IT HAD BEEN almost ten months since the birth of the Roys’ little boy. Khoka was now a slender, wispy child, with an impossibly small face. So far, he had managed to acquire just two teeth, but the lack in numbers was made up by the frequency of his beaming smile. The neighbours often ribbed Shorbojoya about the grin, insisting that she must have had it especially commissioned from the workshop in the sky.

And if someone added a little starter-laughter of their own, Khoka’s grin would blossom into interminable bouts of delighted giggling. His mother would finally be compelled to say, ‘That’s enough laughter for today, my darling. Let’s save the rest for tomorrow, shall we?’

So far, he had mastered two words. When happy, he chanted ‘Je je je!’, and showed off his teeth in an enormous grin. When upset, he screamed ‘Na na na!’, and bawled furiously. The rest of his time was chiefly spent in testing the strength of his two teeth. Clumps of clay, the end of his mother’s sari, pieces of wood—anything that he could reach went straight into his mouth. Feeding times inevitably ended with him biting down hard on the bell-metal spoon, and Shorbojoya struggling to get it out.

‘Aww, look at you, you silly boy!’ she would giggle, enamoured by his antics. ‘What will you grin with, darling, if you break your two lovely teeth?’

But Khoka would refuse to let go. Finally, Shorbojoya would have to put her fingers inside his mouth to pry it out.

Since Durga could not be trusted to keep an eye on the baby all the time, a raised pen of split bamboo had been constructed in the veranda outside the kitchen. This is where the baby would stay while Shorbojoya did the housework, or went down to the pond to bathe or fetch water. From a distance, it made Khoka look exactly like a tiny criminal on the dock. He appeared not to mind this wholly undeserved slight, however. Much of his time in the pen-like cot was spent crawling around enthusiastically, gurgling with laughter and talking to creatures invisible to adult eyes. But there would be moments when he would pull himself up by the rails and stare into the bamboo grove behind the house in complete silence, a look of sombre wonderment on his little face.

The swish of wet clothes in the back lane—the one that led directly to the women’s bathing steps at the pond—was his signal that his mother was on her way home. Usually, this would make him gurgle with renewed delight and scramble to the edge of the cot in anticipation. Lately, however, he had learnt to be more cautious. Before leaving for the pond, Shorbojoya would clean and dress her son in fresh clothes, then draw a thick line of kajal around his eyes to ward off the evil eye. In the time that it took her to bathe and do the daily laundry, however, Khoka would smear much of the black pigment all over his freshly cleaned face. Upon her return from the pond, his exasperated mother would call him a little magpie, then advance purposefully upon him with a damp cloth. No matter how hard he screamed or how red in the face he became, she would scrub him till he was clean again, and then pin him down to reapply the repellent of evil eyes. These were the moments when Khoka was decidedly not fond of his mother, and he endeavoured to express it as loudly as he could. But his otherwise-doting mother would pay no attention to his wishes when there was dirt to be removed.

Sometimes, instead of fighting, he attempted to escape when Shorbojoya approached him with a washcloth. But his mother was wily, and knew his ways well. All she had to do was say, ‘My baby says “tuuuuu!” Show us how to rock, my darling. Show us how to sing! Tuuuuu!’

Immediately, Khoka would plop down in his cot and begin to rock back and forth. He would start moving his tiny hands to an internal rhythm, and launch into the only song he knew:

Je je je ae aaeeeeee aeeeeiiii

Je je je je je aee

Je jaeeeeeiiiii . . .

At the very next moment, he would be swept up in his mother’s lap, and the dreaded washcloth would be scrubbing him clean.

Sometimes, while working, Shorbojoya would suddenly realize that she hadn’t heard her baby’s babbling for a while. Her heart would thud harder in her chest. Did he manage to slip out of his cot? Did he crawl out of the courtyard? Did a fox sneak in and carry him off? She would scramble to the veranda, falling over her feet in her haste . . . only to find Khoka sprawled in his cot, fast asleep. His fair-skinned little body looked like a basket of spilled magnolias in the sun, rising and falling gently with each breath. Nothing could rouse him when he slept this deeply—not red ants, not flies, not the black tickling ants. In the last ten months, these moments of repose had been the only spells of silence in this remote old house by the woods and bamboo groves. The rest of the time, its dilapidated rooms overflowed with his joyous singing and his unstoppable gurgles of delight.

People often say that mothers are the greatest pillar of society, for they gift civilization its greatest asset: its men. We praise women, and justly so, for unselfishly bearing and raising our boys without expecting any recognition or compensation in return. But in that praise, do we not often forget the gifts that a child bestows upon its mother? It is true that our children enter the world empty-handed, without the coins to pay for their care. But what worldly wealth can compare to the joy of seeing that first gummy smile, to hearing those first lisping words? Can any earthly treasure