Dosa had raced across her room as soon as she heard Rusi and Coomi Bilimoria's footsteps descending the wooden steps of Wadia Baug. As she peered from the slightly parted curtain, she saw the couple step into the street. Instinctively, Dosa held up her left hand to her face and squinted at her watch. A few minutes before eight. As always, Coomi had taken her own sweet time getting ready. As always, Rusi must be seething with anger. A swift, experienced glance at the couple confirmed her suspicions. Dosa noticed the space between Rusi and Coomi as they walked down the street and the stiff, starched way in which Rusi was carrying himself. Coomi was taking small half steps, trying to keep up with her husband's stride, as if to appease his clenched anger by advertising the fact that she was hurrying up at last.

On their way to Mehernosh Kanga's wedding they were, Dosa knew. Tomorrow morning, she would get a full report about the wedding from the many foot soldiers in the army of gossip Dosa had carefully built over the years. From their reports, she would be able to piece together not only how much money Jimmy and Zarin Kanga had spent on their only son's wedding but who had gotten drunk and made a perfect fool of himself and who was not on speaking terms with whom. Dosa's pulse quickened at the thought of the pleasures that awaited her tomorrow. Most of the morning would be spent on the phone, she knew, and then the stream of neighbors would arrive, mostly housewives eager to strew their resentments and outrages like roses at Dosa's feet.

But that would be tomorrow. Tonight, Dosa felt a pang of loneliness and hunger at the thought of the festivities and the food the Bilimorias would soon partake of. In the last three years, Dosa's arthritis had gotten severe enough that she left her home only to attend an occasional funeral. Prior to that, she used to make it a point to attend the weddings of close friends and relatives. But as age drew her away from the pains and pleasures of married life and closer to the seductions of death, Dosa had given up celebrating marriage in favor of paying tribute to death. On more than one occasion, mourners had seen Dosa in her plain white sari at the Tower of Silence, seen the hunched figure with the beaklike nose and the cunning, darting eyes, and they had involuntarily shuddered at the resemblance between Dosa and the patient big vultures who would soon devout the body of the dead person. Even Dosa's last name, Popat, or Parrot, had a fowl-like association that was eerie.

Dosa had waited all day for her doorbell to ring, announcing the delivery of an order of the wedding dinner to her home. But the food never arrived, and now Dosa reconciled herself to making a scrambled egg for dinner. If old man Hosi Kanga, Jimmy's uncle, were still living, he would've definitely sent a lagan-nu-bhonu over today, Dosa thought. But Jimmy Kanga was like the rest of them--money minus manners.

Thoughts of the younger generation's shabby ways put Dosa in a reflective mood. She had not heard from her son, Zubin, in over three weeks. Ten years ago, Zubin had been offered a posting in Pune and had, in Dosa's estimation, accepted it all too eagerly. She always blamed her daughter-in-law, Bapsi, for the fact. Now, as she checked the calendar to see when she'd last received a letter from Zubin, she thought darkly about her daughter-in-law. That daakan has worked her jadoo to bewitch my poor Zubin, Dosa thought, not for the first time. Must be putting something in his food to make him forget his poor widowed mother.

Each Friday, Dosa wrote her son a long letter, brimming with the latest neighborhood gossip. Although she wrote mostly in English, Dosa lapsed into Gujarati whenever she was outraged about something or wanted to take a jab at Bapsi. When, during one of his visits, Zubin pointed out to her that he couldn't read Gujarati, Dosa put down his inability to a defect in his character. "If you were wanting to know what was happening in your poor mother's life, you'd be able to read not only Gujarati but German and Italian also."

"Now, Mamma, be reasonable," Zubin protested. "First, you send me to an Englishmedium school and then you expect me to read Gujarati. You think I'm Einstein, or what? And what does poor Bapsi have to do with this anyway?"

"Bas, bas, deekra," Dosa intoned. "No need to put down your poor crippled mother for the sake of your wife. Big and strong as an ox, she is. But far be it from me to say anything against your fair princess. What they say is one hundred percent correct-a son is a son until he gets his wife, but a daughter is a daughter all her life. But the good Lord didn't see fit to give me a daughter, someone who would have loved her old mother in her old age. Cbalo, we have to bear silently whatever life throws at us."

Zubin stared at his mother with the same bewildered expression his father, Sorab, used to wear in his dealings with Dosa. Noticing the look, Dosa turned away with satisfaction.

Dosa had not had Zubin until she had been married for about eight years. This was not due to the whims of an unkind God or a defect of Sorab's, as Dosa wordlessly intimated to the people around her. For a woman who made it her calling to know the neighborhood's business, Dosa carried an astounding secret-in the first seven years of her marriage, she had had sex with her husband exactly three times. It had been her decision. It was the only way she knew to keep control over her life, to reclaim her body, which had been traded like a sack of flour.

From the day she entered St. Anne's School for Girls as a kindergartner until the day she was pulled out of high school, Dosa was the brightest student in her class. Her short stature assured that she would never be a good athlete and her highstrung nature guaranteed she would never be popular with her classmates, but nobody could deny that behind the plain face lay a brain as sharp and lethal as a bomb. When anyone asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up, Dosa replied that she would be happy being a teacher or a housewife, but she secretly always believed she was destined to be a doctor-the first Parsi woman doctor. At a young age, Dosa learned that ambition was more unattractive in a girl than pimples, but that did not prevent her from working hard toward a secret goal.

It all changed in one evening, when she was twelve, though it would be several more years before the consequences of that evening caught up with her. Her parents had left Dosa to watch her younger siblings and gone over to have dinner with the Popat family. The Popats were old friends and they were celebrating their son Sorab's eighteenth birthday. Fueled by the cheap whiskey he was consuming, Dosa's father, Minoo Framrose, got progressively more sentimental and bombastic. "You are my oldest friend, Darius," he said expansively, while his embarrassed wife tried to shush him. "So much we've been through together, bossie. Like a brother you are to me. Say the word, brother, and anything that's mine is yours."

Darius Popat looked at him steadily. "One shouldn't say things one doesn't mean, brother," he said.

"No, no. I mean it. Anything that's mine is yours. My word is as good as gold, Darius. You know that."

The room suddenly grew quiet. "Okay, then, salaa. Promise me one thing. That when Dosa, your oldest, turns sixteen, you will give her hand in marriage to my Sorab. We are honorable folks, would not want dowry or anything. I know your money situation. After all, you are having four daughters to marry. We would not ask for any dowry for Dosa. In fact, you know that apartment I have in Wadia Baug? I'll present that to Sorab and Dosa as a wedding gift. So what do you say, bossie?"

For a split second, Minoo Framrose hesitated. Then he said, "Darius, you are indeed a great man, a true gentleman. My Dosa would be fortunate to be married into a good family like yours. I give you my word of honor, bossie. Now we will truly be brothers."

On the way home and all of the next morning, Shenaz Framrose berated her husband. She was more angry than Minoo had ever seen her. "What is my daughter, a pair of shoes, to be traded back and forth between two drunken idiots? You go right back to that shameless Darius and tell him it wasn't you speaking; it was the alcohol. Giving away your twelve-year-old daughter as if she's a prostitute. God will never forgive you if you do this, Minoo."

As his hangover loosened its grip on him, Minoo himself was awaking to the enormity of what he had done. In his heart, he knew his wife was right, which is why he allowed her to vent her anger at him without saying a word back. He had made a terrible mistake, and it was his daughter who would have to pay for it. But he also knew that despite Shenaz's protestations and his own doubts, he would never go back on his word to Darius. He had shaken his best friend's hand over their agreement. Not paying a dowry for Dosa increased the marriage chances of the other three girls. Besides, Sorab was a good man from a good family. The way Shenaz was going on, you'd think he'd sold Dosa to a brothel or something.

When Shenaz understood that he would not change his mind, she turned away in disgust. "Somehow, whenever you men make a gentleman's agreement, it is always us women who suffer," she said bitterly. Later, she made her husband promise not to mention his deal with Darius to his daughter. Shenaz wanted her daughter to have a few more carefree years before her life changed irrevocably.

Dosa learned about the arrangement the day after her sixteenth birthday. Her first reaction was to blame her mother. Dosa adored her father, hero-worshiped him, and instinctively faulted her mother for what she imagined was an ill-fated attempt to domesticate her. But Minoo spoke up. "Dosa. Baby. This is all my doing. This was my promise to my old friend Darius. Mummy was not having anything to do with it. But I've given Darius Uncle my word. And Sorab is nice young man, intelligent and hardworking. And darling, I'm also having three of your sisters to marry off, don't forget."

She had turned on him with a look that chilled his blood, a look he knew he would remember on his deathbed. Her mouth opened ant he waited for the black gusts of fury and despair to burst out, but she made no sound. She opened and closed her mouth, fishlike, three times. Then, she turned around and locked herself in the bathroom. He could not meet his wife's eyes.

When Mother Superior heard that Minoo was pulling her star student out of school to get married, she went ballistic. Just plain refuse to let Dosa go. Threatened to visit Minoo at his office if he didn't show up in her principal's office right away.

When he went, he noticed that her face, usually so cheery, w a: flushed the color of a bruise. "Mr. Framrose, I want to hear for myself your reasons for pulling Dosa out of school in the middle of the year,' she began. "I have heard some rumors and, frankly, they are so preposterous that I can scarcely believe them."

Before her intent gaze, Minoo felt the same quiver he used to whey, he had been hauled into the principal's office as a young boy. But his voice was calm when he spoke. "Well, Mother, the rumors are true. Dosa is getting married. And her husband does not want her to carry on her education after marriage."

Mother Superior's composure broke. "But, good God, man. Do you not understand what you're doing? Your daughter has a wonderful intellect and great curiosity. Dosa's thirst for knowledge is a beautiful, rare thing to behold. Believe me, Mr. Framrose, I've taught students in many schools, and Dosa can hold her own against the best of them. Your daughter has a great future ahead of her."

Guilt made him defensive. "With all due respect, Mother, my daughter is a woman," he said, spitting out each word for effect. "Her choices are to become a nurse or a teacher--that is, cleaning up someone's vomit or teaching children who don't want to be educated. Instead, her husband can give her a life of comfort and ease. Besides, I have given her in-laws my word of honor."

They went back and forth for half an hour. When Mother Superior knew she had lost Dosa, she tried another tactic. "Mr. Framrose, I've always considered you a modern, honorable man. I realize there is nothing I can say that will change your mind about Dosa. But you have three other daughters at this school. Before you leave, will you make me one promise? That you will let these three girls fly as high as they want to without bargaining away their futures?"

His face flushed. "I promise," he said quietly. "The other three can study as much as they want to. I have always been a believer in girls' education. I'm . . . I'm just sorry Dosa won't have the same chance."

He had been true to his word. All three of Dosa's sisters went to college, a fact that gnawed at Dosa's heart her entire life. On her wedding day, she turned to the sister closest to her in age and said, "I suppose Daddy has made me the sacrificial lamb so that the three of you can build your lives on my broken back. Think of your poor sister when you are studying in a beautiful college library."

As the family prepared for the wedding, Dosa promised herself that she would never again be caught unawares by what people around her were saying or doing. The betrayal by her father crystallized her natural curiosity, so that soon after getting married, Dosa started prying, digging and unearthing all the hidden lives of the people in her new neighborhood. It was surprisingly easy. Most people long to talk about their lives, she found. Within weeks, she learned about who hated whom, which resident was in love with someone she shouldn't love, which husband was abusive, and which mother-in-law was tyrannical. Bad marriages, alcoholic husbands, errant children, problems with domestic servants, chronic illnesses, failed business ventures, sibling rivalry-Dosa's new neighbors brought the newcomer their litany of griefs, until she knew their lives as well as they did.

Over the years, she became the neighborhood's midwife of information--gossip was born in her apartment and was carried like a baby into the neighborhood by the battalion of housewives who visited her daily. Mothers would come to her to complain bitterly about their uncaring children; wives would bring to her their daily offerings of their husbands' infidelities or alcoholism or abuse. On rare occasions, the husbands themselves would march in unannounced to denounce their wives angrily and then appeal to Dosa to knock some sense into their silly, feminine heads. And Dosa herself would nab the errant children as they tried to creep past her apartment and lecture them how God was watching their every move. "Satan has been tied by God in thick-thick chains. But Satan is all day long working on these chains, making them thinner and thinner. Every time you are being rude to your Mummy, you know what's happening? You are helping that Satan make his chains thinner. Now, once Satan is free, who do: you think he's going to come for, straightum-straight? For you." It was hard to say whether the children were more afraid of Dosa's twisted theology or of the sight of the short, pencil-thin woman with the long, clawlike fingers who peered at them with her beady eyes. But in either case, most of them went home after one of these encounters and sobbed their apologies to their wondrous mothers.

In this manner, Dosa found a way of realizing her lost ambition to be a doctor. Instead of fixing their broken bodies, she attempted to fix their broken lives. But Dosa never handed out enough medicine to actually cure them, just enough to keep them believing in her powers, to keep them coming back. Dosa's credo was not familial reconciliation, but wifely dominance, and she trained her army of frustrated housewives in that philosophy. Some of them took her message to heart, while others toyed with it, staying away from Dosa's venomous presence during periods of reconciliation with their husbands and then dragging themselves back in her lair during times of marital discord. Always, she took them back.

Dosa herself was not exempt from the neighborhood gossip--in the early years, there was much speculation as to why Sorab's young wife had not borne him a child. Few knew of the uneasy agreement Sorab and Dosa had reached on their wedding night. Few suspected that Sorab was being made to pay for the ugly betrayal Dosa had suffered at the hands of her father. In this, Dosa was lucky. Sorab was essentially a weak, mild-mannered youth, who was easily cowered by his strong-willed, fiercely intelligent wife.

Dosa allowed Sorab to inflict himself upon her on their wedding night. He was an uninspired, inexperienced lover, and she willed herself to stay still under his chaotic, frenzied thrashings; tolerated silently the sharp pain and the feeling of disgust that ran through her body when he entered her. She even allowed him to pull her close to him and stroke her hair as he whispered his apologies for having hurt her. She waited for his breathing to get back to normal, heard his thudding heart slow down to a normal rate. Then she went to the bathroom, shut the door, and vigorously washed herself. You will not get pregnant, she told herself fiercely. You will not.

When she got back, Sorab was curled up in sleep, looking like a warm, happy puppy. Steeling herself to this sight, Dosa sat on the edge of the bed and shook her husband awake. For a minute, Sorab looked at her blankly, as if he had no recognition of the fact that the woman on his bed would be the one he would share his life with. Then his face broke into a beaming smile.

But then he saw the look on Dosa's face.

"Darling, what's wrong?"

She looked at him steadily, her eyes steely as the knife she was about to plunge into him. "Sorab, I will only say this once, so listen carefully," she began. "From this day forth, I will never have marital relations with you again. I will happily cook for you, keep your house for you, polish your shoes for you. But if you are so much as touching me with a fingernail, I will go to the fire temple and jump in the well there. I will be dead before the frogs in the well even know I'm there. This is my promise to you."

He looked at her and for a moment he thought he was asleep and dreaming. "Dosa, I'm not knowing you well enough to know . . . If this is a joke, darling . . ."

"No Joke." And then, to make sure he understood, she repeated, "No joke. And another thing. I am not wanting anyone to know about this talk. Let them wonder why there are no children, let them do their guss-puss, I don't care. If anyone asks, tell them to mind their own business."

"But I want children," he cried. "Always I've been wanting children."

"Then you should have been a man enough to stand up to your pappa and told him you would find your own bride," she cried fiercely. "Instead of ruining my life, you should have spoken to him about wanting children. I don't want children, not now, not ever. All I wanted was to finish school and go to college. Instead, I have this."

"But . . . but I had no idea. Millions of people have arranged marriages, after all. And I am a young man. It is impossible, what you are suggesting, Dosa. I have my needs, if you understand what I'm saying. All these years, I waited for you to become a woman, waited patiently. I'm a twenty-two year old man. What am I supposed to do with my normal needs?"

"Go see a prostitute, if you have to. But I'm telling you Sorab, if you ever touch me again, the next time you touch me, it will be my cold, dead body."

She could not be reasoned with. For the first few months, Sorab pleaded with her, prayed to God for guidance and understanding, shed hot tears of bitterness and frustration, but it was to no avail. At times, his desire for her was so acute that he would leap out of bed in frustration and spend the night sleeping in the easy chair in the living room. Several times, he thought of leaving, but he knew that a divorce would break his mother's heart. And part of him felt sympathetic to the bright, fiercely intelligent woman whose life he had unwittingly destroyed.

Finally, in the seventh month of their marriage, he went to Dosa, the usual torment in his eyes replaced by something that approached calm. "Dosa, sit down," he said, motioning to a chair in the kitchen. "In all my nightmares, I never thought I was having to talk to my wife in this way. But you have left me no choice. Dosa, I am a man. If you will not fulfill your wifely duties then I am going to start visiting prostitution houses. Do you understand what I'm telling you?"

For the first time in months, her face softened. She reached out and took his hand in hers, so that for one quick moment, his heart was alive again. "I do understand," she said softly. "It was never my intention to deprive you of your normal urges. You have my blessings to visit as many prostitutes as you want to."

He hit her then, hard, across the face, this man who had never gotten into a fistfight even as a young boy. "Saali besharam. I have married a demon, not a woman. You are lower than a common prostitute, talking to your husband like this. I should've let you jump into that well when you promised to. Should've pushed you in myself. At least then you could've inflicted your dookh on those poor frogs, instead of on me. What happened in November was not my wedding; it was my funeral."

She sat before him motionless, willing her already-swollen face to remain calm, willing her hands not to touch the blood on her upper lip. She waited for the thundercloud of his dark fury to pass and for Sorab to turn back into the kind, apologetic man that he was. She didn't have to wait long. His eyes widened at the sight of her swollen face as he emerged from the fog of his anger and his lower lip started to tremble. "Doss. Darling. Oh, Dadaji, -what have I done? Oh, Dosa, say something, please. Oh God. May my hands be chopped off for this. Oh, Dosa, forgive me, forgive me, please."

He never bothered her after that. But by their second wedding anniversary, he was making discreet visits to prostitutes, although he never told a soul about these visits. Whenever his mother asked him about grandchildren, he found a way of laughing off the question. He grew used to seeing the curious, slightly pitying look in the eyes of his neighbors. Strangely, their secret bound him to Dosa, gave him a sense of connection with his wife, whom, paradoxically, he loved more the more she scorned him. Dosa, too, found a way of dealing with the unspoken question that she knew was on the minds of her friends and neighbors. Without ever saying so, she lightly hinted at Sorab's "problem," and she expertly made her husband the focus of their unspoken pity and derision and herself of sympathy and admiration. "Whatever God puts our way, we must accept," she said stoically, while her audience nodded and tsk-tsked in sympathy.

Seven years passed in this way. Each day, after Sorab left for work, Dosa cleaned house and prepared dinner. Then, her wifely duties done, she spent a few hours reading about the medicinal benefits of herbs, a topic that had piqued her interest a few years earlier. Often, a neighbor would stop by to pick up some of Dosa's home remedies for colds, fevers, burns, joint pain, alcoholism, infidelity. She never accepted money for her medicines; instead, the visitor had to repay her with nuggets of gossip and information. While she treated their physical ailment, she also counseled them on their career choices, parenting skills, and marital relations. Despite her youth, Dosa's reputation grew. Every woman she helped sang her praises to others. Women like Yasmin Shroff, who was five years older than Dosa but respected the younger woman's formidable will and intelligence.

"Go get a job," Dosa told Yasmin after the woman showed up at Dosa's apartment with bruises on her arm. "The more you are staying at home, the less he is respecting you and the more he's beating you. You have a good mind. Go use it. And don't worry about that besharam husband of yours. Leave him to me."

She was good to her word. Dosa visited the Shroff residence three days later to meet with Gustav Shroff. After some small talk, she got to the point. But Gustav was adamant about his wife not working. He spoke of manly pride and honor and family name. Dosa sighed. Gustav was not making this easy. She stared at him appraisingly. "Gustav, listen quietly for a minute," she said at last. There was a long pause. "Because you are my dear friend's husband, I will say this once," Dosa said softly. "Better if you heed my advice .... You don't want to have to worry about every meal you eat at home, Gustav. A man's home is his castle. He should not worry about something being in his food. You know what I'm saying? Better to let Yasmin find a job so she can be happy, too."

Gustav blinked. "You are threatening me, Dosa?"

"Threatening you? Baap re, Gustav, I am just a poor ignorant housewife. I just spend my time mixing my herbs and all. Some say they help; some say they don't. What do I know? And who am I to threaten you? No, as your well-wisher, I am just giving you some good advice. Follow, don't follow-your choice."

Before Dosa left that day, an agitated Gustav agreed to let his wife get a job and even offered to walk Dosa home. It was later that evening that he realized that the woman who had broken his will was a full twelve years younger than he was.

As Dosa grew confident that Sorab did not need her sexually, she warmed up to him in other ways. On weekends, she and Sorab went to the seaside and ate bhelpuri and panipuri for dinner at the beachfront booths. Or they caught a movie at the Bombay Film Society. They both loved movies, and on the way home, they excitedly discussed what they had seen. These were the times Sorab loved best, when his wife looked happy and alive. At such moments, he thought of her as a good friend, rather than as his wife, and forgot the great wound she had inflicted upon him. In his most forgiving moments, he even told himself that he had a better marriage than most of his friends, freed as it was from the tyrannies of wailing infants, sexual jealousies, petty grievances. Dosa kept a clean house, had dinner ready when he got home, loved going to movies with him, never fought with him about how he spent his time or his money. Besides, he was now getting sex on a regular basis. Two days a week, Sorab returned home late from work. He never explained where he had gone; she never asked.

A few weeks before their eighth wedding anniversary, Minoo Framrose died in his sleep. Sorab had just reached his office when he received the phone call; he turned around immediately and headed home. He found Dosa as he had never seen her before--distraught, hysterical, alternating between raging at her father and torn with remorse at the thought of seven years of bitterness and estrangement. Together, they attended the four days of ceremonies at the Tower of Silence. In those days, Sorab found his manhood. He was firm with Dosa when she refused to eat, he was gentle with her when she couldn't sleep, and he held her tightly when her body racked with sobs as they carried Minoo's body away to be lowered into the well where the vultures waited.

At home, she was exhausted, spent, as if grief had wrung her dry. "Go to bed," he said gently. "I will bring you some toast and butter for dinner."

But when he entered the bedroom, she was sitting on the edge of the bed, a thoughtful expression on her face. "Thank you for the last few days. What I would have done without you, I don't even know."

"Shh, shh, Dosa. Not even to mention. After all, you are my wife. It is my responsibility to take care of you. I just wish I could take your pain away, put it on my head instead."

Her eyes filled with tears again. "How can you love me still, after how I have treated you? I have destroyed your manhood, turned you into a shrimp. Any other man would have left years ago. All my khoonas against my daddy, I took out on you. Oh, Sorab, I should've jumped into that well years ago."

"Now, Dosa. No sense in crying over spilt milk. What use bringing up old ghosts? You are needing rest, darling. Just sleep now."

But she was inconsolable, and he soon realized that what Dosa needed was not sleep, but absolution. So he let her talk and she told him everything: How she'd won a book as the first prize for reading in second grade. How she still had the blue ribbon her book had been wrapped in. How she had been the best student in her class, always. How, although she had told not a soul, she had always believed she would be the first female Parsi doctor in the city. How her father had always encouraged her to do well in school, which was what had made his betrayal even harder to take. How she had loved and worshiped her father and how it tore up her heart to think he'd traded her future away like a pair of shoes. How he had come into her room the night before her wedding and told her he was sorry and how he had finally left when she didn't say a word. How, even in her darkest rage, she had understood why her father couldn't go back on his word to Darius, admired him for it even, and how she'd hated herself for loving him still. How it killed her, even today, to hear of her sisters' accomplishments and how she hated herself for resenting the very people she loved. How she had been scared of having children at a young age, how she had hated Sorab because she was terrified of his power to make her pregnant. How she'd seen him as the embodiment of the trick fate had played on her, how she'd vowed to make him pay for her father's mistake. How she had tried to continue hating Sorab and how she had failed. How his kindness, his mild temper had won her over. How lonely she felt when he was at work and how she looked forward to his footsteps each evening. How her terror of having children had dissipated, now that she was older, and how her heart warmed at the thought of having an infant to love. How she was tired of fixing everybody else's problems when her own marriage was a lie. How she, yes, how she wanted love, needed it, needed to be able to give it and receive it. How she was terrified that she was too late, that she had chased love out of Sorab's heart, just as she had chased him into the arms of strange women. How wrong she had been to punish him for another's mistake, how terribly, horribly wrong, and how she regretted it now.

He looked at her with incredulity, afraid of trusting what he was hearing. Some ancient instinct told him that this was not the time for words, and so he took her in his arms. For a moment, she stiffened, as if by habit, and then he could feel the slow thawing of her frozen heart. After years of sleeping with women he did not care to hold a second longer than necessary, Sorab Popat held on to his tiny, fierce, willful wife like a man clinging to a lifeline.

Zubin was born a year later. He was a cheerful boy with his father's easy, mild temperament and his mother's intelligence. Dosa was a zealous mother and doted over her only child with a ferocity and protectiveness that amazed and exasperated her husband. Zubin was not allowed to join the other neighborhood kids when they played on the sidewalk, because Dosa was terrified that her little boy would get struck by a car or, at the very least, stumble and bruise his knee. She took every cut or bruise or fever the boy ever suffered as a reflection of her poor mothering. When Zubin came down with the inevitable illnesses of childhood, Dosa would sit up with her ailing child all night long, covering him with blankets, opening and closing windows, putting cold rags dipped in Tata's eau de cologne on his fevered brow. It was as if the darkhaired boy with the ready smile had unlocked all the love that Dosa had kept hidden in her heart for seven long years. And strangely, there was enough love left over to include Sorab, so chat some days, Sorab found it hard to remember the drought years. As the years rolled by, he thought of the time spent visiting prostitutes while his young wife slept virginlike in their bed, with the unreal air of a man struggling hard to remember a long-forgotten dream.

Once, on one of the rare evenings that they went to dinner without Zubin, Sorab decided to take a shortcut through the red-light district. As they rode down the street where Sorab used to visit his favorite prostitute, he slowed down his scooter ever so slightly to glance at the third-floor apartment he had visited for so many years. He thought he'd barely turned his head to sneak a look, but Dosa, eagle-eyed as ever, noticed.

"Someone you are knowing lives here?"

"Oh no, nobody. I mean, just someone from, you know . . .

"I see."

Later that night in bed, Sorab opened his eyes to find Dosa peering closely at his face.

"So, do you ever miss them, miss her?"

It took him a minute to understand who she was referring to. "Miss them? Not for an hour, not for a minute. Why should I? My whole world is right here, under this very roof"

"Sure?"

He had never seen her like this, and his heart swelled with tenderness and pity. "Dosa, my Dosa. You are my wife as well as my life. The others were . . . paper. Understand? Paper. Whereas you are velvet--rich, heavy, dark. Something a man can feel satisfied with."

Two days before Zubin's tenth birthday, Sorab decided to stop at Best Cake Shop to buy for his son and wife the chocolate eclairs they both loved so much. Since Zubin's birth, it had become a ritual that every payday, Sorab would come home with a small surprise for his family. Before he left the shop, Sorab placed an order for Zubin's birthday party. "Make sure it's freshum-fresh," he instructed the clerk. "I want the cake to melt in my son's mouth. See you day after tomorrow.

It was dark when he left the shop, and Sorab was filled with a longing to get home quickly to be with his wife and child. He decided to take a different route home. Balancing the small cake box on the front of his scooter, he cut in front of a motorist, who panicked and stepped on the gas pedal instead of the brake. It was a fatal mistake. The car hit the small scooter with an impact that lifted Sorab's slight body like a kite and threw him over two lanes of traffic. Passersby who saw the broken, twisted body instinctively prayed for his death. Two minutes later, their prayers were granted. Sorab's eyes fluttered for a moment, his mouth shaped into a wordless O, and then he was dead. Other witnesses shooed away the street urchins who had crawled under the flattened scooter in hopes of rescuing the enticing cake box.

Dosa refused to believe the news when it reached her. She could not accept that her life had taken yet another unexpected turn and that this time there was no ready target to blame for yet another betrayal, yet another delinquent promise. All the bitterness that Sorab's steadfast love and decency had drained from Dosa's heart now came pouring back, as did Dosa's sense of persecution, of injustice. She shocked her mother by reciting the names of all the people she wished had died in her Sorab's place. Her old mother, already guiltridden from a past mistake, tried desperately to help her bereaved daughter cope with this latest twist of fate, but Dosa was inconsolable. All three of her sisters rallied around her, including the youngest, Banu, who was in law school, and estranged from the eldest sister, who never let Banu forget that she was standing on the ashes of Dosa's dreams. Two years prior to Sorab's death, Banu had had it out with this eldest sister, whose grief had followed her like a shadow throughout her life. Dosa and Sorab had invited the entire family over to dinner, and, as was her habit, Dosa had made some barb about the "cushy" life her younger siblings led. But this time, Banu did not remain silent. "Bas, Dosa, enough is enough. Daddy's dead; you are having a sweet little son and a good husband. Still it's not enough. What happened to you is ancient history. Baap re, at this rate, the Hindus and Muslims will be friends before you forgive and forget. The rest of the family can keep saying, `Poor Dosa,' but personally, I'm sick and tired of your nakhras and your caustic remarks. Don't ever invite me to your house again, because I won't be coming."

Seeing Banu at her husband's funeral made grief rise like bile in Dosa. She was on the verge of lashing out, of somehow blaming Sorab's death on Banu, but Shenaz Framrose restrained her. "Deekra, don't defile the memory of your saintly husband," she murmured. "This is a time for family to be together. You are suffering enough dookh. No need to spread it further."

After Sorab's death, Dosa became obsessed with her son. "You are now my son and my sun, the only light in my life," she would say to the bewildered boy, who was torn between wishing to protect his mother and wanting to run from her omnipresence.

Until Sorab's death, Dosa had showered her son with books, so that some of Zubin's earliest memories were of reading in the living room while the cries of the neighborhood children playing outdoors at dusk wafted in through his window. If he felt a pang of loneliness then, the novels and textbooks that he read more than compensated for it. Zubin had turned into a bookish, cautious young boy, more at home in a library or classroom than on a cricket field.

But now, Dosa wanted to talk to her son in the evenings, rather than have him bury his nose in a book. All day long, while Zubin was at school, Dosa would scour the neighborhood for nuggets of gossip, which she would then hoard and offer to Zubin at the end of the day. If the boy showed his boredom at the comings and goings of the adults around him, Dosa would chide him. "Just like the rest of them you're becoming, Zubin," she would say. "Not a care for your poor widowed mother." It was both Dosa's fortune and ill fortune that between Sorab's pension and investments and Darius Popat's generosity, she did not have to work for a living. Darius Popat had announced at his son's funeral that he would die before he would let his daughter-in-law get a job. Dosa was happy with that. After years of relative quiet, her apartment once again hummed with the sound of gossiping visitors. While Zubin was away at school, Dosa sat on her couch like royalty and made her pronouncements while her visitors brought her the juiciest tidbits of information.

A year after Sorab's death, Dosa found Zubin in the kitchen, taking apart a dead cockroach, a look of fierce concentration on his face. "My goodness, Zubin. What are you doing, looking like a murderer? Drop that dirty thing and go wash your hands, fatta-faat"

"Is okay, Mamma," the boy said importantly. "I'm just practicing for my biology class. If I'm going to be a brilliant doctor, my teacher, Mr. Pinto, says I have to get over my soog and be ready to cut up people and all. But first, I start with insects."

This was the first Dosa had heard about Zubin's desire to be a doctor. The boy's words stirred up the envy that lived right below the surface of Dosa's skin. And on the heels of that envy came fear. Fear that her son would burn with the same ambition she had and then get destroyed by the fire of that ambition when it was snuffed out, as Dosa superstitiously believed it invariably would be. The envy alone, she would have been able to conquer, because Dosa genuinely loved her little boy. But the combination of fear and envy was toxic. She convinced herself that Zubin was about to make the same mistake she had, that his dreams were too large for his puny, middle-class life to hold. Her heart ached for her son, as if the disappointments she believed awaited him had already occurred.

In a panic, Dosa called Yasmin Shroff at work. Yasmin was now a secretary at Tata Industries and worldly in a way that Dosa admired. "Yasmin? Dosamai here. Sorry to disturb you at work, but I am having a problem. No, no, everybody is fine. It's just that--Zubin told me today he is wanting to be a doctor."

Yasmin sounded bewildered. "That's great, Dosa. But what about your problem?"

Dosa was impatient. "But that is the problem, stupid. At one time, I also was wanting to be a doctor. But my dear departed father had other ideas. Instead, I married Sorab. I don't want my Zubin to go through the same disappointment that I did."

"Well, Dosamai, it's not as if you will marry Zubin off against his wishes. Also, children want to be different things at different ages. But if Zubin is serious, I think it would be so wonderful if he could actually live out your dream. In a way, Zubin could keep your dream alive. See what I mean?"

Dosa hung up from the conversation angry at herself for having called Yasmin. "That stupid Yasmin," she said out loud. "Has scrambled eggs for brains. Thinks because she works for Tata, she is as smart as Mr. Tata himself. Stupid fool."

Dosa did not want to realize her own aborted dreams through Zubin's achievements. Rather, she saw her role as protecting Zubin from future heartbreak. And if that meant she had to be the one to break his heart now, she was willing to pay the price. That evening, for the first time, she pushed Zubin outdoors to play cricket with the other neighborhood kids. "Enough of this mugging and studying. A real bookworm you are becoming. Sitting home all day and tearing apart poor little cockroaches. How you think the baby cockroaches' mummies and daddies must be feeling?"

Zubin, who had grown up hearing his mother curse daily the roaches that infested their kitchen, stared at his mother openmouthed. He had never so much as owned a cricket bat and had no idea what he would do among the tough, tanned, muscled neighborhood kids he was now being encouraged to socialize with. He put his mom's strange behavior down to her ongoing grief at his father's death.

From then on, Dosa embarked on a plan to save Zubin from his own intelligence. In a total reversal of her former behavior, she now encouraged him to do less homework. She extolled the virtues of humility, praised the holiness of small things. Why, working as a clerk with other Parsis at the Central Bank of India was as good a job as any other. A steady paycheck, good benefits, job security, long lunch breaks. She took to scanning the newspapers for any accounts of doctors who had killed patients through negligence, conducted weird experiments on them, stabbed their wives, or been involved in scandals. Any such nugget, she placed where Zubin would be sure to see it.

One day, she opened her front door to call Zubin in for dinner and saw that he was in an animated conversation with Rusi Bilimoria, who lived one floor above them. Rusi was already a legend among the neighborhood kids because he had a part-time job and was talking about buying a motorcycle with his own money. "When I buy a big house at Worli or Marine Drive, you can come visit me," Rusi was saying to Zubin. "Should be in a few years, bossie. What I say is, if you are willing to work hard, anything is possible, na? The sky is the limit, then."

His words frightened Dosa. She could see Rusi's self-confidence unravel all of her careful plans to ensure that Zubin grew into a modest, cautious man who did not aim too high. For six months now, she had worked to suppress her son's natural curiosity and native intelligence. And now, a young neighborhood show-off was about to wreck her scheme by instigating her son to dare to dream his way out of his middleclass existence.

She flew toward Rusi like a mother lion protecting her cub. "Besharam, stop filling my son's ears with all your dhaaps," she cried. "Wadia Baug is good enough for us simple folks. You can go to your Worli and live with those Gujus and Sindhis, if that's what you want. We are happy being with our own kind."

"Mummy, Mummy, stop it," Zubin whispered. "We were only talking, that's all."

Rusi looked stricken. "I'm sorry, Dosamai," he said. "I didn't mean anything by it." He fled up the stairs.

From that day on, Dosa made it her business to know Rusi's business. For years, she watched him because she was afraid he would contaminate her son, who, with each passing year, was becoming the dull, mild man she wanted him to be. She often told Zubin to be thankful that she had saved him from Rusi's seductive but foolish dreams, especially in light of the fact that Rusi's business never quite took off the way he had predicted. "Remember what I told you years ago, beta?" she said when Zubin became an officer at Central Bank at age twenty nine. "Look at the hours Rusi works, dragging himself home late at night, looking as tired as a mouse chased by a cat. And look at you, coming home by six-thirty sharp, in tip-top condition. And what for Rusi works so hard? Still stuck in Wadia Baug he is, same as us plain folk."

Dosa's victory was complete a few years later, when Zubin came home and recounted a conversation he had had with Rusi earlier in the day. Rusi had applied for another loan from Central Bank and Zubin's boss had just turned him down.

A teary Rusi poked his head into Zubin's office on his way out. "Arre, bossie, what's wrong?" Zubin said, rising to his feet. "What brings you here? Come in, come in."

Rusi's eyes were bloodshot and his usually neat hair looked disheveled, as if he had run his hand through it one too many times. "I'm sunk, Zubin," he whispered. "My boat is sunk. I have creditors in the market from whom I've borrowed money for the business. Twenty-eight to thirty-one percent interest they're charging me, boss. I came to see your branch manager for a loan at a regular interest rate, so I can get these bloodsuckers off my back. I'm expecting a big order soon from Sharma Enterprise. Big concern. With one order, I can wipe out my debts. But what to do? Your boss says he won't loan me another paisa. I don't even have the money to buy some inventory."

"But Rusi, are you mad? Doing business with these loan sharks? They'll bleed you dry. Plus, you owe us money. But how did you get yourself in this mess anyway?"

Rusi's lower lip moved, but his eyes were steady. "Just years and years of problems catching up with me. Always trying to stay one step ahead of failure. I started my business with no capital, Zubin. Do you understand? Nobody to back me up, nobody to teach or guide me. Every mistake I made, I paid for it myself. All by trial and error. I was a young man and impatient. Those American books I read, like Think and Grow Rich, made it look so easy. It wasn't. And trying to remain honest in business in this corrupt country . . . But forget it. I myself don't know what went wrong. Whatever it is, here I am now. With a young child and a wife and mother to support. I tell you, Zubin, if I don't get this loan, I'll have to close the business down. Don't know what I'll do then--probably drive a taxi or something.'

"So what did you say?" Dosamai asked her son eagerly.

"Say? Nothing," Zubin said with a shrug. "He went back in to see Mr. D'Souza, the branch manager." He did not tell his mother that he had personally implored his boss to extend Rusi another loan. And that D'Souza had reluctantly agreed.

And he did not tell Dosamai when D'Souza came into his office sixteen months later, all smiles. "That Bilimoria chap. Amazing fellow. Came in earlier today with the last payment on the loan. We were pretty sure he was putting some money aside, y'know, taking his cut before paying us back. So we did an audit on him, and guess what? Came back clean as a whistle. Turns out he was paying us back every penny he owed. Damn honest bugger. Guess I wouldn't be too happy if I were his wife. But since I'm his banker, I'm delighted."

Zubin's heart swelled with pride. "Yah, he's a good man, that Rusi. Known him my whole life, sir." But part of him also thought Rusi was foolish. So he's averted one crisis, Zubin thought. But without any money put aside, he'll be in the same boat next time. He's still living from one contract to another.

Dosamai did not share her son's affection for Rusi. When, after years of tracking him, she was convinced that Rusi would never be the success he had predicted, that his star did not burn as brightly as it had once seemed, she continued to watch him out of habit. And when Rusi's wife, Coomi, began to visit her with her litany of complaints against her husband, she became the jewel in Dosa's crown. Now, Dosa had an inroad into the innermost chambers of Rusi's red heart.

Dosa shuffled into the small dingy kitchen to take out an old battered frying pan in which to make her scrambled egg. She wished Zubin would call her tonight from Pune. With so many of the neighbors at the Kanga wedding tonight, the apartment building felt uncharacteristically empty and silent. Even that recluse Tehmi had decided to attend the wedding. I wonder if that drunken Adi is at home, she thought to herself. Or did Jimmy also invite him? I wish Bapsi had married him instead and left my darling Zubin alone.

Zubin's decision to marry at thirty-five had shocked Dosa, who had been lulled by the long years of living alone with her only son. Dosa immediately told her son he was too old and too bald to marry, but for once, Zubin would not listen. He was head over heels in love with the jovial, hardworking bank teller who had just been transferred to his branch. When Dosa met the strong, vibrant, buxom woman her son brought home, she regretted the many times she had talked her son out of marrying the insipid, pale, unthreatening women he had previously expressed an interest in. Those women, Dosa would have been able to control; one look at Bapsi told Dosa that she had met her match. Bapsi charged into Dosa's wiliness and guile with the open honesty and the head-on innocence of a young bull. All of Dosa's surreptitious ways, her slyness and penchant for troublemaking, now lay naked under Bapsi's unwavering gaze. Her new daughter-in-law blew Dosa's cover with alarming regularity. "Mamma, come away from that window," she would say in a loud voice as Dosa would discreetly part the curtains to spy on someone. "None of our business what others are doing." For Dosa, whose business was other people's business, Bapsi's words were blasphemy. To make matters worse, her daughter-in-law also refused to nurse Dosa's lifelong sense of injury at the cruel trick fate had played on her. "Come on, na, Mamma," Bapsi would boom in her good-natured way. "Who even knows if you really would have been a doctor? Anyway, you had a good man for a husband and your Zubin is a sweetie pie, and now you have a daughter who takes care of your every need. What else are you wanting? Let bygones be bygones."

It was like two continents clashing. And Zubin soon became the territory they each wanted to colonize, so that he was increasingly torn between the two strong women in his life. He spent years trying to build bridges between the two of them, to get them to speak a common language, but to no avail. Bapsi resented the fact that while she and Zubin were at work all day, Dosa invited a steady stream of neighborhood women into their home for hours of gossip and conversation. "An idle mind is the devil's workshop," she would say. "Why don't they do some social work or something instead of spying on one another and poking their noses in other people's business? Some people have too much time on their hands." Dosa saw this as a challenge to her life's work and reacted with the ferocity of a businessman whose lease has just been canceled. "You'd think she was president of the bank instead of just a common clerk," she'd complain to her many admirers. "The Queen of Sheba, my son has married."

The situation at home reached a point where when his branch manager offered Zubin a transfer to Pune, Zubin had to stop himself from kissing the man on both cheeks in gratitude. "Sir, I accept," he said. "No, no, nothing to think about. As long as Bapsi gets a transfer also, I accept."

Still, leaving Wadia Baug was not easy. On his way to the railway station, Zubin encountered Rusi Bilimoria coming up the stairs, and he thought back to a conversation from decades ago. Strange it is, he thought. For all his talk, Rusi never left Wadia Baug. And here I am, the one who is leaving. "Best of luck with the business, Rusi," he said, surprised at the tremor in his voice. "Thank you for all your help," Rusi replied, taking Zubin's hand in both of his. "You're a good man, and the building people will miss you. Good luck in your new life."

As he stepped out of the building, Zubin had felt a pang of fear and guilt at leaving behind the woman he loved and hated more than any other. But then he glanced at his wife, saw the gray screaming through her hair and how her mouth now curved downward, and he knew he had to give her a chance. Bapsi had put up with so much for his sake. Now it was his turn to make her happy. His mother would be safe, buffeted by the friends, neighbors, and even the foes that she had cultivated over the years. Out of fear, gratitude, admiration, boredom, and even love, they would flock to Dosa's home, seeking her advice on things, picking up the herbal tinctures that she brewed, dropping off an occasional box of sweets or a plate of mutton chops or biryani for her.

But tonight, there was only a scrambled egg and a slice of Modern bread for dinner. Dosa chewed slowly as she ate directly from the pan she had fried the egg in. Then she hobbled into the living room and turned on the TV, not bothering to flip channels. It would help kill the evening, pass the time. She intended to stay up until all the neighbors returned home from the wedding, intended to mark what time each couple or family got in.

But within moments, there was an odd whistling sound in Dosa's living room. She was in her shabby armchair, her feet curled up under her thin thighs, her head tilted back, her mouth open, a thin ribbon of drool curling on her chin. She was fast asleep.