THE FIRST thing you notice walking into the house that Satheesh P built is what he didn’t. The bedroom is finished. So are the living room and verandah. The kitchen, halfway done. Beyond that are cement walls left bare, floors that have never been tiled, another bedroom that exists only as an outline. He had been working on the house for years.

On the wall of the bedroom that he did finish is a pencil scrawl, “Soregam”. A child’s spelling for “swargam” or heaven, written with the kind of confidence children have before they begin to doubt themselves. She had written it on the wall her father’s shirts hang.…