SHORBOJOYA HAD REFUSED to speak a full sentence to Indir Thakrun since her return to the household half a year back. She fully believed that the old woman was an ill omen for her family. Not only had every single relative she’d ever lived with died before their time, Shorbojoya was also sure that the woman was now trying to siren away her own children. Durga certainly seemed to care more for her ‘auntie’ than she did for her own mother. Well, Shorbojoya wasn’t going to stand for it! In the last six or so months, she had made it quite clear to Indir that she was no longer welcome in the Roy household. She had instructed her, in so many words, to start looking for alternative arrangements before her time under Shorbojoya’s roof ran out.

Indir had no idea what these arrangements could possibly be. In her seventy years, she had been cast adrift by fate several times, and the charity of neighbours and family was the only thing she knew to turn to. If there was indeed an alternative way for women to survive, she had certainly never found it. It did occur to her, however, that she could beg sanctuary from someone else. Decades ago, her daughter had been married to a well-off farmer in Bhandarhati. Of course, the poor girl had passed away soon after, and her once-son-in-law had gone on to marry again and have several children, who now had several children of their own. But if she managed to reach him, and then throw herself upon his mercy, would he really turn a former mother-in-law away?

At six the next evening, a bullock cart stopped outside a large house in Bhandarhati. A young man came out from within to answer the carter’s call. A man of about fifty followed him out, saying, ‘Who is it, Radhu? Ask them where they’re coming from.’

Indir peered out from under the cart’s awning. Who was this heavy-set man of obvious authority, with more salt than pepper in his hair? Was this her son-in-law? No no, surely not! Where was the tall, willowy Chondor that she remembered? Suddenly, all the despair, confusion, and worry that she had been bottling up inside for months crashed upon her. She began sobbing helplessly. Forty years. Forty years! That was how long she had lived without her darling daughter—how long her little girl had been dead! These days she could barely remember her face. And here was the poor child’s once-husband—older and well-settled, bearing no trace of her anywhere on him!

But surely, surely he would still grant her sanctuary? Chondor was a good man. He would be good to her. He must! She had nowhere else to go!

Meanwhile, the sight of a sobbing, gasping older woman had left Chondor Mojumdar stunned and speechless. It took him a good few minutes to work out that this woman, crying pitifully about his first wife, was in fact his first mother-in-law. Once he worked that out, he quickly came forward and bent to touch her feet. At this, relief flooded Indir. She forced her sobs down and pulled the sari a little over her head.

‘A place . . . under your roof, Babaji,’ she gasped. ‘Haven’t many days left. No one else to give shelter . . . just a little food, some old clothes . . .’

Hurriedly, Chondro Mojumdar instructed his eldest son to unload Indir’s things from the cart and take her indoors. After the passing of his second wife, the household duties had fallen to his widowed daughter, Hoimoboti, and his eldest daughter-in-law. They would see to this new member’s needs.

Chondro Mojumdar’s house was built on two enormous raised platforms, supported by the trunks of palmyra trees. Each platform housed an aatchalaa—a house with an eight-sided roof. The large space within was filled to the brim with trunks, safety chests and other furniture. There was barely enough room to walk. Within this edifice of plenty, Chondro Mojumdar lived with his four children, three daughters-in-law, and four or five grandchildren. Indir soon discovered that in the absence of his second wife—who, like Bishweshwori, had preceded her husband into the afterlife—the household was run by his widowed daughter Hoimoboti and his eldest daughter-in-law.

Indir took to Hoimoboti immediately. She was a cheerful and kind woman, and had no hesitation about calling Indir grandma. ‘Did you meet me when I was little, Grandma?’ she asked, while chopping fruits for Indir’s meal. ‘No . . . I don’t think you’ve ever visited us before. Do you still have your teeth? Should I dice a sugarcane for you?’

Outside, in the kitchen veranda, the household children were fighting and laughing over their dinner.

‘Ma, look! Umi poured ALL her daal on my plate!’

‘Why do you keep sitting next to her? Haven’t I told you to sit somewhere else? And you, Umi! Think you can do what you like, do you?’

Umi began to defend herself, and the rest of the conversation drowned in a confusion of voices.

A few days passed. Indir couldn’t settle into this new household. The crowd of furniture overwhelmed her. The children were strangers to her, and far too loud. She had food and shelter, but no one to talk to. The ways of the household, the people in the neighbourhood, even the roads around were new to her. Had Indir stopped to think about it, she may have realized that Chondro Mojumdar’s family was everything she had always thought she wanted: a surfeit of resources, paucity of want, and a house full of happy children. As it was, she missed the peace of her own little hut. She missed walking down familiar paths, and a neighbourhood that she had spent an entire lifetime in. But most of all, she missed Durga and the baby.

Finally, on the twentieth day of her arrival in Bhandarhati, Indir could no longer withstand her inner turmoil. She wrapped up her