Fiction: Salil wants to collect art, Nupur wants to be a curator. But this world isn’t so welcoming

The first day of school was hurried. Nupur stuffed her bag with what she could find and ran down the stairs, where the house help was in a flurry and her anxious mother was shouting instructions. The yellow bus arrived with a hydraulic hiss. “Bacha party, where are you?”

Nupur fled, her sandwich in her mouth, her bag slapping one side, her lunchbox the other. She muttered a hi, a good morning, a kaise ho, and got to a window seat. The bus was air-conditioned; she took a deep breath and looked outside. Some sky was visible, some sun. It was a spring day in Delhi. A hot summer waited in the wings.

They drove through traffic onto a six-lane highway. They passed wheat fields and livestock and hoardings that offered villas with amenities. Her new school had a sprawling campus in the neighbouring state of Uttar Pradesh.

She sat, nose pressed on a windowpane, her breath forming continents.

“Shy one, what’s your name?”

“Nupur,” she said.

“Where are you from?”

“Lajpat Nagar,” she said without thinking.

Three generations of Guptas stayed in Lajpat Nagar. Granduncles, grandaunts, their children, their grandchildren. Some dogs without collars wagged their tails outside, some cats roamed like they owned the place, and two cows from...

Read more

News