He stood outside Sunita's door and took a long drag of his cigarette. Sunita and Gopal rented out two of the rooms in their old-fashioned Himalayan house, which was coated in cow dung for insulation and painted with white paint. None of the rooms were connected, and the four doors opened onto the courtyard—one to an empty room, the next one Timothy's, then Sunita and Gopal's room, and finally the room that Saasi Ji, Gopal's mother, shared with Gopal's brother.
Blue night was spreading across the sky. Timothy put his cigarette out and ducked under the low eave to enter Sunita and Gopal's room: a single square space with a two-burner gas range on a bench in the corner functioning as their kitchen. Next to the stove was a shelf with all the steel plates lined up against the wall and in the n
