Alok’s son, Ratul, walks into the room. In the last six months he has really shot up and now stands half an inch taller than his father. He is wearing a flowery bush shirt and white shorts with huge front pockets. Alok, still sobbing, makes as if to get up, his right arm extended towards his boy. It looks like he wants him to squeeze it. Ratul grabs hold of the palm, then uses it to push his father right back on to the sofa. With one hand he grabs hold of Alok’s close-cropped hair and begins to slap him across the face. Alok’s brow has creased over, but he sits there taking the abuse, offering no resistance. He tries to smile but his lips have gone all crooked. ‘Ratul,’ says his mother in an even voice, ‘please get me a glass of water from the kitchen.’ He lets go of his father immediately as if he has been waiting all this while for someone to tell him to stop, to exercise his free will, to not be a slave to feverish impulse. ‘Just a minute,’ he says in a shaking voice, and steps into the toilet. He leaves the door slightly ajar. He emerges a minute later, wipes his hands on a small pink towel hanging in the passageway, goes straight back into his room.

Alok sits on the bed, quiet and expressionless. He finds the lights too bright and wants Manisha to switch some of them off. ‘Let me get some water from the fridge first,’ she says, going into the kitchen. She returns with a green plastic bottle. She opens a small cabinet built into the wall, just under where the DVD player is kept. Taken by surprise, a baby lizard jumps out blindly and lands on her wrist. She flicks it away almost absent-mindedly. She reaches for the bottles and lays the pills on her hand—two pink ones for the heart, two yellow ones for diabetes, a two-tone vitamin capsule. She reaches for a strip kept on top of a row of bottles and slips in a few sleeping pills. She remains like that for a few seconds, balanced precariously on her haunches, the tablets displayed neatly on her palm like rare coins. They remind her of the colourful badges that Ratul used to collect when he was younger.

Alok is lying down on the couch. ‘Can you put out the lights please,’ he says once again. ‘Only after you’ve had your medicine,’ says Manisha, in a voice that is half cajoling and half threatening. Alok sits up dutifully and takes the pills.