Chapter 6: The Thousand Books

The memory of that first lunch came to him now as the bus climbed through the Ghats. Roni-da had listened to his poems with the attention Kaurav had never received at home. But it was the library that had truly claimed him—a thousand books lining the walls, each spine a doorway he hadn't known existed.

Until that afternoon, Kaurav had considered himself well-read. The library destroyed this comfortable delusion. Here was scholarship he couldn't fathom, literatures he had never heard of, critical works that made his own reading seem provincial. The sight had been both humbling and intoxicating. His heart, still raw from the argument with Sohini, had found refuge among those shelves.

By evening, the other troupe members had arrived. Vismaya's surprise at seeing him again had been genuine, expressed later in the gift of a Gold Flake cigarette after rehearsal. They were working