Morning times

Max will wake us up, without fail, between 6 and 7 a.m. He clambers out of the web-like shroud of the mosquito net, totters into our room and starts banging on about vehicles. There is a heavy price to pay for ignoring his implorations. Last week he tried to get us up, and failing to do so, came back spraying a bag of milk all over the kitchen and living rooms. The tension of the morning was heightened when we gave him the remaining milk in a bottle and sat him on a cushion- next to a scorpion. It was 6.05am and Kate and I were bathed in sweat and aging by the minute.

The only other thing to get us leaping out of bed is the clown’s horn siren song that signals the arrival nearby of the bread man. ‘Bled man!’ Max with holler and I’ll bolt for the door, clutching him in one hand and ten rupees in the other. Many is the time that I’ve lurched forth into the dawn, lungi coming undone, wild of eye and breath, only to hear the comedy claxon disappearing around a corner. There is a ventriloquist’s trickiness to the noise, and Max and I have spent many minutes clambering vainly through people’s backyards, only to have to return dusty and bleeding, unable to put bread on the table.