Vipin keeps ending up in the same part of the courtyard.
He doesn't intend to. The house is large enough that he could disappear into it if he wanted—into a side room where old trunks sleep, near the cowshed where noise is forgiven, anywhere movement doesn't need explaining. But his pace slows near the neem tree, near the stretch of wall where the afternoon shade holds a little longer. His feet find small excuses: returning a steel bowl, carrying a lota that doesn't urgently need carrying, pausing as if he's waiting for instructions that haven't yet been spoken.
It takes time before the repetition begins to stand out.
People don't stop there. They don't gather. They pass through—and adjust. A conversation bends and resumes at a lower volume. Someone alters direction by half a step. A sentence meant for one person finishes somewhere else, softer, incomplete.
The courtyard keeps moving, but not evenly.
Dadi sits near the wall most afternoons, legs stretched out on a low wooden stool, her spine upright despite the years pressing into her joints. The stool isn't padded. It isn't comfortable. It is placed so that she can see the kitchen door, the entrance, and the corridor leading into the inner rooms without turning her head.
From where she sits, the house stays within view.
From where the house moves, she cannot be bypassed.
When someone needs something, they don't always ask her—but their eyes flick in her direction before acting. A decision begins elsewhere and loops back without announcement. Instructions shift mid-sentence, as if the air itself redirects them.
The pattern repeats often enough that it no longer feels incidental.
One afternoon, Vipin crosses the courtyard with a steel lota in his hands. He filled it at the tap without being asked. There was no plan behind it—only the sense that his feet would bring him here afterward.
Dadi clicks her tongue.
"Where are you taking that?"
He stops at once.
"You filled it already?" She nods toward the lota.
"Yes."
"Bring it here."
He steps closer, careful not to bump the stool, and places the lota within her reach. She drinks slowly, wipes her mouth with the edge of her sari, then looks down at him.
"You keep circling like a lost calf," she says. "Don't you have schoolwork?"
"I finished."
Her eyebrow lifts slightly. "Finished, or escaped?"
The pause before his answer stretches just long enough to matter. "Finished."
"Hm."
She doesn't pursue it. The dismissal is deliberate.
She shifts her legs, adjusting her position. The movement is small, but not smooth—there is a pause before the knees bend, a controlled exhale as she settles again.
Vipin crouches before he thinks through why, placing his hands lightly on her calves.
Her body stiffens.
"What are you doing?"
"I saw you rubbing your knees earlier," he says quickly. "They hurt when you sit too long."
"And who told you to touch?"
"No one." He hesitates, then adds, "Mother does it sometimes."
The courtyard continues around them: a bucket scraped across stone, a voice lifted briefly and lowered again, the radio crackling from inside the house.
"Fine," Dadi says at last. "But don't press like you're kneading dough. Use your thumbs."
He adjusts immediately.
The skin beneath his fingers is warm, firm, tender in places. He presses carefully, watching her face instead of his hands. When the pressure is wrong, her brow tightens.
"Not there."
He shifts.
"That's better."
Her breathing changes, subtle but steady, settling into a slower rhythm. Her eyes close—not fully, not for long. Just enough.
Vipin keeps his hands in place until his wrists begin to ache and his fingers lose strength. Only then does he stop.
"Go wash," she says. "Oil doesn't belong everywhere."
At the hand pump, the water shocks his fingers numb, then tingling. The smell lingers even after scrubbing. When he returns, Dadi has not moved. The stool remains in its place. The shade has shortened. The sun has shifted.
He sits again, without hesitation this time.
In the evenings, someone recites from the Ramayana. It is never announced. A voice simply begins from one of the inner rooms, steady and measured, the words unfolding in a rhythm that settles into the courtyard. Vipin listens from his place near the wall, tracing the pauses, the weight of syllables.
Once, he murmurs a line too quickly under his breath.
"Not like that," Dadi says without looking up. "You swallowed the end."
He tries again, slower.
"That's better."
Her knitting needles never pause.
Days layer themselves this way. Sitting. Fetching water before it is asked for. Pressing knees when the heat peaks. Listening in the evenings. No praise. No rebuke. The stool stays. The shade returns.
One afternoon, a younger cousin drops down where Vipin usually sits, careless and loud.
"Not there," Dadi says. "Move."
The boy shifts away without argument. Vipin doesn't look at him. He stays where he is.
Another day, Vipin forgets the water.
Dadi doesn't call him.
She waits.
When she finally reaches for the lota herself, the movement is slower. The stiffness shows.
That evening, she says nothing.
The next day, Vipin brings the water at the usual time.
She takes it without comment.
The lesson settles without being named.
The pantry door enters Vipin's awareness not because he watches it, but because he hears it—the muted scrape of metal, the brief stillness that follows, the weight of keys shifting in Dadi's hand.
The door opens.
It closes.
Nothing comes out.
Still, something has changed.
That night, lying on his bedding with hunger pressing familiar and sharp, Vipin replays the day without trying to improve it. He marks where he arrived too early. Where he forgot once. Where silence did more work than speech.
Tomorrow, he won't do more.
Tomorrow, he will do the same things, at the same time, without being reminded.
In this house, repetition is remembered.
And without being called closer, without being sent away, Vipin knows—through the simple fact of being allowed to remain—that he has been seen.