Every night, the same thing happened at the Sharma family table, and every night, nobody but Vihaan seemed to notice.

Dadi would take one roti fewer than everyone else.

Nine of them sat around the long table — Papa, Chacha, both mothers, three cousins, Dadi, and Vihaan — plates clattering, someone always asking for more subzi, Chachi shouting from the kitchen about the last roti being on its way.

And when the tawa finally emptied and the count came up short, Dadi always said the same thing.

“I am full. Eating too much makes an old woman sleepy.”

Vihaan was eight, but he was not stupid. He had counted the rotis rolled that morning. He had watched the pile shrink around the table, plate by plate, until the basket reached Dadi looking a little too light.

“Dadi, take mine,” he said one evening, pushing his plate towards her.

“No no, beta, you are growing. Eat.”

“You’re always full first,” Vihaan said. “Every day.”

Dadi laughed, the sound soft like tissue paper. “An old stomach doesn’t need what a young one does.”

But that night, Vihaan couldn’t sleep. He kept thinking of Dadi’s hands — how they trembled slightly now when she poured tea, how she’d started resting on the third step instead of climbing straight up to the terrace.

The next morning, he woke early, before even Chachi lit the stove. He found Dadi’s rolling pin, her flour-dusted board, and stood beside her.

“Teach me to make one roti,” he said. “A perfect round one. For you.”

Dadi looked at him for a long moment, flour on her fingers, morning light catching the silver in her hair.

“Why the sudden interest, beta?”

“Because you always give yours away,” Vihaan said. “I want to give one back.”

That evening, when the basket came around and Dadi reached for her usual half-portion, Vihaan placed a roti in front of her first — lopsided, slightly burnt at one edge, made with his own eight-year-old hands.

“This one is yours,” he said. “Only yours. Nobody else touches it.”

Dadi didn’t say anything for a moment. She simply broke off a piece, chewed slowly, and nodded at him the way she used to when he learned to tie his shoelaces for the first time.

“Best roti I’ve eaten in sixty years,” she said.

Vihaan knew it wasn’t true. But he also knew, for the first time, exactly what she had been doing for him every single night — and he wasn’t going to let her do it alone anymore.