Anindita Sen Part 1 – The Postbox by the Pier The sea had been restless all week, its surface shifting in colours that belonged more to a mood than to the sky—dull pewter in the mornings, then a bruised green by afternoon, then turning almost black by evening when the horizon swallowed the sun whole. Mira Basu walked along the narrow pier each day after school, not because she had errands to run there but because the smell of salt and the sound of waves striking the wooden posts felt like a private conversation she could not hear anywhere else.…