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began to recommend him to others: an opportunistic friend and his daily visits to a dying ‘oil-in-law’, a father whose driver had taken to drink. It felt as if no sooner had he washed the auto and set off from his village, than the next time he paused and looked up from the road the sun was sinking away, and he’d again forgotten to eat the rotis his sister had packed, and the night was starting its smoky occupation of the sky.
    ‘I hear you’re doing well,’ Susheel said.
    They were at the Drivers’ Dhaba, sipping sweet tea.
    ‘Maybe you’ll earn as much as me one day.’
    Tochi nodded. ‘How old are you?’
    Susheel’s face turned serious. He understood. ‘Seventeen, bhaji.’
    ‘Family?’
    ‘Just my ma and papa. My ma’s ill.’
    Tochi nodded.
    His last stop in the city before heading home was always to pay the brothers their share of the day’s takings. They lived in a one-roomed shack under a stairwell, behind a new hotel, with both their families. At least eleven different faces he’d counted over the weeks. He’d duck to enter and the children would huddle off into a corner to give this uncle room to sit. A sister handed him tea and as he drank the brothers liked to hear of his day. Where he’d been, who he’d taken. Afterwards, they’d say that the auto truly was proving much luckier for him.
    *
    He slept in the back of the auto, as a precaution. One night, Dalbir lay collapsed over the handlebars. He’d been working in the field and, Tochi noticed, had forgotten to wash the mud from behind his ears.
    ‘We should buy another auto so I can be a driver too,’ Dalbir said.
    ‘Who’ll work the land?’
    Dalbir thought on this. ‘I’ll hire a manager.’
    He heard a woman rustling down their lane. It was Palvinder. She brought Tochi a glass of milk – they could afford to drink it themselves now – and collected his dirty bowl and plate.
    ‘Ma is asking for you,’ she said to Dalbir.
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Since when did you start asking “why”?’
    ‘I have my rights.’
    ‘Go,’ Tochi said, and, grumbling, Dalbir rose and went slouching up the lane. Tochi gulped at his milk, handed back the glass. ‘Did Ma tell you?’
    Palvinder nodded.
    ‘And you’re happy with the match?’
    ‘Would it make any difference if I wasn’t?’
    Tochi nodded. ‘I’ll see what they say tomorrow.’
    She stood the emptied glass upside down in the bowl and followed her younger brother.
    The servant showed Tochi through to the breakfast room, where Babuji was sitting at the scoop of a long kidney-shaped table, spooning sugar into his tea. When he glanced up, sunshine seemed to fill his face and he reached for his walking stick.
    ‘Don’t get up,’ Tochi said, touching the old man’s feet.
    Babuji tapped his stick against the nearest chair and Tochi sat down, balancing on the lip of the seat. ‘I came as soon as I returned. But you were away.’
    ‘Calcutta business,’ the old man said dismissively, because what he really wanted to hear was what Tochi had been up to. Where he’d been and what he’d done and how long he’d been back. Was it true he’d bought an auto? Tochi said it was.
    ‘Wonderful! Well done! You’re moving in the right direction.’
    He’d aged in a grand way. His hair had turned as white as milk and the skin was terrifically lined, making a noble feature of the large loose face that many still said reflected too soft a character. His hands clasped the ivory handle of his stick and the hem of his silver kurta made a valley in his lap. He’d known Tochi’s grandfather. They’d been great friends, Tochi’s mother had said. Babuji had even attended Papaji’s funeral pyre, and as far as anyone in the village could remember that was the first time a landowner had attended the rites of a chamaar. But that was all back when they’d worked for the family, in the years before Tochi’s father had asked Babuji if they might quit their servant jobs and instead rent some