Then Indians are not taught how to leave, nor how to be left. It isn’t in our vocabulary. We’re only taught how to stay despite absolutely everything. That’s partly why we don’t behave well. We think there won’t be any consequence to behaving badly.”

He missed India, for although he understood nothing, he felt at home in the story; he enjoyed the arguments presented, the conundrum that might conspire to be threatening or merely silly.

Pooja had been to a proper restaurant only a few times in her life, and if you were going to be in a restaurant only a few times, so much rode on the choice that it was impossible to decide. It was harder yet because of the unstable sand, waves, breeze, and moon.

You yourself feel like a cheat when you discover your father has cheated you. The whole world becomes a lie.

How strange it was that Sunny should feel what he felt—and he couldn’t easily define it—in his teeth. It was a combination of curiosity, disappointment, joy, suspicion, sadness, pity, envy.

Satya had been brave. He had been adventurous. Satya’s life was becoming a true story.

My grandfather sent you a marriage proposal on my behalf.”

Said Sunny, “We were fated to meet.”

“How embarrassing.”

They drove down country paths, looped back, and returned to where they started, lost themselves anew in a spread-out landscape of hamlets and paths that puzzled through the fields and coconut groves, making sense only to those who lived there, unfolding according to the history of the inhabitants.

Red grit in her slippers, yellow-gray evening in her hair, shrieking birds, darkening tombs, Sonia fell into her own depression and thought that this, here, was the end of love, surely. How could new love grow in this sad city forest?

War was never noble; it turned on itself