Tw // death, suicide Bulbuli was my cousin. She lived in the village bordering mine, and we met every other day, or atleast once a week till I lived in the village. We remained fairly close even after I shifted to the town. Trips to her house were frequent. We were in the same class, I studied in the fancy convent - courtesy of my working parents, while she was left in a half-walled broken school beside my house, because her absentee jobless father and a dead mother could not afford much. She used to come over to our place after her school was over and we used to play all sorts of games. We had a small mandir, called "gukhai-ghor" in Assamese, which had a small verandah. One of us used to take the verandah as a make-shift house, while the other used the concrete slabs attached outside our living room. The leaves of the money-plant near the gukhai-ghor served as currency. We made small pots and pans from mud which often cracked but we played with them anyway. There would be ...