The day after Diwali was always the quietest in Amrur. Street dogs, which spent most mornings howling after cyclists, crouched fearfully in garbage shelters. Three-legged autorickshaws that hooted and tooted while ferrying passengers from Amrur to other parts of Bangalore were silent, having been abandoned on street corners. Vendors with cracked voices selling onions and tomatoes in wooden carts did not appear for their daily rounds.

Akriti liked hushness, but this one came with the aftertaste of burnt crackers; with the dark ash-smoke that slid through Amrur and made her cough. Besides, this would not be a hush day for her. Akriti was leaving today.

She opened her yellow schoolbag, with the peeling Mickey Mouse sticker, to check that everything she had packed was essential. Akriti didn't want to carry too much. She needed the palm-sized plastic comb and circular hand mirror. She was not so sure about the apple. She wanted to try out the street food – chats, samosas, gol gappas floating in jeera water; the apple was only a just-in-case. Akriti didn't want to think about the just-in-cases now – being stranded on a lonely road, getting kidnapped (yes, she had considered every danger), losing her bag and her purse with it. Her elaborate plan depended on none of the just-in-cases happening. She picked up the apple from the bag and then dropped it back. She would decide later.

Akriti let the pencil and ruled notebook remain in the bag – she wanted to list the places she visited and the things she saw. She wanted a permanent keepsake of this trip. She would have liked a camera; something she could hang around her neck like the tourists she saw when her school took their class on annual sightseeing trips to Lal Bagh, Vidhana Soudha and other places of educational interest. As Akriti queued behind her classmates in a line, whose straightness was rigidly managed by tired teachers, she would look at the tourists with wonder and envy imagining how pleasant their lives must be without timetables and classes. She imagined that traveling to new places and taking pictures was all tourists did. Perhaps, she could buy a toy camera from one of the roadside vendors in the bazaar, a plastic one with a zoom and aperture speeds painted on it. In a woolen pouch buried in the front zip of her bag, Akriti kept the fifty rupees that would make this trip possible. She had been collecting the money for more than six months through sustained deception and intrigue. The fourth standard, she told her parents, involved more homework and additional investments in stationary - compasses, scales, H2B pencils and different types of notebooks. Akriti had studied her Nancy Drews; she was careful not to leave a trail. She spaced out her requirements, keeping her voice even as she asked for them and maintained steady eye-contact, the two things that ultimately all fictional villains forgot about. Hiding the money was a bigger problem – the underside of her bed and study table drawers were regularly cleaned by her mother, as was her clothes cupboard. She did not want to keep the purse in her school bag in case it accidentally fell out. Akriti started carrying the money with her at all times – in the skirt pockets or inside her buckled shoes. She would exchange the coins for torn notes at her school canteen. Akriti did worry about getting caught, but this secret she kept from everyone else elevated her in the littlest ways that no one noticed. She smiled during geography (the dullest of her classes) and found the hot bus rides home easier to bear. At night before she went to bed, she would check her amassed wealth, counting and recounting every note, dreaming of the day she could spend it.

She had picked the day after Diwali because it was a second Saturday this year - a schoolless day. Her mother, aunts and grandmother exhausted with the previous day's extended cooking – barfis, mysore paks, murukus, would be less alert. Her father, uncles and grandfather would spend the morning in the living room watching some old Amitabh dushum-dushum movie on their new VCR. The previous night's strenuous activities (involving lighting bombs, rockets and phuljadis) meant that her cousins would sleep-in till noon.

Akriti zipped her bag, snapped the plastic press-on lock and slung it on her shoulder. Akriti walked slowly, trying to control her breathing the way their yoga teacher had taught in school. Through her passage along the corridor, the walls and doors did not turn into snarling, narasimahish aunts and uncles, as she had imagined in her dreams. She opened the front door and ran out. Akriti had never stepped out of the house alone. Amma always said streets were not safe enough. She and her cousins played their games – stapoo and rasa kashi on the terrace. She had always yearned to explore colorful streets that she glimpsed through her school bus window and special trips. Akriti looked at the street, thrilled that she had escaped as planned.

The road was littered with cracker debris and mitai covers. Broken claylamps lay in tiny puddles of oil. The intricate rangoli designs on the street had been stamped upon and the smudged red, pink, green, white and yellow powders only faintly resembled the bright petals and mango leaves they had been yesterday. The stillness of the street frightened Akriti and now that she was outside the expedition seemed absurd and foolish.

As Akriti stood on the street unsure of what to do, the door opened. Trishna, her aunt, emerged. Trishna was carrying a iron bucket half filled with water and a dried coconut shell with coarse rice powder. She had come to wash yesterday's rangoli pattern and draw a fresh geometrical design on the street. She usually did this at six every morning, but on the day after diwali household schedules were all relaxed. Trishna was wearing a loose mint green house gown with red and myrtle embroidery around the neck and sleeves. Even in this shapeless dress, it was apparent when she moved that she had the gracefulness of a Bharatnatyam dancer. As Trishna bent to swing the bucket and wash the street, she noticed that her niece was standing a little further down the road dressed in her lilac frilled frock, carrying her schoolbag and staring into the street with faraway eyes.

“Akriti,” Trishna called, her voice fluid and melodious like a tune from a bamboo flute.

“Akriti what are you doing?” Trishna asked when the girl turned with a confused, slightly helpless look on her face. She knew instinctively that her niece was trying to run away.

“It's ok,” she said, calling the girl over. “It's ok, I understand.”

Trishna placed the bucket and the fibrous coconut shell on the street. The kolam flour fell out, forming little hills and puddles of whiteness. Trishna decided to clean up later and walked up to Akriti, who had not moved. She wrapped the girl in her arms and felt her small body stiffen. “Don't worry,” she said, touching her niece's left cheek with the back of her hand.

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