Biji had to do the fainting spell again, so they would put her in the rickshaw and take her home. She hid her roti in the little cloth bag hanging on her thin gnarled hand and with a move perfected over two decades, fainted.

Kartar and Moga rushed over just in time to catch her.

‘What now?’ Moga wondered

‘At least she will not be eating our head on the way back!’ muttered Kartar as he collected his mother in his arms, cradling her like a child.

‘She has taken a roti from here, you wanna pay up?’ The cheeky man baking the bread commented.

‘Bastard! You can count your rotis when God takes you to hell!’ Biji erupted like a volcano shaking Kartar who almost dropped the terror from his hands. Biji directed her wrath towards the surprised son.

‘You better hold on properly to me! Tomorrow Durga is coming, I want to die after I see her face… You hear me! And that’s what you name her Durga, else I am not coming back home with you!’

At home, Saroj was hoping they would not find her mother-in-law until she had delivered her baby. She was a ravishing, tall woman with pale skin and amber eyes. Biji constantly remarked over her pale complexion, wondering where it came from and insinuated Saroj’s grandmother had taken a lover. She was sure it was the handsome foreign student who had come down to complete some project in the village. He smiled at everyone in the village and offered the pretty girls sweets. Biji had her eyes on him but Saroj’s grandmother had swooped in on him.

Saroj was convinced Biji was the devil incarnate, sent on earth to torment her. She sat on a high stool with a swollen belly. The sweat trickled down her back and her little hand fan didn’t do much to help. Kartar had also put a small table fan in the open kitchen where Saroj cooked the meals and everyone sat around to eat in a corner of the courtyard. The kitchen enclosure had a raised muddy platform with a stove. Steel utensils, blackened with heat over time, piled up on each other and struggled for space. The entire house was a mix of brick and mud.

A pot simmered on the stove as she tinkered with the wood and burnt cowdung used as fuel to cook with. She went back to chopping the vegetables but it was uncomfortable to even sit on the stool. The smoke was becoming unbearable for her. She stirred the broth one last time and covered the pot to simmer. Her two little girls – Rano, aged four and Reet, aged five, sat giggling next to her, lost in their own world, playing with the tea set made from mud that she had bought at a fair last year. Half the set was broken.

As Saroj shifted her weight again, she hoped the old fusspot was wrong and it was a boy. Even if it was a girl there was no way in hell she was going to name her Durga.