Chapter 2: Plant response to elevated CO2 - DRUM - University of ...

forgotten my Mom? I peeked outside, it looked dark, sinister. I looked at Mami,
“Mami will you come with me? Can we go check?” but she was feeding Vama,
the Farex drool dribbling on her bib.
I couldn’t sit at home worrying any longer. I stepped out. The gate opened
slowly; it needed to be oiled. As soon as I was out, I yanked off my kolhapuris,
held them in my hand, bunched together, and ran and ran. Darkness quickly fell
back behind me and the cool night air rushed past my face. Breathless I reached
the temple, climbed up the stairs. Suddenly I realized I was wearing the same
sky blue dress and was afraid of the lemon tree women identifying me. I looked
around till a few old people shushed me. I flew down the marble steps with a
heart that suddenly seemed to be throbbing everywhere in my ears, my wrists
and in the veins of my throat, my knees. Outside the temple compound the black
soil felt cool, metallic under my feet. The broken moon, cast a deathly pale light
on the dark trees, the small cement structures and the tall iron gates.
All of them had a strange whitish glow and it glimmered and shimmered,
a vaporous white, sometimes near, at other times far away. It was silent,
deserted, devoid of human voices, the further I walked from the temple towards
home. Only the dogs howled, sometimes far away, at other times closer. Black
clouds seemed to be marching away in a solemn procession and the moon was
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