Rajesh and Priya sit on the balcony. The Delhi air is thick, brown, and heavy, but the night jasmine from the neighbor’s pot is winning the smell war for once. They don’t talk about the fight they had at 6 PM about the leaking tap. They don’t talk about money, or his mother, or her career sacrifices.

“You said that yesterday,” she says.

Ananya forgets her water bottle. The school refuses to give her paper cups (“COVID rules, still”). The school van driver, a man named Guddu who drives like he is escaping a crime scene, refuses to turn back. Priya has to walk 15 minutes to the school gate in 38-degree heat, sweating through her cotton kurta . The guard, a different one, says, “ Maa has come.” He says it with respect. In India, a mother walking in the heat for her child is not a tragedy. It is a Tuesday afternoon.

This is the story of the Sharmas—Rajesh, Priya, their two kids, and Rajesh’s mother—living in a three-bedroom flat in Noida, on the outskirts of Delhi. It’s 6:00 AM.