Read this extract, and then answer the question that follows it: And so the post office stood in the middle of the hustle and bustle of Shahkot. Schoolchildren, beggars, potters and signboard painters. Cows and pigs and water buffaloes. Ikebana class teachers from the polytechnic. Mathematics tutors. Clerks from the asthma institute, and cooks. Lady doctors and the head of the mental asylum. Accountants. Hosiery products men. Umbrella repair men. A bread and egg man. A fish woman. Flies. A washerman barely visible beneath sheets and towels. An orange-robed sadhu smiling and bowing despite the heat. (Truly India is a land of miracles.) Scooters and rickshaws, trucks and cars. Everyone’s mother, father, uncle, sister-in-law and fourth and fifth cousin-brother twice and thrice removed. And Sampath on his way to work with Pinky sitting on the back seat of the cycle, charting a zigzag line through it all as he sought out the promise of coolness alongside walls and under trees and awnings, for the morning sun was already hot. Dashing from one blue pool of shadow to another, he conducted an erratic path through the crowd, which responded with snorts and shouts, a vast blowing of horns and utter chaos. ‘Stop!’ Pinky thumped her brother. ‘I am almost falling off the back here. Can’t you even cycle straight?’ They continued a bit farther. ‘Let me off.’ She hammered at him. ‘This is too much. I am going to take the public bus instead. You are making me feel sick.’ He stopped and, glowering at him, Pinky straightened her fantastic outfit of sunset polyester and strode towards the bus stop. He watched her, resting for a minute as he drank a glass of ice-cold water from the water man’s cart. As the bus appeared around the bend, filled to bursting as usual, Pinky removed a hairpin from her hair so as to have a weapon against men who might misbehave on seeing such a pretty girl at close quarters. Throwing herself on to the overcrowded steps, hanging on, feet waving wildly in the air, she speared a man who was not only taking up too much room in her opinion, but had made the mistake of winking at her, unaware of whom he was up against. Sampath could hear him shouting in alarm as his voice carried out of the window of the bus and down the street. Everyone on the bus shouted as well. Some in attempt to restore calm: ‘But why are you making such a big fuss about a little thing like a wink?’ Some in encouragement: ‘Very good. Good for you. You show him.’ Some disapproving and terse: ‘There are some ladies who should be made to walk to work. The bus disappeared in a billowing cloud of exhaust fumes. When Sampath had finished coughing, he cycled on, taking a short cut that led through the hospital grounds, forgetting, as usual, to bend down low enough to pass under his own particular bit of raised wire when he reached the post office, so that a large tuft of hair was caught and wrenched from his head as he entered the compound. Perhaps it would later be claimed by the crows as a superior sort of nesting material. Was he, he wondered, an especially generous supporter of the increasing crow population of Shahkot? Would this make him prematurely bald? Or perhaps his hair, inspired by empty patches, would spring back thicker and more resilient than ever?