So, she had an idea. To take what she needed. A few weeks after her exams, she rode the bus to Powai with some of her classmates to attend Mood Indigo, the big music festival hosted each year by IIT Bombay. Vivek had played with his band on those stages. It was stomach-clenching to be back in his territory, but she’d arrived on a mission. She skirted the edge of the party, passing greasy-haired communists. One of them handed her a bright flyer reading BAN ROCK SHOW: AMERICAN IMPERIALIST TRADITION before sighing, shoving the rest of his papers into a cloth messenger bag, and moseying back to his hostel, defeated that night by cultural globalization. A doomed student band from St. Xavier’s began to play George Michael’s “Careless Whisper,” and as the frank roar of boos followed, Anjali knew it was only a matter of time before someone began throwing rotten bananas and tomatoes onto the stage.

Then, at the fateful swell of a Police song, she found herself blinking at Pranesh Dayal. They had not seen each other since Vivek’s death. “I’m sorry,” he shouted through the noise.

Their recommenced walks along the lakeside in Powai were longer now. Lakshmi believed her daughter to be studying in town with her posh friends. Pranesh told her stiffly, as though he’d copped the line from a film, that she was the very picture of beauty. For his part, he had begun jogging and doing push-ups; he was, briefly, almost handsome.

When he graduated and told her he was moving to a place called Atlanta, where he had been accepted into Georgia Tech (he’d wanted Stanford), she told him to write. His letters rolled in. There are no good rotis to be found. I hope you are learning your mother’s/chachi’s recipes etc because all of us students are homesick for proper food. She held on to them as her parents began to trot grooms through the living room, each one promising her a smaller life than the last. Finally, she announced the fact of Pranesh and his correspondence. A love match to a foreign-dwelling boy was a surprise, but acceptable. There was little to arrange between families, given that Pranesh was an orphan. He came to marry and collect her. As they circled the wedding fire, she watched smoke obscure the back of his head and imagined there was more inside him she did not know.