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

eaches and hill‐stations, cutting short vacations, shorter. In his Dalal Street
office, his IBM laptop is permanently fixed on the Economic Times homepage,
programmed to refresh every five minutes. There, on the trading board he
responds to the dancing NASDAQ figures with a matched intuitive rhythm of
his fingers, selling and buying shares to the pulse of the market.
Preetiben wriggles to let the pleats of her handloom saree fall uniformly
across her girth. Her hands are employed in adjusting the length of her pallu and
she holds it, letting it fall below her knees. Satisfied, she picks up the safety pin
from the dressing table, one hand on the pallu and pokes it in, attaching the pallu
to her blouse. Preetiben is a careful dresser: the uniform pleats of her saree
always stay crisp and the beauty of the border of the saree, prominently
displayed beneath the folds. Her petticoats (she wears satin ones) never peep out
and her pallu falls gracefully in perfect proportion over her expansive form,
which Preetiben is very conscious of. Preetiben prefers to wrap her sarees a little
tight in an effort to create the illusion of appearing thin but has to take smaller
steps for these small manipulations.
Preetiben stood facing her cupboard for a long time this morning. Though
she has two cupboards (and a half of her husband’s) full of sarees: dazzling silks,
airy chiffons, muted kanjiwarams, staid and bulky handlooms, crisp chikan,
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