picked one, upon which the man warned her in a funereal voice, ‘Lady, lose this one and you may not get another. They don’t make them now. I’ve been using this one of mine for forty years. My father used it for twenty before me. It’s British made. Look at the stem. And the spokes. Strong devils. Sixty monsoons have poured on this cloth and look at it. Not a hole.’

He had danced his eyebrows at her, inviting her to touch and feel the umbrella. She had accepted the invitation and confirmed his claims about its virtues. She had put on an expression which said such an umbrella had never been and would never be again. Finally, to show how seriously she had taken his warning, and how much she appreciated the merchandise, she had bought two umbrellas in place of one.

By the time Ashesh and Anima step out of Surgaon station, the sickly drizzle that had started as the train pulled in has turned into plump raindrops that will soon merge into a blinding sheet of water. Ashesh lunges for shelter, but Anima grabs his shirt sleeve. ‘If you want to be fancy-free and not carry umbrellas, get wet. We’ll soon find a rick.’ Sliding her umbrella open, she pulls him in. The next moment the wind gets under the umbrella and blows it inside out. The slanting rain attacks them viciously. ‘So much for umbrellas,’ Ashesh says happily.