THAT DAY AFTER lunch, Opu had gone to the fisherman’s neighbourhood to play with cowrie shells. It was after two in the afternoon, and the sun was at its harshest. His first stop was at Tinkori fisherman’s house. Tinkori’s son Bonka was under their guava tree, sharpening a piece of split bamboo.

‘Oi, want to come play cowries?’ Opu asked.

Bonka very much wanted to, but he was scheduled to go on the boat. His father would be furious if he disappeared to play cowries. Reluctantly, he refused.

Next, Opu went by Ramchoron fisherman’s house. Ramchoron was sitting on his outer veranda, smoking tobacco.

‘Is Hridoy at home?’ Opu asked him.

‘What’d you want with Hridoy, Thakur?’ Ramchoron replied gruffly. ‘Cowries, is it? No, Hride isn’t at home. Be about your way!’

Walking about under the midday sun had begun to tan Opu’s fair face red. He went to a few more houses in the neighbourhood, but found no one free to play with him. He was on the brink of giving up, when he struck gold under the tamarind tree near Baburam Parui’s house. A large group of boys had gathered under the tree, and they were playing cowries. Opu’s face lit up at the sight. Most of the boys were from fishermen families, but there was also Potu, a young boy from the brahmin colony. Opu didn’t know Potu that well for they lived quite far from each other and were from different age groups. Indeed, he had only met Potu when he had started going to Proshonno Gurumoshai’s school. Potu had been the boy sitting in the back row, silently chewing the edge of a palmyra leaf. Still, as the only other outsider in this neighbourhood, Opu walked up to Potu.

‘How many cowries?’ he asked.

Potu untucked his cowrie pouch from his waistband. ‘Seventeen cowries. Seven of them gold-veined. And if I lose these, I can get more.’

Then he pointed proudly to his pouch. It was a small bag woven with bright yarn, and one of Potu’s most treasured possessions. ‘Do you like this, Opuda? It can hold eighty cowries—a full pon!’

The games began. Potu was losing at first, but soon he started winning. As he had discovered a few days back, his aim in the game of cowries was becoming nearly perfect. It was confidence in his new skill along with the dream of winning a whole pon of cowries that had brought him this far out of his own neighbourhood. Following the rules of the game, he would aim at a big cowrie and strike. His face lit up every time he made a shell twirl out of its square. He carefully stashed every cowrie he won into his pouch. Every so often, he would open up the pouch and peer into it, eagerly counting how many more he would have to win to fill it up.

After this went on for a while, a few of the local boys suddenly called a halt and went into a huddle. After some whispered conferring, one of them broke away and approached Potu.

‘Your aim’s too good, Thakur,’ he said. ‘You will have to aim from a foot further than the rest of us.’

Potu instantly straightened. ‘It’s not a crime to have a good aim!’ he protested. ‘You can aim as well as you like—I’m not stopping anyone from winning!’

The fishermen’s boys refused to yield. Looking at the cowries he’d already won, Potu began to think that an early retirement might be the better part of greed. He’d never before won as many cowries as he had that afternoon. If the others forced him to aim from an extra foot away, there was a good chance that he would lose all the shells he had won, and then a few. No reason to take such risks.

‘I think I’m done for the day,’ he declared. ‘I’ll be going home now.’ Then, seeing the violence written clearly in the eyes of the other boys, he involuntarily wrapped his fist tighter around his precious pouch.

A second boy broke away from the huddle and came forward. ‘Not so fast, Thakur. Planning on making off with our cowries, were you?’ His arm shot out and clamped on Potu’s wrist.

Potu tried to free his wrist, but soon realized he was nowhere near strong enough. ‘Why are you acting like this? Let me go,’ he pleaded. By now, all the local boys had surrounded him. One of them shoved him from behind. Potu fell, but didn’t let go of his pouch. He knew that was what the boys were after. So he lay prone on the ground, pressing the pouch to his stomach, determined not to give in. But he was only a boy, and a weak one at that. His strength was no match for the much older and stronger boys of the fishermen’s neighbourhood. Before long, the pouch was snatched from his grasp, and his shells scattered all over the ground.

At first, Opu hadn’t exactly been unhappy at Potu’s troubles. After all, he too had lost several cowries to Potu’s excellent aim. But when the boys shoved Potu to the ground and began beating him up, his heart constricted in sudden alarm. He began pushing through the crowd that was raining blows on Potu, shouting, ‘He’s just a small child! Why’re you beating him up like this? Let him go—let him go, I say!’

Once he reached Potu, he tried to help him get back on his feet. But then someone’s fist connected with the back of his head, and he collapsed next to Potu, right in the middle of the shoving and pushing. The punch had been so hard that for the next few seconds he saw nothing but darkness.

Opu was destined for a severe beating that day. Though older than Potu, there wasn’t much strength in his delicate, effeminate frame. It was Neeren’s sudden appearance on the road that saved