The night had turned into a continuous roar of explosions.

Outside the thin windows of the second-floor flat, the colony and the wider city of Delhi celebrated Diwali with everything they had—long strings of crackers, rockets that screamed upward and burst into gold and green, the deep thump of bombs that rattled the glass. Inside, the only light came from the small cluster of diyas still burning on the table and the intermittent flashes that lit the room in sudden, violent colour.