The days passed without form or shape. When one day ended, I couldn’t remember quite how I’d spent it – in what meaningful activities, and in what meaningless ones. Before midnight, I would forget all that had happened throughout that entire day.

I never did get round to buying a bulb.

I didn’t even get round to buying a panty.

At times I found the two of them unbearable. I wished they would put an end to it … but they didn’t. Their lovemaking went on and on. In desperation I would pull off the panty and fling it out onto the balcony. Then they would disappear at once.

In the mornings I made tea in the small kitchen. As I sipped my tea, I would feel the pangs starting up again. Strolling out to the balcony, I would pick up the panty and put it back in the wardrobe. The panty definitely smelled of me by then. Of me. How strange!

15

One day I feel a sudden burst of love. It is only after living here all this time that this feeling strikes me. Every day I see how they survive. As I watch them, I realise that I cannot blame the country or the government. For they are always lying down. In dangerous positions.

They sleep. Whenever I look, at least three of the four are asleep. The fourth sits, limbs splayed, with a blank stare. All they do by way of movement is scratch their heads, pick their noses, and spit.

In fact, I never see them eating. Some time after midnight, when the restaurant next door draws down its shutters, the first thing the waiters do is carry out a huge bucket full of the remnants of various delicacies and empty it into a dustbin near the section of pavement where the family live. A pack of dogs immediately throws itself at the leftovers. The three who have been sleeping sit up then. Soon afterwards, someone from the restaurant hands out polythene bags of food, quite a decent amount. That is the only time I ever see them eat.

I don’t know where they’ve come from. I don’t know why they have no home. There is such a vast wasteland in and around villages, which no one owns – why don’t they go there and build houses for themselves? Why do they languish in this blind city? Why do they linger on the pavement? What attraction does this place hold for them? Why have these two healthy young men been unable to obtain even one of those dark, dank, three-by-four rooms of mud and bamboo in some slum or other?

I don’t know where they go during the rains. When it rains at night, I go out on to the balcony – to look for them. But I never manage to spot them. Like the cockroaches that swarm into bathrooms under cover of darkness but disappear the moment the light is switched on, these people vanish into thin air as soon as it starts raining.