Matarani Temple smelled of incense and marigold. Lamps burned in brass bowls, and the courtyard hummed with quiet prayers and festival chatter. Diwali light made everything look softer — the painted idols, the pilgrims' bright sarees, the gilded temple gate — as if the whole town had borrowed a child's idea of magic for the evening.
Tabu sat on a low stone bench beside his mother. The barber's razor had just kissed his scalp; his head was a round, shiny new moon. Tears gathered at the corners of his eyes and spilled down, hot and loud. He could see his own face in his mother's palm mirror — a small, wet moon with eyebrows that looked embarrassed.
"See?" his mother said with the teasing tone she always used when she wanted him to be brave. "Matarani will give you strong hair now. You'll be handsome when you grow tall. No more bald like Papa — ha!"
The words were meant to comfort; they landed like little feathers. Tabu sobbed all the same. Villagers smiled in that soft, indulgent way reserved for children at festivals.
Sita arrived with her mother and the rustle of silk that follows wealthy visitors. She had been away in America most of the year, so in Bhadrak — with its small roads and louder relatives — felt like a picture book she could step into. She was five, all cheeks and sunlight, and everything surprised her into giggles.
When she saw Tabu's bald head shining in the Diwali lights, she laughed — a high, continuous peal that grew louder the more she looked. She clapped both small hands and pointed.
"He looks like a potato!" she announced, utterly delighted.
Laughter rippled through the cluster of onlookers. Tabu's mother couldn't help smiling at the sight of this little foreign sparkle of joy — even Sita's mother covered her mouth, trying not to chuckle out loud. A few neighbours winked at Tabu's mother like conspirators in a gentle joke.
Tabu's eyes darted from face to face. Laughter felt like a wind that might blow him away. He tried to fold his chin in, to look stern — "grown-up," he told himself. He scrunched his face into what he imagined a brave boy should be like, but the balloon inside him popped: he grabbed his mother, buried his face in her saree, and howled.
"Everyone's laughing at me! Even you, Maa, you're so bad! I'm not going to talk to you!" he sobbed, burying his head against her shoulder. The words were furious and small at the same time.
Sita's laughter softened into a curious tilt of the head. She walked closer, peered, then tugged at Tabu's sleeve and — in the sudden, fearless way children have — pulled one of his eyes into a silly little face.
"Yeee!" she squealed. "Look! One eye!" She stuck out her tongue, triumphant.
Tabu froze. Time narrowed to the pull of that tiny hand. His cheeks puffed, indignation rising like steam. For half a second he saw himself as a knight would see an enemy: this child had mocked him. A duel, then. A crime against dignity.
He lifted his small fist and — in a gesture half heroic, half absurd — smacked his chubby cheek once, as if to wake the bravery inside. The slap made him wince; it also made him feel, briefly, like a soldier who had set his face to sternness.
Across them, brief murmurs passed between the mothers. Tabu's mother nodded and smiled warmly at Sita's mother; two women, two kinds of love, sharing the same temple stone. Tabu's father, who had come to the temple for the festival, tried to make polite conversation with Sita's father — a tall man whose suits seemed to carry the smell of boardrooms and who looked at Tabu's family with a measured politeness that bordered on cold. The glance was quick; Tabu noticed nothing of the business like chill, but his mother felt the edge and drew Tabu a little closer.
When the families began to move away — the festival pressing them onwards with sweets and blessings — Tabu's mouth was still a tight line. He wanted one thing: to make sure he would not be laughed at again. To prove he was not a potato. To prove he was brave.
"Leave my hand, Maa," he said in a tone that was half challenge and half bravado, "I will beat him up and come back."
His mother nearly exploded into laughter, then caught herself. She kissed his tear-wet forehead. "You will what?"
"Beat him up," Tabu repeated solemnly, certain of his plan. In his mind it meant: go over there, make things right, return triumphant. He did not have the words for the embarrassment that made his ribs hurt; he only knew victory had to be child-sized and immediate.
Sita, meanwhile, wriggled free of her mother's hand and pulled her own cheeks as if to practice her next attack of giggles. As they walked in opposite directions — Tabu with the small, determined stomp of a boy who meant to be brave, Sita with the careless flutter of a child used to getting smiles when she demanded them — something settled between them that neither understood then.
They had met.
Neither would forget the other's face: Tabu's, shiny and furious and heartbreakingly sincere; Sita's, open-mouthed with laughter, like a flower that would not stop opening. It would be a small, ordinary moment in a small, ordinary town. Later it would feel like a slant of fate.
For now, the temple bells rang, the lamps burned on, and children scattered into the Diwali night — two names being tucked into memory the way a mother tucks a child's hand into her own: without much ceremony, but with the promise to hold on.