The dal has been on the fire since six. Sunita turns it with the long ladle. Outside it has been raining for three days and you cannot hear the rain, you hear the river. The Semrawal is four hundred metres from the courtyard and when it is full you feel it through the wall. You feel it with your hand flat against the wall.

Her father-in-law sits in the doorway. His name is Ramautar. He is sixty-five years old and for forty years he has sat there with his back straight against the jamb.

This morning he sits crooked.

Sunita sees him from the kitchen. She puts down the ladle. She goes to the doorway and puts her hand on his neck and the neck is cold and wet. He says it is nothing. He says it twice.

Her husband calls the ambulance at seven twenty. From the hospital in Satna they say forty minutes. At ten past eight the driver calls back and says he is stopped at Sohas, that the water has taken the road past the pylon and that he is going no further, and that he will wait for them there.

From Sohas to the courtyard is three kilometres.

Into the courtyard come Chhotu the neighbour and Chhotu's son. The boy from the shop comes. Ramkishore comes, the son-in-law, who has the tractor and who is the one who knows the road.

Ramkishore says to wait two hours. He says the water always drops by the middle of the morning. He says that this morning the current took a buffalo belonging to the Yadavs and that they found the buffalo at the bridge.

The men talk in the courtyard and the rain falls on them and nobody moves under the shelter. While they are talking Sunita has gone to the wall where the cot hangs, has untied it and pulled the four hemp cords one by one, the way you pull them when they have to hold a weight. She has stood it upright against the wall. She stays there with her hands on the two poles, still, and nobody notices until they raise their heads and see her with the cot in her hands.

Ramkishore takes off his shirt.

He throws it on the chair. He turns sideways. Above his right knee there is a mark a hand's width long, pale on the dark skin, and he shows it with two fingers.

"In July. Third bend after the pylon."

He says that there the bottom has eaten the road away. He says there is a hole as wide as a buffalo and you cannot see it, because the water above it is still and looks shallow. He says that if the cot goes over there, with a man on it, then it is his shoulders that answer in front of the whole village, and that is no small thing, and he knows it because he has already been out in that water and he knows how it pulls.

He is right. All six of them know he is right.

Sunita does not answer. She cannot say it. She has the weight of the cot in her hands and the weight is the only thing she knows how to say. So she takes the step. She sets the cot down in the mud and holds it steady with her foot, while Chhotu and his son take her father-in-law under the arms and lower him onto it. He says again that it is nothing, and he says it quietly.

Nobody has said yes. Six people move.

They leave the courtyard at twenty to nine. Chhotu and his son in front, Sunita and the boy from the shop behind, her husband and Ramkishore at the sides, and Ramkishore has put his shirt back on and walks ahead of them all and points out where to put their feet.

The water is at the ankle first. Then at the calf. Then at the thigh.

The hemp cords go taut and make a sound you can hear under the rain. The cot bends in the middle and the bend shows. Ramautar keeps his hands crossed on his stomach and does not hold on to the poles.

At the third bend after the pylon Ramkishore stops. He goes in first. He takes four steps to the right, off the line of the road, into the field, and raises his arm. They cross there. The water is higher there and the current less, and they pass in single file, one at a time, with the cot held high on their shoulders.

Sunita says the name at every step. She says it to keep the time.

Ramautar. Ramautar. Ramautar.

The boy from the shop slips once and gets up on his own. Chhotu's bag, with the old medicines in it, goes under and nobody turns round to get it.

The ambulance is past the bend, with the engine running and the headlights on even though it is daylight. It is nine twenty-five. They open the back door and load him in and the driver says two of you get in, and her husband and Sunita get in, and Ramkishore stays on the road with the others and watches them go.

The cot stays on the verge. They leave it there, propped against the signpost, with the mud running off its cords.

Inside the ambulance Sunita holds his hand. The road from Sohas to Satna is tarred and smooth and you feel nothing. She goes on saying the name, quietly now, not to keep the time now.

Ramautar. Ramautar.

And she waits for him to answer.