‘Yeah. I did that. Still do, sometimes. You think that’s what they mean by “bargaining”?’

‘Whatever.’ The Yam shot him a look that didn’t exactly give Eram the warm fuzzies. ‘But you’re doing much better than me. Probably somewhere between depression and acceptance.’

‘Is that right.’ Eram knew that he was depressed. When he had tried to tell his dad about it, Faizl had pointed out that people often confused dehydration for depression because the physiological symptoms were similar. He had encouraged Eram to drink more water. ‘How do you figure?’

‘Because you have a plan of how to move forward. A shit plan, in my opinion, but at least it’s something.’

Eram did have a plan. It wasn’t a plan to move from depression to acceptance, or any rubbish like that, though. He just wanted to remember Gehna so hard that he wouldn’t ever forget.

Each day he did one thing—only one, no more and no less—or went to one place or spoke to one person that had meant something to her. He ate the pizza at (Not Just) Jazz, which Gehna had liked because its crust was bumpy and uneven. The fries at The Chip Shop because they were sliced irregularly by hand. The sev puri outside Eros cinema because the man who made it was a little person and climbed up on a footstool to serve his customers. The popcorn at Eros itself because they still popped it old-school style on a stove, instead of using one of the giant automated machines that every other movie theatre used.

Food didn’t have to necessarily be good for Gehna to love it; it just had to be un-ordinary. She collected experience—the atypical, the arresting, the remarkable—like other people hoarded nice clothes (or whatever else people did).

‘It’s kintsugi, Rat.’ He had once asked her how come she joked openly about suicide, or didn’t cover up the scars on her arm from back when she would cut herself.

‘What?’

‘Kintsugi. The repairing of cracked pottery with gold lacquer. See, the Japanese believe that when something breaks, the breakage becomes part of the history and the life of the thing. Instead of trying to hide the cracks, they highlight them. The art of precious scars they call it.’

Eram retraced, one by one, day by day, all of the history and life of his relationship with Gehna. It wasn’t easy for him. The numbness he had felt for so long after that terrible night at the hospital gave way and he cracked open his own heart afresh each day. He walked down the Marine Drive promenade where they had almost kissed, and the Carter Road promenade where they had also almost kissed, and visited the Asian restaurant in Khar where they had actually kissed. They had done more than that even—sandwiched between Eram’s body and the golden balustrade of the staircase going down, Gehna had reached around to slip a hand into the butt pocket of his jeans. A fat man passing behind them, with his fat wife and two overweight kids, had scowled.