“If I don’t wake up first,” says Sunita, a school teacher in Lucknow, “the universe collapses. Last week, I slept until 5:30. My husband missed his 6:12 train, my son forgot his geometry box, and my daughter wore mismatched socks. It’s not magic. It’s habit.”

“My brother’s family once showed up at 8:00 AM on a Sunday,” laughs Arjun, a businessman in Jaipur. “I was in my underwear. My wife was brushing her teeth. My brother said, ‘We were in the neighborhood.’ We live in different cities. They drove 200 kilometers. That’s ‘in the neighborhood’ in India.”

The pre-dawn quiet is also the only time the mother drinks her own chai—while it is hot, without interruption. By 6:00 AM, the house explodes. Space is a luxury in the Indian middle-class lifestyle. A 2-BHK (two-bedroom-hall-kitchen) apartment often houses six people: grandparents, parents, and two children.