Before dawn in 1936, Big Ammachi frets as Philipose heads to school, noticing ill omens yet resisting calling him back. Baby Mol greets the sunrise with delight, then abruptly declares something has happened to “our baby,” heightening Ammachi’s unease amid their simple morning rituals.

Philipose walks through storm-darkened paths, recalling his dog Caesar’s fatal snakebite and eyeing a moored rice barge as the river roars. He weighs being late and dry versus punctual and soaked, grouses about Saaji Saar’s punishments, and unwraps his lunch under palms as rain intensifies.

A keening cry draws him to the jetty boatman, who kneels beside a limp infant. Seeing froth and a white, rubbery obstruction, Philipose repeatedly reaches into the baby’s throat, tearing free peels until breath rattles back. Fearing the child will fail again, he urges a clinic; the boatman wails about the flood and money.

Driven by urgency and frustration, Philipose shoves the man’s dugout into the surging river, grabs the baby, and orders the panicked father to paddle—despite his own vow to avoid water. As the canoe bucks and floods, Philipose slaps the boatman to focus him and clears the baby’s airway again while bailing furiously.

At a sharp bend, the current spins them into a flooded canal; they smash into a submerged jetty. Philipose leaps ashore with the gasping child; the boatman scrambles after him as the canoe is swept away. Shaking with anger at his folly yet clutching the saved baby, Philipose climbs the slick steps toward a gate, having narrowly escaped the river he feared.