By the ninth cycle of her chemotherapy Kalyani couldn't swallow. So Girish had tried to stay on liquids too. He had already stopped eating samosas and batata vadas months ago when they put Kalyani on a boiled food diet. But over the last month Girish had started to feel weak. Both in body and spirit.

Though visiting hours were 9 to 11, he'd leave her bedside at 15 past, in casual defiance for no particular reason other than his increasing distaste for all the painted signs that had begun to populate his life now. This one mocked him the loudest… 'Samosa - Rs. 10/-'. Right outside Charni Road station, he had turned away from it at around 11:30 each morning, for months, thinking of Kalyani, and all the samosas she could now never eat, and all the boiled sabudana she now had to.