After the cyclone tore through the coastal town, Leela walked out to survey the damage to her family's small farm. Half the trees had snapped clean at the trunk, tall and rigid ones that had always looked the strongest. But the old mango tree at the edge of the field, gnarled and bent from decades of storms, still stood, leaning but alive.

Her grandfather, who had planted that tree fifty years earlier, found her staring at it.