Chapter 3: The Frosted Glass

Rangoon , Central Jetty 1940

The sun had not yet risen when the ship docked at Rangoon port.

At half past three in the morning, the port was as busy as the middle of the day. Workers shouting in Bengali. A fight breaking out on the next boat, loud and fast in Burmese. A group of Englishmen in uniform stood to one side supervising the unloading of rice sacks for their battalion, unhurried and indifferent to the chaos around them.

Meenakshi stood at the railing taking it in. Five days on the ship had been quiet, almost suspended, as though the world had agreed to pause while they crossed the water. This was the world resuming. All at once and at full volume.

After about thirty minutes they were on the dock. Meenakshi held her mother's hand as tightly as she could. Around them people pushed and called out and dragged luggage and argued with porters. Kamala moved through it all with her eyes scanning, always scanning, the way she had learned to move through uncertainty in the last six months.

Then Venkat came to a sudden halt a few feet ahead of them.

He turned.

Kamala. Meenakshi.

That was all he could say. That was all there was.

Meenakshi did not wait. She let go of her mother's hand and wrapped both arms around her father, her face pressed into his chest, and did not move.

Appa.

Kamala stood very still. Not the stillness of peace. The stillness of a woman who has been holding something in for six months and has not yet decided whether this is the moment to put it down or let it break. A storm that had been gathering quietly over a long sea crossing, waiting for land.

She looked at her husband over their daughter's head.