Extract:

Mona looks through the glass window at the platform outside. It is midnight. The New Delhi-Haldwani Express has stopped at a little station. A few people get off and look around. The train is not meant to halt here. In the seats alongside, both her parents are asleep. Outside, something dives and collides against her glass window and buzzes madly. Mona peers out.  What is it? A blue bottle fly? In the middle of the night? Stupid insect. Go to sleep.

The blue bottle thing stops hovering, flips upside down and hangs still. Mona gapes, and at that moment she hears it. Very distinctly. A tiny hiccup, in three octaves. Hi-i-c! Before she can say What? The blue bottle thing does something that makes her hair go porcupine. It trembles wildly, its body opening up from the rear. Mona blinks. The thing was opening up like a flower! The blue-green sheen quickly turns white. It is incredible how fast it happens. The ‘petals’ grow right before her into a massive, fantastic, beautiful white lotus. Great goose pimples. Prozy will never believe this.

Mona will be thirteen in a month and she wears a tiny nose ring. She touches it now to make sure she is awake…