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

their bed. Suddenly, seized by unreasonable anger, he rushes to the window,
tempted to throw a stone at the Coke hoarding on the other end of the street.
Bhaveshbhai thinks he can hardly be blamed, for today it is quieter than
the usual mornings. Devoid of the news paper boys, the milkman’s impatient
doorbells, bicycle bells, and pressure cookers whistling away in the two or three
story buildings of the shaded Adenwala lane, Matunga, like the rest of the
Bombay, hibernates this holiday morning. Bhaveshbhai turns away from the
window and a patch of sunlight on the floor, to walk back into the high ceilings
and cool recesses of his home, across the long corridor that connects all the
rooms, the hall and the kitchen.
When he was young, the roads filled up with prabhat pheris and spirited
“Vande maataram” on Independence Day. The residents of Adenwala road had
the events planned out and practiced months before: Ramayan skits (before the
advent of the modern Ramayan fad), bhajans, recitation of patriotic poetry and
after the flag hoisting, a breakfast of jalebi and ganthia that the women of the
neighbourhood had stayed up the whole night preparing. He too could never
recall sleeping on the night of the fourteenth. There was too much excitement
and too many things to look at: pandals being set, torans being tied, and mikes
and speakers checked with a soft tap and “Check 1...2...3”.
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