Sixteen

Aruna woke up with a sudden jolt and, just for a moment, wondered where she was. The bedsheet felt rough and the arm across her chest did not have the comfortable weight of Ramanujam’s. Her husband definitely did not wear bangles, like the ones digging into her chest. The crack that crazed across the ceiling and down the wall reminded her that she was at her parents’ place.

She realised that the fan had stopped turning; the power must have cut off. She removed Vani’s hand and turned on her side but Aruna couldn’t go back to sleep – her mind was too busy.

It had been three days since she had come here. Have I done the right thing? What will I do next? Is he thinking about me? Is he even missing me? What am I doing here? Have I done the right thing?

Her thoughts went round and round like a blinkered buffalo turning an oil mill. Stop it, she told herself.

The next hour passed slowly until her mother got up to collect the water from the tap before the flow stopped. Aruna joined her, putting empty vessels under the tap to collect fresh water while her mother washed the previous night’s dishes with the old. The water soon stopped running and they moved on to other chores.

“When does the water come in your mother-in-law’s house?” asked her mother.

Aruna thought for a moment and said, “I don’t know. The servants collect it and we also have a well.”

Her mother smiled at her. “I am glad you still think of it as your house,” she said.

Aruna flushed and did not answer. She pretended to be too busy rubbing the heavy pestle on the stone mortar to make a paste of coriander leaves for the chutney.

“How long will you stay here? You’ve made your point, now go back to your husband,” she said.

“Is this not my house? Why are you driving me away?” said Aruna. She looked up, pushing back a loose strand of hair. The air was very humid and sweat glistened on her forehead.

“Nobody is driving you away. But people talk when a wife leaves her husband’s house. Padma from three doors away was asking if you were pregnant. She looked so satisfied with herself when I said you were not pregnant, you would not believe.”

“You don’t need friends like that,” said Aruna. “Cut her off.”

“Who will I stop talking to?” said her mother. “Everybody was envious that you married into such a wealthy family that had a house with a garden, a car and servants. Naturally they will feel a bit of joy that your life is not a bed of roses. Everybody will feel it; some will be better at hiding it than others. All couples go through problems – how will marriages last if the partners just up and leave instead of sticking it out? You still haven’t told me exactly why you left. Has your husband been beating you?”

“No,” said Aruna. “Of course not.”

“Then why? Whatever the tiff was about, you’ve made your point. Go back now.”

“Don’t force me. If you don’t want me here, just say so and I’ll go somewhere else, anywhere.”

Her mother did not reply but started muttering to herself. Aruna ignored her and tested the coriander paste between her forefinger and thumb. Deciding that it had reached the right consistency, she scooped it out into a bowl and washed the mortar and pestle. She brought her hand to her nose and breathed in the fresh smell of the coriander. Her mother took the bowl and took it to the hob to saute it. Aruna heard her talking under her breath.

“I thought she was the sensible one in the family but what did I know? Silly girl.”

“What did you say?” asked Aruna.

“Nothing. Rouse Vani. Otherwise she will only start stirring when the sun is halfway up the horizon, as if she is Lady Curzon.”

An hour later, they had finished their breakfast and Aruna decided to go for a bath. Despite her mother’s protests that it was not winter, she heated a vessel of water and mixed it with cold water in a bucket. She closed the bathroom door and looked around in the resulting gloom. It was a tiny room, perhaps four feet by five feet, with an old, tall, plastic bin in a corner that held their soiled linen. A pipe stuck out of the wall; the builder of the house had very optimistically put it in, but no water had ever flowed out of it. The brass tap at the end of the pipe must have been removed a long time ago and sold for scrap. The door was a tin sheet over a wooden frame. Two feet of the sheet near the floor had rusted away and a previous tenant had nailed up a plywood plank to cover the hole. The bottom of the wooden frame had been eaten away by the water like the fingers on a leper’s hands. The walls had not been painted in years. Aruna sighed and thought about her airy, marble-tiled bathroom with its wonderful hot shower.

She reached into the bucket and took out the mug. Its handle was broken and the sharp edge almost cut her finger. “Oww!” she said and examined her hand carefully in the dim light to see if it bled. How expensive were mugs? Time to get a new one, she muttered with a frown, pouring water over herself.

She didn’t feel like lingering and quickly finished her bath. As she dried herself and started putting on her clothes, she heard a male voice outside the living room saying, “I didn’t realise it was already the month of Aashaadam.”

“Aashaada Maasam is still two months away,” said her father.

“That’s what I thought, but since you are the scholar, I thought maybe I was mistaken.”

Aruna pulled the drawstring of her salwar tight round her waist and tied it with a shoelace knot, listening to the conversation in the other room. She recognised the voice of one of their neighbours talking to her father.

“It’s just that I noticed your daughter has come home, so I thought, Mr Somayajulu is a pundit, a man who knows our traditions and customs. He won’t suffer his daughter coming home without a reason and, as she is not pregnant, it must be that month in which all newly married women leave their in-laws’ houses and come back to their parents.”

Aruna pulled the kameez over her head and missed what her father said in reply. She squeezed her eyes shut. Her actions were affecting the people she loved most. She untied her hair and shook it loose. When she heard the man leave, she opened the bathroom door and went out. The sky suddenly burst open and heavy rain started falling as if somebody up there had opened a spigot. Water splashed off the ground and on to her legs. Aruna yelped at how suddenly it had gone from dry to pouring and she closed the back door. She hoped the interfering neighbour had got soaked.

Aruna took advantage of a break in the rain and made her way to Mr Ali’s house. She was really annoyed – trying to avoid a dog on the way, she had stepped into a puddle and at the same time a passing motorcycle had splashed her. She dabbed ineffectually at the brown mud stains on her dress with her handkerchief. She had hoped to wear the dress again but she would have to wash it now. She hadn’t taken that many clothes with her when she left her husband’s house and it was difficult to wash and get clothes dry with the constant rain.

She gave up on the stains and turned to her work. She needed to prepare the list of Christian bridegrooms – at least she could type it on the PC now, rather than on that old mechanical typewriter. She switched on the computer and started typing the list. Soon Mr Ali joined her and went through the morning post.

About half an hour later, a thin, middle-aged woman rang the bell and came in. “Is this the marriage bureau?” she asked. She talked in clipped tones and walked with bird-like movements.

Aruna looked up and nodded. “Please take a seat,” she said.

The woman was very fair, almost pale, with grey hair, and she wore an old-fashioned, light-cream chiffon sari. Dark, squarish glasses sat on the bridge of a prominent nose. Her handbag was of fine leather but looked faded from years of use. Aruna thought she looked like a dowager, except that she was still wearing the black-bead necklace that signified a married Muslim woman.

“How can we help you?” said Mr Ali.

“My son’s wedding is in exactly four weeks,” she said.

“Thank you for coming and telling us,” said Mr Ali. “Not everybody does, you know. However, I don’t believe I’ve seen you before. Please give us your membership number and we can look up your details.”

“I am not a member of your marriage bureau,” said the lady.

“I see,” said Mr Ali and glanced at Aruna. She met his eyes and shook her head slightly. It was clear that he was as mystified as herself. Mr Ali turned back to the woman and said, “How can we help you?”

“I want you to help me find a bride for my son,” she said.

“Find a bride…” said Mr Ali. “But didn’t you just say that his wedding is in a month’s time?”

“Maybe the lady has another son,” said Aruna.

“No,” said the lady, “I have fixed my son’s marriage date and booked the wedding hall. I’ve arranged for the cook, the priest and the videographer. I just need to find the bride.”

“Did…Has a prior engagement…ahh…broken down?” said Mr Ali. Aruna smiled at how delicately her boss was asking the question. She quickly suppressed the smile when she realised that the lady might take offence. A broken engagement was no laughing matter even on the boy’s side. On the girl’s side, of course, it would be a disaster.

“No,” said the lady. “There was no engagement.” Aruna and Mr Ali were speechless and, after a moment, the lady continued, “Both my husband and I are from noble families.”

She looked at them with a flash in her eyes and they both nodded – that was not difficult to believe at all.

“My husband is a much older man than me and very weak. I have to make all the arrangements myself.” She looked at the wall. “When we were young and strong, we had retainers to do our bidding but now that we don’t have the strength, we have to run around ourselves.”

She shrugged and looked back at them. Her voice became stronger again.

“People tell me that my son has a good job in Mumbai and I did not expect any trouble finding a bride for him, so I went ahead and made all the arrangements. Everybody knows the date and if the wedding doesn’t take place on the day, then my nose will be cut off – my family’s pride will be ground into the dust.”

“I see,” said Mr Ali. “What about your son? Does he know the date too?”

“Of course he knows,” said the lady, looking at him over the top of her glasses like a schoolteacher. “How can he apply for leave otherwise?”

Aruna almost grinned. The lady was the first person, apart from Madam, who spoke to Sir like that.

“Why don’t you complete one of our forms?” said Mr Ali.

“I don’t fill out forms,” said the lady. “Let me tell you what I want.”

Mr Ali looked at Aruna and shrugged. He took out a form and a pen. “Yes, lady,” he said. “Let’s start with your name…”

Ten minutes later, they had all the details. “It all seems straightforward. Your son is a vice-president in a multinational company, earning a very good salary, and your family is second to none,” said Mr Ali, putting the cap on his pen.

“I have answered all your questions but I haven’t told you the most important condition yet.”

“What is it?” said Mr Ali, unscrewing the cap again.

“Society is not what it used to be,” said the lady. “People like us have to manage with one or two servants instead of fifteen or twenty as before. My son sells soap.”

“Your son is a top executive, madam,” said Mr Ali.

“Whatever,” she said. “He is still selling soap to ordinary people. If my father or my husband’s father had seen this day, they wouldn’t have believed it. Anyway, what I am saying is that families like ours have lost a lot over the years. What we haven’t lost is our pride and our pride is in our noses.”

So is your snot, thought Aruna, who was feeling uncharitable because of her own problems. She didn’t say it aloud.

“Noses, madam?” said Mr Ali.

“All our family members, for as long back as we have records, have had prominent noses.” The lady touched her beak-like proboscis, almost stroking it. “I want to make sure that continues. The girl I find should have a long nose too. Otherwise my grandchildren might be stub-nosed and that would be unbearable. Do you have any long-nosed girls on your books?”

Mr Ali shrugged. “Unfortunately, we don’t record that information,” he said. “So while we can search for girls of less than twenty-eight years of age or those studying economics, we cannot ask the computer to give us a list of girls with three-inch-long noses.”

Just then, the door opened and Pari came in. “Salaam, chaacha,” she said gaily and walked through came the house, her ponytail swinging behind her.

The lady stared after the young woman. “Who is that?” she asked.

“That’s my niece,” said Mr Ali, shading the relationship a bit.

“Does she have any royal blood in her? She has a fantastic nose.”

Mr Ali laughed. “I doubt it very much. She was adopted from a poor couple who had six other children and couldn’t afford to feed them all. Her father was a manual labourer.”

Aruna looked at Mr Ali in surprise. She hadn’t known that.

“There must be some noble blood in her ancestry. You cannot hide that sort of thing. She didn’t appear to be married. Do you think I can talk to her parents?”

“Her parents are dead,” said Mr Ali. “And she is a widow.”

“Oh!” said the lady. “That’s a shame.”

Mr Ali turned to Aruna. “Take out the all photographs we have for Muslim brides. That’s the only way the lady will find girls with long noses.”

♦

Rehman rode his motorcycle down a plank laid across the muddy slope and parked the bike under cover. Three unfinished floors had been built on pillars, all in grey concrete. It would be another two floors taller by the time construction finished.

Rehman got out of his wet raincoat and handed it to a wiry man in his fifties. It had been pouring for five days now and the entrance to the construction site was a quagmire.

“Soori, is everything OK?” Rehman asked. He was enjoying his job much more now that the actual construction had started.

“Yes, sir. We had a delivery of sand earlier today. The lorry driver said that we may not get another load for a few days.”

“I was expecting that because of the rains,” said Rehman. “That’s why I ordered it even though we don’t need the sand for almost a week. Where is it?”

“I got them to put it in the back where the water won’t get into it,” said Soori.

“That’s very good. Has the maestri, the foreman, come in?”

Soori hung Rehman’s coat on a nail that had been driven into a nearby pillar. His wife, a thin, dark woman with a silver nose ring and a tattooed band round her upper arms, brought him a steaming glass of tea. Rehman took the steel tumbler with a grateful smile and took a sip.

Soori, the watchman, lived on site with his wife in a small shack that had been thrown together with palm leaves and opened-up cement sacks, plus other bits and pieces of construction materials. His sons were also watchmen in nearby construction sites and they all lived a peripatetic life, moving to a new building once each was completed.

Rehman had sorted out the paperwork necessary to send Soori’s three grandchildren to a local government school and since then Soori and his wife were devoted to him. Rehman was discovering just how much help it was to have a man he trusted on location twenty-four hours a day. Soori and his wife had lived on building sites for over twenty-five years and even though they had never been to school, they had a vast fund of knowledge about the practice, if not the theory, of civil engineering.

Rehman finished the tea and handed it back to Soori’s wife, saying to her, “We don’t need to water anything today because the air is moist, so take another worker with you and move the bricks up to the second floor. We’ll start building the walls there tomorrow.”

She nodded and left. She earned extra money by working on the site and providing lunches and teas to the workers. He turned to Soori and said, “Let’s meet the maestri.”

The foreman was on the second floor with a gang of workers. Retail, they say, is detail, but this is even truer for construction. A hundred things must happen simultaneously. Rehman was soon busy making sure that the plumber did not interfere with the electrician and that they both finished their piece of work before the plasterers; that there was enough iron for the wire-benders and sufficient cement for the brickies; and while it was easy to remember that carpenters needed wood, he also had to make sure they had screws, dowels and glue.

A couple of hours later, he was pointing out to the maestri that one of his workers was not laying the wall straight when Soori came running up.

“The owner has come,” he said.

Rehman asked the foreman to continue and went with Soori down to the ground floor. A short, sleek-looking man, in a white cotton shirt and dark trousers and black, stout platform shoes, was sitting on a folding metal chair, waiting for him. His nephew, a young man in his twenties, stood behind him, holding a tattered, sorry-looking bag that no thief would pay any attention to. Rehman knew that it contained chequebooks and tens of thousands of rupees in cash.

“Good morning, Mr Bhargav,” said Rehman to the older man and nodded to his nephew.

Mr Bhargav was not actually the owner of the site. The land once belonged to an old man who had lived on the plot all his life, along with his four sons and their families, in a small house with a big garden all round it. When he died, his four sons had inherited the land but could not decide what to do. Because of the lie of the land, it could not be divided into four similar-sized parts of equal value, and none of the brothers had enough money to buy out the others. With their father gone, relations had soured between the siblings until they were barely talking to each other. Their wives were even more antagonistic to one another.

Mr Bhargav had come across one of the brothers, who had told him about the land and their situation. He struck a deal with all four that he would demolish the old house and put up the new building at his own cost, and they would get a share of the profits after the building was finally sold. The brothers could have retained a bigger portion of the final building if they negotiated as one entity, but Mr Bhargav had sealed the deal by putting them up in flats in different parts of the city.

The builder, in a rare moment of candour, had once told Rehman, “If the brothers won’t even talk to each other, how can they complain that I am short-changing them?”

Soori brought another chair and Rehman sat down.

“Has the new plastering maestri come yet?” said Mr Bhargav.

“No, sir,” said Rehman. “I’ve split the existing team into two, so the work is proceeding on both sides of the building but obviously it has slowed down.” Rehman looked at his watch. “Oh! I didn’t realise it was already eleven. He should have been here well before now.”

“Hmm,” said Mr Bhargav. “I got a call from the sand supplier. He said he delivered a load today: I thought we had enough for another week?”

Rehman nodded. “It becomes difficult to dig sand out of the ground when it is raining like this. So, I decided to keep some in stock.”

“Good idea,” said Mr Bhargav. He turned to his nephew. “See, that’s the kind of thing you need to learn. Anybody can shout at the workers and make them run around, but you need to keep thinking ahead to make sure that the work doesn’t stop.” Mr Bhargav turned back to Rehman. “Keep up the good work. It is very important because we are running out of time.”

The agreement with the owners specified that the building should be complete in eighteen months, or there would be penalties to pay, but the work had not started on time because of various delays and now there were less than six months left until the deadline. Rehman was sure that the brothers would not come together and enforce the contract but Mr Bhargav kept reminding him of the time limit every time they met.

A man in his late twenties, wearing a rough shirt and trousers, walked on to the construction site. His fingers were grey with cement and he held a brick trowel and a plumb line.

“Namaste, saar,” he said to them.

“What time did you say you would come? And what time is it now?” said Mr Bhargav.

“Sorry, saar. My little one had diarrhoea because of all these rains. My wife was really worried so I had to take him to the doctor.”

“I don’t care,” said Mr Bhargav. “We don’t need you. I hate unreliable people. Get out of here.”

“That’s not fair, saar. I had a good reason.” He looked at Rehman who averted his gaze, embarrassed and unable to meet the worker’s eyes.

“What are you looking at the engineer for?” said Mr Bhargav. “Everybody here works for me. I am telling you that I don’t have time for unreliable people. Go.”

“I am really sorry, sir. But the young one is not well and I really need the job. The medicines are so expensive and I won’t get another job straight away in these rains. Please show some mercy. I will come on time in future.”

“Nothing doing,” said Mr Bhargav.

“Please, sir, I beg you…”

Mr Bhargav just stared the man down until he turned and left, his head hanging and feet dragging. Once the plastering foreman left, Mr Bhargav stood up in his platform shoes and patted Rehman on the shoulder before he got up from his chair.

“Right, keep it up.”

He turned and walked out, his short legs moving quickly.

His nephew followed behind, taking deliberately short steps to keep behind Mr Bhargav.

Rehman stared after them. I should have stood up for the worker, he thought to himself. But that wouldn’t have helped when Mr Bhargav was so adamant. When had that stopped him before? He was thinking like his father now, weighing up the odds of success before acting.

♦

Two days later, the rains stopped and the sun came out. The sky was a cloudless blue and the air particularly clear, as if it had been scrubbed in the showers. As always, the sun’s rays seemed very strong after the rain. Rehman’s shoulders prickled in the heat even though it was only just past nine in the morning. He was on the top floor of the construction site, and the whole area in front of him was full of vertical, nine-foot-tall pine logs supporting a ceiling of rough wooden planks. The watchman and general factotum, Soori, set up a home-made bamboo ladder, wedging it against the boundary wall, and they both climbed up on to the ceiling. They were high above the ground with a great view over the town.

Rehman looked around with interest. Ten or fifteen years ago, the houses below him would have been covered with red roof tiles, but now…He shook his head. There was nothing less suitable for the hot south Indian weather than rectangular boxes topped by concrete slabs. Solid grey cement clad around iron bars is a combination ideally designed to capture the sun’s heat and transmit it downwards into the rooms below, which is not what one wants when the outside temperature is forty degrees in the shade.

“I think we can tell the iron-bending brothers to get their team over to start binding the rods for the slab,” said Soori, shading his eyes and looking into the sky.

“Do you think the rain has really stopped?” said Rehman.

Soori nodded, but Rehman took out his mobile phone to call Usha. After the usual greetings, he asked her, “What does the meteorology department say about the weather?”

Usha laughed. “I’ve heard that some men call their fiancees just to have a chat. Let me check their fax.” The phone went silent for a little while and then Usha’s voice came back. “The weather front has moved on and it will remain sunny now.”

Rehman said his goodbyes, promising to call again later in the evening, and hung up. He turned to Soori and said, “OK, let’s call the iron-benders.”

Rehman calculated swiftly – it would take three days to prepare the iron framework, so they could start pouring the concrete in four days. Give it one more day just to be on the safe side. He’d better arrange the gang of workers, the concrete mixer, cement and pebble-sized stones. He already had sand, but it was better to get some more. He’d have to tell Mr Bhargav to arrange the cash for all the material and for the extra workers on the day.

Pouring the concrete for the slabs was probably the biggest single task in a construction like this and there was little margin for error. The work would start early and carry on as late into the night as necessary. The entire concrete had to be poured in one continuous operation, otherwise the parts would never join seamlessly and the roof would always be prone to leaks and weaknesses. The two men climbed down the ladder and Rehman got busy arranging everything.

Three days later, everything was going well. The iron framework was almost ready and everything was organised for the slab two days hence. He stepped off the ladder and came down the stairs to the ground floor. A big empty plastic sack lay across the stairs. Picking it up, he called out to one of the women working nearby, watering a newly made brick wall.

“Put this away,” he said. “Make sure there are no obstructions on or near the stairs. They will cause accidents.”

“All right, babu.” She nodded, taking a stubby, hand-rolled cigar out of her mouth. She probably couldn’t afford cigarettes.

Just as he reached the ground floor, his mobile phone rang. He didn’t recognise the caller’s number. “Hello.”

“Thank God I got hold of you. I’ve been trying to get your number all morning.” It was a woman’s voice, speaking very fast in Telugu.

Rehman jerked the phone away from his ear and looked at the number on the front for a moment. He put it back to his ear and replied in the same language, “Excuse me, madam. Who are you and what is this regarding?”

“Oh! Sorry. I am Sita. You picked up Vasu at my place a few months back.”

Rehman remembered the newly married, six-fingered woman who came from the same village as Vasu and Mr Naidu. He had also seen her after the monkey wedding, supporting her mother-in-law with Pari. “Sitakka! I remember now. What can I do for you?”

He was surprised to hear from her.

“Something terrible has happened. Mr Naidu is in hospital. My mother-in-law said that he has taken poison.”

“What? I don’t believe it. What about Vasu? Where is he?”

“The boy is fine, apparently. He is in the village.”

“Which hospital is Mr Naidu in? How unwell is he?”

“Very serious – he still hasn’t recovered consciousness. He is at the NTR hospital in town. We are on the way to the village now. Can you come over as well?”

Rehman thought rapidly. “Of course,” he said. “He is such a careful man. How can he make a mistake like this? Anyway, that’s for later. I’ll go straight to the hospital first before coming to the village. Please make sure Vasu is all right. I am worried about him.”

He put the phone down. Mr Bhargav was walking over quite rapidly for a man with such short legs. His much taller nephew walked several steps behind him, carrying the usual tattered bag.

“Thank goodness you are here, Mr Bhargav. My…er…uncle is seriously unwell and in hospital. I need to go straight away.”

“Of course, of course. Will you be back in the afternoon?” said Mr Bhargav.

“No, sir. He is in a village outside the city. I’ll be at least two days.”

“Oh, that’s bad timing. There are a hundred things to be done for the slab work.”

“I am sorry, sir. But I have to do this.”

“All right. Two days maximum, though. You have to be here for the pouring of the concrete.”

Rehman nodded. “Thanks, sir.”

Mr Bhargav held up two fingers. “Remember, I hate unreliable people,” he said.

Rehman turned and went to his two-wheeler, calling to Soori. When the watchman came over, Rehman spent a few minutes giving him instructions about what needed to be done in the next couple of days. Finally, he was free to leave.

He drove quickly to his parents’ house. His father and his assistant were busy with a client and his mother was in the kitchen. He called both of them into the living room and told them what had happened. He stuffed a pair of trousers and a couple of shirts into his old cotton bag along with a toothbrush. His mother rushed into the kitchen and returned in a couple of minutes with a plastic packet.

“There’s rice, dhal and a cabbage curry in there. I’ve put in a plastic spoon as well.”

“I am not hungry, ammi. This is not the time to be thinking about food.”

“Don’t be silly. You will be hungry soon. Eat this on the way in the bus and you won’t need to waste time once you get there.”

Rehman slung his bag over his shoulder and took the food packet from his mother. Less than a minute later they were hailing an auto-rickshaw.

Rehman got in, telling the driver to hurry to the RTC bus stand.

On the way, he called Usha and told her what had happened. She said, “I am coming to the bus stand. I’ll be there in ten minutes, wait for me.”

“I don’t want to delay, Usha. I’ll meet you when I come back.”

“I am leaving now. I will be there almost at the same time as you. Just look out for me.”

“All right,” he said. “Come to the ticket counter.” As soon as the auto-rickshaw reached the bus stand, he rushed over to buy his ticket. The queue wasn’t too long. There was an Express Volvo bus to his destination in fifteen minutes. He looked at his watch impatiently and scanned the crowds. He would give Usha another five minutes. He didn’t want to miss the bus.

She came just as he was about to give up. He gave her a fleeting smile and started moving towards the buses. She followed with rapid steps, almost running. Her high heels click-clacked on the hard floor and many people turned to stare at the unusual sight of a glamorous lady running for a bus. As they reached the bus, he turned to say a hurried goodbye. She had a grim look on her face.

“Take care, Rehman. I have a bad feeling about this.” He nodded. She quickly rummaged in her bag and took out a bundle of hundred-rupee notes.

“That’s ten thousand rupees,” she said. In answer to the question in his eyes she said, “It’s from my emergency stash. After what happened when I told my parents about our engagement, I always keep some money with me.”

Rehman wasn’t happy about taking money from Usha but he could see that she wouldn’t give in easily and he didn’t have time to argue with her now. The bus was likely to leave any moment now.

“Thanks. But I don’t need so much money.”

“Keep it, just in case. Hospitals are an expensive business.”