Unaccustomed Earth

“I don’t understand,” my father said.

“Neither do I,” I replied. “You haven’t wanted a picture of anything in years.”

“That’s not true.”

“It is.”

the hydrangea her father had planted, that was to bloom pink or blue depending on the soil. It did not prove to Ruma that her father had loved her mother, or even that he missed her. And yet he had put it there, honored her before turning to another woman

It might have been your child but this was not the case. We had been careful, and you had left nothing behind

I returned to my existence, the existence I had chosen instead of you.

She was the only person he’d met in his adult life who had any understanding of his past, the only woman he wanted to remain connected to. He didn’t want to leave it up to chance to find her again, didn’t want to share her with another man

On the plane from Italy his anger had dissolved, and now, in Thailand, he was left only with longing for her

She had grown up hearing from her mother that losing gold was inauspicious, and as the plane began to climb, in those moments she was still aware of it moving, a dark thought passed through her, that it would crash or be blasted apart in the sky.

She explained her reasons, reasons that had nothing to do with Navin. She told Kaushik she was not able to give up her life, not able to follow him that way. And that she didn’t expect it of him. She said she didn’t want to try to change him, didn’t want to be accused, one day, of pinning him down

The boy who had not paid attention to her; the man who’d embarked on an affair knowing she could never be his; at the last moment he was asking for more. A piece of her was elated. But she was also struck by his selfishness, by the fact that he was telling her what to do. Unlike Navin, he was not offering to come to her.

Kaushik had pulled over, rushed out, but the first thing he’d done was take a picture. “The first thing,” he told Hema. “Before even asking if they were okay.”