Games at Twilight

THE WEATHER
    • …everything was still curtained and shuttered in a way that stifled the children, made them feel that their lungs were stuffed with cotton wool and their noses with dust…
    • The white walls of the veranda glared stridently in the sun…everything gleaming, brassy and bare.
    • The garden outside was like a tray made of beaten brass…
    • No life stirred at this arid time of day

TWILIGHT
    • The scent of earth receiving water, slaking its thirst in great gulps and releasing that green scent of freshness, coolness.
    • The trees and bushes around them stood inky and sepulchral, spilling long shadows across them.

THE CHILDREN
    • …they burst out like seeds from a crackling, over-ripe pod into the veranda…
    • …perhaps roused by the shrieks of the children, a band of parrots…tumbled frantically in the still, sizzling air…
    • The children…felt released…tumbling, shoving, pushing against each other, frantic to start.
    • The business of the children’s day which is – play.

MIRA
    • The motherly Mira intervened…firmly pulling and pushing till a kind of vague circle was formed.

RAGHU
    • ‘You’re dead,’ he said with satisfaction, licking the beads of perspiration off his upper lip, and then stalked off in search of worthier prey…
    • Trampling delicate ferns underfoot as he did so.
    • Snarling, he bent to pick up a stick and went off, whacking it against the garage and shed walls as if to beat out his prey.

THE SHED
    • …a poor, ruined and conquered city.
    • …a dark and depressing mortuary of defunct household goods…
    • …the shed smelt of rats, ant hills, dust and spider webs. Also of less definable, less recognizable horrors.

NATURE
    • What might there not be to touch him and feel him as he stood there…
    • It was an insect…exploring him.
    • He…wondered how many more creatures were watching him, waiting to reach out and touch him, the stranger.
    • …seething with such... [continues]

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