Digital intimacy made no sense to her, it made her lonelier, suffusing her body with strange yearnings that knew no home.

She likes things to have meaning. She is used to a clock in every room at her house and the absence of it here is almost a wilful suspension of time.

She routinely boarded a bus and when the bus conductor asked her the name of her stop, she gaped at him, fighting with her memory. But all she could recall was a lane full of shady trees, the angry gulmohar, the vibrant palash, the tall coconuts and all the varieties of ixora that dotted the many gardens there.

She touches them with loving fingers. They are happy memories. She puts them inside a packet, flattens them with her hand and locks the drawer. Mridula squares her shoulders. She will never see them again.

Sue gave her the sheer joy of seeing her own innermost being articulated in tiny atoms in someone else

I can’t really talk like myself with anyone here. Neither my wife nor my son has learnt Bangla. I discuss their things in their language.

Lower-middle class wives in this city, who came from small towns, led lives of warriors. Each day brought a new battle…