What now?

Bhabani Bhattacharya's story 'Glory at Twilight' opens on a slow train that has stopped between fields. Satyajit reaches for a cigarette, then stops himself: his smoking is now rationed. That small denial tells us something has gone badly wrong.

Satyajit had risen from a humble clerk to Managing Director of a bank, through luck, hard work and strong will.

Now the bank has collapsed. His shares, his house in the city and his two cars are all gone.

His wife is with her parents in Delhi, where she has just given birth to their first son. She does not know the full extent of his ruin. To send her money, he sold his diamond ring.

Bhattacharya writes some sentences as fragments, such as 'The amazing tempo of it all.', to copy the way Satyajit's thoughts rush through his mind. Over and over, he asks himself: 'What now?'

Small denials, like the rationed cigarette, show us a great fall.