She placed both her hands clinically on the animal. It bore the topography of torture: a patchwork of tearing, scorching, scarring and healing flesh. She pinched her skin one last time. It was embroidered with a familiar labyrinth of tiny violet veins, leading inwards, seeking her hidden heart. She could reach in and remove it; she had done it once before.

•

Nala sat with Rajan on their wicker sofa in the early evening coolness. The verandah at the back of the house looked over a rich and chaotic garden. Despite brittling arthritis and dementia, Archi had continued planting, harvesting and replanting until her death last month. She had coaxed life from the earth for almost a hundred years. Her anthuriums sat pinkly and proudly, their central spadix stiff like pointed fingers, scolding the creeping gardenia beneath. Her orchids were shameless in beauty and abundance. The furred petals of her heliconias looked like a pyramid of king parrots, nesting in red and yellow symmetry. Nala mourned her grandmother, but she felt her presence in the life around her.

Carlo joined them. He was ageing but he still loped behind Nala like a puppy. He jealously pushed Rajan’s hand out of the way, putting his own head in her lap for her to stroke his ears. She pushed back on Carlo and reached for Rajan’s hand, taking it in her own once more.

‘This is our fault, Nala. We spoiled him,’ Rajan said, eyes ahead, voice deflated.

‘We have spoiled him. But this is love and he’s adamant,’ she replied.

‘Love? What is love at his age? Nothing but a passing fancy. What does he know of the love required by marriage?’

‘The love required by marriage?’ she repeated. ‘Oh Rajan, you are too romantic,’ she laughed tearfully. He pulled his hand away, but she pulled it back and refused to let go.

‘I loved my parents, and I did what was asked of me. He should do the same,’ he said quietly.

‘Yes, we both did. But children are changing, our world is changing—you keep telling me this yourself,’ she replied.

‘And now you throw it in my face?’

‘I’m not throwing anything anywhere, Rajan. He says he will raise his children as Hindu and Buddhist. They will be both.’

‘You can’t be both, you are either one or you are the other.’

‘And we have always been the other, here in our own home. We live in danger because of it. Keeping to ourselves only makes us a clearer target. I see that now. But Nandan and this girl, they will marry, they will love each other and have beautiful children together—imagine the possibility that they might be safer Rajan if, instead of being one or the other, they are the perfect combination of both. Think about that,’ she said softly.

•