Nala turned and walked towards her children’s bedrooms. Nandan, her beautiful boy was still bowling a pomegranate down the corridor. ‘No, Nandan, don’t! It will break, it will stain the walls,’ she shouted at him. ‘Don’t worry, Amma,’ he laughed back. ‘I’m practising; it’s called a leg spin. See?’ he said, rubbing the red bulb on his leg and twisting his fingers, snapping the fruit into the air. It spiralled up and then down. She caught her breath, waiting for it to hit the ground and split open into a thousand rubied pieces. But Nandan laughed again and caught it with his chubby hands. ‘Just like Richie Benaud,’ he winked at her as he ran down the corridor. She laughed as she remembered. Nandan didn’t wink anymore.

She stopped outside her daughters’ room. This was the most beautiful room in the house. Its large canopied bed was a chariot that tore across the Kurukshetra battlefield, taking Karna to safety, far away from the arrows that killed him in the Mahabharata. Priya played Karna, Dhara her loyal charioteer, and Nandan, when he was admitted into that intimate circle, a footman.

With the help of extra bed sheets, the chariot transformed into a palace. Priya and Dhara were twin princesses, dressed in their temple finery, re-draped to reflect the style of the Mughal Empire they ruled over. If he asked nicely, Nandan was allowed to be a servant boy, running hither thither to satisfy the whims of his mistresses. She closed the door on the majestic palace and entered the final part of the house she had longed to see: Rajan’s surgery.

It had been closed up the night before they left. The room was full of labelled boxes and sheets thrown over furniture now. She sat on his swivel chair, feeling the indentation of his weight on its leather seat—years, decades of his life imprinted on its ageing skin. She faced the empty patient’s chair in front of her, where thousands of people had sat, listing their pains, their problems and their fears. Rajan had listened and nodded. When they grasped his hands, he held them back tightly, showing strangers more tenderness than, for decades, he could show his own wife. She leaned back into his chair and let it hold her.

•

Rajan waited for Dhara at the counter. As usual, she carried a large pile of books, which she set down carefully.

‘I’ll pay, mahal,’ Rajan stepped in front of her with his wallet open, flicking through his rupees.

‘Rajan mama! I’m not a little girl anymore. I’m thirty-eight—I should pay for you. I’ve been earning for a while, you know.’

‘I know, and I still like to buy my children books,’ he pointed to one on his pile—Charmaine Solomon’s The Complete Asian Cookbook. ‘It’s a first edition.’