"High praise," he whispered.

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.

"Then tell the soil to stop drowning it!"

That night, a storm broke. The kind of wild, biblical storm that uproots toddy palms and turns the river into a roaring god. Vikram, stuck in his rickety field hut, heard a frantic knocking. It was Bujji, drenched, holding a limp, mud-covered lamb.

"I wanted to say it in soil," he whispered back. "It's more honest."

The villagers laughed at him. Bujji ignored him.