At the end of the ceremony, the priest began the final funeral prayer, the Sivapuranam. He chanted the 108 names of Lord Shiva, the god of destruction, whose cosmic dance sustained the universe and whose one word could end it. Rajan repeated after the priest, Hara, hara Mahadeva … I bow to the Destroyer, as he set fire to the pyre. An orange robe wrapped itself around the bodies.

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Nala ignored Rajan and boarded the Yal Devi to Jaffna. He accompanied her, silent and angry. With every jolt of the train, his hands tensed and reached forward, ready to catch the baby as though it would slip out of her, in contravention of every obstetric case study known to the medical profession. She didn’t look out the window. For the first time in her life, the beauty of the hill-country passed her by, like pages of a magazine, flicked by an indifferent reader.

In her handbag she held a small brown paper bag; the kind used by street vendors to package honeyed cashews. It was the only thing Rajan could find after the funeral to contain the ashes, picked up from the litter on the ground. From the cindered debris, he had taken a warm, powdery handful and put it in the sticky paper bag to bring back. It still smelled sweet, like burned, salted sugar. Nala’s hand rested on her bag. She didn’t know which part of Mohan she was taking home.

When Rajan had returned from Gal Oya with Mohan’s family, she had forced him to tell her what had happened. She wanted to know and remember every detail: the mass of broken people stacked in an unruly heap; the flames that spread their fingers, embracing the dead before consuming them; the skin blistering and melting, revealing muscle first, followed by bone; the many fused into one. She had thrown Rajan’s clothes out but she could still smell the smoke; it was all around her whenever she closed her eyes.

She leaned back into the frayed leather seat. Rajan had insisted on a first-class sleeper cabin. It contained just the two of them, the only sound the clatter of the train against the northbound tracks and the low, rhythmic growl of the engine as it ached towards Jaffna. From there, a cousin would drive them to Tellippalai, her village; Mohan’s village. She wanted to place his ashes in their grandmother’s garden.