(smiling, hiding a cough): "Three more pieces, Ma. Then I can buy your blood pressure medicine."

The frame opens on a rain-soaked evening in old Dhaka. Shraboni (25) is hunched over a sewing machine, mending a neighbor’s sari. Her mother, Shobha, enters with a chipped cup of cha.

He freezes.

(laughs bitterly): "Why? What do you want from us?"