For the past few minutes Murali has been trying to send someone a text; the car snakes wildly, bumping across the median.

‘Please don’t do that, Murali,’ I snap. Immediately I feel like shit. That was Papi’s voice, Papi’s disgust. ‘It’s just dangerous, you know?’

‘Yes, madam.’

We drive for another twenty minutes in silence, burrowing through the dark.

‘How is Blake Sir?’

‘All fine.’

I wish he would shut up. If we cannot speak properly, I would rather make this entry in silence without pleasantries.

I wonder whether I should have allowed Blake to come with me. It would have been our last trip together, and he might have helped ease things. But then I think about the way he always crouched in the back seat, pressing his khaki-clad knees together like a gangly bird, blinking at the oncoming lights, all the fear leaking out of his stringy body. And the questions. He would have had so many bloody questions.

It’s after five in the morning when we arrive outside my mother’s apartment building on Marine Street, a kilometre away from the Aurobindo Ashram.

Murali pockets his tip morosely and moves towards his luggage.

‘No, no,’ I say. ‘I can take the bags. Really! You go home. I’ll phone when I need you, Murali.’

I push open the gates. The same watchman, a Nepali guy, leans forward to peer at me through half-closed eyes, and after registering who I am, slopes back to snooze in his chair again. I step into the lift and pull the squeaky metal gate towards me. There is an automatic electrical voice that repeats again and again: ‘Please shut the door. Please shut the door.’

I go up to the third floor. My mother’s flat is marked with an avenue of potted ferns. Splotchy, lurid green things. The door is ajar. Inside, the paper lanterns in the drawing room are casting an orange glow over everything. There are photographs of the protecting talismans again – Aurobindo and the Mother – on the wall. From the veranda, pink fingers of dawn poke through the grilles like warnings.

Ma’s best friend, Auntie Kavitha, sits on the day bed in a kaftan. She used to have such long beautiful hair but it’s shorn now, cut close to the scalp like a soldier’s, and it opens her face, pushes out the ridges of her cheekbones. Opposite her is Mrs Dalal, my mother’s neighbour and fellow devotee. They’re like two crows, these women, emaciated and agile, their voices rasping. They’ve been smoking and there are cups of tea on a tray beside them.

I nod at them and leave my luggage at the door.

My mother is in her bedroom in a freezer box on the floor. A grotesque stainless-steel contraption with an airtight glass lid. She is huge – arms and legs chunky as hams. That pretty mouth of hers slack, as though there were no longer teeth to support the pendulous lips. The skin on her face sags in abundance. And there’s grey in her hair, so much grey, mottled and streaked, spreading out of the crown of her head like the skin of a forest animal.