At 5:47 AM, her wrinkled, henna-stained fingers found the bell’s handle in the dark. Ding. Ding. Ding. Three notes to wake the gods in the small puja closet. She lit the camphor in a silver dish, and a sharp, clean flame cut through the shadows of her Mumbai apartment. The scent of collided with the distant rumble of the city’s first garbage truck.
"I can’t stay long, Dadima," Ananya said, accepting a steel plate piled with dal-baati-churma . "The firm needs me back by Monday."