Bujji’s father, Peddiraju, was a man of tradition. He had already chosen a match for her: a wealthy buffalo trader from a neighboring village with gold rings on every finger and no poetry in his soul.

He knelt and dug a small hole in the hard ground with his bare hands. He placed the sapling in it.

"You will not shame me with a pilla pundu city boy who talks to dirt," Peddiraju thundered.

"In our village," she said, tilting her head, "we ask the water if it is happy. If it tastes of rain and old clay, it is happy. Your machine knows nothing of happiness."

"You're not useless, city-man," she said.

Then, a commotion. A jeep roared into the arena, kicking up red dust. Vikram stepped out, not in a white shirt, but in a simple lungi and a crumpled kurta . He looked like he had not slept for days. In his hand, he carried a single mango sapling.

For three weeks, they were separated. Vikram was banned from the orchards. Bujji was locked in the grain store room. He sent her messages through a village boy—a single mallepuvvu flower wrapped in a scrap of paper. On it, he had written: “The pH of my heart without you is acidic enough to dissolve stone.”