𝐕 𝐀 𝐑 𝐀 𝐍 𝐀 𝐒 𝐈

𝐀 𝐔 𝐓 𝐇 𝐎 𝐑 ' 𝐒     𝐏 𝐎 𝐕

Banaras. The city stirred long before the sun dared to rise. At three in the morning, Varanasi was already breathing, not the languid breath of sleep, but the restless, eager breath of anticipation. Every soul who called Kashi home, and every traveler who had only borrowed her for a season, felt the same pull toward the river. The Ganga Aarti was still two hours away, yet already the ghats hummed with quiet urgency, footsteps hurrying through the dark, oil lamps being carried like small captive stars. No one wanted to arrive late to witness the fire meet the water. And so the whole city rose together, in the hush before dawn, united by a single devotion.

By five, when the aarti itself would begin, the sky would soften to a pale gold and the crowds would thicken into a living tide along the steps. But now, in this fragile hour before the world woke properly, the ghats belonged to almost no one.

Almost.

In a corner where the temple lights could not reach, where the darkness pooled thick and unbroken, a lone figure moved through the water. She had come to bathe while the world still slept, while the river was hers alone. The weather was gentle, forgiving, the kind of pre-dawn calm that made the sacred hour feel suspended in time. She stood knee-deep in the holy water, and for a moment, the goddess herself might have paused to watch.

Her body was slick with the river's touch, her lavender kurti clinging to her like a second skin, betraying every curve it had been sewn to conceal. Water traced rivulets down her face, and no matter how many times she tossed her head to shake them loose, damp strands of hair kept returning to rest against her cheek, as though the Ganga herself refused to let go of her so easily. There was something otherworldly in the sight, a hush that seemed to fall even over the water, as if Varanasi, in that unwitnessed moment, had rediscovered Parvati walking again among mortals.

As she rose from the river, the ghats seemed to hold their breath with her. Her dark-brown curls, heavy with water, uncoiled slowly down her shoulders, and the first threads of morning light, still hours from full daybreak, yet somehow already finding her, wove faint gold through the wet strands. Hers was not a beauty that announced itself. It did not demand to be seen. It simply existed, quietly, and gathered every eye that happened to pass.

Her skin held the freshness of the river itself, luminous, unmarked by time. Her eyes, a deep, unhurried brown, framed by lashes too thick to be entirely fair to those around her, carried a stillness that felt ancient, as though they had listened to a thousand years of prayers rising off these very steps. When she smiled, faint dimples appeared, soft as crescent moons, gentle enough to undo even the hardest of hearts. Her lips held a natural rose hue, as if dawn had already claimed them before the sun itself arrived.

She was slender, unhurried in her movements, and yet her frame carried a soft, unstudied grace, the kind that never asks to be noticed and is noticed all the more for it. The wind lifted the damp fabric away from her only briefly before letting it fall again, and she climbed the stone steps with the unconscious ease of someone who had never once considered her own reflection.

But it was not her face, nor her form, that made her beautiful. It was the calm she carried, a serenity that seemed to settle the air around her even as the ghats stirred with early chaos. She inclined her head toward the priests with quiet respect. She stepped aside without a second thought to let an elderly woman pass. She folded her hands toward the river one final time before turning away, a silent gratitude offered to the water that had held her.

In that instant, she did not look like a woman finishing her morning ritual. She looked like something the Ganga herself had shaped, out of water, out of first light, out of an impossibly gentle heart, and released, briefly, into the world of men.

The corner where she stood remained cloaked in shadow, untouched by the temple's glow. She realized, with a small jolt of alarm, that lavender had been a poor choice for bathing, the fabric had turned nearly transparent where it clung to her. Quickly, she reached for the dry chunni she had left folded nearby and wrapped it snug across her chest, then draped a towel over her shoulders for good measure, covering herself with practiced modesty before setting off toward the dharamshala to change.

Clothes bundled in her arms, she began climbing the worn stone steps, humming faintly to herself, lost entirely in the private joy of the hour, the kind of joy that makes a person forget to watch where they're going.

That was when he appeared.

A man, dressed head to toe in black, moving with the same distracted haste that had claimed her. Neither saw the other in time. They collided, hard, unexpectedly, and in the disorientation of impact, her hands flew out and found the only thing within reach: his collar, which she seized in a fisted, unyielding grip. There was no railing to catch them, no ledge to soften the fall. They went down together onto the stone steps, and he groaned, the sound sharp with real pain, as she landed atop him, her lips grazing dangerously close to his ear.

The night, which only moments ago had been mild and unbothered, seemed to shift with them. The moon, previously content to glow, flared suddenly brighter, and dark clouds began gathering at its edges with unnatural speed. The wind changed direction all at once, gathering into something closer to a storm, as though the sky itself had taken notice of what was unfolding on the ghats below.

She opened her eyes at the sound of his pained gasp, but the darkness swallowed most of what she might have seen. Her vision, mildly weak even in daylight, gave her little to work with here, only the outline of a face, and then, impossibly, his eyes. She could not make out their color or their shape, only that he had not blinked. The two or three diyas still burning nearby offered no real light, only suggestion.

He, in turn, found himself caught in the same helpless stillness. Whatever pain the fall had caused him seemed to vanish entirely, replaced by the strange, disarming pull of her eyes, dark, luminous, searching. He did not register that he had fallen. He did not register that he was hurt. He only knew that he did not want to look away.

She blinked rapidly, trying and failing to bring his face into focus, and beneath that effort, fear began to rise. Her heart pounded so hard she was certain he could hear it. This was the first time in her life she had been this close to a man, close enough to feel his breath, close enough that escape suddenly felt impossible. She tried to rise, to pull back, to run, but before she could, he moved first. Still lost in whatever spell her eyes had cast over him, he wrapped one arm around her waist, almost without meaning to, as though some instinct older than thought had decided for him.

Her eyes went wide. Her voice caught somewhere deep in her throat and refused to surface. She could not run. She could not scream. She could not even move. And in that paralysis, something in her cracked, a quiet, devastating realization of just how powerless she felt in this one unguarded moment. Tears rose unbidden, and one slipped free, falling onto his cheek, just beneath his eye.

The touch of it seemed to break whatever trance had held him. He blinked, came back to himself, and released her at once.

The moment he let go, she scrambled backward and ran, fast, breathless, indifferent to everything except the need to be away from him, leaving him alone on the stone steps beneath a sky that had not yet decided to calm itself.

𝐇 𝐄 𝐑   𝐏 𝐎 𝐕

I ran the whole way back to the dharamshala without once looking behind me, as though the night itself might reach out and catch me if I slowed. My heart was not beating, it was racing, wild and reckless, faster than any engine on a Formula One track. I changed quickly into a maroon kurti, my fingers fumbling with the fabric, and only once I was dressed did I let myself breathe.

I had been so close to a man. A real man, breathing, warm, alive beneath me. In all my life, I had never allowed myself even accidental proximity to one, had kept careful, deliberate distance as a matter of habit, almost of instinct. And yet tonight, without warning or consent, I had ended up in the arms of a stranger whose face I had never seen, whose name I did not know. Thank god, thank every god watching over those ghats, that he hadn't seen mine either.

But strange as it was to admit, even to myself, some small, treacherous part of me had felt something close to good in that moment. For those few suspended seconds, I had forgotten the crowd, forgotten the darkness, forgotten every worry I carried. I had simply existed, lost in something I couldn't name.

No. What was I even thinking? How could I let my mind wander somewhere like that?

Then, with a jolt, I remembered, in my haste, in the scramble to escape, I had left my dupatta behind. It had been resting over my chest, and when I scrambled up, it must have slipped, fallen, been left draped somewhere on him.

Hey Mata Rani, I thought, sending up a small, exasperated prayer, we came to Banaras hoping to find a little peace, and instead the very first night hands us this. No more tests, please. Not tonight.

Now I was left with two choices: retreat to the hotel and pretend the night had never happened, or stay and let the Kashi Vishwanath Aarti carry away what remained of my nerves. After a moment's hesitation, patience won. I decided to stay. Whoever that man was, he had surely gone his own way by now. It wasn't as though he had truly seen me, not in that darkness, not with diyas too dim to reveal anything more than shape and shadow. Even if our paths somehow crossed again in the honest light of day, he would never recognize me. And even if some impossible memory lingered, I told myself firmly, it wouldn't matter. I was only a tourist here. I would leave, and Banaras would keep its secret.

So I stepped out and let the Kashi Vishwanath Aarti wash over me, and something in its rhythm calmed the storm inside my chest. By the time the Mangla Aarti began, I had already forgotten the tremor in my hands, the heat of that unexpected closeness. There was only serenity now, only the thick, unhurried devotion hanging in the air like incense smoke.

If love is ever meant to exist, I thought, watching the flame rise and fall in the priest's hands, let it be like Mahadev and Parvati's, vast, and quiet, and eternal.

By half past five, the rituals had folded themselves closed for the morning, and I made my way back toward the hotel I had booked for our stay. When I finally pushed open the door to our room, I found Chaya exactly where I expected, dead asleep, utterly unmoved by the sunrise, the noise of the street, or the fact that the day had technically already begun without her.

Oh my god, I thought, shaking my head at the sight of her. What kind of person sleeps like this? A Kumbhakaran, without question. If left undisturbed, she would happily surrender her entire day to sleep, indifferent to earthquakes, indifferent to storms, indifferent to the world entirely, until someone forced her awake. And even then, waking her only unlocked her true form: eating, talking, arguing, all at once, as though she were making up for lost time.

I tried gently first. I shook her shoulder, softly, coaxingly. Nothing. Not even a stir. Undeterred, I tried again, my voice calm and even.

"Chaya, utho. Subah ho gayi hai."

She groaned, burrowing deeper into the blanket. "Sone do na, mummy. Kyun humare sapno ka rajkumar humse cheena chahti ho?"

I shook my head at her nonsense and pressed on. "Chaya, yeh Haridwar nahi hai, yeh Banaras hai. Kam se kam ab to utho. Aur waise bhi, hum Jaya aunty nahi hain."

Her eyes fluttered open slowly, reality creeping in one blink at a time, and then, without even a flicker of hesitation, she pulled the blanket tighter around herself and mumbled into the pillow, "Sone do na. Haridwar na sahi, Banaras hi sahi, kam se kam vacation pe to sone do. Aur meri mata shree banna band karo."

I closed my eyes, drew a long, patient breath, and tried once more. "Pehli baat, hum vacation pe nahi hain, project ke silsile mein aaye hain. Aur doosri baat, vacation hi sahi, lekin vacation pe sota kaun hai? Ab uth jao."

She let out an exaggerated sigh, entirely unbothered. "Arre sone do na. Kal se project officially start hoga, to aaj to aaram kar sakte hain na. Hum kal shaam hi to aaye hain. Kam se kam ek hafte ka rest to milna chahiye."

I rolled my eyes, already resigned to losing this particular battle, when another voice cut cheerfully through the room.

"Rehne do, Ishu. Soti hui female Kumbhakaran kabhi apne aap se uthi hai jo aaj uth jaayegi?"

I turned toward the door to find Akshay leaning against the frame, flashing his usual bright, unbothered grin, mischief written plainly across his face. And just like that, the banter came alive, and my day truly began.

The moment his voice reached her, Chaya shot upright, eyes narrowing with a fierce, sudden alertness that no amount of shaking from me had managed to summon. "Aaye haye," she snapped, "sara din kharab ho gaya. Subah subah uthte hi kaunsa manhoos chehra dekh liya."

Akshay glanced at me, feigning offense, and dramatically flung himself onto the bed beside her. "Ho, Ishu, batao to, tumhare chehre ko manhoos bola. Main to nahi sehta. Tsk, tsk, tsk."

"Oye suar ke bacche," Chaya shot back instantly, pointing at him without missing a beat, "usse nahi, tujhe bola. Vo to meri pyaari jaan hai." She gestured at me, and I arranged my face into something innocently confused, biting back a smile.

"Oye, suar ka nahi, Rajesh Negi ka beta hoon," Akshay retorted, smirking, "zara tameez se bolo. Tumhare hone waale sasur hain, meri jaan." He punctuated it with a wink that made Chaya groan aloud.

"Cheee. Tumse shaadi karne se to zindagi bhar kunwari baithna pasand karoongi. Usse behtar hai tum jaake pehle brush karke aao."

She wrinkled her nose at him with theatrical disgust, and I stepped between them before their morning skirmish could escalate into a full-blown war. "Okay, enough, dono ke liye. Chalo, aaj free hai, to Banaras ghoom ke aate hain."

Chaya's whole face lit up instantly, sleep forgotten. "Sahi hai, main nahake aati hoon." Then, turning to Akshay with a pointed look, she added, "Aur tum, Mister, tum Neel ko bula lo yahin. Phir saath mein chalenge, warna vo aur yeh madam apna poora din kitaabon mein hi nikaal denge."

"Theek hai, jaisa aap bolti hain, devi," Akshay said with an exaggerated bow, and disappeared toward his and Neel's room.

And just like that, I was alone again, and my mind, treacherously, drifted straight back to that unknown man on the ghats, to the strange weight of the morning's incident, to the small, unwelcome flutter I felt every time I let myself remember how close we had been.

I really needed to stop this.

I was still lost in thought, staring out the window at the waking city, when I heard Akshay's voice again, this time teasing Neel about something, his hair, probably, or his shirt. I turned to see them both walk in, easy and cheerful, and something in me softened at the sight. Akshay flopped onto the bed like he owned it, while Neel, calmer as always, settled quietly onto the spare sofa.

"Kya hua," Akshay asked, glancing my way, "vo female Kumbhakaran abhi ready nahi hui?"

I shook my head, and he scoffed dramatically, right as Chaya emerged from the bathroom, freshly changed. "Aa gayi, kutte," he said, sitting up straighter.

"Okay, so here's the itinerary," he announced, all business now. "Sabse pehle hum chalenge breakfast karne, phir Sarai Ghat, and then shopping, lunch, temple visits, aur aakhir mein Assi Ghat ki sandhya aarti."

"Aur tum jaise ghade ne itna dimaag lagaya hai isse banane mein?" Chaya laughed, dabbing on her mascara without even glancing at him.

Watching her, I suddenly remembered I hadn't touched my own makeup yet.

Shaant rehti hoon, I reminded myself, but iska matlab yeh thodi na ki makeup karna band kar doon. So I sat down and did mine too, while the boys, being the patient gentlemen they occasionally pretended to be, waited without complaint. After all, when a girl is getting ready to step out, letting her take her time is simply common courtesy.

"Maine nahi, Neel ne banayi hai," Akshay corrected, gesturing toward his friend. "Poora plan dekh kar, rest, project, sab kuch. Ek mahina rukna hai, to poora itinerary to hona hi chahiye."

"Aur ummeed bhi kya hai," Chaya added dryly, "tujh jaise kam-akal bandar se." She flung her lip gloss at him without warning, and he caught it effortlessly, which was fortunate, because had he dropped it, she would have genuinely ended him over that lip gloss, despite having thrown it herself. Neel, watching the entire exchange unfold, simply looked done with all of us.

By the time we finally logged out of the hotel, we were unanimously, stubbornly determined to explore every street of Banaras on foot, no auto, no cab, nothing but our own feet and whatever the city chose to show us.

I had changed into a lavender Anarkali. Chaya and Akshay, entirely by accident, had ended up in matching beige, her kurti, his shirt, while Neel wore, unsurprisingly, blue.

Chaya and Akshay were exactly the kind of pair everyone assumed were dating, though neither would admit it aloud, and we had no real proof beyond the constant bickering. But the day I finally caught them together and they hadn't told me, I swear, they'd find me standing over them with a knife in hand.

Breakfast was simple that morning, hot kachoris and steaming cutting chai, eaten standing at a stall while the city woke fully around us. Akshay, ever the self-appointed historian, narrated the story of each ghat we passed, reciting facts we had all technically already read in the project file, though none of us stopped him. There was something charming about his enthusiasm, the way he turned dry research into performance, gesturing at crumbling stone steps as though unveiling secrets.

By the time we finally sat down to eat again, my legs had filed a formal resignation. We were all sweaty, sun-scorched, and thoroughly exhausted, moving like we'd just finished a marathon rather than a morning of sightseeing. Which, in fairness, we practically had. Even Chaya, the very architect of this ambitious walking tour, had begun muttering regrets under her breath, cursing her own itinerary between sips of water.

After lunch, though, exhaustion apparently meant nothing to her, because she was suddenly, ferociously determined to shop. And honestly, I wasn't going to argue, some quiet, familiar part of me wanted to lose myself in the narrow lanes too, in the smell of incense and wet stone and old silk, if only to stop thinking about things I had no business thinking about.

So we wandered into the local market of Kashi, weaving between stalls draped in bangles and dupattas, when the ordinary hum of the afternoon fractured.

Five or six men were hurling belongings out of a shop, cloth, boxes, someone's entire livelihood scattered carelessly onto the street, while another man sat sprawled across the passenger seat of a jeep nearby, a cigar between his fingers, radiating a kind of studied indifference. He didn't so much sit as occupy space, as though the world existed around his convenience. I couldn't make out his face clearly from where we stood, only the outline of someone utterly unbothered by the chaos he'd apparently caused.

Chaya's hand found mine before I even registered the pull. "Chalo, dekhte hain," she said, already dragging us forward, and the four of us pushed through the gathering crowd until we stood at the front, close enough to see everything and understand nothing.

An old man was on his knees in the dust, begging, not for money, not for mercy in the abstract, but for his life. His voice cracked as he pleaded that this shop, this job, was the only way he had left to earn his bread. He clutched at someone's leg, sobbing, and still no one moved. Not a single hand reached to help him. Not one voice rose in protest. The crowd simply watched, the way people watch a storm from behind glass, safe, silent, complicit.

And the man standing over him, the one whose leg the old vendor clutched, looked entirely unmoved. There was something about his face, I realized with a small, uneasy jolt, that felt familiar, though I was certain I had never laid eyes on him before. He crouched, murmured something too low for the crowd to hear, his mouth barely moving, and then rose again to his full height.

He did not look like a man who cared whether he was being watched.

And yet the moment he had stepped into view, every conversation around him had simply died.

It wasn't only that he was handsome, though he undeniably was. It wasn't only the obvious discipline carved into his frame, the black shirt straining faintly across broad shoulders, sleeves pushed up over forearms marked with veins and old, faded ink. Strength didn't seem to be something he performed. It was simply woven into him, as unremarkable to him as breathing.

The black shirt itself didn't look chosen for style. It looked like armor, dark, unadorned, stripped of anything unnecessary, as though he'd deliberately removed every soft edge from his life.

His jaw was framed by a beard that wasn't sculpted with vanity, nor left to grow wild with neglect, it sat somewhere deliberate in between, the look of a man with far more pressing concerns than mirrors. Every rough edge of him only sharpened the impression he left in his wake. His hair, dark and slightly unruly, refused to be tamed, a few loose strands falling across his forehead, softening nothing, revealing nothing.

Because there was nothing soft about him at all.

He didn't smile. Not because he was incapable of it, I sensed that clearly, but because he simply didn't need to. His expression stayed locked in something still and unreadable, a permanent quiet calculation, lips resting in a flat, level line. His eyes carried the particular weight of a man who had already seen enough of humanity to stop expecting it to surprise him.

They weren't loud eyes. They were patient, the dangerous kind. The sort that measured a room before he ever took a single step into it, that never darted nervously from one thing to another but lingered, studied, filed everything away for later.

A predator never rushes. Neither did he.

I had always believed fear announced itself loudly, through shouting, through violence, through visible rage. Standing there, I understood how wrong that assumption was. Real fear was quiet. It walked into a room dressed in black, rolled its sleeves once without ceremony, and simply waited.

That was exactly what he reminded me of.

Power, entirely without performance. Violence, entirely without spectacle. A man who never had to prove his danger, because everyone around him had already, instinctively, arranged themselves as though he were.

Even standing motionless, he looked prepared for conflict. His shoulders stayed loose, deceptively relaxed, but there was an unmistakable readiness threaded through every line of him, nothing wasted, not a glance, not a step, not even a breath.

His body carried the unmistakable evidence of someone who trained not for admiration but because weakness had simply never been permitted as an option. Lean muscle shaped the fabric stretched over him; his forearms were thick with the kind of strength earned through work, not gyms. His hands, calloused and rough, spoke a truer language than any watch or ring ever could.

Hands built to protect.

Or to destroy.

Depending entirely on which side of him you happened to stand.

People so often mistook loudness for power. He was nothing like that. He was silence, and silence, worn by the wrong man, could become its own kind of threat.

And then, almost against my will, I noticed his eyes.

I don't fully know why. Perhaps because everything else about him seemed to warn me to look away, and yet those eyes refused to let me obey.

Dark, not simply brown, but dark enough to seem as though they swallowed light rather than reflected it. There was something unnervingly still buried inside them, something that didn't wander in search of approval or amusement the way most eyes did. They observed. They measured. They calculated, endlessly, silently.

Those weren't the eyes of a man who stumbled from one street brawl to the next for sport. They belonged to someone who had survived far too much to waste a single unnecessary reaction. Beneath that stillness, I sensed something closer to exhaustion, not the kind that came from sleepless nights, but the kind that settled in after watching pieces of yourself disappear, one after another, until you stopped counting. It was buried well, nearly invisible, and yet, once seen, impossible to unsee.

His gaze swept the street with practiced precision, every exit, every parked vehicle, every unfamiliar face cataloged in the space of seconds. Not curiosity. Instinct.

The realization unsettled me more than I wanted to admit. No ordinary thug watched the world like that.

His eyes reminded me, absurdly, of old temples in the hush after evening aarti, calm on the surface, and yet holding centuries of buried storms within their walls. They frightened me precisely because they revealed nothing. No anger. No excitement. No impatience.

Only control.

Absolute, unshaken control.

And somehow, impossibly, I felt I had seen them before.

Not him. His eyes.

The thought struck so suddenly that I frowned at myself, annoyed by my own mind. Where? In a newspaper photograph? On some forgotten television segment? Across a crowded ghat during last year's Dev Deepawali, lost among a thousand other faces? A dream, perhaps?

No. Dreams rarely left behind eyes remembered this clearly.

There was something hauntingly familiar about them, as though they had crossed mine once, years ago, in a moment too small to register at the time and too significant, apparently, to ever fully forget.

He hadn't looked at me. Not once. And yet I couldn't shake the strange, certain feeling that if he ever did, he wouldn't simply see a face in a crowd.

He would remember it.

Ridiculous, I told myself firmly. I had never met this man. I was certain of that much.

And still, the familiarity clung to me, faint and persistent, like the last trace of incense lingering in the air long after the prayers had ended.

His eyes carried stories no one had ever been invited to hear, older than the rest of him, weighted by choices that had clearly stopped troubling his conscience long ago. There wasn't cruelty in them, not exactly.

There was consequence.

And the frightening truth about consequence was that it rarely needed to raise its voice to be understood.

Those were the eyes of a man who had learned, somewhere along the way, that violence didn't need drama.

It only needed efficiency.

I had spent years buried in history books, empires, kings, wars, the slow architecture of power across centuries. And if there was one thing every ruler who had truly inspired fear shared, it was this: they never needed to prove themselves. People simply already knew.

Standing there in his plain black clothes, his expression carved from stone, his shoulders loose despite the tension coiled invisibly around him, he looked less like a street criminal and more like a king who had wandered, by some cruel accident, into the wrong century.

Perhaps he was nothing more than another Banarasi gunda drunk on borrowed power and a handful of loyal fists. Perhaps that was the whole, unremarkable truth of him.

But something about those maddeningly familiar eyes insisted otherwise.

I dismissed the thought as quickly as it had come. I had a project to finish, temples to document, research to complete, far more pressing concerns than a mysterious man dressed entirely in black and the strange, unwelcome pull he seemed to exert without even trying.

So I looked away.

And then he began beating the old man.

I watched, frozen, as did everyone else around me, the whole crowd rendered mute and motionless, as though collectively deciding that watching was safer than intervening. Perhaps I was still too new to this city, too unfamiliar with its silences, but I hadn't come here looking for a fight, and I certainly hadn't come looking for an enemy. Still, wrong was wrong, regardless of geography, and someone, surely, had to say so.

The old man was nearing the edge of consciousness now, blood at his mouth, while the man in black showed no flicker of remorse, striking him again and again like something had switched off inside him, indifferent entirely to the vendor's age, to his frailty, to the plain fact that he might not survive this.

Even if the old man had done something wrong, and what could an old man possibly have done to deserve this, this wasn't justice. This was cruelty dressed up as consequence. Hamare Haridwar mein to aisa nahi hota, I thought helplessly, my chest tightening with something between fear and fury.

He raised his hand again, ready to strike once more, and blood was already sliding from the old man's mouth. This was too much. Someone needed to get him to a hospital, and no one, not one person in this entire crowd, could keep standing here, watching a man be murdered in broad daylight while saying absolutely nothing.

I wrenched my hand free from Chaya's grip. She was angry too, I could see it plainly on her face, but when she looked at me, the warmth I usually found there had cooled into warning. She shook her head, slow and deliberate, a silent plea: Mat karo. Hum bas thode din hi hai idhar.

I wanted to tell her that this was exactly why we had to stand against it, because what if, in those very same few days, something like this happened to one of us instead, and no stranger in the crowd bothered to move either?

He was raising his hand to strike the old man again when I caught his wrist and —

I slapped him. Hard. Across his cheek. In front of the entire, breathless city of Banaras.