The mansion had been transformed into a temple of performative mourning. The air was heavy with the scent of cheap incense and the suffocating drone of weeping relatives. Every corner of the house echoed with the hollow, orchestrated sobs of Vikram, who played the part of the grieving widower with the precision of a stage actor. He sat in the drawing room, his head bowed, his shoulders shaking with rhythmic, practiced sorrow.

"My poor child," he would murmur whenever a relative approached, his voice thick with a forced, trembling tremor. "Meera was my soul, my heart. Who will raise my little one now? Meri bachi ki maa chali gayi... ab iska khayal kaun rakhega? (My child's mother is gone... who will look after her now?)"