It was a quarter to two and I was in the canteen with my dabba open in front of me and inside the dabba was my mother's rice and on top of the rice was the yellow dal and on the dal was a whole chilli that she always put in even though I told her I didn't eat it, and Ramesh was sitting across from me eating his own dabba which was the same as mine because in the village the mothers all cook the same dal, and he was telling me something about his daughter getting married in October and the money that was still missing, and he didn't finish the sentence because there was the roar.

It was not a roar of explosion. It was a roar of weight. The mountain of waste that stood behind the building, the one that had been growing for years and had turned soft with the rain, moved all at once and came down on the wall and the wall came down on us and the light went out and the sound went on inside my ears even after outside it was over.

When I opened my eyes there was nothing to see because there was no light, and there was a thing above me, a slab of concrete, I could feel it with my face two fingers from my nose, and my right arm was underneath, caught, I couldn't feel it anymore from the elbow, and next to me was Ramesh's breathing and the breathing made a sound I had never heard a breath make.

I tried to pull my arm. And the arm would not come and I pulled harder and then I felt the slab move, a centimetre, I felt it come down toward Ramesh, toward Ramesh's chest which was right under the edge, and Ramesh made a sound, and I understood something you understand with the body before the head: that my caught arm was the only thing holding up that edge of concrete, that if I slid the arm out the slab came down, and if the slab came down Ramesh would not breathe anymore.

So I stopped pulling.

I put the arm back where it was, or rather I didn't put it back because I had never really moved it, I left it there, and I forced the other way, pushing up, holding, and the arm I could not feel and it was good not to feel it because that way I did not feel the pain either, and we stayed like that, Ramesh and I, in the dark, him breathing and me holding, and we couldn't see each other, we could only hear each other, his shoulder against my shoulder and his breath against my face.

The arm now was no longer cold and no longer warm, it had become a thing that was not mine, it had become a piece of wood someone had left there to prop up a door, and I talked to that piece of wood, I told it hold on, I told it a little longer, I told it you are not an arm now, you are a nail, and nails do not get tired and nails do not ask for anything.

To keep from screaming I started saying the lunch. I said the rice, I said the dal, I said the chilli I don't eat, I said the chapati, and after a while Ramesh understood what I was doing and started saying it too, his lunch, which was my lunch, and for a stretch in the dark under the concrete two men said to each other in low voices the list of their mothers' lunch the way you say a prayer, and as long as we said it we were both alive.

Then Ramesh said it more quietly. And then he said it more quietly still. And at a certain point only I was saying it, and I kept saying it, the rice the dal the chilli, not because I believed he could hear it but because to stop saying it meant to know, and I did not want to know, I held the arm and said the lunch and did not know.

The diggers came when it was night, I could tell from the cold. I heard the voices above the concrete and I heard banging and I heard a voice saying in Marathi there's someone, move, there's someone, and I answered with what little voice I had left and I said there are two of us, take him first, take Ramesh first, even though I knew, even though for hours the arm had been holding up a weight that no longer breathed.

They pulled me out at dawn. My right arm was no longer an arm, the doctors say maybe they save it, maybe not. But it is not the arm I speak of when I tell it, and I tell it rarely, because people want it to end well and this does not end well, it ends and that is all.

After three days a boy from the digging brought me my dabba. They had found it underneath, crushed flat as a coin, the lid welded to the bottom by the pressure. They put it in my hand while I was on the hospital bed. It would not open anymore. Inside there was still my mother's rice and the dal and the whole chilli I don't eat, all crushed together into a finger of steel, and I keep it like that, closed, on the nightstand, and I let no one open it, because it is the last thing that was whole when there were still two of us saying the lunch.