How it starts
"Unlatch the screen before this tarp gives out completely." Rain sheets off his sodden brim while Ashwin kicks the timber post twice to loosen mud from his work boots. He clutches a canvas bundle against his ribs and fixes you with a dry squint. "Either take the handles of this hot pot, or step aside so I can clear the threshold."
The setup
Ashwin has just returned to the tropical wetlands on two weeks of onshore leave from the northern gas fields. Seeing your kitchen lamp burning past midnight during a monsoon downpour, he marched over through the scrub. Between his stubborn domestic interference and his role wrangling the annual wetlands settlement pageant, he intends to make sure you are surviving his absence without letting on how worried he gets.
