It was true that prickly heat was common during the rainy season. But Boori Ma preferred to think that what irritated her bed, what stole her sleep, what burned like peppers across her thinning scalp and skin, was of a less mundane origin.
She was ruminating on these things as she swept the stairwell - she always worked from top to bottom - when it started to rain. It came slapping across the roof like a boy in slippers too big for him and washed Mrs Dalal's lemon peels into the gutter. Before pedestrians could open their umbrellas, it rushed down collars, pockets, and shoes. In that particular flat-building and all the neighbouring buildings, creaky shutters were closed and tied with petticoat strings to the window bars.
At the time, Boori Ma was working all the way down on the second-floor landing. She looked up the ladder-like stairs and as the sound of falling water tightened around her she knew her quilts were turning into yoghurt. But then she recalled her conversation with Mrs Dalal. And so she continued, at the same pace, to sweep the dust, cigarette ends, and lozenge wrappers from the rest of the steps, until she reached the letter boxes at the bottom. To keep out the wind, she rummaged through her baskets for some newspapers and crammed them into the diamond-shaped openings of the collapsible gate. Then on her bucket of coals she set her lunch to boil, and monitored the flame with a plaited palm fan.
That afternoon, as was her habit, Boori Ma reknotted her hair, untied the loose end of her sari, and counted out her life savings. She had just woken from a nap of 20 minutes, which she had taken on a temporary bed made from newspapers. The rain had stopped and now the sour smell that rises from wet mango leaves was hanging low over the alley.
On certain afternoons Boori Ma visited her fellow residents. She enjoyed drifting in and out of the various households. The residents, for their part, assured Boori Ma that she was always welcome; they never drew the latch bars across their doors except at night. They went about their business, scolding children or adding up expenses or picking stones out of the evening rice. From time to time she was handed a glass of tea, the cracker tin was passed in her direction, and she helped children shoot chips across the carom board. Knowing not to sit on the furniture, she crouched, instead, in doorways and hallways, and observed gestures and manners in the same way a person tends to watch traffic in a foreign city.
ON this particular afternoon Boori Ma decided to accept Mrs Dalal's invitation. Her back still itched, even after napping on the newspapers, and she was beginning to want some prickly-heat powder after all. She picked up her broom - she never felt quite herself without it - and was about to climb upstairs, when a rickshaw pulled up to the collapsible gate.
It was Mr Dalal. The years he had spent filing receipts had left him with purple crescents under his eyes. But today his gaze was bright. The tip of his tongue played between his teeth, and in the clamp of his thighs he held two small ceramic basins.
"Boori Ma, I have a job for you. Help me carry these basins upstairs." He pressed a folded handkerchief to his forehead and throat and gave the rickshaw driver a coin. Then he and Boori Ma carried the basins all the way up to the third floor. It wasn't until they were inside the flat that he finally announced, to Mrs Dalal, to Boori Ma, and to a few other residents who had followed them out of curiosity, the following things. That his hours filing receipts for a distributor of rubber tubes, pipes and valve fittings had ended. That the distributor himself, who craved fresher air, and whose profits had doubled, was opening a second branch in Burdwan. And that, following an assessment of his sedulous performance over the years, the distributor was promoting Mr Dalal to manage the College Street branch. In his excitement on his way home through the plumbing district, Mr Dalal had bought two basins.
"What are we supposed to do with two basins in a two-roomed flat?" Mrs Dalal demanded. She had already been sulking over her lemon peels. "Who ever heard of it? I still cook on kerosene. You refuse to apply for a phone. And I have yet to see the fridge you promised when we married. You expect two basins to make up for all that?"
The argument that followed was loud enough to be heard all the way down to the letter boxes. It was loud enough, and long enough, to rise above a second spell of rain that fell after dark. It was loud enough even to distract Boori Ma as she swept the stair from top to bottom for the second time that day, and for this reason she spoke neither of her hardships, nor of easier times. She spent the night on a bed of newspapers.
The argument between Mr and Mrs Dalal was still more or less in effect early the next morning, when a barefoot team of workmen came to install the basins. After a night of tossing and pacing, Mr Dalal had decided to install one basin in the sittingroom of their flat, and the other one on the stairwell of the building, on the first-floor landing. "This way everyone can use it," he explained from door to door. The residents were delighted; for years they had all brushed their teeth with stored water poured from mugs.