The bus left me at a bend in the road, beside a tea stall with a blue tarpaulin roof and three plastic chairs, one of which had a broken leg.
“Walk straight,” the conductor had said, pointing with his chin. “You’ll reach Bairan.”
He made it sound as though Bairan were a shop at the end of a corridor.
I had come to the little village in the Malwa countryside because my aunt had sent me to collect two jars of homemade ghee from a woman named Kesarben. The errand seemed a perfectly reasonable excuse to spend a Saturday away from the city, and I had no intention of hurrying back.
The road was narrow and dusty, with fields on either side. Someone had planted marigolds beside a whitewashed house, and their orange heads nodded over a low wall. Beyond them, the land rolled gently towards a line of low hills, the colour of old brass in the afternoon sun.
I took a few steps and stopped.
A breeze had come across the fields. It carried the smell of sun-warmed grass, warm soil and something faintly sweet that I couldn't identify. My shirt stirred against my back. A strand of hair blew across my mouth. I brushed it away, smiling at nothing in particular.
In the city, wind usually meant dust in your eyes or a sudden struggle with your umbrella. Here, it slipped past without asking anything of me.
I walked on.
The village was still some distance away, but I could see its rooftops between the trees. A pair of egrets stood in a field, their white feathers almost absurdly bright against the dark earth. Farther along, a farmer was guiding a bullock cart around a patch of loose stones. The wooden wheels groaned each time they dropped into a rut.
I stepped aside to let him pass.
“Going to Bairan?” he asked.
“Yes. I'm looking for Kesarben's house, my aunt said she sells ghee.”
He smiled. “Half the houses here sell ghee, beta, but Kesarben's is the one that will persuade a man to eat dry rotis without complaint. Look for a neem tree with a split trunk.”
I thanked him and continued, keeping an eye out for the tree.
The road dipped into a shallow hollow. Here, the air was cooler. Grass grew thickly along the edges, and tiny yellow flowers had opened among the weeds. I crouched to look at one, though I knew nothing about flowers and couldn't have named it if someone had asked.
A small beetle was crawling across one of its petals.
I watched it for a while.
Then I remembered I was supposed to be going somewhere and stood up, brushing the dry grass from my cuffs.
By the time I found the neem tree, the sun had moved behind a thin sheet of cloud. The house stood at the edge of a field, its walls painted a pale green that had faded unevenly. A row of steel plates dried on a ledge. Red chillies lay spread across a piece of cloth in the courtyard, and a fat brown hen was investigating them with professional seriousness.
Kesarben was sitting on a low stool, cleaning coriander.
“You’re the ghee person?” she asked.
“I hope so.”
She looked me up and down, then grinned. “Come in through the gate. You look hungry.”
I had eaten two biscuits on the bus and was, in fact, starving.
She brought me a glass of chaas with roasted cumin sprinkled on top. It was cold enough to make my teeth ache a little. While I drank, she went to fetch the jars. I sat in the courtyard and listened to the small afternoon sounds around me: a vessel clinking inside the kitchen, the scrape of a broom from a neighbour's porch, the distant clucking of hens.
A breeze wandered through the courtyard and lifted the corner of the cloth beneath the chillies.
Somewhere beyond the wall, a hand pump squeaked in a steady rhythm.
Kesarben returned with the ghee wrapped in old newspaper.
“Your bus back?” she asked.
“Not until 6:30.”
She glanced at the sky. “Then don't leave just yet. The light gets lovely around five.”
I told her I could wait.
She seemed pleased by this answer, as though I had finally said something sensible.
After a while, I left the house to walk along the field behind it. A narrow ridge of earth separated two plots, and I followed it carefully, my arms held out for balance. The soil was dry on top but soft underneath. Each time my heel pressed down, the earth gave a little.
The field had recently been harvested. Stubble caught at my trouser cuffs, and the remaining stalks scratched gently against one another in the wind. Beyond them lay a patch of green crops, their leaves turning over in little flashes whenever the breeze passed.
I could see much farther than I expected. A cluster of houses sat in a shallow fold of land. Beyond that, a solitary tree stood on a rise, its branches spreading sideways as though they had grown accustomed to the wind arriving from one direction. There were no dramatic mountains, no spectacular waterfall, nothing that would have made me reach immediately for my phone.
Still, I wanted to remember every part of it.
The warmth on my cheeks. The dry grass brushing my ankles. The smell of dung smoke drifting from a distant cooking fire. The occasional sharp fragrance of crushed leaves beneath my shoes.
And the breeze.
It came and went without any pattern I could detect. Sometimes it touched only my face; sometimes it moved through the entire field, setting the grass trembling in front of me. Once, it caught the loose end of my scarf and pulled it behind my shoulder. I held it down with one hand and stood there, letting the air cool the sweat along my neck.
A little way ahead, I found a stone trough beside a hand pump. I worked the heavy iron handle a few times until clear, cold water gushed from the spout, then washed my hands and splashed some over my face. When I straightened, droplets ran down my wrists and disappeared into my sleeves.
I laughed because I felt wonderfully foolish, standing alone beside a pump with wet sleeves and no reason to be anywhere else.
Then I sat on the flat stone beside the trough.
A cloud passed over the sun. The fields lost their shine and became a softer green. For a few minutes, everything seemed to settle into its own ordinary business. An insect buzzed near my ear. A cow called from somewhere behind the houses. A bird landed on the fence, inspected me, and flew away.
I thought of all the Saturdays I had spent indoors, moving from one task to the next, postponing walks because there was always something else to finish. I had imagined that a countryside visit would require an itinerary, a viewpoint, perhaps a photograph worth showing people.
Instead, I was sitting beside a hand pump, drying my hands on my trousers.
It was enough to make me stay another ten minutes.
When I returned to Kesarben's house, she was rolling out rotis for her family. She insisted I eat one, hot from the tawa, with a little white butter melting in the middle. I ate it standing beside the kitchen doorway, watching the evening light settle on the courtyard floor.
The roti was soft, with small brown spots where it had blistered. The butter tasted faintly sweet. I could smell wood smoke in my hair.
By the time I reached the tea stall, the sky had turned the colour of watered milk. I bought a cup of tea and sat on the chair with the broken leg, balancing myself carefully.
The bus arrived late, as country buses often do, though for once I had nowhere urgent to be.
I climbed aboard with the two jars tucked into my bag. As we pulled away, I looked back at the road, the fields and the neem trees standing dark against the fading light.
The breeze followed the bus for a little while, lifting dust from the roadside and stirring the leaves of a row of trees. Then the road curved, and Bairan disappeared behind us.
I leaned against the window. My fingers still smelled faintly of white butter, wood smoke, and cold iron from the pump.
At home, my aunt would ask whether I had found the ghee, whether the jars had survived the journey, whether the woman had charged too much.
I would tell her yes, yes, and no.
I might even tell her about the roti.
But I wasn't sure how to explain the ten minutes beside the hand pump, or why the sight of a field moving under the wind had stayed with me more clearly than anything else.
So I decided not to explain it.
Some afternoons are better carried home quietly.