“He kissed her. In the courtyard. Next to the neem tree stump. Under the Dussehra sky. The kiss tasted like filter coffee and jaggery and the specific, irreplaceable flavour of a moment that Meera had been too afraid to want and that had arrived anyway, the way all the best things arrived — not on schedule, not according to plan, but in their own time, in their own way, in a courtyard in Mysore on a night when the sky was clear and the fear was still there but the love was bigger.”