She glanced up for a second. "It's a rose."

Ravi smiled. He pointed to the newest bloom, a tight-fisted bud just beginning to show a sliver of pink. "Look, Meera. Look closely."

It grew in a clay pot on the balcony of his small flat in Old Delhi, a spot just large enough for a wooden stool, a chai cup, and the thorny tangle of stems he called Gulab . Not just any gulab— his gulab. Its flowers were the color of a bride’s lehenga, a deep, heart-cracking pink that turned crimson at the edges, as if the petals had been dipped in ink and then in fire.

She sighed but put the tablet down. For a full minute, they both watched. The sun shifted. A honeybee arrived, hovered, decided against it, and left. A single dewdrop slid down a thorn and vanished into the soil. And then—Meera gasped.

"Dada," she said one winter morning, not looking up from her game. "You just sit and watch that old flower every day. Isn't it boring?"

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