The poem reflects the speakers reflections on an ancestral house.

The poet
mentions that some things that entered the house never went out. They lost
themselves amongst other things that had similarly a history of being lost.

Cows that entered were provided with shelter and gifted with a name. Their
mating with bulls was carefully shielded from the young girls of the house
.Nevertheless these girls managed to witness the cat through holes in the
window. This points to the sheer hypocrisy in Indian society about hushing up
topics that are in reality not taboo anymore. Libary books once borrowed from
libraries never found their way back. They remained only to serve as breeding
homes for insects, and worms like the silverfish that multiplied in the office-
room of the head of the family.

Dishes that belonged to the neighbours were never returned. They came to
the house to distribute sweets to celebrate the wedding anniversary of some
god. Here the poet makes fun of the frivolity of tradition, and plurality of
religion. Servants once employed, never left the house. Gramophones
continued to remain there. On a distressing note, the poet mentions that
diseases like epilepsy that once entered the blood continued to haunt the
generations to come.

Sons-in-law who came to see their mothers-in-law or fathers-in-law never left

the house. They were asked to stay back to check domestic accounts by the
mothers-in-law; or office accounts by the fathers-in-law. They were also asked
to stay on to teach arithmetic the nieces of the family. Women who came as
wives of some male members never left the house. They were left to witness
monsoons beating against the banana plantains.

The poet then goes on to say that somethings that went out of the house did
find their way back. Bales of cotton were carried out to Manchester in the UK,
these bales returned processed as packets of cloth with heavy bills attachedto
them. The cloth was then used as loin-cloth by men of the household provided
that it was coarse; if smooth, it served the purpose of night-dress. Letters
posted by members of the family found their way back as they were redirected
by the post-offices that failed to locate the precise address.
Ideas that originated in the house conveyed to outsiders, returned to the
house as gossip. Little did the conceivers of gossip comprehend that the
rumors that they were spreading had their roots in the very house. What an
uncle once communicated to a visitor, was repeated by some other visitor to
the family, who had no idea that these ideas were initially conveyed by an
uncle of the same family The uncle may have made some passing remark that
the contents of some book written by Plotinus pertain to what some great
conquerer like Alexander the Great had looted from the territory that lay
between two rivers , and which was a breeding place for mosquitoes causing
Malaria. A beggar once sang a song outside the house in an unmusical tone;
this song was also not free from the four walls of the house, as a cook had
picked up the lyrics of the song, and sang it in a jarring voice.

Some things that went out of this house could never stay out for a longer
period of time They returned back right on time these included daughters that
were married to idiots and were therefore found to be incompatible to live with.
Or it happened that these idiots had turned them out of the house. Sons of the
house who had run away returned in the shape of their sons, because their
wives had given birth to boys. These little sons obliged the elders in the house
by reciting Sanskrit verses to them or by bringing betel-nuts for visitors with
anecdotes to tell. The sons also brought with them water from the Ganges that
could be sprinkled on someone about to die in the house.

On a poignant note, the poet ends the poem by mentioning that once ran
away returned as a corpse that had been half-eaten in the Sahara in the year
1943.Many years later, a nephew who had left the house to join the army
returned as a dead body. He had been killed in the course of a clash between
the countrys border security force and that of the neighboring countrys
security forces.