Sunday Story 6: Plus One

TWO THINGS HAPPENED on the eleventh day after my mother’s passing. One: Vinay wanted Amma’s watering can for himself. Two: a man came to visit me; a man I’d never seen before; a man who had one of those vaguely familiar faces that made you uncomfortable; a man who introduced himself as someone who once ‘knew your mother’.

The first was not a surprise. Mother did not have life insurance. (She never yielded to my sales talk.) No jewellery. Her only other possessions of note – besides her four saris...