Part 1 Section 5 Summary

The date of this journal entry is February 24th. On this Sunday, Inder Lal had volunteered to take her to the Nawab's palace in Khatm. The narrator wonders how Ritu makes it, living in two small rooms with her husband, mother-in-law and three small children (she has only seen her outside those rooms occasionally—and then, always with her mother-in-law). The bus they take is the same as the others on which she's traveled: an old vehicle filled beyond capacity. The terrain between towns is also the same, flat and dusty. Khatm, she immediately thinks, is a wretched place. Unlike Satipur, which seems to have grown according to its needs, Khatm is just in the shadow of the Nawab's palace. Its streets are narrow and dirty. There are numerous beggars.

In contrast, the walls of the Nawab's palace mark off...