They went down for about five minutes, past two-storeyed houses with small but spacious courtyards, each quite unlike the others, till they had to stop again and ask an adolescent standing by a gate where Nishant Apartments was. The boy scratched his arm and claimed there was no such place over here. As they looked at him disbelievingly, he said, “It may be on that side,” pointing to the direction they’d just come from.

“That side?” Mr. Mitra looked helpless; he’d given up trying to arrive on time. What preoccupied him now was not getting there, but the negotiations involved in how to get there.

It turned out that what the boy was suggesting was simple. The main road, Lansdowne Road, divided the two halves of Rai Bahadur Mullick Road; one half of Mullick Road went left, the other right.

“Don’t you know where they live?” asked Mr. Mitra as Abdul reversed and turned the car around. The over-sweet, reminiscent smell of the tuberoses rose in the front of the car with a breeze that had come unexpectedly through the window. In front of a house on the left, clothes hung to dry as a child went round and round in circles in the courtyard on a tricycle.

“But I’ve only been there three or four times—and the last time, two years ago!” she complained. “I find these lanes so confusing.”

The lanes were confusing; there were at least two, one after another, that looked exactly the same, with their clotheslines, grilles, and courtyards.

About ten or eleven days ago, they’d noticed a small item in the newspaper, and were shocked to recognise who it was. Then an obituary appeared, and Mr. Mitra had called his daughter in Delhi, who remembered Anjali from visits made in childhood. Last week another insertion had told them that “Observances will be made in memory of Mrs. Anjali Poddar, who passed away on the 23rd of February, at 11 A.M. at 49 Nishant Apartments, Rai Bahadur R.C. Mullick Road. All are welcome.”

They didn’t expect it would be a proper shraddh ceremony; they didn’t think people would be fed. So Mrs. Mitra had told the boy at home, firmly so as to impress her words upon him, “We’ll be back by one o’clock! Cook the rice and keep the daal and fish ready!” Without mentioning it clearly, they’d decided they must go to the club afterwards to get some cookies for tea, and stop at New Market on the way back. So they must leave the place soon after twelve; it was already ten past eleven.