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

home from Bangalore and Nagpur just to wish her on 17th August each year. But
today, like every other year, she wished they had. Then she immediately
corrected herself for being so selfish. Mrs Kapur said it was nice enough that her
children remembered her birthday and she tried to tell herself that. Yet, she had
checked – it only took 1.5 hrs to reach Bombay from Bangalore. It cost four
thousand rupees, that wasn’t exactly cheap but wasn’t Varun entitled once‐ayear
paid airfare anywhere in India? Even as she contemplated, she knew she
would never ask Varun about it, or anyone else. Neither Mahesh nor Usha.
Especially not Usha with her one and a half yr old daughter (her own
granddaughter!) to take care of, and once again she thanked God that her time
raising a family had passed. Now, she rarely got up once she sat down, except
when she was in the presence of visitors or guests for she hated to look unwell
before them, and she wasn’t that weak really was she, she only had to eat well
and sleep well and things would just sort of fall into place she convinced herself,
she had to convince herself.
She looked out. The rainwater was slowly seeping in through the terrace,
into the hall. By now she guessed the trains would have stopped running, the
Kurla‐Sion tracks would have been flooded and the railway services disrupted.
She looked outside for a while then picked up the phone diary but it fell out from
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