THE YEAR’S FIRST summer storm finally broke that evening. The clouds had been gathering all day, but even then, the storm had a hurried feel to it, arriving before it was fully expected. In a moment, the world beyond the Roys’ walls was transformed. The bamboos that spent the rest of the year leaning into their compound were whipped aside, making the house suddenly look far more exposed and vulnerable. In a minute, whistling dust-laden winds began to blow bits of bamboo leaves, hay and jackfruit leaves into their courtyard, making swirling little heaps all over the place. From beyond the walls came the faint but unmistakable sound of fruits dropping to the ground.

‘Opu!’ Durga shouted over the sound of rushing winds. ‘Mangoes! Let’s go!’

She raced out of the house, her brother at her heels.

‘You pick under the Shindurkota trees, I’ll cover the Shonamukhi,’ she called back as they ran.

All around them, branches were being whipped from side to side. Swirling dust severely impaired vision, and sharp-edged bamboo leaves whistling by made staying the course difficult. When the children reached their late uncle’s orchard, the place had become a battleground. Ripe fruits, unripe fruits, twigs, branches . . . everything was being ripped off and hurled around like missiles. Leaves eddied in the winds and flew into their faces. To make things worse, hundreds of soft, spiky dandelions blew into the orchard and began snowing around the mango trees, getting in the way.

And yet Opu ran around in wild excitement, shouting every time he heard a mango fall.

‘Didi! There’s one! There, that’s another—on that side! Let’s get them all!’

Durga was grinning widely. But unlike her brother, she worked silently and efficiently. For all his excitement and dancing about, Opu had only been able to locate two mangoes. Durga, on the other hand, had already picked five or six.

Suddenly, a bubble of human noise broke through the winds. The Mukhujje children were almost upon the Shonamukhi mango tree. The roaring storm had swallowed the sound of their approach, so they saw the trespassers before the trespassers saw them. Shotu’s yell of outrage was the Roy children’s first intimation that they were not alone.

‘Look, everyone! Opu and Dugga Didi are stealing our fruit!’

The siblings looked up, alarmed. Backed up by his band, Shotu advanced swiftly upon Durga.

‘Why are you in our garden, Duggadi? Didn’t Ma warn you never to steal from us again? Get out, or I’ll tell Ma. How many have you stolen already?’

After a forced glimpse into the mango knot in Durga’s sari, he called out to this sister, appalled. ‘Tunu, come see! She’s already taken six of our mangoes!’

‘What does it matter, Shotuda?’ Ranu interjected. ‘There are still so many trees to pick from. Let them pick their mangoes. We’ll pick our own.’

‘These are not their mangoes—these are ours! Plus if she stays here, she’ll take all the best mangoes. Don’t you know what she’s like? No Duggadi, you get out of our garden right now. I’m not going to let you steal from our mango trees.’

Under normal circumstances, Durga would not have let things go this easily. The orchard was prime picking ground, and she had known the place as her uncle’s garden all her life. But the memory of the brutal beating Shotu’s mother had engineered a few days back gave her pause. Perhaps giving in was the smarter option. In an attempt to salvage her dignity, she threw down the mangoes and suddenly acted like a wonderful new idea had just occurred to her.

‘Opu! Come on, we’ll go to a fantastic secret garden! Huge mangoes, all of them thi-i-is big! You and I will run around and pick all of them. Thank goodness we can’t stay here, eh? The other place is so much better!’

Then she walked out of the orchard, her head held high. Opu followed closely behind.

Once the Roy children were gone, Ranu turned on her cousin. ‘You’re really selfish, Shotuda! Why did you have to throw them out?’

Ranu had always been soft-hearted, and the helplessness in Durga’s eyes had genuinely hurt her.

Opu was rather naive for his age. Once out of the orchards, he said, ‘Where’s this secret garden, Didi? Did you mean the Sholtekhagee mango trees in Putu’s family garden?’

Durga didn’t want to confess that she had had no actual garden in mind. Instead, she thought for a second.

‘Uh, actually, I meant the trees around the Fort Pond. Let’s go there.’

The way to the Fort Pond was a good fifteen minutes on foot, by way of narrow overgrown lanes that connected ancient, abandoned orchards. The ground there was thick with spindly shrubs and spiky undergrowth. Almost no one went to those orchards any more. One, because they were too far; and two, because they were too overgrown to be worth the effort.

The wind reached a fever pitch as brother and sister approached the Fort Pond, nearly drowning out their voices. Dark clouds had rolled in during their trek, and the sky was as dark as in the after-dusk hours. The lebbeck and elephant-apple trees cast long shadows, making the base of the mango trees as dark as night. Mangoes were falling rapidly, but with the howling winds, it was almost impossible to guess exactly where the sound of their fall was coming from. Most of them fell into the thick porcupine-flower bushes anyway, retrieval from which meant certain injury. Still, a determined Durga chased the falls and collected about eight to ten mangoes.

Just then, the skies opened up. The force of the howling winds lessened slightly, but the new pitter-patter of the first large drops made speaking to each other just as hard. Durga ran over to her brother through the spiky ground-shrubs, and pulled him under the dense foliage of an ancient tree.

Soon, the pitter-patter turned into a torrential downpour. The force of the water