Why this Amma is acting like this and all only I don’t understand. She is making her eyes go round round like one fan. But who will tell her to relax little? Ha?

Maa would tell you an entirely-too-long story about the night of my birth, shuddering as she narrated the way my wriggling, wet body shot out of her and landed on the floor with a wet thwack.

He smiles at Sandhya and looks away. It’s another new, mysterious habit of his. He coughs discreetly into his elbow. There’s a curtain of acrid smoke suspended in the room, drifting in from his open kitchen where the parathas were fried.

“If I could get my hands on that bloody umbilical cord, I would wrap my fingers around it and drag him back to me, just like that.”

“Who is John Galt?” someone hooted from among the seated crowd. Atlas shrugged. “Cheeky,” he said, nodding his head and smiling to himself as the joke dawned on him.