pyre—as a son should—placing the first flame in the mouth of the man who had raised him. And as a son should, he had spent the thirteen days on a thatch mat, receiving the company of mourners. At mealtimes he had eaten only the plainest food. He had slept under thin, meagre blankets. These austerities had freed him. His stepfather’s wish had been fulfilled. Bishnu’s responsibilities here were almost met. As he finished dressing, Leela called out to him from the porch of the family house: ‘Dai, hurry up! The food is getting cold.’ She was standing with her hands on her hips, as their mother used to. Since Bishnu’s last visit his sister’s features had sharpened, her dark eyes and full lips an exact recall of their mother. In her manners, too, she brought back their mother, though Leela was more fine-boned than their mother had been. At twenty she looked barely sixteen. 164/65
‘Aren’t you done bathing?’ she said. ‘This is your first proper meal. I’ve made all your favourite dishes!’ Bishnu gathered his towel, soap and razor, and followed Leela into the house. She bustled about, serving the meal. ‘It’s nice to see you back in normal clothing, Dai. All these old rituals… I hated seeing you in white.’ She placed a chair for him at the head of the table, the chipped laminate table just as it had been when Bishnu had come into this house. Bishnu still remembered the day his mother fled her first marriage by eloping with his stepfather. She had brought along Bishnu, aged four and a half. With this he had lost his biological father and relatives, his birth village, his past: all unspeakable and forever unmentioned after the scandal. ‘Would you like hot water with your meal?’ Leela asked. ‘Cold is fine,’ Bishnu said.
The Book of Aleph