The dust in the drawing room of the Basu household never quite settled, but on that fateful afternoon the Higher Secondary results were announced, it seemed to hang suspended in the shaft of pale, humid sunlight like an audience waiting for a cue. Sushma Devi sat on the edge of the velvet-upholstered sofa, her palm pressed firmly against her forehead as if holding her thoughts from scattering into the neighbourhood. Across the room, her husband, Naren babu, was carefully wiping his spectacles with the corner of his dhoti, his forehead beaded with a perspiration that had very little to do with the stubborn West Bengal summer. “If we can push Bablu and Tupur at least into B.Com at the evening college,” Sushma murmured, her eyes fixed on the framed portrait of Ramakrishna Paramahansa on the wall, “we might still be able to look Nukur-babu in the eye at the evening…
