Father Michael in his long black cassock jabbed his finger at an older student who had wrestled a child half his size to the ground. He taught science at both schools and was a favorite instructor among the students. He didn’t give too many exams, told jokes at the end of class. Lately though, he admonished, quite harshly, those who earned poor marks and instead sent rowdy children straight to Sister Louisa, keeper of the switches. Sister Ann, the music teacher, no longer sang cheery gospels in the mornings before classes started. All of the teachers at the two schools seemed on edge lately.

A page from a yellowed newspaper tumbled in the wind, caught onto the back of Deepa’s chappal. She plucked it off, flattened the paper on her palm. The date was October 27, 1946. Death toll high from latest riots in Bihar; citizens fearful of more bloodshed with upcoming Partition, it read. A photo showed a pile of mangled bodies in the middle of the street. Several of the charred remains, including children, were missing limbs.

She shuddered, crumpled the paper, shoved it in her bag. She and her father had listened to the radio during the sectarian violence that broke out in Calcutta, Noakhali, and finally in Bihar late last October. He smoked one beedi after another as he adjusted the dial to quiet the static.

“How can we march together with Gandhi during the day and destroy one another at night?” he had cried between puffs. “How can brother kill brother? For thousands of years, Indian identity was never so inextricably tied to religion. The blood of Partition is on British not Indian hands.”

Even if she agreed with him, Deepa often grew tired of her father’s lectures. He was a deeply opinionated man, and his politics and personality were one and the same. “When one finds God,” he always said, “one loses individuality and intellect.” He sent Deepa to St. Magdalene for the quality of the education, not the indoctrination of a higher power. She was to keep her mind focused on her books, he’d told her, not on “silly bead prayers.”

Her mother was not so rigidly anti-religion. She prayed, occasionally visited the temple, but had largely left the divine up to Deepa. And though Deepa had longed to believe in something—in a benevolent force that provided guidance, in the possibility of transcendence—only literature, the power of words, and ancient stories, had served as her anchor. She hoped they would be enough.

“Deepa,” a soft voice said. “Do you remember me?”

Little Laila wore a white salwar kameez, maroon dupatta, brown chappals. Two long braids hung passed her shoulders. A dimple stretched along one cheek. Her top gums were missing her two front teeth.

“Laila, so nice to see you again,” Deepa said, leaning over. “And how sweet you look in your uniform! Did you have a good first week of school?”

“Yes. I learned lots o’ things.”