‘But he’s your father too,’ says Surabhi, her voice rising a little now, jabbing a finger in the direction of the window. ‘I spend my nights and days looking after this man, Priyanjali—all the goddamn helpless creatures that inhabit this house. Get a job? he says. I’m sure it’s your bloody wife who puts words in your mouth, that infernal stickybeak. And what do you know of art? All you can do is sell godawful law books.’ She feels false while finishing the sentence. She gets up and calls for Umang and her sisters, ‘Food’s ready,’ she says to no one in particular. ‘Let’s eat.’

Alok doesn’t want to eat. He says he will eat later. He signals to Atmaram to pour another drink.

Surabhi is sulking. Her sulks are the stuff of legend. There is an insinuating quality to them—they crawl into corners and mingle with dust balls, get lodged in your intestines. This is a especially bad one, drawing everything and everyone who happens to fall in its way into an obliterating vortex. The family sits on the floor on little square aasans and eats out of steel plates with sharp raised edges. There is very little conversation—someone offers someone an extra helping of dal, a polite refusal or acceptance follows; Priyanjali requests Umang to pass the jug of water; Surabhi asks Umang to put the fan on. A Lijjat papad, ridden with bullet holes, takes off in the direction of the kitchen sink; giddy with freedom, it dances crazily in the air, a slave to the fan’s rotating blades, before collapsing on the floor in silent resignation.

One by one they troop out and spoon the remains of their plates into the huge plastic bag that is kept in the balcony for this purpose. Alok asks Surabhi to open the crate of mangoes. She doesn’t reply. The garbage bag is full by now and she pushes the pile down to make space for her contribution—papery onion skins and empty pea shells, each shell having been cleaned out in a single stroke by the push of her practised thumb.

One by one they pull out their mattresses and pillows and sheets from under the pile on the big bed. Swiftly, furtively, they disassemble the mother ship and find their predetermined slots on the floor. Priyanjali takes the kitchen; Umang and his mother the TV room, at right angles to the big bed. They lie there, sometimes still, sometimes tossing, their engines turned off, bobbing on the shallow waters, an eye kept half open for the occasional inspired shark, an opportunistic pirate.