Later that night, when the last light is switched off, Priya will walk to the prayer room. She will light one final camphor. She will whisper to no god in particular: “Keep them safe. Keep us together.”

“Beta, stop looking at that phone,” Dadiji says to Anuj. “In my time, we talked at lunch.”

“What meeting? You are looking at green numbers on a black screen.”

“When I was a girl in Lahore,” she says, though no one is listening except the ceiling fan, “we had a mango tree in the courtyard. Your great-grandfather would climb it with a stick. We would sit underneath with salt and red chili powder...”

“Ammi, I’m leaving,” Kavya whispers, hugging her mother from behind. Priya’s hand stops mid-spatula. She knows her daughter is leaving the nest. She does not cry. Instead, she shoves a box of besan laddoo into Kavya’s tote bag. “Share with your roommates. Don’t eat canteen food. It is oil and regret.”

Anuj scrolls Instagram. Kavya texts her boyfriend. Rajan reads the newspaper. Dadiji eats with her fingers, rolling the rice into perfect, meditative balls.

Meet the Sharmas: Rajan (49), a mid-level bank manager; Priya (45), a schoolteacher who runs the household’s emotional economy; their son, Anuj (22), a final-year engineering student; and daughter, Kavya (18), who is about to leave for college in Pune. And then there is Dadiji (Grandmother Asha, 78), the sovereign matriarch who holds the keys to both the kitchen pantry and the family’s ancestral memory. Priya Sharma does not drink her tea in peace. She drinks it while standing over a gas stove, rotating three tawa (griddles) simultaneously. Roti number one is for Anuj’s office lunch box. Roti number two is for Dadiji, who cannot eat hard grains. Roti number three is for Rajan, who likes his slightly burnt.

For ten minutes, the family is not individuals hurtling toward different futures. They are simply listeners. They are a lineage. They are an Indian family—loud, crowded, inefficient, exhausting, and utterly, irreplaceably whole.