Money · The Salt Road · Pulse Beat
The numbers did not add up, and Kavita, who was good with numbers, could see why. She went through the accounts on the kitchen table with a pencil. The pans had made a loss for three years. The loans…
The numbers did not add up, and Kavita, who was good with numbers, could see why.
She went through the accounts on the kitchen table with a pencil. The pans had made a loss for three years. The loans to the cooperative were not paid. A pump had broken in the spring and been mended with a loan from a man in the next village, at an interest that made her wince.
"Why didn't he tell us?" she asked.
"You'd have told him to sell," said Mohan.
"Of course I would have! It's failing, Mohan."
"It's not failing, it's..." He stopped. He was twenty-nine and exhausted and had not slept properly in a week. "It's the last of something. The salt makers in Kutch were four hundred families when Papa was a boy. They're sixty now."
Jayesh, at the end of the table, said nothing. He was looking at the folder Mr Sethi had left. Kavita saw the way his eyes lingered on the figure, and a dark, quick suspicion crossed her mind.
"Jayesh," she said. "Are you in trouble?"
He did not answer fast enough.