“August arrived without rain. The without-rain being: not the normal August pause (the pause that Pune's monsoon sometimes took — a few dry days between wet spells, the dry-days being the monsoon's breath between exhalations). This was: cessation. The monsoon stopped. The stopping being absolute — no drizzle, no clouds heavy enough to produce anything, the sky transitioning from monsoon-grey to a blue that was wrong for August, the wrong-blue being the colour of January sky appearing in monsoon month and the appearing being: the anomaly's latest expression.”