Anu felt better having spoken to Shwetha. She was not the type to bottle things up. Hurrying up the familiar steps to the library with the musky smell of old books, Anu took a deep breath and waved to the librarian. She had been going to that library for at least fifteen years now. The library had witnessed her transition from reading Enid Blyton to Harry Potter to John Grisham.

That was where she and Sanju had their first real conversation—where she had mumbled and he had stuttered. Smiling quickly at a few known faces, Anu got busy rummaging through the shelves. She had to find the twentieth book in the Stephanie Plum series. She had been able to find all parts up to the nineteenth and beyond the twenty-first, but not the twentieth. As her search intensified, so did the beeps and dings of a video game. A kid with a mobile! If she could suffer through the boredom of entertaining her son with toys, so should other mothers.

Anu tapped on the shoulder of the woman next to the child. ‘Can you put your son’s mobile on silent?’

The woman, with her face buried into a book, replied, ‘I would if he were mine.’

Tendering an apology, feeling sheepish, Anu went back to her search. Two minutes later, the kid hugged the same woman. ‘Mumma, the phone is not working.’

What an ingenious liar! While Anu gawked, the woman smirked, fixed the phone, and moved to a different aisle.

Anu went up to the librarian and whispered. ‘Can you throw that lying woman out?’

The librarian shook his head. ‘No, ma’am. But you can take this.’ He pushed a brand new Leanne Moriarty towards her, with a conspiratorial smile. ‘This had been reserved for her.’

Anu was happy with that sweet revenge. Billing her books, she started to the door. The kid had had now moved on to emanating thuds and crash sounds from the phone. Anu stopped. She had to save the world from that auditory assault. Walking up to the kid, Anu took his phone, turned it off, and left it on a top-shelf. Before he could recover and scream, or smack her cold, Anu handed him a miniature dinosaur she had bought for Vicky. ‘Here, play with this.’

Anu felt delighted when she looked at the time. She still had good two hours before she needed to pick Vicky. She could spend this time on her bed with the book—could life get any better than that? Well, it could—if you throw in a bag of potato chips to the mix. The Hot Chips shops in every nook and cranny of Bangalore might be a weight watcher’s nightmare, but they were Anu’s delight.