He took the — the flower pot — from the corner of the yard, filled it with fresh earth, and planted marigold seeds. He placed it exactly where Sarbjit used to stand to catch the morning sun.

Og had seen Sarbjit speak to a dying sparrow with the softness of a grandmother. He had watched him scratch a calendar into the wall with a pebble, counting days not for himself, but for the child he’d left behind. The other prisoners called Sarbjit bhai — brother. The guards called him animal . Og called him friend .

Here is — a fictional tale. The Flower Pot of Sarbjit Og was not a man of many words. He was a groundskeeper at a forgotten prison on the outskirts of Lahore, a place where time moved like dried mud — slow, cracking, heavy. For thirty years, he had tended only one thing: a cracked blumentopf (flower pot) outside Cell No. 12.

Then, one cold dawn, the cell was empty. Sarbjit had died of a brain hemorrhage, the official report said. His sister back in India fought for justice; his wife wailed into a television camera. But here, in the prison yard, Og did the only thing he could.