He woke up later, drooling on his arm. His feet were cold. Why was it so quiet? Then he realized: the noises of water pipes gurgling, of feet running up and down the corroded cast-iron stairs, and the whole building rattling around him every time a bus or truck passed on the road outside; these had been left in Esplanade Mansion. Here there was only the sound of birds chirping, implausibly cheerfully. He sat up and examined the phone. Still no message. Was it because of what had happened on Wednesday? The servant, coming into the room with glasses of cold lemonade on a tray, had given them a funny look. But they hadn’t been doing anything, just lying on the bed and reading the same book. When Ashish hadn’t seen Sunder in college for three days he’d called him, but there had been no answer. He ached to know what had happened, what would happen; during the last year, their friendship, so odd and circumstantial, had been hesitating on the edge of something else – but he couldn’t be certain. Surely it wasn’t all in his imagination?
There was a shout from outside. He wiped his mouth and went to the window. Boys were playing cricket in the lane. A small child ran up to bowl a tennis ball at a much older boy, who whooped and hit it hard; the ball landed, making a joyous thump, on the bonnet of a car halfway down the lane and the watchman got up and began to walk, with the detached enjoyment of someone playing a well-known role, towards the cricketers.
Ashish rubbed his eyes, turned off the fan, and went into the living room, from where he could hear voices.
‘Tea?’ His aunt came out of the kitchen and smiled at him.
‘Hm.’
He sat down, still half immersed in the dense warmth of afternoon sleep, and peered at his aunt and uncle. Mohan was drinking a steaming cup of tea and reading the newspaper. Ashish leaned his elbow on the edge of the table and allowed himself to re-enter the world.
‘Here.’ Lakshmi mami put a cup in front of him. He recognized it: it was tall and had a blue handle; a fey character called Little Boy Blue danced about on the front. All his cousins and sometimes he had been force-fed milk with protein powder in this cup, in the belief that it would make them strong.
Mohan grunted and folded the newspaper.
‘Anything interesting?’ Ashish asked.
‘Nonsense,’ said Mohan dispassionately. He brightened. ‘Shall we go for a walk?’ Ashish smirked; he recalled this meant his uncle wanted to visit the snack shop at the edge of the market, and buy hot samosa.
‘Let him finish his tea at least,’ Lakshmi mami intervened.
Ashish immediately adopted a hangdog expression and put the cup to his mouth. ‘It’s hot,’ he whimpered, making for the television. He found the remote, put on a music channel, and began to watch the video of a new song that blared, cancelling out the birdsong and the cries of the cricketers outside.
‘No hurry,’ said Mohan. He got up and began to drift around the living room in a conspicuously bored way.
The last light was golden, like something in a film; it fell carelessly across the dusty leaves of the old banyan in the empty plot, here and there picking out the new, shiny green ones. Television aerials cast extravagant shadows.
A chubby, frizzy-haired girl whom Ashish thought he recognized was pretending to walk for exercise. She dawdled down the lane, her mobile pressed to her ear.
‘I know,’ she said into the phone. ‘Seriously!’
As they passed, she smiled at both of them, and Mohan reached out and patted her head with the flat of his hand.
‘Madhavi, Dr Gogate’s daughter. Do you remember her?’ he asked Ashish quietly.
‘She used to be a little fat girl?’
‘Well, a little healthy maybe.’
‘That’s exactly what he said!’ Madhavi said. Her voice followed them for a yard or two after they rounded the corner. They crossed the small roundabout, where Ashish saw two stray puppies play-fighting, rolling in the dirt next to a heap of rubbish.
‘We’ll go to Matunga one Sunday for dosa if you like,’ Mohan said.
‘Mm,’ Ashish agreed. He had changed into his Sunday clothes, a t-shirt and shorts made comfortable from much washing. The evening air was soothing on his skin.
‘Your parents will reach this evening, we can call them when we get back.’
‘Okay.’ He scuffled along. He didn’t miss his parents; he wasn’t sure if he would. But already he missed town: on a holiday like today, outside Esplanade Mansion the streets were as quiet as the inside of a cup, and at such times the city always seemed to belong to him alone.
‘So,’ Mohan cleared his throat, ‘college doesn’t start for a month, a little more than a month?’
Ashish’s ears pricked up at the mention of college, but he kept his head prudently down. ‘Yes, in June,’ he said.
‘Ah. Hm.’
They continued to amble along the second lane, where the bungalows and apartment blocks were low-rise and set back from the road. Next to a broken culvert, bright green weeds flourished illegally.
‘Your parents were surprised about your attendance record,’ Mohan said.
Ashish looked at him. Mohan looked away, and waved at an unattractive grey bungalow on the left. The gatepost was marked Iyer. ‘Famous doctor lives there,’ he remarked. ‘Heart surgeon. Son is also a doctor. Dermatologist.’
‘Hm.’
Mohan frowned. ‘I don’t want to lecture you about your studies,’ he said. Ashish, holding his breath, flapped on in his rubber slippers. A rickshaw, containing two laughing young people, went past; the exhaust made explosive, farting noises.
‘It’ll be nice for all of us if you have a good year,’ Mohan said finally. He sighed, laughed, and pulled Ashish closer to him so that he could perform a familiar manoeuvre of affection and exasperation: he put his left hand on Ashish’s head and clouted it with his right. This was the only punishment he’d ever managed to inflict when his children, nephews and nieces reported each other’s misdemeanours to him.
Ashish grinned, but not too much. ‘Yes Mohan mama, don’t worry,’ he said obligingly.
His uncle snorted. ‘You have no idea. You should have heard your grandfather talk about studies, doing well at school…Vivek mama had it worse than I did, of course.’ He smiled.
They were passing a dilapidated beige bungalow. ‘He used to write, your grandfather,’ Mohan said suddenly. ‘Did you know that?’
‘No,’ Ashish said. His uncle was smiling, as though he had pulled a forgotten rabbit out of an old hat. ‘Do you mean stories?’
‘Stories, essays, little things. I don’t know what you’d call them. On Sundays he would get up early in the morning. When we woke up, he would be writing and he’d carry on all day.’
‘So he didn’t take you all out, you didn’t do things?’
‘It was his writing time.’
Ashish tried to digest this image of his grandfather, whom he mostly knew from photographs; there, he seemed like a grimmer, more stolid edition of his uncle: white shirt, trousers worn