Kaki, my aunt, talked of stocks stored for the year-tall red-stoppered glass jars filled with cummin, ajwain, mustard, bought at the right price, in the right season, fragrant from the harvest. She talked of dals and wheat and she’s all set, the best wheat, all fifteen kilos cleaned, sieved, coated with castor oil and packed in large bins. This once I’m tempted, perhaps its in your genes, this peculiar mix of satisfaction-joy at doing things right, that sense of continuity, the way its always been done generation after generation. And money-sound too. Maybe later.

She wafts in and out of “here time”, that gleam in her eyes short lived, head upright-now lolling, as the disease continues to extract all that was good, instant and alert, corrodes, inches towards the inevitable. Sobering.