Chapter 1: The Miracle on the Kachra Heap

When I was clocking out late at night—yawning, my dupatta slipping off one shoulder, my feet aching in old Bata sandals—I caught a sharp, almost metallic smell of blood near the D-block garbage station, behind our research institute in Pune. The air was heavy and muggy, mosquitoes humming their nightly chorus, with the whirr of the campus generator in the background.

A huge black shape lay sprawled at the bottom of a dried-up fountain behind the canteen, half-lit by the flickering yellow of the streetlamp. Empty Maaza bottles, styrofoam plates, and someone’s vada pav remains surrounded him, as if the city’s filth had claimed him too.

By the uncertain, moth-circled light, I could just about make out what it was.

A mermaid.

A mermaid, nearly three metres long, lay quietly in a muddy heap of trash. His once-lustrous silver hair was now matted with blood and dirt, caked into tangles like wet seaweed. The pair of eyes that could stun anyone with their beauty when open were now tightly shut, unmoving, as if lost in the memory of deep oceans.

He looked just like discarded rubbish—some broken thing the world had tossed out. My heart gave a strange lurch, a mix of pity and guilt. Only in this country, I thought, would such a miracle end up on the kachra heap.

This is... Sairaj? Why is he here?

I recognized him as the mermaid who’d been captured along with Tejas. The sight of him brought back the memory of those first nights: blood on marble floors, shrieking alarms, Kabir’s laughter echoing in the corridors. Sairaj, the untamable one, now thrown out like yesterday’s leftovers.

This time, the lab had only caught these two mature, perfect mermaids. How could one of them end up thrown out like rubbish? In all our years, we’d never caught creatures so beautiful—or so tragic.

A colleague leaving with me glanced over, his tone tinged with pity and regret, rubbing the sleep from his eyes as he balanced his helmet under one arm. His phone buzzed with a WhatsApp message, but he ignored it, watching me with tired eyes.

"Yeah, during the experiment just now, he suddenly woke up from anaesthesia and attacked several researchers. Kabir’s arm was almost torn off. Mad fellow, yaar."

"Kabir tossed him here, left him to die. Said if he died, he’d dissect him and make a specimen. Typical Kabir na—full psycho type."

I looked at the wounds covering the mermaid and couldn’t help but frown. Red gashes ran down his tail, some still oozing in the half-light. The raw, ugly marks seemed out of place on a creature meant for stories and lullabies.

Mermaids heal incredibly fast. Even with injuries this severe, if he were put back in water, he’d recover within half a month.

Kabir dumped him here clearly hoping he would die. Such cruelty, just for data, just to show off in front of his father’s moneyed friends. I could almost hear my mother’s voice, scolding from years ago: *Don’t get involved with things that don’t belong to our world, beta.*

I stopped walking, the keys to my scooter jangling in my pocket.

My colleague looked at me. "You’re not thinking of saving him, are you? I’d advise against it, Meera."

"Kabir’s dad is our project’s main sponsor. He’s not like us, just here to add a line to his CV—a proper rich kid. We’re here to make a living, not fight with these people, okay? Don’t get involved."

"If you cross him, do you think your life will be easy after this? You want your Amma and Appa to hear about some scandal in your job? Think before you act, yaar."

I said nothing. After my colleague left, his bike roaring off into the night, I returned to the lab and activated the transport trolley. My hands shook a little as I keyed in the access code, but I told myself I had no choice—sometimes you just have to do what’s right, *log kya kahenge* be damned.

Fortunately, Sairaj was already gravely injured and unconscious, so I didn’t need to sedate him again. The trolley rattled over the uneven tiles, echoing down the corridor like a midnight train leaving Pune station. I prayed no one would see me. The security guard was, as usual, dozing with the newspaper over his face, so I slipped by quietly.

There was an old, abandoned fish tank in the lab, the kind that once housed prize-winning carps for some visiting VIP. After filling it with water—my hands red from the cold—I placed Sairaj inside, careful not to let his tail scrape against the broken edge.

He was completely unaware, sinking quietly to the bottom.

Crimson blood tinged the water pink. His silver hair floated in the water, like strands of jasmine shimmering under the tube light—beautiful even in such misery. It reminded me of the garlands my mother used to string for the temple—so delicate, so easily ruined.

In the tank beside him, Tejas swam restlessly, his hostility clear on his face.

"Why him?" His usually gentle, affectionate brown eyes were now full of grievance, his lips pressed in a pout I had never seen before. It was almost childish, but there was hurt beneath it.

"You already have me... isn’t that enough?"

I could only try to soothe him. "I only want you, but he’s your kin. How could I just watch him die?"

I didn’t tell Tejas that, in truth, I always felt a difficult-to-express guilt towards Sairaj. In my heart, I knew this was partly my fault—karma, perhaps, or just the heavy price of being human.

Because my original experimental subject wasn’t Tejas.

Back then, the capture team brought me two mermaids to choose from. The air in the lab that day was thick with expectation and the scent of wet scales. My hands trembled with the thrill of discovery, but something sour twisted inside me.

One was Tejas.

And the other was Sairaj.

And I chose Tejas, leaving Sairaj behind.