As the priest chanted the mangalyadharanam , she did not look at her husband. She looked at the little girl—her new daughter—who was watching with wide, frightened eyes.

Janaki sighed. The sound carried decades of compromises. “Your father thinks… stability is kindness.”

Kannan was the carpenter’s son—a boy with calloused hands and a laugh that smelled of sawdust and sun. They had never spoken of love. But when he passed her on the village path, he would leave a single illanthalir —a tender neem leaf—on the compound wall. Just one. Not a flower, not a letter. A leaf. Because, he once told her, “A leaf is honest. It doesn’t promise fragrance. It only promises to grow.”

Meera didn’t look up. She already knew. Letters from Chennai always arrived on Thursdays. And letters from Chennai always carried the weight of her uncle’s expectations: a proposal, a photograph, a horoscope.

“Appa,” she whispered, “I am also tired.”

Meera smiled. A small smile. A tender sprout’s smile.

“He is a widower,” Janaki added, her voice softer now, as if wrapping the truth in cotton wool. “Forty-two. Two children. An accounts officer.”