3 Quotes by Shoba Narayan

This morning I, too, am in a hurry. The plumber who has reneged four times has promised that he will show up to fix the leak in our bathroom.“Mother-promise, Madam,” he pronounced solemnly, when I phoned him last night. “God-promise.”“Don’t say that,” I admonished. “If you don’t come tomorrow, your mother will die.”I didn’t know then that his mother was already dead.

The shivering that had started six weeks before has turned into violent paroxysms. Let go, child, I whisper to her, as she drools bile and saliva, as her body rattles so hard I hear the emptiness inside. I want her to die; I want the decision not to be mine.

They can’t complain to the police, they say, because their cows roam the streets. The police will only take down an FIR (First Information Report) and register a case if cows are stolen from within someone’s property. So these farmers buy Alsatian dogs to guard the cows. They buy roosters to wake them up at dawn for the milking; and then buy hens to give the rooster something to do. Within the compound of an urban dairy farmer lies an entire ecosystem.