It was late evening when Nandu asked the question.

The monsoon had come early that year. Rain battered the tin roof of Baa's house in sheets, and the power had gone out an hour ago. They sat on the floor of the front room with a single oil lamp between them, its flame throwing long shadows on the walls. Baa was mixing pigments in a brass bowl — red earth from the garden, ground to a fine powder and thinned with gum arabic. Even in a blackout, her hands did not rest.

"Baa," Nandu said. "Where is Thatha now?"

He had circled this question before — where did he go, what happened to him, is he somewhere — peering over the edge but never leaning in. Tonight, in the darkness and the rain, with the lamp making the room feel like the inside of a clay pot, he asked it straight.

Baa set down her bowl. She looked at him for a long time. The lamp flame trembled in a draft and steadied.

"Close your eyes," she said.

Nandu closed them.

"Now. Think of his voice."

Nandu sat in the darkness behind his eyelids. At first there was nothing — just the rain and his own breathing. Then, slowly, like a radio signal strengthening, he heard it. Thatha's voice. Not a specific word, at first, but the texture of it — low, warm, with a roughness at the edges like sandstone. And then a word came: Nandu- boy. The way Thatha always said it, turning his name into two words, the second one carrying all the affection in the world.

Nandu's chin trembled. His eyes stayed shut.

"Can you hear it?" Baa asked softly.

"Yes," he whispered.

"Now tell me — is that a memory?"

Nandu thought about it. It felt like a memory. But memories felt flat, like photographs. This felt alive — warm, present, as though Thatha were sitting right beside him, just out of reach, speaking from somewhere very close that had no direction.

"I don't know," he said honestly.

"Good answer," Baa said. "Neither do I. But I believe this: the soul — the real person, the thing behind the eyes and the voice — cannot be seen. You cannot photograph it. You cannot think about it properly, because it is bigger than thought. It does not change the way bodies change. It simply is."

She tapped his chest, right over his heart.

"What you just heard — that is not your brain playing tricks. That is him. Not his body, not his kurtas. Him. The part that was never born and will never die. The part you cannot see but can feel — closer to you right now than your own breath."

Nandu opened his eyes. The rain drummed. The lamp flickered. Baa picked up her bowl and went back to mixing pigments, as though she had said nothing extraordinary.

But Nandu sat very still for a long time, one hand pressed to his chest, listening.