From their own perspective, the children’s play is the most serious and the most real aspect of their lives—what Anita Desai calls “the business of the children’s day” (Paragraph 7). Play is the means by which they develop an understanding of themselves and learn the rules of the world they’re growing into. Their games are thus marked by anxieties and ambitions related to the expectations and hierarchies of that world. For Mira—an older sibling and a girl—this means that she is already taking on the role of a mother, breaking up fights and corralling the children into a semblance of order. For the young protagonist Ravi, it means that his drive to win the game—strong enough to supersede even his fear—is really a drive to prove that he can become the kind of dominating, masculine figure he sees in his brother Raghu.

In the story’s opening, the children’s mother occupies the adult role that “motherly Mira” is in training for. Her domain is the house—a domesticated space in which her role is to perform an endless series of caretaking tasks, which the children mostly greet with resentment.