The Living. Anjali Joseph

      

      

       Copyright

      4th Estate

      An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

       www.4thEstate.co.uk

      First published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2016

      Copyright © Anjali Joseph 2016

      Anjali Joseph asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

      Cover photographs: © Suparat Malipoom / EyeEm / Getty Images (top); © Rahul Kattayil / Getty Images (bottom)

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

      This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

      Source ISBN: 9780007462841

      Ebook Edition © March 2016 ISBN: 9780007462827

      Version: 2017-05-26

       Dedication

       To my parents

       Epigraph

      The wise grieve neither for the living nor for the dead.

      Bhagavad Gita, 2.11,

      translated by Swami Sivananda

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Part I: Shoes

Chapter 1: A long way from the morning

Chapter 2: Like heavy water

Chapter 3: Nothing’s new

Chapter 4: A person who could be looked at

Chapter 5: Life was simple

Chapter 6: The day and what it wanted

Chapter 7: Waiting

Chapter 8: People want everything to look perfect

Chapter 9: When I’m tired

Chapter 10: There was weather

Chapter 11: The smell of the ink

Chapter 12: Sunny delight

Chapter 13: He doesn’t look like his dad

Chapter 14: A spotlight

       Chapter 15: This is better

       Chapter 16: Autumn couldn’t ever come

       Chapter 17: The cars carried on passing

       Chapter 18: That feeling

       Chapter 19: Alphabetti spaghetti

       Chapter 20: Ash

       Part II: Chappals

       Chapter 1: A small temple

       Chapter 2: Is it time?

       Chapter 3: Ghost story

       Chapter 4: All in the head

       Chapter 5: The hides

       Part III: Shoes

       Chapter 21: His good white shirt

       Chapter 22: A bottle of something

       Chapter 23: The way she is

       Chapter 24: Summer doesn’t have a date