It started with rain. Not a drizzle, not a soft pattering on rooftops. This was the kind of rain that rewrote roads and reminded cities that they were once rivers. Delhi had seen monsoons before, but this one was different. It didn't flood the city with water. It flooded it with memory.
Supriya stood beneath a broken tin awning, soaked to the knees, holding a paper-wrapped parcel that contained a volunteer's hacked solar inverter schematic. She was supposed to present it next week to a district education board. Instead, she had taken a detour to an old street.
It was the place where she and Nishanth had first disagreed. Years ago. Before the feathers, before the silence.
Back then, it was about method. She believed in top-down directives, curated templates, instructional design. He believed in intuition. In trial. In movement before perfection.
