I bring the child food every day. Do I think that this gives me a claim on her? Why am I feeling so restless otherwise? If what I fear comes true, if the foreign woman does take her away and bring her up as her own, I should be happy that the girl has been given an opportunity for a decent human existence.

For I know very well that my involvement is partial. None of this child’s needs are fulfilled by it. Will I ever be able to risk anything more for her than a single square meal a day?

Although this truth has staked its claim over my mind, it cannot touch my heart. Instead, I feel sobs welling up in my throat. My agitation grows. I glance at the clock, pack the rice and boiled egg in the polythene packet and go downstairs. I look as arrogant as the midday sun.

I stand at an angle to the mother of the child and the foreign woman, who says ‘Hi’ to me. But the mother doesn’t even acknowledge my existence. She stretches out her hand for the packet and hangs it up on the tree. When I take a couple of steps towards the child, she runs to her mother, burying herself in her mother’s breast.

I hurry back to the building, jabbing impatiently at the lift button. I call you. Choking with tears, I pound the table. ‘No more food for her. No more. I’m telling you, no more food for her.’

I stop bringing her food after that. The days pass one by one. She doesn’t go anywhere. The foreign woman doesn’t come and whisk her away to some sheltered, affluent life, cosseted and secure. Sleeping, her fist lies in the pavement’s dust, and passers-by step over it with ease.

I go out onto the balcony when the sun is overhead. I check whether her mother looks up at me expectantly.

No, she does not. Instead, it is I who keep on steal­ing glances. And dream that the child is lying on the end of my sari, in the veranda of a thatched hut, on a green plot of land very far away from here. Silvery water hugs a moonlit sandbank. A pot of rice is boiling in the corner of a scrubbed-clean courtyard. Our sleep deepens amid the fragrance of rice, of potato, of lime. The pain that covers the length and breadth of the world is obliterated.

19

She called you, wanting to tell you about the pain. Though she had her doubts about whether it could be called a pain.

There was a strike in the city, a bandh. There was no need to get out of bed in the morning. But she had risen early, disturbed by the sensation of pain. Pain, in the sense of a hive of discomfort centred on a single nipple.

The uneasiness had begun with a tingling sensation at the tip of her right nipple. It intensified gradually. She began to scratch the place with her left hand, small scratches with her fingernail, and realised that the tip of a nipple was completely different from the rest of the body. It was made so that it could not be scratched. Doing anything to this tiny piece of wrinkled flesh only meant hurting it further. Rubbing it with a piece of cloth had provided some comfort, though, its brown areola becoming swollen and warm.