She asked Ramdas, that evening, to tell her about August 1947.
She asked him directly because she had been asking around it for two days and she was done with the approach. She was a person who asked direct questions when direct questions were what was needed, and what was needed, she had decided, was to understand what had happened in this village in August 1947. Not because it was required for the census enumeration — it wasn't — but because she had been in this village for two days and she had not slept well and the camera was showing her things she did not have a framework for and the old woman's eyes had stayed with her and the shadows on the courtyard wall had stayed with her and she needed something to hold onto that was the shape of the actual thing.
