Sita lights a lamp and unbolts the doors. Goli drops his dapper hat and swinging cane in a corner. He drops himself onto a waiting bamboo mat. Sita holds the oversized lamp with the itty-bitty flame, so he can see. She asks, “Supper?”

He is prone and his eyes closed. He turns onto his side and gets comfortable as he says, “No. Ate at the club.”

Sita blinks, then glances at the lamp. She hurries to the kitchen and eats in a race against the dwindling flame.

For breakfast and lunch the day following, they have rice with buttermilk so thin that it looks like kanji, water that old people strain from boiled rice and drink for strength. Each of the children pretends the runny white meal is something else: onion sambar, spinach curry, bitter gourd. Kamalam starts to sniffle a little as she bites into the tangy flesh of another baby mango. Janaki signals her, “What?”

Kamalam answers aloud, “I miss Amma.”

Janaki’s sinuses start to sting, too, at the thought of their grandmother, her generous kitchen and care. Sita ends this nonsense. “Hush. Stop that. You have your ‘amma’ right here. You want to go back to living with Vairum Mama, where we are not wanted?”

That night, Goli’s work forces him to stay over in a neighbouring town. His family eat their poor meal early, all together, and gather in the hall. The moon has narrowed nightly and is almost ready to turn and begin its pregnant climb again. In the bluish darkness of the hall, the children lie or sit on their bedrolls and play word games, making up rhymes and riddles, laughing loud and free in the night that gladly does not contain their father. Sita shines brightest of all in the open darkness of this night. Why? Tomorrow is Thursday, payday.

It is afternoon. Sita is sitting on the veranda when Goli arrives home from work the next evening-empty-handed, but with a spring in his step.

“Coffee?” he asks, walking past Sita, into the house, with his head opposing the direction of his travel by about thirty degrees. Sita had put off making the coffee, hoping-not, though she would never admit it, assuming-he would bring some of the precious dark dust, since she has enough to brew only a thimbleful. She sits a moment longer on the veranda, where all sit to sun their cares or forget them by watching their neighbours, where private pains meet the life of the street, where decisions are made and deals contracted, along streets just like this one all over Madras Presidency. Different people, different language, but the same worries. And despite all this, Sita sits all alone in the rosy dusk, her toes over- and underlapping one another, her chin on her knees. In the rapid sunset, it is only moments before she can no longer see her toenails and is isolated even from herself.

Taking a breath, she picks herself up and walks into the house just like her father did, her head cocked at an unreasonable angle, trying to see what he sees. There is no more milk in the house. She brews the weak coffee and dumps three tablespoons of sugar through the pale steam. Thank God sugar and rice come in huge sacks. Plenty of those commodities remain. Looks like sugar and rice for supper tonight.

She places the tumbler and bowl on a saucer and carries it out to her father. No more English biscuits or store-bought sweets. Goli is pacing to and fro. He grasps the bowl and pours the coffee from the tumbler to blend and cool it. He is anticipating, as every drinker of great South Indian coffee does, the pleasure of foam and steam rising as the creamy liquid, falling from the lip of the stainless steel tumbler, hits the cylindrical bowl. He gets steam, but no foam. He frowns and peers into the bowl, fighting more the fog in his mind than that around the dish, trying to see what is wrong. Sita stands by, her mind a blank with hundreds of squirming questions nibbling its edges. Finally, Goli looks up, his spectacles opaque from the mist, and asks her, “What is this?”

She answers, reflexively obedient. “Appa, coffee, Appa.”

“It doesn’t look like coffee,” he grunts.

“Appa, that’s what coffee looks like without milk, Appa.” She bobs in a sort of curtsy.

“Who drinks coffee with no milk?” Goli addresses the ceiling. “Am I an Englishman?”

Sita swallows the air in her mouth with great difficulty and asks, “Did… did you get paid, today, Appa?”

“Oh, yes, oh, yes.” Goli smiles. “Stopped after work and put the whole thing down on that new cinema of ours. Ready to fire her up any day now.” He makes another long waterfall of the coffee and remembers his displeasure. “Milk!”

“We have no milk, Appa,” Sita explains gently, her face tense.

“Get some, then, are there no cows left in the world?” he jokes. “Listen, girl, you can hear them now…”

The questions in Sita’s mind are taking big bites now, feasting on her eleven-year-old brain. She replies, “I need money, Appa.”

“Money? You need money?” Goli rises. “It is not enough that I am slaving from dawn until dusk, working for the English, buying properties, doing business, you want money now too?”

“No, Appa, for supplies,” Sita minces. “To buy milk, vegetables, lentils, butter…”

Goli throws the coffee onto the street. “Just like your mother, no management sense. Just like that stupid cook! I told her, get out!” He begins pacing, reliving the scene. “I said, My wife will cook, my daughter will cook! What else are you doing? I don’t have infinite resources, you know. You have to learn to plan.”

“But-” Sita attempts.

“Do not talk back to me!” Goli chops his left hand against his right palm terrifyingly. “I told you, you must learn. The budget is all used up-too bad. I’m going to the club.”

That night, they eat plain boiled rice with a choice of side dish: sugar or baby mango. Breakfast: the same. Lunch: ditto.

At five o’clock, Laddu shows up with three onions and a sweet potato. Sita is elated, her salivary glands springing to action. The springs quickly run dry, though, when she thinks to ask, “Laddu. Where did you get these?”

Laddu’s head cocks at thirty degrees, apparently the angle at which an individual can dissociate from any present situation. He replies, “My friend gifted them to me. They had too many.”

Sita heaves half a sigh of relief. It is interrupted by the remembrance that Laddu cannot speak the same language as any of his friends. Now she asks, “Does your friend know he gifted them to you?”

Laddu is fascinated by a spiderweb in the northwest corner of the kitchen. Sita asks no more questions and prepares a decent meal. Her siblings relish it like no meal they’ve ever eaten, their delight pathetic. Sita gags on every mouthful and lies awake that night on an empty stomach.

In the morning, Goli sits groggy on his mat. This he does for long minutes each morning, sometimes rubbing his head or cleaning his fingernails. It is as though his internal mechanisms are winding. Soon something will snap and he will career for the bathroom as though released from a colossal slingshot, the mist evaporating from his eyes like clouds from a lake. Once this happens, he cannot be stopped. Sita has chosen this, his calmest hour (quarter-hour, really, but who’s counting?), for her second approach.

“Appa?”

No sign of response. She creeps closer, and kneels. “Appa? Appa, I know I should have planned better, Appa, I know I splurged, but I… I really need to buy some more supplies, Appa. I can’t… I have nothing left to cook…”

She trails off weakly, distracted by the oddness of his demeanour. He is only a yard away but peering at her as though from a long way off. Suddenly, he zooms in, his pupils dilating with the rush of landing. He springs to his feet.

“That’s it. That’s it, I’ve had it with your requests. If you will not stop bothering me, if you cannot take responsibility for yourself and live by my rules, you can all go back to live with your grandmother. Pack up, you’re all leaving on the 9:30 train.”