IN THE SPRING OF his final year, Vivek went on holiday. He was riding with friends on the roof of a train from Bombay to Kanyakumari. They had their guitars up there, and they were strumming Dire Straits the whole way south. There was a disconnect between landscape and soundscape—their twangs did not match the dry fields laden with yellow-green brush, baking beneath the cloudless sky. They felt thick with the possibility of what awaited them over the next several years, as some of them prepared to cross oceans, to make lives of their own.

The car passed under a low electrical wire. All ducked but Vivek. Beneath the relentless Andhra Pradesh sun, having brushed twenty-five thousand volts, he sustained third-degree burns. He died atop the train, miles from his parents, from his sister, from the elder brother who had set such a standard for him.

“My dad used to call Uncle Vivek’s death very Indian,” Anita said. “A third world way to go, that’s what he’d say. He had a lot of anger against India for things like that. His parents died in a terrible bus crash in Himachal Pradesh.” She shivered and continued.

The following months were brutal at the Joshis’. Dhruv did not come home. He was waiting for his American residency to go through and claimed leaving the United States would boot him to the back of the queue. Lakshmi Joshi never forgave her firstborn. She was territorial about her grief, snapping at anyone who tried to join her weeping. “My child, my child,” she wailed. Anjali could not help thinking that her mother’s overwhelming woe was another sign that she, the daughter, was inadequate.

As the year went on, Anjali completed her exams, earning poor marks. All auspicious events, engagements included, were postponed in the wake of death, so she had some time. But soon, she would be noticed for what she was—a daughter who needed to be married off. And who could say to what type of man? It seemed a horrible fate to have to live your life with someone whose mind was smaller than your own. She wanted someone who was more than she was.