The first to be fed was usually a crow, for whom a small ball of kneaded aata was kept on the balcony for it to pick up; the crow was supposed to be the soul come back—such absurd make-believe! Yet everyone did it, as if it were some sort of nursery game. Mr. Mitra, looking out through the windshield, past the steering wheel and Abdul’s shoulder, speculated if such practices might be all right in this case. Here the soul had made its own exit, and it was difficult to imagine why it would want to come back to the third-floor balcony of Nishant Apartments.

“Ask him!” said Mrs. Mitra, prodding her husband’s arm with a finger. She nodded towards a watchman standing in front of what looked like a bungalow. “Ask him!”

“Nishant?” said the thin, moustached chowkidar, refusing to get up from his stool. Behind him was an incongruously large bungalow, belonging to a businessman, hidden by an imposing white gate and a wall. He barely allowed himself a smile. “But there it is.” Two houses away, on the left.

It was clear from the size of the cramped compound, with the ceiling overhanging the porch only a few feet away from the adjoining wall, that Nishant had been erected where some older house once was, and which had been sold off to property developers and contractors. It must be twelve or thirteen years old. An Ambassador and two Marutis were parked outside by the pavement. Mr. Mitra, holding the tuberoses under his right arm, glanced at his watch as he entered the porch, then got into the lift, which had a collapsible gate, hesitantly. He waited for his wife, looked at himself quickly in the mirror, and pressed a button. Mrs. Mitra smoothed her hair and looked at the floors changing through the collapsible gate.

A narrow, tiled, clean corridor, going past forty-six and forty-seven, led to the main door to forty-nine, which was open. Faint music emanated to the corridor, and a few people could be seen moving about in the hall. There was a jumble of slippers and sandals and shoes by the door, promiscuously heaped on one another. Mr. Mitra took off his with an impatient movement; Mrs. Mitra descended delicately from hers—they had small, two-inch heels.

Mr. Talukdar, who was standing in a white shirt and trousers talking to another couple and a man, excused himself from their company and came to the newly arrived couple. “Come in, come in,” he said to Mrs. Mitra. To Mr. Mitra he said nothing, but accepted the tuberoses that were now transferred to his arms. “Nilima’s there,” he said, indicating a woman who was sitting at the far side of the sitting room upon a mattress on the floor, an old woman near her. So saying, he went off slowly with the tuberoses in another direction.