“The chai shop smelled the way it had always smelled: of ginger and cardamom and the specific, deep, smoky-sweet scent of tea leaves being boiled in milk on a gas stove that had been running since four-thirty AM. The smell was home. Not the house — the house was four streets away, with Amma and the television and the framed Vim commercial screenshot. The smell of chai was the home that preceded the house, the home that existed before memory, the smell that meant Appa was alive and the shop was open and the world was functioning.”