Prologue: Dastak (The Knock)

Nagpur, August 26, 1978

The knock came at 11:47 PM, and the knock was three knocks — not two, not four, three — and the three knocks were the kind that Lata Jadhav would remember for the rest of her life because the three knocks were the last sound she heard as a child and the first sound she heard as something else.

But before the knock: the evening. The evening that was ordinary. The evening that was a Saturday in late August in Nagpur, the city that sat at the geographic centre of India and that experienced, in late August, the particular heat that the rest of India had already finished experiencing, the monsoon heat that was not the dry heat of May or the wet heat of July but the exhausted heat of August, the heat that had been heating for four months and that was tired of heating but that heated anyway because Nagpur's heat did not take vacations.

Lata was twelve. She was in the backyard — not a large backyard, the backyard of a two-storey house on Sitapur Gali, the gali that connected Dharampeth Main Road to the temple lane, the gali that was narrow enough that neighbours could hear each other's televisions and wide enough that neighbours could pretend they couldn't. The backyard had a tulsi plant (every backyard in Sitapur Gali had a tulsi plant; the absence of tulsi was, in Nagpur's Brahmin-adjacent neighbourhoods, a social offence worse than playing music after ten PM), a clothesline (the clothesline that held, at this moment, three of Lata's school uniforms drying in the non-existent breeze), and a patch of earth where Lata's mother grew coriander and mint and the particular variety of green chilli that Nagpur called "Nagpuri mirchi" and that the rest of India called "unnecessarily aggressive."

"Lata! Jevayला ये!" Lata's mother called from the kitchen window. Come eat.

Lata's mother was Vandana Jadhav. Vandana was thirty-four, worked as a secretary at Patil & Sons Construction (the construction company that had built half of Dharampeth and that was, by 1978, building the other half), and made the best pohe in Sitapur Gali — a claim that was contested by Mrs. Kulkarni at number 14 but that was, by the consensus of everyone who had eaten both women's pohe, accurate. Vandana's pohe had the particular quality that Nagpur pohe required: the flattened rice not soggy, not dry, the turmeric visible but not dominant, the peanuts roasted to the exact point where the crunch was satisfying without being dental, and the garnish of fresh coriander and a squeeze of lemon that made the entire plate taste like a Saturday morning should taste.

Tonight was not pohe. Tonight was dinner — dal-bhat, the rice and lentil combination that was Maharashtra's baseline meal, the meal that said: this is a weeknight and the weeknight does not require spectacle. The dal was Vandana's toor dal — pressure-cooked with turmeric and salt, tempered with mustard seeds and curry leaves and a single dried red chilli that provided warmth without violence, the particular Maharashtrian tempering that was not the aggressive tadka of North India but the measured phodan of a cuisine that believed in subtlety.

Lata walked inside. The kitchen was — the kitchen was Vandana's kingdom. Not large (no kitchen in Sitapur Gali was large; the houses were built for families that cooked in small spaces and ate in the same small spaces and whose cooking was calibrated to the smallness, the efficiency of a cuisine that could produce a five-item thali on two burners and a single pressure cooker). The kitchen had a gas stove (two burners, the blue flames), a steel rack (the vessels arranged by size, the arrangement that Vandana maintained with the particular obsessiveness of a woman whose life contained things she could not control and whose kitchen was the thing she could), and a window that looked onto the gali and through which the neighbour's television was audible (tonight: Chitrahaar, the Wednesday film-song programme that someone was watching on Saturday because the neighbour had a VCR, the VCR being the 1978 equivalent of declaring to the gali that your family had arrived).

"Baba kuthay aahe?" Lata asked. Where's Papa?

The question that she asked every evening. The question that had, in the last three weeks, acquired a different answer. Three weeks ago, the answer was: he's at work, he'll be home late, eat your dinner. Three weeks ago, Tushar Jadhav still lived in the house on Sitapur Gali. Three weeks ago, Tushar Jadhav's suitcase was still in the bedroom closet and Tushar Jadhav's shoes were still at the front door and Tushar Jadhav's presence was still the thing that made the house smaller — not physically but atmospherically, the presence of a man whose drinking made the rooms contract and whose anger made the walls close in.

"Baba gela," Vandana said. The same answer she'd given for three weeks. Papa's gone. Not: Papa left. Not: Papa and I are separating. Gone. The word that was vague enough to be true and specific enough to be a lie, because Tushar had not just gone — Tushar had been asked to leave, by Vandana, after the night when the asking became necessary, the night that Lata did not know about in full but that she knew about in pieces, the pieces being: the sound through the wall, the morning after when Vandana's arm was in a sling and the explanation was "I fell in the kitchen," and the suitcase that appeared by the front door and the shoes that disappeared from beside it.

Lata ate the dal-bhat. The dal was perfect — Vandana's dal was always perfect, the perfection being the control, the kitchen being the kingdom where the queen's word was law and the law was: the dal will be perfect regardless of what happens outside the kitchen. The rice was Nagpur rice — short-grain, slightly sticky, the rice that absorbed the dal and became, in the absorbing, the particular comfort food that every Maharashtrian child associated with safety, with home, with the mother's kitchen.

After dinner, Lata asked: "Aai, TV baghoo ka?" Can I watch TV?

"Ho, ja." Yes, go.

Lata watched Chitrahaar on the neighbour's sound — not on their own television (they did not have a VCR; Vandana's salary at Patil & Sons did not extend to VCRs) but through the wall, the sound carrying, the songs identifiable by melody even without the picture. Lata hummed along — she knew all the songs, the particular musical literacy of a twelve-year-old in 1978 India whose entertainment was Doordarshan and All India Radio and the film songs that floated through gali walls like ghosts of Bollywood.

At 10 PM, Vandana said: "Zop, Lata." Sleep.

Lata went to her room. The room that was — small. The room of a twelve-year-old in a two-storey Nagpur house: a bed (single, the mattress that was cotton-stuffed and that needed re-stuffing and that Vandana kept promising to get re-stuffed and that remained un-re-stuffed because re-stuffing cost money and money was the thing that Tushar's departure had made scarce), a desk (for homework, the desk that held schoolbooks and a pencil box and a photograph of Lata at age six in a frock that she no longer remembered wearing), and a window (the window that looked onto Sitapur Gali and through which the gali's nighttime sounds entered: the dog that barked at 10:30 every night, the autorickshaw that idled at the corner, the particular acoustic signature of a Nagpur gali settling into sleep).

Lata did not sleep. Lata lay in bed and listened to the gali and thought about her father and thought about her mother's arm in the sling and thought about the pieces that she had assembled into a picture that was not complete but that was clear enough to understand: her father hurt her mother, and her mother had made him leave, and the leaving was better.

At 11:47 PM, the knock.

Three knocks. On the front door. The front door that was — at this hour — bolted. The bolt that Vandana slid every night at 10 PM, the bolt that was the barrier between the house and the gali, the barrier that was not strong (the bolt was old, the wood was old, the security was the security of a neighbourhood where crime was not the regular concern) but that was present, the presence being the ritual of closing, the ritual that said: the day is done, the house is sealed, the inside is safe.

Lata heard the knock. From her room — the room that was upstairs, the sound carrying through the old house's bones, the knock audible because the house was quiet and the gali was quiet and the knock was the only sound.

She heard her mother's footsteps. Vandana going to the door — the particular footsteps of a woman who was not expecting a visitor at 11:47 PM and whose not-expecting produced the cautious walk, the walk that was not the daytime walk (quick, purposeful, the secretary's walk) but the nighttime walk (slow, careful, the mother's walk, the walk of a woman who was going to a door that should not be knocked on at this hour).

The bolt sliding. The door opening.

A voice — a woman's voice. Not Vandana's. A voice that Lata did not recognise. The voice saying something that Lata could not hear from upstairs — the words lost in the stairwell, the meaning lost in the distance, only the tone carrying: urgent, low, the tone of a person who was at a door at 11:47 PM and who needed something.

Then: a sound. Not a word — a sound. The sound of Vandana — the particular sound that a woman makes when she is surprised and the surprise is not pleasant, the sound that is not a scream but a gasp, the gasp that said: something is wrong.

Lata got out of bed. Down the stairs — the stairs that were narrow and wooden and that creaked at the third step and the seventh step and that Lata had learned to navigate in the dark by avoiding the creaking steps, the particular knowledge that children accumulate about their houses, the knowledge that is not taught but absorbed.

At the bottom of the stairs: the front door. Open. Vandana — not visible. The doorway showing the gali — dark, the streetlight at the corner providing the only light, the light that was sodium-yellow and that made everything look like a faded photograph.

And in the doorway: a woman. Not tall, not short. The woman's face lit by the sodium-yellow streetlight — the face that Lata would remember: angular, determined, the face of a woman who was doing something she had decided to do and who was not going to be stopped from doing it.

"Lata," the woman said. The woman knew her name.

And then — the cloth. Over Lata's face. The smell — sweet, chemical, the smell that was not a Nagpur smell, not a kitchen smell, not any smell that Lata had encountered in twelve years of smelling — the smell that was the last thing she registered before the world went dark.

The knock had come. The knock had been answered. And Lata Jadhav — twelve years old, resident of Sitapur Gali, Dharampeth, Nagpur — was gone.