“I didn’t,” she whispered. “I just held us together. The house can break. That’s fine.”

“ Arre, bachcha! ” Sarita yelped, not in anger, but in the dramatic exhaustion of a woman who has cleaned the same floor three times already.

By 5 PM, she had located the pressure cooker (it was in the car trunk—don’t ask). Arjun delivered it. The laddoos were accepted. She finally sat down to drink her chai, which had gone cold three times. But cold chai in a broken household was still chai.

Instead of crying, she pulled out a tube of superglue. “Bring it here. And bring me a fresh cup of chai. Hot this time.”

Her husband, Rakesh, came home early. He stood in the doorway, holding a pink plastic toy—a broken teapot from their daughter’s tea set.