The clay pot had hung between the two balconies since morning, tied with jute rope, swaying whenever the wind picked up. By afternoon, every child in the society had gathered below it, chalk circles marked on the hot tar to show where each layer of the pyramid would stand.
"Six on the bottom," said Kabir, the oldest boy, counting on his fingers. "Three in the middle. One on top."
Diya's hand shot up before he finished. "Top. Obviously."
She was already stretching one arm straight above her head, as if height alone might answer to enthusiasm.
Bhoomi crouched by the chalk circles instead, checking the spacing between them with her palm, then checking it again.
"The pot's about nine feet up," Kabir said. "Nobody reaches that alone."
"I can practice," Diya said. "Give me the wall."
She spent the next hour throwing herself at the compound wall, marking a chalk line each time her fingertips grazed higher, landing in a crouch, trying again. Twice she nearly turned her ankle on the landing. Both times she waved off the hand someone offered and went straight back to the wall.
Bhoomi watched from the chalk circles, arranging and rearranging the six children who'd agreed to be the base, until their feet lined up exactly where the morning's diagram said they should.
"Diya," she said. "Come stand here instead."
"In a minute. I'm almost at eight feet."
She wasn't. She was at six, maybe six and a half, and every attempt after the twentieth looked exactly like the first — a run-up, a jump, a slap of her palm against brick a full arm's length below the mark.
By five o'clock, the base team had practiced locking arms and legs eleven times without her, steady enough now that Kabir could climb halfway up and stand without wobbling. Diya was still at the wall, breathing hard, chalk dust up both forearms.
Bhoomi walked over and stood beside her, not saying anything, just matching her breathing to Diya's until it slowed down on its own.
"You keep landing in the same spot," Bhoomi said finally. "The wall's not moving. You're not either. Nine feet doesn't happen from one person jumping harder."
Diya turned, ready to argue, and found she didn't actually have one.
"Then how does it happen?"
Bhoomi held out both hands, cupped together, the way the base layer had been practicing all afternoon without her.
Diya looked at the hands. Then at the six children lined up in the chalk circles, waiting. Then at the pot, hanging exactly where it had hung all day, nine feet up, not one inch closer for all her jumping.
She put her foot in Bhoomi's hands.
The pyramid went up slower than any of Diya's solo attempts — three counts on the base, a pause while the middle layer found its balance, another pause while Kabir climbed and steadied himself against four separate shoulders that weren't his own. Diya went last, her bare feet finding grip on backs that had been strangers to her that morning, now holding perfectly still under her weight.
For a second, right before she reached the pot, the whole courtyard went the kind of quiet that happens right before something breaks.
Someone below shouted her name. Six voices, then more, joining in from the balconies above.
Diya's fingers found the rim of the pot and pulled.
It came apart in a rush of curd and marigold petals, raining down over every shoulder that had carried her there, and for one full second nobody moved, soaked and laughing and still holding each other up.
On the tar below, where the setting sun threw long shadows across the chalk circles, six separate shadows had become one shape — no gaps between them, no single outline you could point to and call just Diya's, or just Bhoomi's, or just anyone's.
Bhoomi noticed it first, the way she noticed most things. She didn't say anything about it. She just stood there a moment longer than she needed to, watching the one shadow they'd all made together, before she reached up and helped pull Diya down.
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