Reading her diary description of Siddharth's death became Anima's solace. She would read it before facing each new day. It was now her life with her lover-husband. Over time, as she absorbed the shock of his death, its meaning expanded. Siddharth's death became the death of Jews in Germany. It became those left dead by the partition of India. The death of a mahatma on 30 January 1948. Thousands of Sikhs in Delhi in 1984. The two thousand murdered in Gujarat in 2002. Corpses were piling up. Amongst them was one Siddharth. A single droplet in an ocean of the killed. How much longer was she going to cradle his death in the palm of her hand, against her wet cheek?

2

Ashesh doesn’t quite know what has woken him up. He is in the hazy state between sleeping and waking. Was it the dream? One black tunnel leading to another and another, with him holding on to their slippery sides trying to get out? Was it a sound? Did the bed shake? Could it have been a quake?

Ashesh lies with eyes still closed, wondering; then sinks back into sleep. But the next moment his eyes fly open and he freezes. His sheet is jumping. His heart thumps. The sheet trembles, jumps. Only one part. He kicks it off. His right hand. His right hand is jumping, disconnected from the rest of his body, from his will, like something possessed. Ashesh watches it for five minutes, fifty—he isn’t sure—then grabs it with his left hand and holds it down. It grows still.

Ashesh frees the hand warily. It lies motionless by his side. He raises it, lowers it, closes and opens his fist. It's working. Ashesh's tense body relaxes. He bursts into a sweat, gets up, walks to the kitchen, legs trembling, swallows a glassful of water and walks out on to the veranda.

It's a long veranda, both corners screened by madhumalati creepers. He does not love potted plants. But he loves privacy. He lowers himself into the cane rocking chair and rocks himself gently. He tries to laugh. His lips don’t part. They’re still dry. Haridas would have laughed. ‘You really tore your arsehole there, didn’t you? Hypohypesthesia.’ One of Haridas's concocted words. It means a condition of irrational anxiety.

Whenever Ashesh wakes up in the middle of the night, he plays a game with himself. He tries to guess the time. He feels the weight of the silence and the density of the darkness to gauge it. His guess now is five minutes past three. He screws up his eyes to look at his watch. Dead right. Most times he is. No surprise there. But when he isn’t, he feels angry. He can lie in bed for hours afterwards wondering why. Anima says it's the effect of bachelorhood. ‘You’ll soon start talking to yourself, you’ll see.’