Every Sunday, Meera's family gathered around the same wooden table, and every Sunday, one chair stayed empty — her father's chair, untouched since the funeral eight months ago. No one moved it. No one sat in it. It had simply become part of the room's silence.

Meera hated Sundays now. They used to mean her father's terrible jokes and the smell of his over-spiced chai. Now they meant watching her mother set five plates instead of six, then quietly removing one, every single week, like a small ritual of loss repeated on schedule.