Smita knows that’s impossible. She cannot fight her way down to the driver. And even if she could, he would either refuse to slow down and stop or force them to get off. She couldn’t risk that. Nagarajan’s silhouette shrinks into the distance, soon he will be a tiny dot far behind them. But still he runs, in vain. Lalita is sobbing. Her father is out of sight now. Perhaps forever. She buries her face in her mother’s neck.

Don’t cry.

He will join us in the south.

Smita wants to reassure her daughter, and convince herself of the possibility, too. But nothing is less certain. She wonders what else they will be forced to let go, before their journey’s end. She consoles her weeping daughter and touches the image of Vishnu beneath her sari. All will be well, she tells Lalita. And there is comfort in her words. There will be challenges every step of the way, but Vishnu will be there, close beside them.

Lalita has fallen asleep. The tears have dried on her face, leaving faint white streaks. Smita watches the landscape slipping by through the dirty window. Beside the road, makeshift shacks, a petrol station, a school, the wrecks of small trucks and vans, chairs beneath an ancient tree, a ramshackle market, traders sitting on the ground, a shop renting the latest motor scooters. A lake, warehouses, a ruined temple, billboards, women in saris carrying baskets on their heads, a tractor. All India is there, by the side of this road, she thinks. An indescribable chaos of ancient and modern, pure and impure, sacred and profane.

The bus arrives at the terminus in Varanasi three hours late – a truck had got stuck in mud on the road and blocked the traffic. Immediately, the cargo of men, women, children, suitcases, chickens and everything the passengers had managed to cram overhead, underfoot and between them on the seats, spills out. There is even a goat, which a man fetches down from the roof while Lalita stares in amazement, wondering how he had managed to get the creature up there in the first place.

The moment they leave the bus, Smita and her daughter are caught up in the energy of the city. Everywhere, buses, cars, rickshaws and trucks loaded with pilgrims converge on the Ganges and the Golden Temple. Varanasi is one of the oldest cities in the world. People come here to purify themselves, to meditate, and marry, but also to cremate their departed loved ones, and sometimes to die. All along the ghats – the flights of steps leading down to Mother Ganges, Gangaji as the river is known here – life and death, dark and light, exist side by side, in an endless dance.