THE DAY HIS parents had The Conversation, Opu had not been asleep. He had been lying down with his eyes closed, listening to his parents talk. They would leave this land and go to Kashi—that was the plan. His father had been explaining the many advantages of Kashi to his mother. Horihor knew the land well, for he had spent a long time in Kashi as a young man. Everyone there either knew or respected him. Besides, things were cheap and plenty in Kashi, unlike in this village, and there were friends there who would be willing to help them.

His mother was so keen to leave that she would have packed up that very night if she could—she had no desire to spend a single day more in the village. From his father’s words, Kashi seemed like a golden land of plenty . . . unlike this village of theirs, where sorrow was a constant companion from season to season. All they needed to do was muster enough courage to leave this place. And then the happiness of the golden land would be theirs! Finally, after much discussion, his parents decided that they would leave Contentment at the beginning of summer, in Boishakh, the first month of the local calendar.

This plan, however, presented a crucial problem. Sometime back, Shorbojoya had vowed an offering at the temple of Goddess Shiddheshwori in Gonganondopur. But the temple was almost ten kilometres away from their village, and this fact had kept her from fulfilling her promise. But now that they were leaving this land, she could no longer afford to put it off. Unfortunately, neither could she find a single volunteer to accompany her to the temple. In the end, Opu offered to go. He could travel alone, perform the puja on his mother’s behalf, and finally visit the aunt on his father’s side that he’d heard about but never met, given that she lived in faraway Gonganondopur.

At first, Shorbojoya dismissed him outright. ‘Yes yes, of course you’ll go alone . . . do you even know how far it is, you silly boy? Go alone indeed! It’s almost thirteen kilometres one way . . . as if!’

But Opu was insistent. ‘Why can’t I go? Don’t I have eyes and ears and legs? Or am I supposed to stay indoors for the rest of my life?’

‘Oh yes, you have everything! Our big-man hero, you’ll go alone to Gonganondopur! Go on, run along now. Don’t bother me with this nonsense.’

In the end, however, she had to give in to his unrelenting pleading. And thus Opu set out alone, for the first time in his life.

The raised dirt road cut straight through the middle of the Shonadanga moors. The fields on either side were filled with crown-flower plants, their long white stems curved with the weight of the blossoms till they were almost one with the grass. Not a single other person was on the road. The morning was