The afternoon was so still, silent, that you could hear the khunti stirring the contents of a kodhai a house away. An incessantly chirping sparrow in the kamini tree, a reluctant bark of a neighbouring dog. The hesitant knock on a gate - one boy asking another to come out and play; the other boy replying that he is sleeping. Play can wait.
Darkness soaks in, like Chelpark Royal Blue soaking through blotting paper. The street stirs with cycle bells, conversations, children's running footsteps, shrieks and laughter. Stirrings in the kitchen too - Darjeeling tea and cream crackers, patishaapta for later. The dog lifts an ear, finds no reason to lift her snout; the cat, curled like a comma, snoozes in the remnants of warmth from the sun on the window sill.
A pair of glasses, a book wrapped lovingly in the glossy weekend supplement of a newspaper, a tea cup drained of its content, the outlines in the room blurring into one another - like a smudged watercolour.
I am hibernating.