She paused but Rajjo looked on with a stony expression. ‘We welcomed another calf this winter and Sheru named it Sanjay after the actor Sanjay Dutt! Reet is ready to deliver her second child the following spring and Sheru failed his classes again. He also ran away from the house and was hauled back by the local villagers and father. He got a sound beating. Mother blamed grandmother’s genes because she would run away from the house just like Sheru did!’

Rajjo smiled hearing about Sheru, as Rano paused to catch her breath.

‘These days he is on a trip that he wants to be a truck driver...some days he wants to be a tailor and those are the good days,’ Rano smiled.

Another slurp and some more silence. Rano noticed Rajjo had dark circles under her beautiful brown eyes.

‘Mother really misses you and sometimes she cries too, she wanted to come and see you and invite you for the wedding, but father told her not to go, since he was travelling and someone needed to be home… so I’ve come with Karam.’ Her voice faltered just a bit towards the end.

Kesar sat there looking at the beautiful mistress staring into her teacup like it held some fascinating mysteries. Refusing to speak to her guests.

‘Father also could not come as he is travelling…’

Rajjo got up and went back to packing the stuff away. She clearly wanted them to leave. It felt like they were all leaving her behind – all of them back home in the village. The seasons were passing by, along with her fugacious youth, while she was sitting here trapped in cardboard boxes. She wanted Rano to leave and go far far away, where she would not remind her of the wheat fields or the lazy afternoons they spent stealing guavas from the guava orchards. Ripe and sweet.

Rano quietly unwrapped something from her shawl and handed her to her sister. It was an idol of Goddess Durga. ‘She will protect you, she will give you strength…’ whispered Rano in Rajjo’s ear and then she was gone.

Karam took one last look at Rajjo and his heart flipped over again. The hauntingly beautiful face ravaged by tragedy had only grown more mesmerizing. And then he was gone too.

Kesar looked up at Rajjo agitatedly slotting the boxes, counting packets and neatly arranging the food parcels. As Rajjo’s hands moved of their own accord to the feverish rhythm, her mind wondered what to do with the deity, as she sorted the cartons one by one. Perhaps she was going to keep it. Her namesake.

‘For Protection and for strength...’ her sister had whispered.

Perhaps she was going to need it. She could sense it, she could smell it, as pungent as the first shower of monsoon soaked in by the parched soil; that the next few days were going to define her destiny.

Rajjo realized pulling a rally together was a mammoth task but she loved the part she played in it. The permits for the rally had come. Seth-ji was screaming at anyone and everyone.