Marisa’s wrist was starting to hurt. This too had been waiting to happen. Like white hair and being wrinkled all over. Knees, spine, wrist, knuckles. She was thinking she wouldn’t be of much use with arthritis, and perhaps they would send her to the old home after Christmas. They usually did it at that time, helping to soften it with small gifts for those who couldn’t even handle the small tasks assigned to them, in exchange for a room and three meals. Like this task of scraping away candle wax from the boundary wall.

Funny, Marisa was thinking, how hard it was. How it clung, this leftover wax. It never clung like this before it melted. Burnt and melted down. Before she could shoo it away, it crept back in: that face, like a pink-yellow jelly. At the hospital. But that had been years ago. It wasn’t healthy to think of such things, from so long ago. Aloud, she mumbled about irresponsible youngsters. Always wanting to do this and that, never waiting to clear up. Last night, they’d showed up in hordes. Hundreds. Maybe a thousand of them. And candles and all. It had been a beautiful sight, she had to admit. All those flames and the gentle wind stretching the fire and making it paler, bluer, colder. And those faces and those skirts and shorts and black bands. Nice of them to walk about the whole place, and stop at not just the police station, but also a mosque and a temple and a church, lighting candles on the boundary walls. Such a pity there wasn’t any gurudwara or synagogue in walking distance, or they’d have gone there too. Very enthusiastic, they were. But when they called for volunteers to come and clean up the wax and candle stubs and burnt out matchsticks, how many came? Nobody here.

Marisa remembered that she hadn’t seen young people for a long time now, outside of church. She hadn’t even been that keen on church, to be honest. But then, she just hadn’t been able to get married and then her brother had died and his kids took up more and more of the house. And finally, she had just packed up in a huff and asked to do things around the church. Devote her remaining years to God and humanity’s service. She smiled to think of the way she had mouthed it - flat voice, eyes fixed high on the wall. Six years ago, that was. The Father had been most disapproving of her tone and lack of genuine humility.

In the clear, harsh morning light, Marisa replayed those faces. Pale browns light up in red-yellows. Some of the girls showing their legs. Beautiful, really. She had looked through a window, peering at each face. Almost all had smiled when they saw a friend’s face, and they waved and hugged. When they met an older acquaintance, they smiled shyly and allowed themselves to be drawn into a sideways hug. They made speeches about standing together and not allowing this to rip them apart. One nation, one people, one heart. A bunch of misguided outsiders, men with rifles and bombs could not change that. They would prove to those who hated and killed innocents that they would not give in to hate.

They had, Marisa thought, proved. Hate hadn’t been in the air, that night of the candles. But then this morning, the sweeper lady who came from the basti behind the mosque had jabbered on about her sister, who had married a Muslim scrap-dealer, who had been asked to leave the building he lived in, and now the whole family was a guest and the sweeper lady wasn’t pleased at all. And the sister had lived in a proper building and all, not a basti, so the kids didn’t know how to hold their bladders until they got their turn at the common toilet. So much trouble. The sweeper lady, whose name Marisa just couldn’t remember, and who expected anyone to remember names at her age anyway, had suddenly stopped sweeping and asked Marisa if there would be a riot.

Marisa had been ironing then and she had stopped only to fold away a tablecloth. A riot? She had parroted that a few times: riot. There were riots sometimes, no? There had been one, when was it, before her brother had his first heart attack. No, just after. The heart attack had come between the two riots. Oh, what horrible timing. They had had to go to hospitals. And unbidden, the face came back. The melty pink-yellow face.

Marisa shook her head to dispel the image, wincing as she transferred the little strip of metal she was using as a scraper from her right hand to the left. Pink wax, yellow wax, white wax. She mumbled aloud about how it didn’t even make a difference. A little wax on a wall was just wax on the wall. But the Father had said, scrape, so scrape. If she said she couldn’t, he would say it was time to give herself some rest. Rest! Oh, she could do with some rest alright. It would be nice to rest in a little house, in an armchair, knitting perhaps, and call out for a cup of tea, with a young girl in the house to fetch it. Like her own mother had done.

She hadn’t had new dresses during the wars, she remembered. Not even for her birthday. Nor the year of the Bombay riots. Marisa shook her head and attacked the globs of wax again. Why was she thinking of war and riots? It must be the newspapers.

Marisa stopped scraping. Why had her mother knitted? Nobody needed woollens in Bombay. Oh, the war! Two big wars in the 60s and 70s. Mufflers for soldiers. That was the year they couldn’t go to Delhi to visit her aunt. Her favourite cousin, Kenny, had written to say it was quite exciting. There was black paper glued on the windows, because there might be civilian bombings. Fighter planes might come zooming past the window and ka-boom! Marisa had suffered nightmares, just reading the letters. Sugar was rationed that year, and there was a black market in flour and butter. Yes, she remembered now.

The morning newspaper was saying it again, now. War. She didn’t like reading the big-big articles on the centre pages. But she read all the letters readers sent in. Common man’s messages. “Let’s go in and there and smash this bloody thing to smithereens”, one 27-year-old from Worli had written. “Let’s just carpet-bomb that rogue nation. We should have taken Lahore 30 years ago. Let’s take Islamabad’s ass.”

Marisa spent another minute trying to imagine what Islamabad’s ass looked like. She’d never ever met a Pakistani. The only one she knew of was Benazir Bhutto, whose ass had been glamourous enough. Nice lady, she was, smart. Marisa looked down at her own faded dress and wondered when she had last had a smart, new dress and then she wondered about old homes and whether anyone bothered with new dresses there. Nobody was looking, true, but there’s something about a new dress hanging in the almirah. She had had one hanging for five years, thinking it was too good for family dinners. Funny, she thought, she couldn’t remember where she wore it finally. Did she ever?

She hadn’t had new dresses during the wars, she remem–bered. Not even for her birthday. Nor the year of the Bombay riots. Marisa shook her head and attacked the globs of wax again. Why was she thinking of war and riots? It must be the newspapers. Full of bad stuff. Bad pictures too. Like that photo of the baby’s hand. She couldn’t get it out of her head, though it was more than a year, two years now. Baby’s hand and the rest of it buried under rubble, after a bombing. Some Muslim country. Who had done it? The Americans, maybe. Or maybe, Israel. Horrible thing to put into a newspaper. Where’s the point? Baby’s gone, no?

She stopped scraping once again to think about babies. Funny, about babies. Nobody could bear them to be hurt, you’d think. Not if you knew it was going to happen. Funny, how it happens anyway. They knew it would happen when they put together a mob, or did that carpet-bombing thing, no? And now they talked of the nuclear option. Marisa gasped as the Hiroshima images crowded in. Her nephew had once bought a foreign news magazine, in which there were pictures of genetically deformed babies and foetuses. She had thrown up, she remembered, and firmly refused to look at foreign magazines ever since. Funny, how they wouldn’t go away, the bad images. Maybe it was her age. When she went to the old home, she must remember to ask the others whether it got any better with time, or worse.

Marisa sighed and decided to go into the kitchen and see if someone would give her a cup of tea. It was too hot to scrape now. And suddenly, guiltily, she thought that if there was a bombing here, she wouldn’t have to scrape wax; it would just melt. Everything would.

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