The loom had its own rhythm long before dawn.
It began as a tremor beneath the floorboards — a low wooden pulse that moved through the ancestral house like a second heartbeat. By the time the first light touched the coconut palms beyond the courtyard wall, Raman was already seated at the frame, feet steady on the pedals, fingers guiding the shuttle through lines of tightening warp.
He did not look at the clock.
He never needed to.
The loom kept time better than any device brought in from the town.
The house had been built around that sound.
Or so it felt.
Teak beams darkened by monsoons. Red oxide floors cooled by the night's humidity. A central courtyard where rain collected in a square of open sky. In the corner room closest to the road stood the loom — older than Raman's marriage, older than Sameer and Devika, older even than the cracked photograph of Raman's father that hung beside the doorway.
When the shuttle flew, the house answered.
Thak.Thak.Thak.
Fathima stirred in the bedroom at the back. She had learned long ago to sleep inside the rhythm. To wake inside it. To measure the mood of her husband by its steadiness.
Today it was too tight.
She could hear it.
The shuttle struck sharper than usual, the threads pulled with a firmness that bordered on defiance.
Outside, the monsoon had not yet committed itself. The sky carried the weight of rain without release. The air smelled of damp earth and something metallic — anticipation, perhaps.
In the courtyard, Devika stood barefoot on the cool stone, her school uniform folded over one arm. She watched her father through the open doorway.
He did not look up.
He rarely did when he worked.
The loom commanded full attention, and Raman gave it without resentment. His hands moved with a discipline that felt inherited rather than learned. Each color line placed with care. Each pattern repeated with faith.
The cloth he was weaving today carried deep indigo stripes bordered by narrow gold threads — a traditional design once ordered in bulk by a cooperative in Kozhikode. Once.
Orders had thinned over the past two years.
Synthetic fabrics had begun arriving from factories in Surat and beyond. Cheaper. Brighter. Uniform.
But Raman did not speak of that.
The loom did not negotiate with trends.
It obeyed tradition.
"Appa," Devika said softly.
No response.
She tried again, louder. "Appa."
The shuttle slowed, then stopped.
Raman did not turn immediately. He ran his palm over the stretched threads first, as though reassuring them. Only then did he look toward his daughter.
"What is it?"
"The headmaster wants to see you today."
A pause.
"Why?"
"He says it is about the scholarship form."
Raman's jaw tightened, though not visibly enough for a stranger to notice. Devika noticed.
"What scholarship?" he asked.
"The one for engineering entrance coaching."
The words lingered between them, fragile as newly spun silk.
Engineering.
Bangalore.
Departure disguised as ambition.
Raman exhaled through his nose and looked back at the loom.
"Finish your schooling first," he said.
"I am finishing," Devika replied. "That is why—"
The shuttle struck once more, abrupt.
"That is why nothing," Raman said quietly.
From the kitchen, Fathima listened without intervening.
She did not move to interrupt the rhythm of father and daughter.
She knew both too well.
Sameer entered the courtyard then, shirt unbuttoned at the collar, hair still damp from a hurried wash at the backyard well. He was twenty-one and carried impatience like a second skin.
"What now?" he asked, sensing tension before words formed fully.
"Nothing," Raman said.
Devika did not answer.
Sameer glanced at her and understood anyway.
"Let her apply," he said casually, leaning against the doorway. "What harm?"
Raman turned sharply.
"You will teach me what is harm?"
"No," Sameer said evenly. "But the world is changing."
The loom stood between them — silent for the first time that morning.
It was not the first time this sentence had entered the house.
The world is changing.
It had arrived in whispers at the tea shop. In newspaper headlines about economic reforms. In stories of men returning from Dubai with gold chains and new cement houses. In cooperative meetings where younger weavers spoke of diversification and older men folded their arms in refusal.
Change had begun as rumor.
Now it pressed against the walls.
Raman stood slowly.
"You think I do not know that?" he asked.
Sameer met his gaze. "Knowing is not the same as accepting."
The first drop of rain struck the courtyard stone.
Then another.
Fathima stepped into the doorway, wiping her hands on the edge of her sari.
"Enough," she said gently. "Eat before the rice cools."
But the air had shifted.
Devika held her uniform tighter.
Sameer stepped aside, unwilling to retreat entirely but unwilling to escalate further.
Raman returned to the loom without speaking.
He pressed the pedal.
The shuttle moved.
Thak.
A thread snapped.
It was a small sound. Sharp, almost embarrassed.
Raman froze.
Broken threads were not uncommon. They could be tied, rewoven, corrected.
But this one had broken near the edge — where tension held the pattern in place.
He leaned forward, inspecting it.
A single gold strand hung loose, trembling.
In the courtyard, the rain strengthened.
Sameer watched from the doorway.
Devika stepped closer.
Raman reached for the loose end, fingers steady but slower than before.
He tied it carefully, pulling the knot tight.
Invisible, once corrected.
That was the discipline of weaving.
But the pattern had shifted by half a line.
Only someone who knew the design intimately would notice.
Raman noticed.
He resumed the shuttle.
Thak.
Thak.
The rhythm returned — but slightly altered.
In the kitchen, Fathima felt something tighten in her chest.
Not fear.
Recognition.
This was how it began.
Not with arguments loud enough for neighbors to hear.
Not with dramatic exits.
With a single thread breaking under accumulated tension.
Outside, the monsoon committed itself fully.
Rain struck the roof in steady percussion.
Water gathered in the courtyard's open square, forming ripples that blurred reflection into abstraction.
Devika watched her father weave and understood, though she could not yet articulate it, that this house was built on patterns older than her desire.
Sameer looked beyond the courtyard wall, imagining roads that led away.
Raman worked.
The loom continued.
But somewhere beneath the steady rhythm, something had shifted — small enough to ignore, large enough to matter.
The first thread had broken.
And though it had been tied again, the pattern would never sit exactly the same.