Sindhutai’s once well-formed body is now a skeleton. The disease has eaten away every bit of flesh. Her once-translucent, cream-coloured skin is now yellow-grey parchment. But her forehead is smooth. All the lines have vanished with the worries, resentment, bitterness and anger of a lifetime. Dr Bhaskar has made efficient arrangements for the funeral. Men and women that Sindhutai hadn’t even known have gathered to touch her feet with respect. Their faces reflect feelings inspired by her story. A woman alone, abandoned by her husband. Nobody to look after her. Children as good as missing. Dr Bhaskar her only saviour. She is his akka—elder sister. She cares for him and his work. She wills her entire property to him for his sacred mission. The cloying fragrance of incense is everywhere. The mourners look elated. Dr Bhaskar’s face glows with pleasure. Sindhutai has made everybody happy by her going, because she goes as a saint.

Anima tries to repress the sob that rises to her throat. It breaks despite her. She is indescribably sad for having lost touch with her mother. She is physically no more, but she had begun to withdraw emotionally many years ago, and neither Anima nor Ashesh had been able to stop the drift. They had failed her. The sobs rise and break, waves of sorrow that will not stop. Bachchu Kaka puts his hand on her elbow in commiseration.

They gather in Bachchu Kaka’s room after the funeral. Silence fills the room, broken only by Bachchu Kaka’s breathing that is becoming difficult. Anima notices that the lines on his face have deepened. ‘You must come and stay with me, Bachchu Kaka,’ she says, worried. He breaks into a false laugh. ‘And do what? Help you make suralichya vadya? Or light a beacon for your student group? Who’s this ancient bag of bones, they’ll say. Lock him in a cupboard with mothballs.’

On the way back to Mumbai, Anima asks in a listless voice, ‘Have you two decided where you are getting married? At the registrar’s or at home?’

Janaki looks at Ashesh. ‘The registrar’s.’

‘Witnesses?’

‘You, Haridas and Shekhar’s mother.’

‘Shekhar’s mother?’

‘Yes. She called to say we must have an older witness. Somebody whose feet we can touch and be blessed.’

40

On the morning of 26 December, the foundation of the eastern world is shaken. At the tip of Sumatra, where the India plate slides below the Burma plate, the crust of the earth cracks. A crevasse 400 kilometres long and 100 kilometres wide rips through the surface at 10,000 kilometres an hour. The seabed rises, throwing up monstrous waves. They swallow up the coasts of Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka and India. Ships, boats, men, women, children, animals, trees, homes, cupboards, beds, documents, letters, shoes, dolls, crutches—all go under and come up later transformed into junk. It takes only a few minutes for living habitations to look like pre-creation chaos.