ABSTRACT
Many a time I have seen her seated on the floor, busily pre paring vegetables while one foot-an apparently wholly un concerned foot-kept the cradle rocker in regular motion. The baby she was rocking was not her own. She was the older wife and her three surviving children, out of eleven, were grown up. She did not know her age, but only that she had passed the climacteric, and had to dye her greying hair black with a mixture of henna and a greenish powder. I would put her in the early fifties.
