April 16. “Button, come here. I want to show you a sunbeam.”

“What’s a sunbeam?”

“It’s a beam formed by sunlight peeping through an opening or a tear. Can you see those light spots?”

“Let me see.”“Where did those sunbeams come from?”

“Perhaps the holes in the tarpaulin!”

“You’re absolutely right. In fact, there are two of them because there are two holes in the tarpaulin covering the window.”

“It’s beautiful. I heard you calling Dost to show him the sunbeams.”

“I did. These are the little things in life we miss out on because of daily pressures.”

“It seems as if the sun is watching a movie where we are the actors through those holes! As kids and I’m talking of 50 years back—we used to watch movies in boxes—called ‘Bioscope’ in those days—through an aperture. A feriwala would carry these movie boxes on his head and call out ‘bioscope, bioscope’ and we would run out and pay one anna (paise) to watch a movie. Sometimes there would be a group taking turns to watch the same movie. Incidentally, the word ‘bioscope’ means movie.”