chapter VI

“It’s nothing but some acid,” declares our uncle Buddha [third from left with three of his brothers] .

He is sitting in the alleyway outside his small apartment with his head in his hand and eyes closed. I had left the guys to go around driving some more and wandered over from the pandal to my father-in-law’s ancestral flat, where several of his brothers still live. Their house is a short walk down the street from the pandal, but another uncle, Bhaiya kakku [father's brother], took a rickshaw over with me.

“Do you need a doctor?” I ask.

He declines and is content to be fed some medicine by his sister-in-law. Bhaiya kakku leaves us momentarily to step inside the flat where his estranged wife and eighteen year-old daughter still live. I can hear his daughter shouting at him from inside the room. Her parents have not been together in many years and she bears all the traits of a teenager from a dysfunctional family. His wife ignores him coldly, and his daughter bickers rudely with him. I start feeling sorry for both uncles simultaneously.

Emerging from the flat, Bhaiya kakku suggests we leave and reluctantly I say goodbye to Buddha kakku whose situation is worrying me. “It’s OK, just some acid,” he repeats, but by his appearance, I fear it is something more.

Putting his arms around my shoulders, I can smell the alcohol on Bhaiya kakku’s breath. In his BBC English, he slurs a grand suggestion:

“Come, Paramseva, let’s get away from these bloody fuckers.”

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chapter VII