She got up. It was cold. The fever had been holding her back - literally - sticking her to the bed which she'd warmed over time, pasting her to the bed which she'd deemed 'succour' for the past couple of weeks and gluing her to a bed she'd been made love to on. My purpose hitherto has been to convince you of a lie. She was not, in fact, attracted to the bed more than anything. She was lonely and she wished she could be less confused of a fact - she was more attracted to her youth than to her bed. But, let's face it - she's gotten up. And she's moving, slowly, to a refrigerator she thinks she'll find food in. All there is, is frozen meat and a pair of scissors. And she can't cook. And she doesn't want to die of food poisoning, if not of love.

She's not in her wedding dress, no. She has socks on; a pair of capris too young to not emphasize her paunch suffocates her waist down and a brassiere beneath a printed tunic beneath a CampusSutra hoodie suffocates her chest up. 'She is not eighty and poor', you might be relieved to think. Well, I assure you, not half physically.

The calling bell rings to an old familiar tune, something she hasn't heard for a long couple of weeks. She is not really shocked. Not partly astonished, not for even a fraction of a second. She's not peed since morning and so she staggers to the washroom.

Her eyes opened. It was dark. It was not a midnight, it was noon. But the curtains and the dust and the buildings blocking out the foggy sun all took a share of the cause. She had been sleeping and I believe you even assumed she heard a noise. Well, she did. It was the calling bell. Again. She cursed so bad the neighbours would hear if they cared. But the neighbour from upstairs died at the start of this book and no matter how waspy he had made her or how insensitive he had called her, she was neither. It was just the circumstances - this time, it was her not being able to see.

But, well, now she can - see, that is - because apparently, the glasses she’d thrown away didn’t break. But the spyhole did. The last time she didn’t open the door, and he hit it with his mother’s umbrella.

People, when ‘people’ were a ‘thing’, used to say she was a control freak. He used to say, “Get a grip.” And she died, convulsing. Now, she’s dead, mind you. Just not half physically. But she'd sincerely hoped, at least, with her utmost effort, that there’d be someone at the door. Since there was not, she hit her head with a bottle of water and moved on to the kitchen, for some hint of leftover aloo bhujia.