“We drove south. The Pune-Satara highway unfolded — the ghats rising on either side, the Western Ghats in their early-morning aspect: dark green, misted, the kind of landscape that looked like it had been painted by someone who understood that beauty was not about precision but about suggestion. The fog sat in the valleys like cotton in a jewellery box, and above it, the peaks were sharp against a sky that was transitioning from grey to blue with the gradual confidence of a thing that happened every day and didn't need to rush.”