Amrit threw down the pencil in frustration.
Doing fraction sums on a half-empty stomach upon a Sunday afternoon was neither easy nor desirable. His textbook lay open to a page of problems that seemed designed less to teach mathematics than to punish children for existing. Three-sevenths plus two-fifths. Find the common denominator. The common denominator, he felt, was misery.
His stomach growled- a long, theatrical rumble, the kind of sound effect his body produced when it wanted to remind him that principles had consequences.
He should not have protested so strongly about the beetroot curry. The protest had been righteous - beetroot was purple and tasted of earth and had no place on a plate that contained rice. But righteousness, he was learning, did not fill your stomach. He had pushed his plate away with the magnificent disdain of a boy who believed his mother would eventually cave. His mother had not caved. His mother had said, "Fine. Go hungry." She had said it with the terrifying calm of a woman who meant it.
He crept into the kitchen to see if the plate was still there. His mother sometimes left it covered on the counter, knowing he would return, occasionally adding an enticement — a papad or a small bowl of sev. But today the counter was wiped clean. The plate had been cleared. Even the sev jar had been put away on the top shelf, which was his mother's way of saying: I am way beyond angry with you.
He tiptoed to his parents' bedroom and pressed his ear to the door. The steady, nasal drone of his father's snoring confirmed that the Sunday afternoon shutdown was in full effect. His mother would be beside his father, reading or dozing, and would not surface for at least an hour. The house was his.
He wheeled his bicycle to the elevator, carefully, silently, lifting the front wheel over the door frame so it wouldn't thump, and pressed the button for the ground floor. He lived on the fifth floor of a nine-storey apartment block, and the elevator smelled, as it always did on Sundays, of someone's sambar.
Outside, the backyard was deserted. The summer sun sat directly overhead like a headmaster presiding over an empty assembly hall, daring anyone to step out. The heat rose from the concrete in visible waves. Not a single friend was about. The swings hung motionless. The cricket stumps, three stacked bricks, stood abandoned near the compound wall.
The only living creatures were the crows. They waddled about near the overflowing dumpsters, pecking at scraps, their feet sinking into the soft, sun-warmed earth. They moved with the unhurried confidence of tenants who paid no rent and feared no landlord.
Amrit chased them on his bicycle. They rose in a furious, cawing cloud, some wheeling away, others diving back threateningly close to his head, as though personally offended by his existence. He passed the dumpsters. The crows resettled behind him the moment he passed, like a door swinging shut. He grew tired of this. Even the crows seemed bored.
He circled the building slowly, shading his eyes with one hand, scanning the balconies of the monolithic column above him. On the third floor, someone's laundry hung motionless in the dead air. On the sixth, an old man sat in a plastic chair with a newspaper over his face. On the seventh, a woman watered plants mechanically, unmindful of the water spilling to the ground below.
No friends. No activity. No hope.
And then, carried on a current of hot, still air, a delightful smell reached him.
Potato bhajjis. Frying in oil.
The smell hit his empty stomach like a fist. It was the smell of sliced potatoes dipped in besan batter, spiced with chilli and ajwain, fried to a perfect golden brown. It was a smell that could make a boy on a bicycle stop pedalling, close his eyes, and forget, momentarily, every grievance he had ever had against the universe.
The hunger he had been holding in abeyance surged back.
He took a couple of slow, listless laps around the building, tracking the smell the way a dog tracks a scent, noting where it strengthened, where it faded, narrowing it down. Fifth floor. Left wing. Vipul's flat.
He hesitated. He could go home. His mother might have softened. She might have left a plate out after all, guiltily, silently, the way mothers do when they regret being firm but cannot bring themselves to say so.
Or she might not have.
He made his way irresolutely toward the elevator, pressed five, and stepped into the corridor. He parked his bicycle against the wall, not outside his own door, but outside Vipul's and rang the bell.
Lalitha Aunty opened the door. Her right hand was caked with besan flour. Behind her, at the dining table, sat Vipul, Amrit's classmate, neighbour, and closest friend, his cheeks bulging with bhajjis that had been stuffed into his mouth in desperate haste after he heard the doorbell ring.
Vipul glared at Amrit. He shook his head vigorously, a furious, emphatic, bhajji-cheeked Nooooo that communicated, with the eloquence of a silent film actor: Go away. This is definitely not a good time. I do not want to share. Leave now.
Amrit ignored him entirely.
"Aunty," he said, turning to Lalitha with THE smile, the smile he had been perfecting since he was four years old, the smile that worked on mothers, grandmothers, teachers, and anyone else he wanted to impress, the smile that contained just the right mixture of politeness and charm, "I wanted to see if Vipul could come out and play?"
Lalitha Aunty looked at the boy, the smile, the sun-flushed cheeks, the slightly too-casual posture.. She was a mother. She recognised the manoeuvre. She had probably executed a version of it herself, many years ago.
She stepped aside and waved him in.
Amrit walked past Vipul, whose expression had progressed from outrage to despair, and sat down at the table with the quiet satisfaction of a general who has taken a city without firing a shot.
He had been right about the smell and the house.
Lalitha Aunty placed a plate of hot bhajjis in front of him. He picked one up, bit into it- the crunch, the soft potato inside, the heat of the chilli blooming on his tongue and chewed slowly, eyes half-closed, while across the table Vipul watched him with the impotent fury of a boy who has just had his pleasant afternoon snatched from him.
Amrit, however, froze over his second bhajji when Lalitha called from the kitchen, "I'm calling your mom to let her know you're here, in case she's worried..."
