In fifteen months much befalls his family. Burfi marries Joyce – altogether confounding Shyamanand – and is yanked away from home by work. At fifty-eight, Shyamanand retires from government service. Urmila endures the ordeal of a perturbingly late menopause. They quit their government flatlet of a decade and occupy their very own shred of earth, of rock and desert sand, by the sea. A dying Aya is shunted to a charitable TB clinic. Jamun and Kasturi, for the first time in their lives, mount each other, love it, and reconnoitre thereafter, for ever and ever, for cloistered space. Urmila rebuffs Shyamanand’s conditional offer to repay her debts. She surprises everyone by agreeing to spend a fortnight with Burfi two thousand kilometres away. In her absence, a blood clot gags an artery somewhere in Shyamanand’s skull and benumbs his left arm and leg. The stroke also chokes his vocability, shrinks it to a sort of slurred moan. July. Hot rain in the afternoon. Shyamanand presumes that he’s alone at home.
