‘It’s about giving up or staying the course, that’s how I look at it. You know, this morning I was thinking about this girl I knew in college. Beautiful thing with long beautiful hair. Brilliant as well, I mean she was a top-rank student. She hung herself from a ceiling fan in the college room. Everyone was so shocked. If someone like her was going to kill herself, what were we still doing alive? She always wore long skirts tucked into one corner of her waist so she looked like a flamenco dancer. I wrote a poem for her, and this morning on Facebook I saw that her boyfriend is now married and has a kid. His life has continued, and even though we’re not really in touch, his presence is constantly validated. But for a moment I’d forgotten her name. I had to look for that old poem to remember her name. It’s kind of unforgivable. Maybe living is about surviving, about being tenacious.’

‘In this city?’

‘Why not?’

‘Look at these people. I feel most of them are here because they can’t be anywhere else.’

‘Maybe it’s what you feel about your own situation.’

‘Maybe.’

That night I get stoned and spend hours waving a mosquito bat in the air trying to kill monsters. I’m wearing a dress that normally makes me feel sexy, but something doesn’t sit right. Either I’ve put on weight or the muscles in my stomach aren’t as strong as they used to be, because my back droops and it requires too great an effort to straighten myself.

It is Samir, Rohini, Praveen, the neighbour girl Tanya, and I. The last time I’d seen Tanya the resident Pomeranians had shredded her daughter’s toy pig on the floor, and she’d had to sweep the snivelling child up against her hip and storm out. She had been a heavy presence that evening. The disappearance of the father of her child had absorbed her every disappointment, and it seemed as if she couldn’t get beyond this beseeching – look what has happened to me. She has advanced since then. The magic of Praveen’s nocturnal visits, perhaps, or simply the understanding that life with that disappeared man would have been unbearable.

‘You look well,’ I tell her.

She is in an ikat jumpsuit, large silver anklets gleaming from under the cowl pants, breasts wide and settled, resembling the happy stupor of Loulou and Leela, brushed and fed, occupying two ends of the divan like bolster cushions.

‘Life is good,’ she says, stroking one elbow continuously.

Is it always so obvious when a woman decides to take a lover? Something changes, even though the body’s dimensions remain the same. The way she holds herself, stakes her place.

‘My mother is visiting so I’m getting some help with Mitali. I’ve rediscovered my sexual organs. Life is good.’