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give her more opportunity to rub salt in your wounds? It may do you good in the long run, Didi. With the family.’
    Sona’s eyes filled with tears, as she murmured hopelessly, ‘I want my own child.’
    Rupa stroked her back and murmured, ‘Bas, bas, in the end it will be all right. Your time will also come.’
    ‘Never. Your Jijaji says we must acknowledge we will not have our own children. Now he looks on others as his own, first his brother’s, then his sister’s. I do not understand him.’
    ‘He has accepted the situation, that is all. At least he is not blaming you.’
    Sona remained silent.
    Rupa said, ‘Didi, why have you never considered going to a doctor? You can afford the best medical care. Even God needs to be helped sometimes.’
    Sona side-stepped the question, not wanting to reveal how humiliating it would be to be seen as a flawed creature, whose body needed expensive medical aid to perform its natural functions. If her family had wanted it, how willingly she would have put herself in the hands of modern medicine, suffered a thousand tests. But strangely her in-laws had never suggested this. Perhaps they wanted to punish her, perhaps they felt she was not worth the money.
    Suppose she did manage to go, secretly with Rupa, and there turned out to be something really wrong with her, she would be doomed to live with this weight on her hopeless heart.
    ‘I don’t understand you, Didi,’ went on her sister, irritated by the way Sona was staring at her perfect white feet, encircled with silver anklets, studded with tiny blue and red meena hearts. ‘If I wanted something as badly as you do, I would try everything, not just rely on puja and fasts, which you have been doing for years, with nothing to show.’
    ‘If you are so keen on doctors, why don’t you go?’ flashed Sona.
    ‘I have accepted my condition, my husband does not hanker after children, he says his sister has enough, he helps with their education, his heart is as big as the sky,’ said Rupa, with a pride her sister thought totally unbecoming.
    ‘It is easy to accept when you have no in-laws always making you feel bad.’
    ‘But we have other things to make us feel bad. The tenant upstairs sits on our head, with his schemes and his plans. From before our marriage they are fighting. My father-in-law worries he will die with it unresolved, and he feels it is just as well we don’t have children who will inherit our problems. At least your house is properly your own.’
    Depends on what you mean by properly, thought Sona sourly.
    ‘And,’ went on Rupa, still inappropriately exaggerating the difficulties of her life, ‘I have to work very hard with the pickles, just to make a little extra money. The case costs a lot, he sends his sister an allowance every month, we even buy the cheapest tickets at the cinema in order to save. If I didn’t have this extra income, we would never go anywhere, never go to India Gate, restaurants or films, always sit at home.’
    ‘You are lucky your Jijaji helps you so much with the pickles, making sure they are sold. He takes so much personal interest in grocery shops only to help you, otherwise it is not really his line of business,’ pointed out Sona, annoyed that her sister should be talking about the money she made without due reference to her husband.
    ‘We live in your shadow, you know that, Didi,’ said Rupa guilelessly.
    ‘He was even saying the other day that later you can supply the local eating-places. Your Jijaji always has very good ideas.’
    At this news, Rupa’s mind began to race, as many fantasies filling it as might have been justified by the news of a pregnancy. She felt a little ashamed, and said modestly, ‘I am so stupid, on my own I can do nothing.’
    Sona gave her a sharp look, and said, ‘Because you are a woman, with no business background, he feels he should help you.’
    ‘Your husband is so generous, always thinking of others. One day your time will come, Didi, I