Smrithi stopped and held her seven-year-old daughter in her arms like a baby, brushing the sand from her face.

‘Why are you crying, Mummy?’ Ahalya asked, sitting up. She wiped her mother’s face with her small hands.

‘It’s just the sand, darling. I’ve got sand in my eye, that’s all,’ she replied, kissing her. She could smell the beach on her daughter’s skin.

•

Smrithi remembered fragments of a moment. She was five. It felt like a dream. A nightmare. A circle of men in sarongs and slippers. They carried fire. Amma told her never to touch fire. The light darted from the fire to their faces to the knives that hung at their sides. Amma told her never to touch knives. They poured the fire on her grandmother. She blazed like a bonfire. The men laughed. Ammamma screamed. Appappa ran into the fire as the skin on her grandmother’s arm slid away, like a runny egg. She took a step forward but someone held her back. ‘No, bubba, wait,’ the old man said, picking her up. She was bundled into her grandfather’s car, terrified.

She remembered hearing Appappa cry and Ammamma fight to breathe. She opened her eyes. Men and women rushed around her, a snowstorm of white coats and uniforms.

‘Stay with her, Rajan, I’ll take the child,’ someone said, a doctor, a friend.

‘No,’ Appappa wept. ‘No. You stay with Nala, take care of her, please. I’ll take the child. They’re waiting for her. I promised her mother I would take her.’

I promised her mother.

Smrithi remembered the ambulance that took her from the hospital to the airport. The sirens keened like a thousand children crying. Appappa sat between the driver and a soldier. He held her on his lap, his blackened hands over her eyes, his heart hammering against her ear.

She remembered the airport. Amma cried, the cadence of it uncontrolled and raw. Appappa held her once more.

‘Go home, get away while you can—don’t bring her back here,’ he whispered to Amma before he left.

Amma clutched her tightly, sobs and words, still shuddering forth.

Words like Kadaval, God.

And mahal.

Smrithi put her small arms around her. She knew she was safe. ‘Amma,’ she cried, ‘Amma.’

•

No one in the family had been to a wedding or a function since Dhara’s death had been agreed upon. There was no body, so there was no funeral for her, but each of them had performed the rites of mourning in their own way.