Where could Anna have gone, and why? Bachchu Kaka, she and Ashesh had asked themselves this for ten years. There could be no release for them from the pain of the question till they had found the answer. Bachchu Kaka was particularly hurt. He and Anna had shared a school bench. How could Shankrya have gone off without telling him? Everything had been going so well for him. He had some money at last. He’d built himself a home. The town Brahmins’ anger against him had lost its edge. Or perhaps his growing eminence in the legal field had made it awkward for them to show it openly. They knew ‘all sorts of caste and no-caste people’ still drew water from his well. The polluted ones still had entry into his kitchen. But why let it affect them? Why ostracize him? It was his well and his kitchen. As long as they did not eat and drink in his house, they should allow themselves to move with the times, be liberal. So Shankrya, without compromising his values, had come to be accepted as an honoured citizen of the town. Why then had he suddenly abandoned it all? Why was the remainder of this sum a zero?

Anima looks around attentively as she walks. In this region of chiku orchards, a shiny, glass-fronted mall has gone up on the main road. Surgaon was never the quaintly charming place that you think small towns are. But its dusty dhoti has, in the last few years, been paired with a striped tee shirt, a cap turned back to front and a cell phone in the hand. The jungles around it are not as densely dressed as they used to be and the sun is no longer stopped from striking directly at its head.

Fortunately, beyond all these transformations, the sea remains the same. It is still the full, surging Arabian Sea on whose waves the Portuguese, the French, the Dutch and the English came riding to set up their colonies. Looking out at that sea, Anna had once said to Anima, ‘Ours has been a strange history. Yes. All these alien people came and settled here. But we let them come, didn’t we? Was that hospitality, laziness or a narrowness that wouldn’t let us see beyond family, clan and personal property? Was it wrong to let them come and stay? I don’t know.’ Anna had taken her hand in his. ‘The whole thing is so complex. Read our history when you grow up. Read other people's histories. Compare. Ask questions. It might help you to see why we are what we are today.’