The DAAN sits where it has always sat—in the corner of the kitchen, its mud-plastered surface still warm from the morning’s fire. My mother’s hand moves across it with the reverence of ritual, the mixture of fresh mud and water becoming a thin coating that seals yesterday’s soot, renewing what must be renewed each dawn.

There is a geometry to poverty that the comfortable never quite grasp. The daan is not picturesque. It is necessity shaped by hands that know cold.

My earliest memory is warmth. Not comfort—warmth. The difference matters. The daan gave us both fire and purpose. Before school, I would watch my mother coax flame from wood gathered the previous afternoon, her breath gentle against kindling that had to catch because there was no alternative. The first chai of the morning tasted of wood smoke and patience.

We cooked everything on that fixed altar of clay. Rice that stuck slightly to the bottom and was relished the next morning with chai. Vegetables that carried the faint char of open flame. Bread that emerged with........

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