Friction: Short story ‘Games at Twilight’ by Anita Desai.
This is one of the stories included in friction category in the syllabus of Department of English, National University of Bangladesh. The story is given below:
Games at Twilight
It was still too hot to play outdoors. They had had their tea. They had been washed and had their hair brushed, and after the long day of confinement in the house that was not cool but at least a protection from the sun, the children strained to get out. Their faces were red and bloated with the effort, but their mother would not open the door, everything was still curtained and, shuttered in a way that stifled the children, made them feel that their lungs were stuffed with cotton wool and their noses with dust and if they didn't burst out into the light and see the sun and feel the air, they would choke.
'Please, ma, please,' they begged. 'We'll play in the veranda and porch — we won't
go a step out of the porch.'
go a step out of the porch.'
'You will, I know you will, and then—'
'No — we won't, we won't,' they wailed so horrendously that she actually let down the bolt of the front door so that they burst out like seeds from a crackling, over-ripe pod into the veranda, with such wild, maniacal yells that she retreated to her bath and the shower of talcum powder and the fresh sari that were to help ; her face the summer evening.
