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tiny fist clutched at a finger of yours. Mine. My daughter. My life.
     
    When she woke in the night, you would wrap her in an old blue denim shirt soft with many washings. She seemed to prefer it to the gaily patterned baby things Nina and you had bought at the baby shop. And you would take her into the living room. For a while you would walk her slowly, humming under your breath, and then you would sit in the rocking chair by the window and rock her to sleep. Slowly, ever so slowly, the softness of her baby cheek nuzzling the side of your neck, her baby breath of milk and sweetness fanning the skin, the warmth of her body seeping into you. In those dark solitary hours of osmosis you knew yourself to be one with the universe and your child. If her eyelid fluttered, you felt it in the beat of your heart. If her breath paused for even a quark, you felt your heart stop: My child. My daughter. My life.
     
    His eyes feel hot and heavy. His throat aches. The dampness beneath his cheek spreads. In the grey dawn, he lies, a man felled by a thought: why did it have to happen to her?
    He draws the sheet to his chin and turns on his side, cradling the bundle.
    A sound startles him. He has never heard it before. He hears it again as it escapes his throat. A whimper, a low call of helplessness, a querulous note of fear. And then, because he can’t bear to be strong any more, he cries. Quietly at first, muffling his pain and
anguish. Only, he can’t hold it within any more. The hurt wrenches itself out of him. Jak weeps.
     
    In the morning, he wakes up with a thought: someone would remember. He would ask around. Someone would know. He leaps out of bed and rifles through his bag again. In the documents pouch is the printout. He had folded it into four and thrust it there. Now he draws it out and smoothens it on the table.
    She had sent it to him two days before she arrived here. A smiling girl, and behind her, three boys. ‘Papa Jak, these are my friends. Asha is not in the picture. The five of us are heading out on the “save the girl child” programme. I am sooo excited!’ she had written.
    Jak looks at the faces. Where are these children now? The three boys and Asha. Why didn’t they come to see her even once? Guilt, perhaps. He could understand that. That they hadn’t been there for her.
    Yet, something niggles. A feeling of disquiet at such complete silence. There have been a few calls and even a couple of visitors. But none from those in the photograph. The invisible Asha hasn’t been in touch either.
    What happened here in Minjikapuram?
    Lives changed. Smriti’s, and his. That much he knows for certain.
    The knots will need to be undone. The knots of silence that seem to surround the days before the accident. But how and where will he find that first slack in the string?

IV
    J ak unties the string carefully. He opens the newspaper wrapping and within, on a banana leaf, lies the masala dosa he ordered for
breakfast. A blob of red chilli chutney smears an edge of the dosa. A composite wave of memory and aromas rides up his nostrils. The hiss of the batter on the griddle, the dollop of ghee melting and turning the batter to a brown crispness, the onion and chilli from the chutney, the fragrance of food wrapped in banana leaf. Jak feels his mouth water.
    Despite everything, despite the world falling around our ears, our bodies will never let us forget that we are alive and needy. That our hunger has to be appeased, our thirst quenched, our desires slaked; our lives spent. There is no escaping that, Jak thinks, as his hand reaches greedily to tear a piece of the dosa.
    The boy peers anxiously at Jak’s face. ‘Is it all right? I had the sambhar and chutney packed separately!’ he says, pointing to two plastic sachets brimming with a green and brown fluid each.
    Jak nods. ‘It’s fine. What about you? I asked you to get yourself something too. I hope you did.’
    Swami smiles. ‘Shall I pour the coffee?’ he asks,