The son was not there.
She went through all fourteen photographs. She was in some of them — at the edge of the frame, visible. The structures, the trees, the light, the ground: all there. The objects people had been holding or sitting near: all there. A clay pot that had been in Kamla's hands was in the photograph, sitting on the ground as if recently set down.
The people were not there. In fourteen photographs of nine people, not one of them appeared in a single image.
She looked at the camera. She looked at the village around her, where Sukhi was sweeping the threshold of the family's kitchen area with the unhurried sweep of someone doing a daily task. Entirely present. Entirely real. The broom making its scratching sound on the earth.
Meera looked at the camera for a long time. Then she scrolled back through the photographs one more time, very carefully, beginning to end. She was thorough. She was a person who documented things. She did not panic at anomalies — anomalies required documentation and then explanation.
The explanation she reached, sitting on the platform under the peepal tree with the camera in her hands, was: sensor malfunction. Digital camera sensors failed in various ways under various conditions, and one of those failures was producing images that registered the background but not the foreground subjects. It was rare but not unknown. She had used this camera on many postings. This was the first time it had done this.
She wrote in her notebook: Camera appearing to malfunction — not registering human subjects, only background/environment. Will continue enumeration and use backup notation. Will attempt to repair or replace camera. Note: all household data verbally confirmed and written, photographs non-functional.
She put the camera away and continued with her forms. She was a census official. She documented things. The documentation would be complete even if the photographs were not working correctly.
The explanation was a sensor malfunction. She held this explanation very carefully, the way you held something fragile that you needed to keep intact. Later, in the dark of the night, the explanation would become harder to hold. But for now, on the platform, in the afternoon, she held it.
