One was an enormous stone complex with eight massive towers, standing strong and immovable. People in colourful saris and men with combed moustaches streamed in carrying bags of marigolds and coconuts. They exited with their dark foreheads dotted red or yellow or streaked with white, and continued along the cracked sidewalk in their bare feet. At the opposite end, a kilometre or so towards the hills, the road disappeared into grass on its way to a massive stone pavilion that housed a sixteen-foot statue of Nandi the bull. Behind the pavilion, stone steps wound up the dry hill and then disappeared behind clusters of sandy boulders. Above it all, the clouds sat quietly in the blue sky as if proof some lid had been arched and sealed over the whole thing. The tall weeds stood still against the columns of the ruins and the soft hooves of the cows thumped gently as they inched their noses forward to new grass. I walked from the centre of town towards the statue of the bull wondering if Cassie had stopped crying yet and if she had figured out a way to make sense of everything despite it not getting any better.
