Chapter 1: The Wedding Terrace The wedding had stretched over three exhausting, exhilarating days in a sprawling Chennai marriage hall. Kolams bloomed fresh each morning at the entrance, nadaswaram melodies drifted through the air thick with jasmine and sambar, and relatives poured in from every corner of Tamil Nadu. Vikram, eighteen and freshly done with his board exams, had come down from Coimbatore with his parents. He...

The bus braked with a hiss of air and a cloud of red dust the colour of dried tamarind. Ranjith stepped down, duffel bag heavy on his shoulder, the January heat already pressing against the thin city shirt that clung to his narrow back. Nineteen years old, first-year diploma student in Trichy, he had not breathed this air since Deepavali. The lane smelled exactly the way memory had preserved it: cow-dung smoke curling fro...

In Puliyoorkurichi village in rural south India, the Christmas crib is never small. Every year the parish builds life-size figures out of fresh palm leaves and pongal grass: Joseph with a real beard, shepherds carrying actual lambs, and a Baby Jesus so delicate that mothers reach out to stroke its tiny fingers and forget to breathe. The work always begins on the first Sunday of Advent, and the only woman the parish trusts...

Rajesh Patel, a 35-year-old tech executive, ruled his modest firm in London’s financial district with a predator’s finesse. His caramel-brown skin glowed under office lights. His 6-foot frame was lean and athletic from cricket and gym sessions—broad shoulders, corded arms, narrow waist. A chiseled face, framed by a trimmed black beard and jet-black undercut hair, held piercing dark eyes that dissected vulnerabilities. Tai...

In the sweltering heat of a Chennai afternoon, the humid air clung to the skin like a lover's desperate embrace. Rajan, a 40-year-old widower, lived in a modest bungalow on the outskirts of Tamil Nadu's bustling capital. His days were filled with the monotony of his accounting job, but his evenings ignited with forbidden excitement through his maid, Lakshmi. She was a 28-year-old woman from a rural village near Madurai, h...

The village of Thiruvallur in rural Tamil Nadu lay cradled in a sea of emerald paddy fields, where the late afternoon sun cast golden rays over swaying coconut palms. The air was thick with the scent of damp earth, blooming jasmine, and the faint tang of wood smoke from distant hearths. In a modest brick house nestled among the groves, Meera, a woman of 38, stood by the kitchen window, her long, thick hair cascading past...