She is in with her mother early, to help with the extra cleaning and cooking the prasad. A little brown monkey, she darts from room to room, but old enough to know not to get too close to the vase on the shelf, and the big glass fruit bowl, or the porcelain figurines on the side tables. She has already broken one vase earlier, and Khudima is strict.

Khudima has kept a strict eye on the preparations. The house has been cleaned to a squeaky sparkle, especially the mandir. It has a raised platform with numerous idols and prints, copper tumblers, pieces of red brocade and turmeric yellow muslin, dried petals, incense stick holders and even a tiny bed and swing set for one of the gods.

She would watch Khudima in the mornings, gingerly taking God out of his bed, from under mini blankets, bathing him in milk and water, drying him gently, dressing him in fresh clothes, and placing him lovingly back in the swing for the day, along with his Goddess. It reminds her of her own doll, who she bathes and brushes her hair and dresses in sets of old doll clothes.

Adults playing with dolls, she chuckles in her head.

She has never come in early enough to see the goddess being pampered. Maybe goddesses are up earlier than the menfolk, like ma, she concludes.

There are fresh flowers in the house everyday, but today the house is fragrant with the special scents of puja flowers. Spread in front of the platform is the samagri - plates full of rice, fruit, sweets, fat marigolds and blood red joba, durba, new packets of dhoop, rupee notes, square mats for people to sit on. Bhajans waft softly from the music system.

Didi, however, is still hunched on her desk, scratching with multiple pencils on her sketchbook.

You haven't showered? You aren't ready for the puja?

Didi doesn't look up. I am not needed today.

She looks at Khudima to solve this puzzle.

This puja is for the men only, khudima explains.

She goes into the kitchen to help her mother, heating the oil for the luchis, ready to fry at the end, so they can be eaten hot. The aloor dom has to be tempered and the semolina roasted in ghee for the halwa.

Start the luchis as soon as I am done. Ma will roll the dough out and she will dunk them in the sizzling oil, and watch them puff up into round, golden perfection. There's not a child that doesn't love luchis, but they are to be offered to god first.

Khudima will save Prasad for her when she comes back for the evening cleanup, she won't be there to watch the prayers. The priest chanting mantras, interspersed with the holy bells and manjira, will ask for the names of the males in the house. The prayers are offered in the name of and by the males of the house, the first-class citizens, those that God listens to. They get first dibs on blessings.

Why does Khudima, a woman, so proudly claim that this puja isn't done for women? Khudima is the manager of the house. She watches everything with an eagle eye, keeping the kids in line, their studies, exercise, TV time, that they are well fed, neatly pressed for school, and never have a notebook missing in their bags. The adult lives are managed equally neatly, from lunchboxes to missing buttons to the driver not reporting for work, it's Khudima who has the keys to everything. Khudima doesn't know computers, but she is still the one who has the wifi password, written down on a piece of paper neatly tucked inside the little notepad by the phone.

Didi, I get why I can't be here, but why can't you?

Didi looks up. Hmmm?

It's how the Gods want it, why are you so bothered?

Well, I am who I am. But you are important. You are rich, she says.

I am? Who said that?

Well, anyone who gives away their old mobile phone for my online school is rich.

And what does rich have to do with God?

She turns towards the bookshelf, stuffed with textbooks and magazines. She sees the cover photos of the girl Didi said was shot with a gun for going to school. There's another old issue, with another little girl, a gori, but brows knit together in fury and exasperation, who apparently is always angry and talks about the world getting very hot. She doesn't get the heat though, the weather seems fine, especially when it rains and the smell of the rain on dry earth is probably even better than the smell of luchis. But that girl is in a magazine, so she must be right. And God must have seen the magazine, and their gods must listen to women - how else will she save the hot world without God's help?

Didi, is it that little girls get heard? But God has less time for bigger girls?

Didi is intrigued. Why would you say that?

Well, he seems to listen to them. She points at the magazines. Otherwise he seems to listen to men more, because Khudima says he will only listen to the men in the house during the puja.

Didi has turned her attention back to her sketchbook.

Is God a man, didi?

Arrey baba, you've seen the goddesses in the temple no?

She considers this.

Didi, will you get married?

Yes, I guess I will. Didi says absent-mindedly.

Will you then have to cook for boys?

Didi guffaws. Nope, I'll just take you along, ok?

So you will have to eat last, like Goddess?

I'm not sure, Didi looks up. It will all depend on the khudima of that house.

I'll cook for you, Didi. But I don't want to cook for boys. Is that ok?

It's a deal. I'll tell God today, Didi tells her, eyes full of quiet amusement.

She walks off, relieved. Negotiations and little, eventual toeholds are fine, she decides.

At least no one will shoot me with a gun, she reassures herself, still unaware of the nightly scars and bloody gashes that are to come, years later when she is married off to the rickshaw driver twice her age. She still hasn't negotiated with God about who he'll listen to then - when her drunk husband invokes Him because she didn't cook, while meting out to her what she deserves, or her, still calling to Him, silently, through empty, but full, eyes.

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