She went back to reading her book while the ice-cubes refused to melt in the November chill. But she didn’t really want to read the book she was holding. She wondered if she should pick a conversation with the woman who was sitting at the next table. But it had been ages—or so it seemed to her—since she had last found the courage to speak to a stranger.

She continued to stare at the letters on the page before her. The ice cubes stayed intact. She reached out for the cold glass of tea, mint and lemon, and held it in her hands briefly. Maybe the ice cubes would melt. The clammy fingers, the nervous mouth—this wasn’t who she had always been.

It was 2019 when her job stopped making sense to her. She carried the senselessness she felt within around her, everywhere. Mere gestures began to sound an alarm inside her head sometimes. Sometimes, it would be something as simple as the way someone cut their food. At restaurants, she always felt like the voices around her grew louder and louder. Or the free background score got louder and louder even when she asked the waiters to turn the volume down. She couldn’t stand the noise.

Every morning when he opened the door to take the trash out, he did a thing with his leg at the door that gave her a small headache. Everything bothered her.

***

Tatai bent down to pick up the magazine that had fallen off the coffee table. Prachinta noticed that deep dimples formed on the small of her back as the white shirt covering her torso slipped over during the movement. Tatai picked up the magazine, sat down and started talking about what rice meant to the region. “All Asians wake up to rice,” she said. “At least East Asians.” How can you wake up to something you have no physical or financial control over, Prachinta wanted to ask her. But she didn’t. She only thought of the dimples on the small of her back, while lingering her gaze on the ones on Tatai’s cheeks. They dug deep into her cheeks as she spoke, and were released as though in punctuation as she talked without interruption.

Prachinta’s bladder felt bloated. She couldn’t tell if it was the strange concoction she had been made to drink or her surgery. But she decided she was just going to stay in bed and wait to go until Tatai left. She did not want her to see that her legs needed waxing. And that under the hospital robe was just a person in need for physical care. She didn’t want Tatai to see that she would never be her— the woman with deep dimples, high spirit, kind eyes.

She had always felt inadequate. She lacked Tatai’s selflessness, her giving streak and her complacence. People like Tatai, capable of loving, appeared unreal to her. Like a mask would someday come off and a disaster would unfold.

But there would always be the rain to make up for every disaster.

The rain, ushering in winter, fell swiftly. It was almost lyrical the way it created two different strains of music as it landed on the backyard and the garden in front of the house. It was on rainy nights that she would find the inspiration to sit up, wade through words on the ether, cling to posts by strangers in some unknown corner of the word. She moved through comments, micro essays, stray thoughts:

“I decided to leave the rest of the pages blank on my diary because you’ve run out of things to say to me.”

The rain lasted all night.

When she woke up, the smell of petrichor had settled and given way to that of the rising heat of the sun. She reached out for her phone first thing, like she always did. There were photos on her Instagram feed. Faces strewn with innocence and confusion. There were no words that spoke to her directly, nothing written for her. But there were a couple of photos that spoke to her from their darkness and their light.

Some photos made way for a brief mental journey. Then she stumbled upon the face of a girl she used to know—a face rimmed with confusion around innocence. This girl used to be in her class. She had very pale skin, fine brown hair. Her eyes were light brown and her lips the colour of skin. Prachinta could not decide if a face as lifeless could have a description. She always wanted to add colour to the girl’s memory. She wanted to add fierce colours to her description. But she couldn’t. Her memory of the girl was feeble. But she could still recall how the girl always spoke with a lilt as though she was afraid of something, even when her voice seemed to laugh. The girl was called Shamrock. One of her grandfathers had come from England during the British colonial rule of India and never left.

Every time Prachinta thought of Shamrock, she was washed over by an intense urge to paint, to draw or find a way to describe her.

One afternoon, during the final term, Rosy and Prachinta had spent hours in the Oval garden, searching among clovers. “I want a Shamrock!” they repeated during the search. It was as though all they needed was to say the word and they would pass the exams. Magic. The word did something to their teeth and lips when they spoke it, leaving a light hoarse strength at the bottom of their throats. Like the hope from a four-dimensional clove. So like Shamrock’s coy smile.

***

Years later, sitting at a restaurant with her book open, she could only remember fragments of the past. She drank some more of the iced tea and then walked out of the restaurant. A cold breeze had started to blow. The sky was overcast. She flicked open her umbrella and started walking. There was nowhere she was going.