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