Kavitha and her husband, Vinod, are aboard a train when the train is hijacked by some men looking to steal valuables from passengers. Kavitha takes note of the people who are in her compartment, especially families and then a tall man with his eight or nine year old son. This young boy is very calm and takes two pebbles, a length of twine, and a small piece of paper from his pockets and puts them into his shoe. The men arrive, barring all of the doors to prevent passengers from escaping. Kavitha wonders if they might force the men to disembark or bring kerosene into the train carriage. The men ask for everyone's jewels. She grabs Vinod's hand, out of habit.

Kavitha and Vinod have often spoken about who in their relationship might die first and Kavitha always insisted that she wanted to go first because she couldn't bear the thought of living without Vinod. But she always knew that she would be completely fine without him, maybe even better. Their marriage was arranged by their families when she was sixteen and he was twenty-two and it had been an uneventful, even boring, ten years together. Kavitha had complained to her friends that Vinod had "dull eyes," that there was no particular life in them. She had also wondered whether violence would be what it took to bring his gaze alive.

Kavitha recalls a time when she once had preferences in life and that since being married, she lost most of them. She used to like taking walks in the evening but Vinod said he was too tired. She liked putting jasmine flowers in her hair but their scent made him nauseous. She liked wishing on fallen eyelashes and when Vinod caught her one day and asked what she was doing, she talked to him for ten minutes about it. He called it ridiculous and she said she wasn't asking him to do it too. She felt good for standing up for herself but then she felt the slap across her cheek. There was emptiness in Vinod's eyes, no anger, regret, or satisfaction from having slapped her. Kavitha felt empty too.

Kavitha remembers a young couple who lived in the apartment directly across from theirs that she liked to watch. She loved the sweetness between them, the way they brought light to their atmosphere together. The wife would wear plain saris during the day but change into brightly-colored ones when her husband came home in the evening. Her husband often brought back snacks to eat with their tea. Kavitha watched them with envy and wanted to cry.

On the train, all of the women in the berth give up small jewels: earrings, nose rings, and bracelets, that the leader of the men did not believe is all they had. He threatens to undress the women and grabs someone by the waist. Her brother lunges and is struck in the arm with a rod, with his blood pooling all over the floor. Kavitha notices that the young boy with the pebbles and twine in his shoe is watching and staring directly at her. She stares back until the leader addresses her directly, asking for her gold chain. She hands it over, an ornament she has not removed since her marriage, with Vinod wincing at the lost gold.

The boy continues to stare at her and she understands that he is trying to tell her something. He taps his ear and Kavitha tries to understand what the boy is telling her. After a few quiet seconds, she hears footsteps patrolling the train corridors. The train guards were not all stationed in front of the berth as she had thought but had to patrol other passengers as well. Then she hears more footsteps and realizes that all three guards were somewhere else and nowhere near their berth.

Kavitha maps a plan of escape in her head and motions for the little boy to pass her the pebbles and twine from his shoe. Kavitha stands up and tells Ahmed, the leader of the robbers, that she needs to use the lavatory for womens' troubles and they let her go after some deliberation. She passes an old man on her way and quickly hands him a pebble, asking him to throw it as she comes out of the lavatory. Kavitha takes a few deep breaths inside the lavatory and opens the door. The man hesitates then throws the pebble down the corridor, causing a bit of a stir with the robbers and the train guards. She darts in, takes the young boy, and jumps out of the train. She and the boy hold the twine tight against the train car and trip Ahmed as he comes racing after them out of the door.

Kavitha and the boy hide underneath the bogies for a while, waiting for the searching guards to leave. They then climb on top of the train and stay there for a long while. Kavitha eventually notices a small light in the deepening night distance, growing bigger as it came closer to the train. She also spots a pile of luggage in the distance. The young boy throws a pebble at it to put it out.

Kavitha and the boy hitchhike on a lorry and Kavitha tries to make plans to get help for the train under siege, saying that her husband and the boy's father were on the train. The boy quietly says that that man with him was not his father. She asks him what his name is and he tells her that it is Mustafa, a Muslim name. She wonders why he was going to India. She also finds out that the luggage she saw was not luggage but kerosene and that the boy had thrown it into the train interior. Mustafa informs Kavitha that the man with him was a Hindu friend of his parents' who was supposed to take him to relatives in East Pakistan but falls silent when asked about his parents. She and Mustafa embark on a long journey towards East Pakistan themselves and Kavitha, through this long journey, is surprised at how often she found herself thinking of Vinod. She is now a widow and she is not alarmed, startled, or frightened by that fact at all. She felt widowed a long time ago already. On a horse cart nearing East Pakistan, Kavitha tells Mustafa that what had happened to them was theirs and theirs alone and never to speak of it.