She walked over to her friend, embraced her tightly. Tensions had been steadily rising over the last several months, more so since Lord Mountbatten formally announced the Partition the previous week. Delhi was no longer safe for her Muslim friends and Deepa’s heart felt heavy under the weight of it all, like it might plunge her into some kind of an abyss, the way a wave drags sand into the ocean. Was this grief? She had been lucky in life. She had never experienced it before.

“Please be careful, Faseelah,” she said.

Deepa had once considered herself adept at offering comfort to her friends when they needed it, of always knowing the right thing to say. But these words were all she could muster, and in the midst of this crisis, they seemed shallow. Muslims were being forced to flee north. Deepa wondered how many more times she’d be able to hug her friend and how long it would be before she learned that Faseelah and her family, too, had escaped to what would become the new Pakistan.

“You be careful too,” Faseelah said, squeezing Deepa’s hand.

A sea of white salwar suits, hijabs, and bobbing black braids crowded the central corridor of St. Magdalene School for Girls. Here, and in the school’s courtyard, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Christian, Buddhist, Parsi, and Jain students gathered together as they always did to study together or exchange gossip. It could be easy to forget that India was on fire when Deepa saw the love and laughter shared between her classmates regardless of their faith.

The Sisters monitored the commotion, wished students a blessed day with prayerful hands, bowed their wide, habited heads, hoped that some of the students might make their way to confession at the chapel, rather than heading directly home.

Outside, three-wheeled rickshaws lined up in rows. The rickshaw wallahs’ arms slung over their eyes like blindfolds, their chests heaved in slumber. The edges of their white lungis waved like flags in the breeze. Upon hearing the rush of children, the drivers unspooled their limbs, mounted their seats.

Deepa scanned the grounds. When she couldn’t find Sri and his rickshaw, her usual means of transportation to her parents’ medical clinic, she sought shade under a harsingar tree. Its white petals framed her face like mogras on a bride’s wedding day. She inhaled their sweet scent.

Another set of bells rang, another set of doors flung open, this time belonging to St. Francis, the boys’ school adjacent to the girls’ school. Students tore through the wrought iron gates, play-punched shoulders, knocked books out of one another’s hands.