DESAI, Kirian

The Inheritance of Loss

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The boys carried out a survey of the house with some interest. The atmosphere, they noted, was of intense solitude. A few bits of rickety fur­niture overlaid with a termite cuneiform stood isolated in the shadows along with some cheap metal-tube folding chairs. Their noses wrinkled from the gamy mouse stench of a small place, although the ceiling had the reach of a public monument and the rooms were spacious in the old manner of wealth, windows placed for snow views. They peered at a cer­tificate issued by Cambridge University that had almost vanished into an overlay of brown stains blooming upon walls that had swelled with mois­ture and billowed forth like sails. The door had been closed forever on a storeroom where the floor had caved in. The storeroom supplies and what seemed like an unreasonable number of emptied tuna fish cans, had been piled on a broken Ping-Pong table in the kitchen, and only a corner of the kitchen was being used, since it was meant originally for the slaving min­ions, not the one leftover servant.

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The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny

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Mina Foi’s finger zipped out and collected a stray sliver of fried onion that lay upon the tablecloth, and she put the sliver in her mouth with an absent-minded expression, not glancing about to see if anyone had spotted her because if nobody sees you, you didn’t do what you did. She was brimful of sadness for no particular reason, just a poignancy, a melancholy that comes from eating such royal food when your life is so very empty, when there is austerity in all matters save dinner

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