Particles I don’t know what she meant about the lie, but I moved out of Nelly’s place and got a room in a hotel. I could see pain and outrage accumulating inside me, but tried to stay calm. The most difficult thing was the mirror in the bathroom, completely unnecessary. I taped three or four sheets on that clumsily polished surface. It was a four-star hotel, on the highest mountain in the city, with angled views of young chir pines, walls of deodars and swatches of green, and comfortable. I spent two continuous days in my room, unwell, filled with a kind of nausea not experienced for twenty or twenty-five years. On the wall across from my bed there were huge black-and-white photos of colonial tiger hunts, and the constant gaze of white sahibs stirred strange, uncomfortable thoughts within me. On TV the main news items (regardless of the spin) highlighted the occupation of Kashmir, its alienated youth. The last two decades had left 90,000 dead. Thousands had disappeared. Women had been raped, entire villages, by men in uniform.
