Ramdas offered her a room in his house for the night. She had been prepared to walk back to where Sukhram was waiting with the jeep — she had, in fact, planned to do this — but when she went to the edge of the village at dusk and looked toward the road, the forest had the specific quality of forest after dark that made it impenetrable without a torch, and her torch batteries were the uncertain kind, and the road was twenty minutes at minimum, and Sukhram would have taken the jeep to the nearest dhaba or petrol station for the night regardless. She would be walking a forest road alone in the dark.
She took the room.
It was a small room at the back of Ramdas's house — mud walls, a wooden cot with a cotton mattress that was old but clean, a clay lamp that Sukhi lit and placed on the window ledge. The room had a single small window facing the village's eastern side. Through the window she could see the lane and, beyond it, the dark shapes of the houses on the other side.
She sat on the cot and opened her notebook and began collating the day's enumeration. She had covered twelve households, recording seventy-four persons. At this rate she would need two more full days to cover all fifty-three households. She had her forms in order, her data cross-checked against itself for internal consistency. Everything was orderly and careful and complete.
She took out the camera and tried the sensor again. She pointed it at the lamp on the window ledge and pressed the shutter. The image registered: the lamp, the window ledge, the wall behind it, the glow of the flame. Everything present. She pointed it at her own hand and pressed the shutter. The image registered her hand — her hand, present, real, recorded.
