Constellations of the heart

The Himalayan sun, usually a benevolent presence, turned hostile as it glinted off the rifle barrels surrounding Yamini Singh and her friends. “So this is how I die,” she muttered, raising her hands higher as commanded. “In hiking boots I paid too much for.”

The five friends stood on a rocky outcropping, a panorama of Kashmir’s majestic mountains stretching before them – a view they now shared with several stern-faced soldiers of the Indian Army.

Forty-eight hours earlier, Yamini had been elbow-deep in medical charts, her resident’s white coat stained with the battle scars of caffeine. Dr. Yamini Singh: brilliant, perpetually skeptical, and currently, utterly bewildered.

“Can someone please explain to me,” she hissed sideways, maintaining her hands-up position, “how a hike to see ‘like, totally majestic mountains and stuff’ led to us potentially being mistaken for border infiltrators?”