Read this extract, and then answer the question that follows it: After the last of the school examinations – the most frenzied, the most panic-stricken, the most gravely consequential of all – Mama and Uma thought that at last the boy would be free. Mama had ideas about sending him to Aruna in Bombay for a little holiday. Papa treated the suggestion with contempt. ‘Holiday? In Bombay? Is that what will get him into a good university? He has to take his entrance tests now, he has to prepare his applications, we have to make lists, collect information –’ and it was Papa’s busiest time, bustling around to the club, meeting old friends he had not seen in years, gathering advice, references, information, sending Arun off to the bank, the post office, signing statements, filling in applications: there was no end to the paperwork involved, if Arun were to go abroad for ‘higher studies’. ‘Where is the need?’ Mama protested. ‘He can go to Seth Baba Ram College here – Mr Joshi went there – it is not bad –’ Papa did not even bother to counter Mama’s arguments; he did not expect her to understand the importance of sending Arun abroad to study, the value of a foreign degree, the openings this would create later in life, the opportunities. He merely brushed aside her protests and concentrated on Arun who required all the advice and careful handling Papa could summon. Perhaps Papa’s memories of studying under the streetlights and of the painful beginnings in dusty provincial courts filled him with this almost manic determination. Was he fulfilling through Arun a dream he had had there under the streetlights, or in the shabby district courts? Uma watched, trying to find out. Of course he would never tell: how could Papa admit he had unfulfilled dreams? That he had done anything less than succeed, totally? So when the letter of acceptance finally arrived, Papa it was who collapsed from sheer exhaustion. He was not even able to rise to a celebration, the festivities he had promised his son if he won this prize. He lay back weakly on the swing, his face grey, and allowed Mama to take over and have her way. But after the first congratulatory embrace and the making of traditional sweets to be sent around to friends and neighbours, Mama too huddled up on the swing, sniffling delicately into her handkerchief, now and then dabbing at her eyes. Uma sat by her, even patted her on the arm now and then, but was uncertain if Mama was sorrowing at the thought of Arun going away, or if this were a role mothers had to play – in which case she must be allowed to continue. Uma watched Arun too, when he read the fateful letter. She watched and searched for an expression, of relief, of joy, doubt, fear, anything at all. But there was none. All the years of scholarly toil had worn down any distinguishing features Arun’s face might once have had. They had left the essentials: a nose, eyes, mouth, ears. But he held his lips tightly together, his nose was as flattened as could possibly be, and his eyes were shielded by the thick glasses his relentless studies had necessitated. There was nothing else – not the hint of a smile, frown, laugh or anything: these had all been ground down till they had disappeared. This blank face now stared at the letter and faced another phase of his existence arranged for him by Papa. Uma gave a sigh of disappointment and turned away, ungratified. She should have expected no more. It was the expression with which he had gone through several hundred comic books in his childhood – tales of adventure, wizardry, crime, passion, daring and hilarity – allowing them to flood into his mind and drown there in a deep well of greyness that was his actual existence. Uma could gaze into the well, looking for some scraps of coloured paper that might still float, but they had sunk without trace. Sometimes she was seized with a longing to stir up that viscous greyness, to bring to life some evidence of colour, if not in her life then in another’s. It made her spectacles flash, it gave her movements an agitated edge, but no one noticed. She went back and forth, getting Arun’s clothes ready, packing and re-packing them. Mama could not summon up the energy required by the task. Arun paid her little attention, he was too engrossed in the brochures and booklets sent him by the university, trying to picture himself on that strange campus. Then the day of departure arrived, and he was getting into the train to Bombay from where he would leave for the States. Looking back, he saw Uma on the platform beside his parents and suddenly noticed how old she looked: his sister Uma, already beginning to stoop and shrink. He threw her a stricken look.