was a schoolteacher at a small English-medium academy near Nayabazar. Every morning, she walked past the old Hanuman temple, bought pithas from a roadside auntie, and adjusted the sindoor she didn’t wear. She was twenty-nine, divorced—a word still sharper than broken glass in a small city. Her world had shrunk to lesson plans, her father’s blood pressure medication, and the half-built balcony overlooking the tram line that rarely saw trams anymore.