I heard it was for the Royes next door, for their daughter’s wedding, possibly a nice little present from the girl’s brother who worked abroad, some construction job in Dubai, or loading trucks in Manila, that brown packet the slightly forgetful postman hurled across their fence gate though it was properly locked, and their puppy tore the outer covering so it looked like my husband’s wig, kicked the parcel, teeth marks all over like a battered rag doll, kicked it so hard it landed on the cobbled lane that’s artfully stained with my aunt’s betel spits, but of course, it was raining, and my aunt wasn’t out strolling and picking conversations, like Haan bhaiya, Mausi dikhi nahi? to a man using a neem twig to clean teeth, inquiring about some random woman who wasn’t around minding blissfully grazing goats, instead she called me to say she suspected something, as we often do in our five-house hamlet here, Kuch to maamla hai! for the Royes were gone rather hastily, the yellow bulbs and garage lights still on, the faucet left running, rumored gone to the groom’s to pacify them for they had called the wedding off without warning or salutation, some issue or the other, likely they were peeved at the girl’s dark skin, or tapering eyes, or blunt hippo nose, or breasts like unripe guavas, too small and tough, or it could be about how scandalous they felt when gossip reached them that the ugly little harmless daughter was once caught with her mouth inside her cousin’s, them together for one whole spring morning under the juicy fleshy mango-laden bough, the most glittering moment in our hamlet’s negligible common history, and how she was caned, her wings clipped suitably, and how the cousin shunted out and away to remain huddled in the shanties by the train tracks below the hills, and I strained to hear my aunt over the loud thunder claps, hoping to shut her up if she let me, so I could forage the skies wearing purple, gather some enduring comfort, or question their sneer and snarl concealed in the crowded head of tumbling clouds, or just plain be numb, while the parcel lay there, a trampled heart bare to sharp fire arrows like a hammer wielding Viking beating down a soggy, sappy bundle.

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