At twenty-five, Shiva was a lanky, quiet sound engineer in Mumbai, recording the heartbeat of the city: train wheels, street hawkers, the soft sizzle of rain on hot asphalt. He lived in a chawl where the walls wept moisture and the neighbors knew him as “the boy who never raised his voice.”
The boy did not know his name. He did not know his mother’s face, nor the color of the sky the night he was found. What he knew was heat.
“Monster,” the caretakers whispered.
