"The parathas smelled so good it was almost painful." This means

Rohan had booked the window seat on the train to Jaipur three weeks earlier. It was his first journey alone, and he had planned it carefully: the window, his headphones, a packet of chips and six hours of fields rushing past.

When he reached his seat, an old woman was sitting in it. She had a cloth bag on her lap and a nervous look, as if she expected to be told off.

"Excuse me," Rohan began, holding out his ticket. "I think this is—"

"I know, beta," she said. "My seat is the middle one. But I feel sick if I cannot see outside. I will move if you want."

Rohan looked at the middle seat, squeezed between a large man reading a newspaper and a family eating parathas. He thought of his three weeks of planning. Then he looked at the old woman's hands, which were holding the bag very tightly.

"It's all right," he said. "Keep it."

The journey was not the one he had planned. The large man's newspaper kept hitting his ear, and the parathas smelled so good it was almost painful. But somewhere after Ajmer, the old woman unwrapped a cloth and offered him two laddoos she had made herself, and told him about her grandson, who was also going to Jaipur, to study, just like Rohan.

By the time the train stopped, Rohan had not seen many fields. He did not mind as much as he had expected.