The sidewalk is tattooed with the umber pigments of decayed leaves. Usual traffic moves to and fro. Kavita watches a woman dressed in a camel trench coat walking a small white dog. The woman stoops over, picks up the dog’s mess, and then they both trot on, somewhere, woman and dog alike seeming very hurried and purposeful in each step they take.

Just like all the people Kavita saw on the way home as she travelled to the condo. People on foot, people on bikes, people in cars, people on buses. People moving, moving, moving. People with somewhere to go, to be. Taking care of her parents had given her a purpose, but now, back in her own life, she feels aimless. Exhausted yet restless. A scribble in the margins. Watching the people. Wondering how she was ever part of them, and more bleakly, how she will ever be able find her way back.

As the wind gusts, Kavita gets a prickly feeling that she is being watched. Across the street, a couple of floors up, a man is leaning against his balcony railing, puffing too. When their eyes meet, he takes one more drag, flicks his cigarette butt over the railing, and goes back into his condo. She wonders about him. Why he’s at home, like she is, at this time of day, when productive members of society found themselves in offices and shops and on wheels of some sort. Maybe he is sick. Or playing hooky. Or unemployed; unemployable. Or, she thinks, maybe he has lost somebody, like she has, and needs to withdraw from the forward motion of the world for a while, before surrendering again to its tow. She wants to ask him: Is he like her? But he’s gone. Maybe she will get another chance tomorrow.

Her neighbour’s terrace door unlocks with a click. Kavita buries her cigarette in the terracotta pot at her feet, the one that holds the twig-like remains of some forgotten annual. As her neighbour’s door slides open, before she gets caught up in the polite lies of chitchat, she slips back inside.