Our relatives I know, murmured that the match was below me…how little they knew, any of them!
-- Rukmani

We ate, finding it difficult to believe we did so. The food lay rich, if uneasy, in our starved bellies.

I howled at her and put my hands to my ears. Thoughts kept hurtling through my head like frenzied squirrels in a new-forged cage. With sudden clarity I recalled my daughter’s off looks that far off day when I had gone to Kenny.

For this I have given you birth, my son, that you should lie in the end at my feet with ashes in your face and coldness in your limbs.

My God! I do not understand you, I never will. Go before I too am entangled in your philosophies.
-- Kenny

I hung about for a while, unable to make up my mind whether I should seek him out in the...