The meal is vegetarian tonight— dal , rice, subzi , a sliver of achar (pickle). No one asks for ketchup. That would be treason.
The city’s relentless hum has not yet begun. But in the Khanna household—a third-floor walk-up in a leafy gall (lane) of suburban Mumbai—the day starts not with an alarm, but with the clink of a steel tumbler.
The apartment is silent. But it is never empty. It is full of yesterday’s arguments, tomorrow’s plans, and the stubborn, beautiful, exhausting, tender chaos of being a family in India.