The Shadow Lines

The Narrator reflects on his grandmother. In 1962, he is 10 years old and she, at 60, has just retired from teaching at a girls’ school. One change she had made at the school was that each girl would learn how to cook something from a part of the country other than the one in which she was raised. On the day of her retirement, each girl brings her a dish prepared in her honor. On the day after her retirement, the Narrator says that his grandmother is happier than he has ever seen her. But days later, he comes home and hears his crying mother talking to his father. She says that the grandmother nags her constantly.

One afternoon, as he is walking home with his friend Montu, they think they see a man in a turban in the window of his grandmother’s room. The Narrator rushes inside and goes up to her room. He finds his grandmother inside with a hot towel wrapped around her hair. His mother explains to him that it is a treatment—his grandmother thinks she is going bald. Soon, his grandmother starts visiting the school again, complaining about how everything is being handled in her absence.