And from the pan drifted the misty shape of a man; his white hair caught the moon’s glow. His head was turned in the direction of Anjali Auntie, as though he could not see me at all. And another figure: a young man, early twenties at best, whose impish smile I could see even from here; he, too, looked at Anjali Auntie, his younger sister. And then a third: a girl with frizzy hair and a glower that I couldn’t see from here but that was surely there, wrinkling her face. I waited to make out her expression—if I could just see how she looked upon me from death to life, then maybe I’d know if I had been or would be forgiven, one day. But it was just the shape of her, distinct yet cloudy, so all I knew was that she was regarding me. I didn’t know if I’d ever know how to parse that regard. I took one step toward them on the rocky bank, but their figures seemed to quiver, as though at risk of dissipating if I got too close, so I stayed where I was.

The three of them, Shruti and Lyall and Vivek, and perhaps still others I couldn’t even see at all, bent alongside the gold digger and plunged their hands into the river, collecting whatever we were giving back to them.

Our offering seemed meager, but they shone at the sight of it.

The Bombayan began to recede first, like fog lifting, and then the others followed him. In a moment, there was again a sudden shock of crooked yellow light. It came and was gone so quickly, and the night went dark as all the shapes from our past took rest.

I dipped my hand into the now alarmingly cold river, disturbing its stillness.

I didn’t and don’t have a name for what happened that night. In the months that followed, all I got from Lakshmi Joshi and her non-hermeneutical approach to history was that there are some mysteries a person needs to accept, some logics to which we are all subject, whether or not we believe we opted into them.

“We had to give it back,” she said of the gold. “I was not sure. But thought maybe something would happen. To think about gold like some offering.”

Or, like returning offspring to its ancestor.