It’s nine in the morning, and the sun is like a poached egg at the centre of a flat, blue plate of sky. It will be a hot day, runny at the edges, coated with something white and hazy. It will slide down so easy you’ll hardly notice. I can always tell what kind of a day it’s going to be from how the sun is done. Sometimes I think Shondha di can tell too, because she makes just the right sort of egg for breakfast. But sometimes she gets it all wrong. Like today she’s given me hardboiled – the sort that sticks in your throat and takes a long time to eat. I don’t complain, because I’m not the complaining sort, and besides, I’m already late. As usual they’ve left without me.

Shondha di combs my hair while I eat, and yanks at the knots till I yelp. I think she enjoys that. That and sticking what she calls boppins into my scalp, to keep the hair off my eyes. Not that it helps. I think a bandana might work, but explaining it to her and making sure she gets it right would take too long.

“So, what will you do today?” she asks.
“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll play with bhai and Tukun.”
“Uh huh, hmmm hmmh…” She’s not really listening. She’s looking at the TV.
“Do you know where they’ve gone?”
“Mmmhh mmmhh…” She still has the boppins in her mouth.
“Where?” I persist, though I know all their places, even the ones they think I don’t.
“Hmmm… Park, I think, or was it… Maybe Bunty’s building?” I don’t think she knows at all, she’s just putting me off.
“What time did Tukun come?”
“Before your baba-ma left.”
“But what time?”
“Hmmm… mmhh…” I know it’s no use asking her, because she reads clocks even worse than me, and I’m only seven. She’s at least forty or fifty. She must be. She’s older than my mother, anyway. That’s why even ma calls her Shondha di, and not just plain Shondha.
“Did they take their cycles?”
“Mmhh mmhh.” I wish she’d finish with my hair.
“Did they take anything else? Did they take the G.I. Joe box? Did they take the Magic Robot?”
“Mhmm… No. No… I think… Na!” She’s useless. No powers of observation at all. No wonder she cooked the wrong sort of egg. Just as I think that thought, she finishes with my hair and notices I’m chewing on my collar again. She tells me exactly how many times she’s told me not to since the day began (six), and I have to admit she’s right (I kept count). She’s about to tell me exactly what she’ll do if she catches me doing it again (put so many little stones in the rice that I’ll break my teeth and will have nothing to chew with) but I’ve heard this one before, so I tell her I’ll be back for lunch and to please not make pumpkin again, put on my slippers and leave.

We live in the Reserve Bank of India colony, Type III flats. It’s a big colony with four gates, lots of yellow buildings and a few pink bungalows, which are Type A. Bunty lives in Type III too, and Tukun lives in Type IV, which is two-bedroom. Where we live, there’s a big park at the center, so you can’t really get lost, even though all the buildings look alike. If the park is behind you, my building’s the fifth one on the lane that starts in front the swings. It’s lucky we live near the park, because I can’t always tell my right from left properly, and sometimes I have to stop and write in the air before I know which is which, and that gets me lots of strange looks. Anyway, you can always tell my building apart because it has a patch of damp on it that looks just like an old woman’s face.

I have my brother’s old cycle which I can ride almost as fast as him. My bhai’s almost twelve. He’s been dropping hints all through the summer, mentioning casually how this or that boy, who’s only in class five, rides to school. When school reopens in June, he’ll be allowed to ride his cycle to school outside the colony gates, if he’s very careful. Knowing my bhai, that’s a very big if. I wonder where he and Tukun have gone to play today. I don’t have to wonder long, because they’re right there in the park.

I can see them as I ride up, playing Batman-Spiderman, swooping and soaring off the slide and seesaws, screaming like madmen. Bunty’s with them too, and Bunty’s younger brother, Roshan. They’re both evil – because Bunty’s chasing after Tukun, who has run to the jungle gym and is swinging wildly from bar to bar, singing what he can remember of the Spiderman song. Whenever he forgets the words, he bellows, “Watch out! Here comes the Spiderman!” Roshan, who is not very bright, is doing what his older brother is doing, except more slowly.

My bhai has dressed for his part by wearing his favourite black t-shirt inside out (so that the lettering that says CHAMP in pink on the front doesn’t show) and his only pair of full pants, also black. I wonder how he got past Shondha di dressed like that – she wouldn’t let me hear the end of it if I tried something so outrageous. She really is very partial to him. Tukun is in his regular clothes, except he’s tied a red dupatta (is that my mother’s?) around his neck, which billows behind him as he leaps. The evil ones, who were obviously not in on the plan, look normally dressed. Only when I get closer do I see that they have lightning flashes, stars and cross-bones drawn on their faces with a black sketch-pen. That looks like my bhai’s handiwork. He has black rings around his own eyes.

“I’m playing too,” I announce. No one pays any attention. So I climb on the third bar of the jungle gym and jump down on Roshan, who looks around to see his brother’s reaction. No one says anything, so I climb again. “YEEEE-AAH!” I scream as I swoop, this time targeting Bunty. Bunty starts to chase me to the swings, and I’m in the game.

“YEEE-AHHH!” I scream as I fly. From swing to slide, from rocking boat to seesaw. “I’m the Flying Raneeee! YEE-AAAH! HAHHAHHAAAHA!” I leap and run. I’m good, I’m evil. I’m beyond good and evil. I cross-over, I double cross. I pass intelligence, I run interference, I get kidnapped, I turn kidnapper. I die several times and come back to life all but once. I live by my wits scattering boppins in my wake, until Shondha di calls us in for lunch.

Lunch for the superheroes is pumpkin mash again. Shondha di refuses to feed us until we bathe. After lunch, she insists we lie down. This happens every afternoon. It’s because she likes to rest her eyes then, and feels better if she knows we’re in our room. I’m not sleepy so I watch the fan spinning slowly. I try to count the blades, but they grow blurry. My bhai is on his bed reading a book. My poached egg of a day is going well so far. I can feel the soft whiteness clouding over as I start to get drowsy despite myself. I’ve only closed my eyes for a moment when I hear something and wake up. My bhai is sitting on the floor putting on his keds.

“Where you going?”
“Aren’t you asleep?”
“Where you going?”
“Tukun’s house.”
“Wait, I’m coming too.” I’m already scrambling into my slippers.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“You can’t.”
“Why can’t I come?”
“We’re going to play Lego. You’ll get bored.”
“I won’t.”
“Paro! Stop being a pain. Go back to sleep.”
“Why can’t I come?”
“We’ll play together in the evening.”
“What will we play?”
“Whatever you want. You choose.”
“I want Batman-Spiderman again.”
“Okay. Now can I go?”
“Okay.”

The truth is that playing Lego with Tukun and my bhai is boring. They keep all the best bits and only give me a few stupid squares and rectangles. They happily build things for hours, and then break them all up again even more cheerfully. I don’t see the point of it at all. Besides, I really am too sleepy. It’s only when I hear the front door shut quietly behind him, that I wonder why he was wearing his keds to play Lego.

Shondha di wakes me up at four-thirty for my milk. My bhai is lying in his bed, with his eyes closed, but I can tell he’s not asleep. I know he’s been outside. I can smell it in his hair – all sweat, dust and afternoon sun. His t-shirt is on the right way around. Shondha di doesn’t seem to notice anything unusual. We have our milk and then we watch TV. He lets me have the remote without a fight. I want to tell him that I know he’s been playing in the park but something makes me keep my mouth shut.

We go back to the park in the evening. The older ones are around today, not playing table tennis in the guesthouse basement as they usually do. Batman-Spiderman is out of the question with them around, and besides, as bhai points out, twice in one day is never as much fun. We play Ice-spice Dhabba instead. I’m katcha nimbu, which means I can never be the den even if I get out first. The game breaks up in a flurry of argument over which team has won, and mothers and maids calling the younger ones home. The older ones sit on the steps near the rocks. They will chatter and laugh well past dark. Their voices carry down our lane and follow us as we cycle home.

Baba-ma are back from work, but they have a party to go to so we don’t have to sit with our holiday homework. Ma says, “Two hours tomorrow,” but she’s in a good mood. I watch her put on a green and golden sari. It’s shimmery, and dances in the light. She lets me try some of her perfume. Baba lets me put on some of his aftershave too. I smell very nice at dinner. Even Shondha di notices. She sniffs and says I smell like a barber’s shop. After dinner and TV, we go to bed. Bhai wants to read his book, but she brooks no argument and turns off the lights. We lie together in the dark, wide awake.

“Bhai?”
“Hmm?”
“What do you see?”
“You start.”
“No, you start.”

‘What do you see?’ is a game we play. We used to play ‘I Spy with my little Eye’, but you can’t play that with the lights off. This is our after-dark variation. You have to both close your eyes, try and see the same things, and then follow the picture until it changes. It’s harder than it sounds because sometimes you can’t see anything at all.

I screw up my eyes really tight. “I see orange and red lights. They’re very bright.” It’s not much of a beginning, but you do have to say what you really see. That’s the only rule. It’s his turn. I wait. He always sees good ones.

“I see a big round marble. It’s blue and green, transparent, all mixed up. And the inside is burning – orange and red lights, like a fire.”
“Ohhh! I see it too. I see it rolling. It’s getting bigger.”
“It’s as big as our building. It’s rolling down our main road.”
“It’s got little people inside, like dolls.”
“I see the people too. They’re wearing funny clothes, like astronauts. They’re jumping inside the marble and falling into the fire.”
“I see our main road and the marble rolling towards it down our lane, past Bunty’s house.”
“It’s rolling down a big hill now. And the people inside are falling, rolling, bouncing. The fire inside is getting bigger, the whole thing is on fire.”
“I see a fat cow on the road.”
“A cow? I don’t see a cow!” bhai laughs. He has opened his eyes. The game is over. “Did you really see a cow?”

We both giggle into our pillows, in case Shondha di hears us. Soon we start on other things. Roshan’s face when I jumped on him. How bhai farted when we were hiding together during Ice-spice Dhabba. How milk came out of my nose once when I laughed while drinking it last week, how bhai’s Hindi master speaks, how Shondha di snores, the new girl in our school bus who peed on the seat. Once we start, we can’t stop. We’re soon doing what bhai calls gigglyfitting. I’m laughing so hard I want to pee myself. The more we try to stop, the harder we giggle. I don’t know quite when I fall asleep, my head buried in my pillow, still stifling giggles. I wake up once when my ma comes in to check on us. I hear the silk of her sari and the tinkle of her bangles. I smell her perfume in the dark.

The next day is a sunny side up. That’s my favorite sort of day, and Shondha di cooks the right sort of eggs for a change. We have drawing class in the morning. We walk down to the Type IV buildings to Mrs. Misra’s house. We have to draw a day at the zoo, but the only animals I can draw properly are dogs, so I put stripes on them and make them zebras. Then the stripes get mixed up with the bars on their cages and it gets very confusing. Someone steals my crimson red crayon. My brother gets to use watercolors. He makes a bigger mess than usual and tears up his painting on the way home and crumples it into a sodden ball. We kick it around between us like a football as we walk home.

After lunch, Shondha di makes us go the room to sleep, though we’re not tired at all. Bhai lies down and reads for a while, then closes his eyes. I know he’s not really sleeping any more than I am. I can always tell if someone’s really asleep or not. Five minutes later, he gets up and puts on his keds. I want to ask to come too, but something about how quiet he’s being makes me think he’ll never let me. He leaves the house through the kitchen door and I see him cycle down the lane from our window. I wait a little, then I decide I’ll just show up at the park like I do every morning and he’ll have to let me play. He’s turned the bolt on the door so it won’t lock shut. I leave it like that. I’m very quiet too, as I leave. Shondha di would have a lot to say if she discovered we had gone out. This is fun. I can feel my stomach get all fluttery.

I can still see Bhai cycling ahead of me, but he doesn’t turn towards the park at the end of our lane. Instead, he’s going in the opposite direction, towards Tukun’s house. I wait at the corner so he won’t see me. He goes into the building. I’m beginning to think I imagined the whole thing – that he really is going to play Lego. Just as I am about to turn around and go back home, I see them come out of the building. I was right after all! He lied. They are going out to play in the hot sun. They both get on their cycles. I think I’ll wait for them to reach the park and surprise them, but they don’t take the turn for the park at all. They’re cycling furiously, growing smaller as I watch. Where are on earth are they going? I get on my cycle too and start to follow behind them. I’m scared they’ll see me and make me go home, so I follow some distance behind.

They are going deeper and deeper into the colony, down roads I’ve hardly been. We go past Gate no. 2, and past the pink bungalows. Every time they take a turn, I speed up desperately, afraid of losing them. I’ll never find my way back from here. The fluttery feeling in my stomach is making me feel a little sick now. I look down and can see my knuckles are white from holding on to the handlebar too hard. We go past the servant quarters. I recognize them from the time I forgot to get off at my bus-stop on the way back from school and ended up here. It’s where all the Hindi-medium children live. We go past a garbage dump and many smaller buildings. The buildings are not yellow anymore, but grey. Our colony is bigger than I’d known. Our park is not at the center of the colony after all. The thought makes me feel strange.

I see them turn another corner, but by the time I come to it they’ve disappeared. There’s no one on the road, only two sleeping dogs. The road has several smaller lanes leading off it, but I don’t know which one to take. I go down one at random, and there are more grey buildings on either side. I turn back. I take another turn, then another. Which way was I facing when I last saw them? It’s getting muddled up in my head. I’m lost. The things in my stomach are nothing so small as butterflies. They’re big scary birds, all flapping their wings, frantic.

I keep riding, hoping to see someone. Maybe someone who’ll take me home. The sun is still as hot as a fried egg, and I can feel my cheeks getting fiery red. The road I’m on has nothing on it, not even any buildings – just dried grass and scrub. It looks like it’s hardly ever used. The sides are moth-eaten and there are potholes and loose stones that make my bike rattle. It reaches a dead end near a squat, grey building that says PUMPHOUSE on it. I’m about to turn around when something metallic catches the sun. Are those their cycles leaning against the PUMPHOUSE? Red Atlas and Blue BSA-SLR. I would know them anywhere. It’s all right then. This is some new game. They must be close by. I’m so relieved I could cry. I park my bike and look for where they could have gone.

The grass is wild and overgrown here, dried to yellow scrub in the May heat. But as I walk behind the PUMPHOUSE, I see something familiar – the colony wall. I see it from the outside every day, along the road my bus takes to school. It’s pale yellow and has little diamond-shaped holes in it, spelling out R B I R B I R B I over and over. It has broken glass on top, sharp and jagged, all different colors – dark inky blue, bottle green, chrome yellow. Even, very rarely, ruby red. They look like jewels in the sun. They do it to keep the thieves out. Though, if I were a thief, they’d be the first things I’d steal. It seems odd to see it from here – the same but not quite the same, like a sweater that’s a different color when it’s inside-out.

As I walk up to it, I can hear shouting and laughter from the other side. Someone shouts a name. I peep through one of the diamonds. It seems to be some sort of large, rough patch of field. At first, I can only see legs – barefoot, chappals, a few full pants. There are lots of people standing around. Some are crouching. A shadow runs past my little diamond of light. I move to another peephole. I still can’t tell what they’re doing. Slowly, I start getting the hang of it, piecing the diamond-shaped bits together. I see a neat pile of bricks, and a boy in profile bent over double in front of it. It’s a cricket game.

I look for my bhai and find him through my fourth diamond. He’s crouching down, in a far corner of the field. A fielder, my bhai – who, in the park, won’t play unless he is the first batsman! I am walking further down the wall, to see if I can spot Tukun, when I find a little gate, right after the fifth R B I, chained up with a rusty padlock, half-hidden behind a bush. There’s a gap between the gate and the wall, just big enough for one person to squeeze in sideways. I make my way outside, and stand there blinking as all the diamonds patch together as a whole.

No one sees me as I stand watching the game. Who are these boys my brother is playing with? They all look bigger than him. Their voices are hoarse and loud, like marbles being shaken in an old biscuit tin. They hoot and shout things like “abbey yaar.” Their singlets are dirty, and some of them have hair in their armpits, which I see when raise their skinny arms to appeal or throw.

As I watch, there’s a bowling change. They’re taking their positions. I recognize the new bowler – he’s the dhobi’s son. He’s the one who sees me first, halfway through his run-up. He lets go of the ball, and it bounces and dribbles away. He says a word I can’t catch. There’s some confusion as people look around, the batsman straightens up, and fielders unbend and amble towards the centre. Someone picks up the ball and throws it to the bowler, who begins to walk back with it. For a moment, it looks like they’re going to go on with the game. Then, just as he’s about to begin, there’s an unpleasant whooping and, then, several words said in a drawl. It’s one of the fielders. I can see him smiling, looking pleased with himself. I haven’t quite caught what he said, but it’s greeted with laughter – the raucous, marbles-shaken-in-a-tin sort. The game slows to a stop again. More shouting, more laughter. I think I hear Tukun’s among them, except it sounds different mixed in with the marbles. My bhai’s name said aloud, the vowels elongated to make it sound all twisted and odd. People are doubled up, smacking their thighs and laughing. A tall boy slaps my brother on his back and he stumbles. He looks at me then, from the other side, and starts to walk across the field. His face is red, his eyes are very small and hard. Things go quiet. I want to melt into the ground. I wish I hadn’t come here. Everyone is staring at me. I know they’re waiting for me to say something, but I can’t think of anything to say. All I know is I shouldn’t be here.

My bhai is walking faster now, almost running up to me. He comes up really close. I smile, trying to be friendly.

“Hi,” I say. But he’s having none of that.
“What you doing here?”
“I… I thought I’d come along.”
“Go home,” he says.
“No, you come home too.”
“Go away, Paro,” he says again.
I can’t tell him I don’t know the way.
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
“Playing. Go away.”
I look for Tukun, but he’s looking away intently. He’s stopped laughing. They all have.
“Bhai… Let’s go home,” I know I sound desperate.
He gives me a little shove towards the gate. “You go. I’ll come later.” He wipes his face with the sleeve of his t-shirt, leaving a brown streak. I can’t leave without him.
“I’m not going.”
“Stay, then,” he says, starting to walk away. People shift in their places. I will not cry.
“I’ll tell Shondha di,” I say to his back. He doesn’t even look my way.
“I’ll tell Baba,” I say again, raising my voice. I can hear it beginning to break.
He turns around, stares at me, then spits out the words. “I don’t care. Tell whoever you want.”
For a second I think he’s close to tears too, but it’s a trick of the light.

He goes back to his place on the field. The game resumes. I stand there for a while, chewing the neck of my dress, my fists balled up at my side. The sun is very hot. I stand by the gate. No one looks at me at all. They laugh and fight, shout, cup their hands together and clap loudly, jump high in the air, slap each other on the back. My brother is one of them.

I want to sit down, but there’s no shade. The ground is hard and full of stones. Eventually, I squeeze my way back in through the gap. I sit by the cycles at the PUMPHOUSE. I notice I’ve torn my frock on some thorns. After what seems like years, Tukun and my bhai return. They get on their cycles, without a word to me. We cycle back in silence. Back past the two dogs, the grey buildings, the servant quarters, the garbage dump, the pink bungalows, the guesthouse, the park.