Arjun’s thumb moved to the spacebar to pause. But the laptop didn’t respond. The video kept playing. The man with the langur looked up suddenly—straight into the lens, straight at Arjun. His lips didn’t move, but the voice sharpened, became intimate, as if whispered into Arjun’s ear.

Myra got a stuffed leopard for her birthday. She loved it. But sometimes, when the city fell quiet, Arjun would hear it—a soft, wind-like whisper from the hard drive of his sealed laptop.

Arjun scrolled through his phone, thumb hovering over the faded poster. Delhi Safari . A 2012 animated film his daughter, Myra, had discovered on some forgotten corner of the internet. “Papa, the leopard speaks!” she’d giggled, showing him a fuzzy clip on YouTube.

Arjun didn’t sleep. He sat guarding his daughter’s door until dawn. When the first light touched the smoggy sky, he looked out the window. The neighbor’s neem tree was still there. The construction crane on the next block hadn’t moved.