My mum has been largely confined to her hospital bed in her room for a while. The blood supply to her brain fails, the condition possibly temporary, probably exacerbated by the summer heat. If she sits up for too long she collapses.

And here I am again, jet-lagged and weary from my regular schlep across the world and nights on its most uncomfortable bed. I keep nodding off but will myself awake in case she might look up at me. Every time she sees me she smiles, pleased for a visitor to break her horizontal monotony. But I could be anyone: she probably doesn’t recognise me.

What’s going on on her mind? The sisters say she’s otherwise responsive: her condition is, in many ways, better than when she arrived here four years ago and she is no longer given any psychiatric medication. She feeds herself and understands when her nurses talk to her. But both the Dr and Sister Suvarna were at pains gently but subtly to remind me that she’s no longer a young woman.

What is she thinking now? Does anything go through her head as she lies, occasionally blinking and gurgling? There can’t be much to this life. She is fragile and tiny. Who knows whether she still wishes to trundle on?

When I last came to see her in January it was obvious that she was still recovering from the infection that nearly finished her off. She was diminished and sleepy and I crept away, not wanting to disturb her, to prolong her wakefulness if she preferred restorative sleep.

Now I sit her by her bed for an hour, two hours, aware that these might be her last smiles for me.