Sold · What the Rain Kept · Pulse Beat

It went to the dealer. The man in the grey suit tapped the crate with a pencil. The dealer, whose name was Gupta and who had treated Ishaan's father with a lifelong, courteous contempt, nodded once…

It went to the dealer.

The man in the grey suit tapped the crate with a pencil. The dealer, whose name was Gupta and who had treated Ishaan's father with a lifelong, courteous contempt, nodded once and began to write a cheque.

There was no applause. Nobody shouted. People simply began to move, stiffly, the way a congregation stands after a sermon that has gone on too long. The old man put a hand on Ishaan's arm. A woman in the third row, who had bid against Gupta and lost, came forward and pressed a book into his palm.

"Take it," she said. "It's yours. I bought it from you in June."

It was The God of Small Things. The spine was cracked, underlined in three colours.

He looked at the book, and then at Tara, who had covered her mouth.

"It came back," she whispered.

"It came back," he said. A strange sound rose in his throat, half laughter, half something else. The rain, which had been falling for nine months, began, as if to oblige him, to stop.