December had come to the village, and the cold had teeth.
Nandu sat on the veranda with Baa, wrapped in the old wool blanket that
smelled of sandalwood and wood smoke. The blanket had been his
grandfather's. Its edges were frayed and a moth had chewed a small hole
near one corner, but Baa had patched it with a square of indigo cloth
that looked like a tiny window into a night sky.
There was no television on — the electricity had been out since five
o'clock. There was no phone in Baa's hand. There was no music, no
game, nothing at all except the veranda, the blanket, the chai that
steamed between Baa's palms, and the enormous silence of a winter
evening in rural Madhya Pradesh.
Nandu fidgeted. He picked at the blanket's fringe. He counted the
stars. He yawned. He looked at Baa.
She was perfectly still. Not sleeping — her eyes were open, watching
the neem tree at the edge of the courtyard as though it were the most
interesting thing in the world. The steam from her chai rose and
curled and disappeared. A gecko clicked somewhere on the wall behind
them. Baa smiled at nothing.
"Baa, aren't you bored?"
She turned to him, and her eyes were bright as river stones after rain.
"Bored?" She said the word as though she had never heard it before and
found it funny. "Nandu, I have my breath. I have this chai. I have
you sitting next to me. The neem tree is doing a little dance in the
wind — have you noticed? There is a gecko on the wall who has been
trying to catch the same moth for ten minutes. And the stars —" she
tilted her chin upward — "the stars tonight are so clear I can almost
hear them."
Nandu looked up. The sky was absurd with stars — thick, powdery,
spilling across the darkness like someone had knocked over a jar of
white paint.
"But don't you want anything?" he asked.
Baa took a slow sip of her chai. "Right now," she said, "wanting
something would be like lighting a candle when the sun is already up.
What would be the point?"
Nandu did not fully understand. But he stopped fidgeting. He pulled the
blanket tighter and looked at the neem tree, really looked, and he saw
that it was dancing. The gecko lunged and missed and Baa laughed, a
low warm sound, and the stars were impossibly bright, and for one
strange, quiet moment, Nandu did not want anything either.
It was the warmest he had felt all winter.
