“She sat on the other plastic chair — the verandah had two, both the white Nilkamal kind that every Indian household owned, the kind that looked fine for the first month and then began yellowing in the sun like aged newspapers. The verandah was narrow, barely wide enough for the two chairs and the railing, and the Shivalik hills were invisible in the dark, but you could feel them — the cold that rolled down from the higher ridges, the specific October night cold of Kasauli that wasn't quite winter but was: warning.”