The terrain changed gradually. The central highlands and their emerald fields flattened into jungles of the Northern Province. Moisture in the air was replaced by dust. The train slowed as it approached Kilinochchi, the last major town before entering the Tamil Peninsula. She watched as groups of children ran along the track with the crawling train. They were waving to the passengers and laughing. Some were running with boxes of food—mangoes, rhambutan and fried lentil cakes—shouting outrageous prices and negotiating down when no one shouted back. Some were running with homemade kites, flying like a skein of ragged birds, swirling hungrily above them. She closed her eyes and remembered. She was playing with Mohan’s kite. He had made it himself from ekels, the thin sticks that were used to scrape the morning moss from their tongues. He formed a crucifix first, binding it with jute. Then, adding more ekels, he transformed the cross into a diamond.

‘It’s a rhombus, Nala,’ he explained importantly as he pulled a piece of silk from his pocket and stretched it across the frame. It was a delicate yellow, the colour of the heart of a frangipani.

She gasped, horrified. ‘That’s from Archi’s sari! Your Appa is going to cane you,’ she declared smugly.

‘Archi gave it to me, Nala, don’t be such a mami.’

‘I am not a mami,’ she bristled. Her mamis were all fat and bossy.

On its maiden voyage, the kite darted and dragged erratically, more like a flower tossed along the roadside than the eagle Mohan assured her he was constructing. Undaunted, he ran as fast as he could, up and down their street with Nala behind him, struggling to keep up. The kite had to be dismantled, redesigned and reassembled several times, its shiny silk body coated in ochre dust from the street. Eventually Archi agreed to take the exhausted children to the beach. Nala begged Mohan for a turn.

‘Hold on to it tightly,’ he warned, worried as her feet became entangled in the kite’s leash. They stood as close to the water’s edge as Archi would allow them, waiting to catch the wind as it galloped in from the ocean. It didn’t take long; the wind lifted the kite off the ground, and Nala released more and more string from the spool in her hands. The children watched, laughing with Archi as the kite finally soared over the water, an amber flower against the taut pink skin of the twilight sky.