Running dreams.

A plate falling

Baba came home late most evenings. He worked at a textile warehouse near the railway crossing. His shirts always smelled of cotton, sweat, and the dust that rose from the road. But whenever he saw me, his face changed.

“Where is my little star?”

“Here!” I’d run to him. He’d lift me into his arms even when I was too old to be carried.

“Have you eaten?”

“No.”

He’d look at Ma. “Why hasn’t my daughter eaten?”

“Because your daughter has been waiting for you.”

He’d smile. “Then we shall eat together.”

That was how it was supposed to be. At least, that was how I remembered it.

Memory is a strange thing. It doesn’t keep everything. It chooses. Sometimes it keeps the color of a curtain but forgets the words spoken behind it. Sometimes it remembers a laugh and hides the reason for it. Sometimes it takes a terrible night and wraps it in enough ordinary mornings that you begin to doubt whether the night happened at all.

My first memory of fear was not a beating. It was a plate falling.

I was twelve. The sound cracked through the house. _Clang._

I froze. Ma stopped stirring the dal. For a moment, neither of us moved.

Then Baba’s voice came from the bedroom. I couldn’t hear the words.

Ma wiped her hands on the edge of her sari. “Meera.”

“Yes?”

“Go to your room.”

“But—”

“Go.”

There was something in her voice that made questions disappear. I went. I sat on my bed and listened. Silence. Then a man’s voice. A woman’s voice. Then silence again. I pressed my palms against my ears.

That was the first time I learned that a house could have rooms inside rooms. You could be sitting in one room and still be somewhere else entirely.