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cassia, and the saffron stigmas of the crocus. On the walls behind her were traces of the drawings she had made so many years ago, still visible from behind a thin layer of whitewash. By this time, it had been generally acknowledged that she was a little eccentric to say the least. Her hunger during first one pregnancy and then another had settled into a permanent obsession with food. As the years progressed, she grew more peculiar. Ignoring completely the hullabaloo created by her husband, she continued to stare out of the window while her daughter complained about the choice of news items being read aloud.
    ‘Hoo,’ said Pinky, flapping her towel in exasperation as she paused on the way to the bathroom. ‘What is there to get so excited about? It is always the same old story. Each year the same scandal. Why don’t you read something that will affect us? For example, the Cinema Monkey. Is there anything about the Cinema Monkey?’
    ‘What monkey?’ asked her father, bewildered.
    ‘See, you are completely out of touch with local issues! For the past month he has been creating havoc outside the cinema, harassing ladies, pulling at their saris until they drop their peanut cones. And all those boys from the university – they are going especially to the cinema, not to see any movies, but just to stand outside and watch the girls getting their clothes pulled off! Haw-ji-haw, I am too scared to go any more.’
    Her father snorted.
    ‘Why don’t you take Sampath with you?’ said Ammaji, trying to find Mr Chawla a good pair of socks while alsosipping tea from a saucer. ‘He can protect you.’
    ‘Sampath!’ said Pinky. ‘What good will Sampath be! The monkey will probably choose me as the best person to target if Sampath is with me.’
    ‘That’s true,’ Ammaji agreed and took another sip of tea. ‘He is not very threatening. Poor Sampath,’ she said. ‘Look at him, sitting, sitting there as usual, with no raise in pay or promotion anywhere in sight.’
    Mr Chawla looked over to where his son was slouched over the table, his breakfast a spreading untidiness of crumbs around his plate. Before him a fly, vibrating like a machine, circled lower and lower over the bowl of fruit that had been bought by his wife after much deliberation from the fruit stall. Careful as a pilot, it settled on the ripest plum in the dish. Imagine its delight in finding such a thing indoors; it ran up and down to gauge the size of its discovery, stopping only occasionally to rub its thin black hands together like a greedy businessman. Sampath lifted the ruddy globe of fruit to get a better view of its long-snouted face when, right by his nose, there was a whoosh of movement and Mr Chawla, taking notice of his son’s distressing lack of initiative, brought down the rolled-up newspaper – Boom! – hard on the fly, leaving nothing but feeble legs waving above a dirty, jammy mess and a blur of iridescent wing.
    ‘Where is your common sense these days?’ said Mr Chawla. ‘God only knows what cowdung heaps and garbage dumps these flies come from. Come on. Eat your breakfast.’ He sat down at the table opposite him and put aside the paper. ‘How is your work going?’
    ‘All right,’ mumbled Sampath.
    The reply irritated Mr Chawla. ‘All right!’ he exclaimed, his eyebrows raised. ‘All right? You don’t sound very certain.If things were going all right, you wouldn’t be earning the same salary you were earning last year and the year before that, now would you?’
    One by one, all Sampath’s classmates had found employment. Even the ones with report cards that were just like his. Report cards with so many red Fs the letter seemed to have multiplied with abandon, run wild by the absence of competition from the rest of the alphabet. Only Sampath had been left idle, spending many blissful hours dreaming in the tea stalls and singing to himself in the public gardens, until at last Mr Chawla had found a suitable job for his