Day 63 of Covid-19 quarantine. The sun gleams on my glassy back, the small dark garnet of my eye in its silver socket twitches as I flit from house to house. Slowly swinging myself on a whisker, I balance my little body on the ledge of a window as I peer inside.

* * * * * *

There is a glass cup on the side table in the office, a half-finished bottle of red wine beside the table. A pack of cigarettes calls to Vinay from the shelf; he hesitates but doesn’t take them. He glances at his wristwatch for the fifth time in fifteen minutes. It is 10 p.m., PST. It is the right time to call her. It will be 9:30 a.m. Indian Standard Time.

Carefully, resolutely, he punches in the number and waits for her to pick up the phone. Once the pleasantries are dispensed with, his mother wants to know when she’s going to see him.

For the fourteenth or seventeenth time, Vinay explains he can’t get on a plane. He flushes darkly, says, “Pandemic.”

He thrusts his fingers through his hair. Says, CNN. Says, Zee News.

But, all she can see is the Yamuna river outside her window, and that’s still running. Vinay can picture her sitting on the sweeping lawn of her British-built bungalow, drinking a cup of Taj Mahal Brooke Bond tea and dipping into a Parle G biscuit, that Ramu, her loyal manservant must have brewed for her minutes ago.

Vinay hugs his glass with both hands, takes a big sip of wine, as he patiently begins explaining about the lockdown once more.

“Don’t you remember I was going to come for Prakash bhaiya’s daughter’s wedding in May? And now I can’t because there are no flights operating?”

A tender smile plays across his mouth as the fog seems to lift momentarily from her brain.

“Can you still get married even though you can’t have a wedding?” she asks.

“Yes,” he says even though he doesn’t know if you can get a Pandit to officiate a Zoom wedding ceremony.

He strains to listen as his mother continues speaking. “Sarla will turn 85 tomorrow,” she tells him excitedly.

He remembers when Ma turned 85. That was November 2019, before the world changed.

Vinay had made a lightning trip back home, an official meet-the-sales-force-in-India trip to be able to get the time off. When the lights turned off only the glow from the candles sitting atop her favorite Black Forest cake lit the drawing-room where they were all assembled—he, Sarla Aunty, Ramu, and his mother’s nurse, dressed in a starched white uniform and a black bindi on her forehead. Meena or Seema, her name was. Vinay’s mouth feels dry as the memories crowd in.

“I’m in better shape than Sarla,” his mother finishes on a haughty note.

“It’s not a competition, Ma.” He lifts a hand over his mouth to stifle a laugh. His sixteen-year-old daughter pokes her head into the room. “Dinner in five minutes,” she mouths soundlessly. He nods, then turns his attention back to the phone.

His mother wants to know when she’ll see him again.

He lets out a sound like a strangled sob and disconnects the call. There’s a tremor in his fingers as he puts off the lights, and shuffles off to join his family for dinner.

* * * * * *

Waking at six in the morning Jaya squints, peering drearily into the pantry, wondering what else is left to cook.

She is exhausted by all the cooking, not only the labor involved since shopping now involves too much walking and queuing, but also by the constant whirring in her brain as she works out what might be made, from whatever is in the house, and how best any leftovers might be eked out.

She spies a twenty-pound sack of brown rice on the bottom shelf. Happiness! Maybe she can dig out the recipe for fried rice her colleague, Sylvia Lee gave her. A spider scuttles out from a recently demolished cobweb and runs away. She dusts off the grime and examines the tattoo imprinted on the faded olive-green color of the bag.

Jaya checks for the expiry date and groans audibly. She speed-dials her sister who’s sheltering on the 16th floor of an apartment building in downtown Seattle.

“Is it safe to consume brown rice that’s seven years old?” she squeaks.

Her sister ponders the question, then remembers an article in the New York Times that said brown rice only lasts a few months.

“I’d be embarrassed to tell the doctor I was eating seven-year-old rice,” Jaya says worriedly. What she really wants to do with this bag of rice of uncertain vintage is to hold on to it (Marie Kondo be damned) in case her phone drops in the toilet, and she needs to drain it.

Her sister breaks through her reverie and reminds her, “You don’t have to go to the doctor during the Covid-19 lockdown.”

They feel marginally better after this rationalization.

“Do you think it’s safe to feed the birds?” Jaya asks her sister. In the background, she can hear the shrill sound of an ambulance piercing the air.

“You should roast the rice in the oven before you put it in the bird feeder,” advises her sister. The espresso machine hisses loudly on the kitchen counter, signaling that her sister’s morning cup of Odacio Nespresso coffee is ready.

Jaya studies the grain of rice she holds between her finger and thumb. It looks like a chipped tooth. Oh, my heart, she thinks. What she wouldn’t give to chip her tooth on a fresh-from-the-tandoor lamb chop scented with cumin and mint, a curry more authentic than one of her own, a steaming bowl of pho, a pretty plate of sushi?

She disconnects the phone as an inspired thought grips her.

How many grains of expired rice? Let me count the husks. That’s the game she and her twelve-year-old twins will play after dinner tonight.