The next morning, the storm passed. The sun rose like a molten bobbarlu sweet. Bujji looked at Vikram’s exhausted, mud-streaked face and saw a man who had stayed up all night for a lamb that wasn’t his.
But the village has eyes sharper than a kite’s.
Vikram was not from the village. He was a city-bred soil scientist sent by the agricultural university to study the sudden blight killing the mango orchards. He wore clean white shirts, spoke Telugu with a clumsy English accent, and squinted at the sun as if it personally offended him.