In everything they said, there was this air of acceptance and tentative experimentation rather than celebration, of a resolve towards provisionality rather than finality; since they themselves, rather than tradition, authority, or destiny, were having to author this event, they were experiencing the difficulty that authors have, of bringing into existence what didn’t exist before. In Arpita, especially, there was a deep sadness, not so much because she was attached to her ex-husband, whom she hated, but because she realised the marriage ceremony has only one incarnation, it has no second birth or afterlife, that the fire cannot be lit again, consumed and charred as it had been by ghee, nor the garlands re-exchanged, except in memory, where it can be played again and again, like a videotape. Whose wedding was that, then, six years ago, and whose wedding was it to be now? There was a subtle disjuncture between meaning and reality. In the meanwhile, they, while considering the idea of the wedding and the marriage, were having to behave like visitors from a remote planet who were studying the civilizations of this one from a book, and finding their habits increasingly difficult to put to use.

Later, after he’d paid the three pounds and fifty—there was a brief discussion about who should have the right to pay, till it was decided that it was not so much a question of rights as of who had the change—they took a tube (both of them had taken the day off from the office) to Highgate, and walked down from there to Hampstead Heath. There were two or three preponderant clouds in the sky, which were being gradually pushed beyond their field of vision by a breeze, but there didn’t seem to be any immediate danger of rain. The Heath was largely tourist-less and deserted except for a few devout ramblers and the usual conference of ducks and a few expatiating, unidentifiable birds that, as they walked, had the strangely private and liberated air of tramps. They went to take a look, from the outside, at the old, stately home where they would have their reception in London—they could well afford it; they each earned more than fifty thousand pounds a year—after the ashirbaad and reception in Calcutta. They were too well dressed to be loiterers or intruders, Arun in his usual overcoat, Arpita in her slacks and her dark blue duffel coat. An onlooker, looking at them looking at the stately home, might have concluded they’d come here to attend a function, only to discover they’d arrived on the wrong day.

“It’s lovely, isn’t it?” he said, dazzled by the sunlight mutely reflecting on the wooden door.