Alok stumbles around in the darkness, holding his box of mangoes and offering it to whoever he happens to stumble over. In the balcony he squats on the floor, hugging the crate to his chest like a teddy bear. His chin vanishes under the downward curve and pout of his anguished lips; he breaks out into huge convulsive sobs. It’s as if an old telegraph machine had suddenly come back to life in a final attempt at communicating an archaic but vital code to the world. ‘Mari keri koyi khatu nathi,’ he cries in Gujarati, ‘nobody wants to eat my mangoes.’ He cracks the crate open and begins flinging the mangoes across the balcony railing. Ripe, red mangoes go flying everywhere like a juggler’s performance gone haywire. In a spectacular display of fealty they head down, straight down, past the multicoloured clotheslines and eavesdropping neighbours, to the earth that gave them life. There they lie, smashed and exposed, like members of a suicidal sect. Their guru and his sidekick stand on the edges, surveying the carnage.

Atmaram goes down, picks up the squashed, gooey skins and collects them in a blue plastic bag. But not all mangoes have splintered. There are hardy individuals who have survived the fall with just a thin crack. These he collects in a separate bag, which he will take home with him.

Alok sits on a sofa in his living room in Malad making tender enquiries about the well-being of his wife and son. His wife, Manisha, has made him a glass of nimbupani. She says she had a headache so she didn’t eat. Their son is in the next room trying to study. ‘Sorry I got late,’ explains Alok. ‘I went off to my sisters’ place. Thought I’d check on them. It had been a few weeks since I went last. And guess what—I took mangoes with me, a whole crate of alphonsos but . . . but they refused to eat them. No one touched my mangoes. Can you believe it?’ The memory, just over an hour old, hangs in front of his eyes, taunting him like a red rag.

‘Why do you go there?’ says Manisha. ‘Why do you keep giving them things they will never be grateful for? You’re the one who works like a dog while your feeble-minded sisters do nothing but blow it all up.’ Alok begins to cry again. He swallows air in big whooping Os—the first unsure tears follow, tailed by a deluge. A powerful booster pump starts up somewhere in the depths of his being and water gushes out in a thick silver stream. There is a hole in the squab on which Alok is sitting; his unconscious left thumb digs deep as far as it can go, and there, curled up like a caterpillar, it rests provisionally.