Chapter 1: Nandini

# Chapter 1: Nandini

## The Pink City at 5 AM

The marigold petals were velvet between her fingers, each one a small cool weight.

The autorickshaw driver refused to take her to Johari Bazaar at five in the morning.

"Madam, abhi toh subah ki azaan bhi nahi hui." The man was half-asleep, his khaki shirt untucked, his face carrying the particular stubbornness of a Jaipur auto driver who had not yet had his first chai and who considered any fare before sunrise an insult to the natural order. He waved a hand, the dismissal of a man who was warm in his seat and intended to stay warm. "Baad mein aao. Saat baje."

Seven o'clock was two hours away. Nandini Rathore did not have two hours.

She had forty-three minutes before the flower vendor at Johari Bazaar closed his overnight wholesale window. After that, Gopal Phoolwale would load whatever marigolds and jasmine remained onto his Tempo and drive to the weddings that had booked first, and the weddings that had booked first were not Nandini's wedding. Nandini's wedding. Or rather, the wedding that Nandini was coordinating, the Shekhawat-Agarwal wedding, the wedding that was in eleven days, the wedding whose bride's mother had called at 4:17 AM to announce that the mandap flowers had to be changed from white rajnigandha to orange marigold because a pandit in Pushkar had declared white flowers inauspicious for a Tuesday wedding — that wedding needed forty kilos of marigold garlands by this evening's mehndi rehearsal. The chai glass was warm against her cupped palms, the steel conducting heat through her skin.

Forty kilos. Forty-three minutes. And this autorickshaw driver wanted her to come back at seven.

"Bhaiya," Nandini said, and she used the voice. The voice was not loud. The voice was not aggressive. The voice was that, calibrated, Rajput-household-trained voice that her mother Kamla Rathore had perfected over three decades of managing a joint family of seventeen people in a haveli in Chandpole, the voice that said I am asking politely and the politeness has a deadline. "Johari Bazaar. Now. I'll pay one-fifty."

The metre fare was seventy rupees. One-fifty was the bribe.

The driver looked at her. Looked at the ₹150 she was holding between two fingers. Calculated the mathematics of sleep versus money. Money won. Money always won in Jaipur at 5 AM.

"Baitho," he said, and started the auto.

Nandini sat. The auto lurched into the empty road, MI Road at five in the morning was a different city from MI Road at five in the evening. No traffic. No horns. No tourists photographing the Hawa Mahal from the wrong angle. Just the grey predawn light on the pink sandstone buildings, the buildings that gave Jaipur its name and its colour and its particular, rose-tinted beauty that looked like someone had dipped the entire city in Gulaal and forgotten to wash it off. Her fingers traced the garland string, the marigold petals soft and slightly damp.

The air was cold. February in Jaipur was the tail end of winter; not the bone-cracking cold of December, when the fog sat on the Nahargarh hills like a blanket that refused to be removed, but the gentler cold of late February, when the mornings still bit but the afternoons forgave. Nandini pulled her dupatta tighter. The dupatta was her grandmother's, a Sanganeri block-print, indigo on white, the fabric soft from forty years of wearing and washing and wearing again. Badi Maa had given it to her the day she started the event planning business, with the instruction: "Yeh dupatta pehno jab kaam pe jaao. Luck aata hai."

Luck. Nandini needed luck. Nandini needed luck and forty kilos of marigold garlands and a bride's mother who would stop calling at 4 AM and a venue coordinator at City Palace who would return her emails and a DJ who understood that "Rajasthani fusion" did not mean playing "Padharo Mhare Desh" on repeat for six hours.

The auto took the turn past Albert Hall Museum, the building's Victorian-Rajput architecture catching the first hint of dawn, the sandstone warming from grey to the faintest suggestion of the pink that would, by noon, be the aggressive, undeniable, tourist-brochure pink that Jaipur was famous for. Past Ramniwas Bagh, where the morning walkers were already circling the park in their white sneakers and determined expressions. Past the statue of Sawai Jai Singh II, the city's founder, who sat on his stone horse with the permanent expression of a man who had built an entire city based on Vastu Shastra principles and was mildly surprised that it worked.

Nandini's phone buzzed. WhatsApp. The bride's mother.

Nandini ji kya hua? Gopal se baat hui? Marigold milega na? Panditji ne bahut strictly bola hai. White flowers BILKUL nahi. Orange only. Jai Shree Krishna. The sandstone was rough under her hand where she leaned against the bazaar wall.

4:52 AM. The woman was texting at 4:52 AM with the urgency of someone whose daughter's cosmic alignment depended on flower colour. Which, in the context of a Rajasthani Marwari wedding, it probably did.

Nandini typed back: Ji Aunty, reaching Johari Bazaar in 10 minutes. Will confirm marigold order by 5:30. Don't worry at all.

The "don't worry at all" was a lie. Nandini was worried. Nandini was worried because the Shekhawat-Agarwal wedding was the biggest wedding her company, Rathore Events, a one-woman operation that she ran from a desk in her bedroom in the family haveli, had ever taken on. ₹18 lakhs budget. Three-day celebration. 800 guests. A venue at Narain Niwas Palace that had marble floors she was terrified of scratching. A baraat procession that required a white mare, a brass band, and a fireworks display that the Jaipur police had already denied permission for twice.

She was twenty-six. She had been running Rathore Events for fourteen months. Her previous biggest wedding had been a ₹4-lakh affair in Tonk where the caterer had served paneer instead of mushroom because "mushroom khatam ho gaya" and the bride's father had not noticed because the bride's father had been consuming Royal Stag since 2 PM. Farid's forearm brushed hers as he poured. His skin was warm, calloused at the wrist.

The Shekhawat-Agarwal wedding was a different universe. The Shekhawats were old Rajput money: the kind of family that had a coat of arms and opinions about which fork to use for salad. The Agarwals were new Marwari money, the kind of family that had a jewellery showroom on Gopalji Ka Rasta and opinions about everything else. The wedding was the merger of two families who agreed on nothing except that their children were in love and that the wedding had to be "Instagram-worthy."

Instagram-worthy. The phrase that had replaced "shaandaar" in the vocabulary of Indian wedding planning. The phrase that meant: we want it to look expensive in photographs, and we want strangers on the internet to envy us, and we want the reels to get at least fifty thousand views, and if the wedding photographer doesn't have a drone, we will find a new photographer.

Nandini had a drone photographer. The drone photographer cost ₹45,000 for three days, which was almost her entire profit margin on the event, but the drone photographer was non-negotiable because the Shekhawat boy, Harsh, twenty-nine, pleasant, worked in his father's real estate firm, and possessed a certain affability of a man who had never had to fight for anything. Had specifically requested "aerial shots of the baraat."

Aerial shots of the baraat. As if the baraat were a military operation requiring surveillance footage. The dupatta's cotton was thin enough that the wind reached her neck through it.

The auto reached Johari Bazaar. The bazaar was not yet open — the jewellery shops with their gold-and-kundan displays were shuttered, the lac bangle sellers were asleep, the street food vendors had not yet set up their mirchi vada stations. But in the back lanes, where the wholesale flower market operated on its own nocturnal schedule, the work had been going since 3 AM.

Nandini paid the driver — ₹150, no receipt, the transaction completed with the mutual understanding that this was a cash economy and the taxman was a concept that existed in Delhi but had not yet reached the Johari Bazaar flower lane at 5 AM.

She walked briskly into the lane. The smell hit first — the smell always hit first in the flower market. Marigold and jasmine and rose.

The underneath-smell of green stems and water and the faintly rotting petals that had fallen from yesterday's unsold garlands. The smell was Jaipur's morning smell, the smell that the city produced before the exhaust fumes and the street food smoke took over, the smell that meant: the work is happening, the weddings are being prepared, the city is making itself beautiful for the people who will spend money on beauty.

Gopal Phoolwale was where Gopal Phoolwale always was — sitting on an upturned plastic crate behind a mountain of marigold garlands, his phone playing a Rajasthani folk song at a volume that suggested he considered the entire lane his personal speaker system. He was fifty-something, moustache like handlebars, the kind of Jaipur trader who could calculate ₹6,000 worth of flowers in his head faster than Nandini's phone calculator. Her bangles clinked against the counter. The steel was cool, then warm where her wrist rested.

"Gopal ji," Nandini said.

Gopal looked up. His face performed the recognition, the recognition that flower vendors gave to regular clients, the recognition that said I know you, I know your weddings, I know your budget, and I know you're here because something went wrong.

"Nandini beti. Subah subah?"

"Marigold. Forty kilos. By this evening."

Gopal's eyebrows performed their own calculation. "Forty kilo marigold. Aaj. Shaam tak."

"Haan ji."

"Pehle order mein rajnigandha tha."

"Pandit ne change karwa diya."

Gopal made the sound. The tch sound, the sound that Rajasthani men made when pandit interference disrupted commercial arrangements. The sound was the editorial comment of a man who had been selling flowers for thirty years and who had seen pandit-driven flower changes derail more weddings than rain.

"Rate badh jayega," Gopal said. Not a question. A statement. A negotiation's opening move. The auto's vinyl seat was hot from the morning sun, the heat pressing through her cotton kurta.

"Kitna?"

"Garland rate; ₹180 per kilo for regular. But forty kilo same-day, emergency order, ₹240."

₹240 per kilo times forty kilos was ₹9,600. The original rajnigandha order had been ₹6,800. The difference, ₹2,800, was coming out of Nandini's margin. The margin that was already thin. The margin that was the difference between "running a business" and "doing expensive charity work for rich families."

"₹200," Nandini said.

"₹230."

"₹210, and I'll give you the phoolon ki sajawat contract for the Mehta engagement next month."

Gopal's moustache twitched. The twitch was the tell — the tell that said the Mehta engagement contract was interesting, the interesting — value that exceeded the₹30-per-kilo negotiation, the value: a contract was repeat business, and repeat business was the flower vendor's oxygen. The marigold garland was heavier than it looked. The flowers' weight pulled at her wrists.

"₹215. Final."

"Done."

The handshake. The Johari Bazaar handshake — firm, brief, eye contact maintained, the handshake that sealed the deal in a market where written contracts were considered an insult to a man's word. Gopal's grip was calloused from thirty years of handling thorns and stems and the rough string used to tie garlands. Nandini's grip was firm because Badi Maa had taught her: "Haath mein dum rakhna. Kamzor haath se koi deal nahi hoti."

Nandini typed the confirmation to the bride's mother: Aunty, 40 kg marigold garlands confirmed. Delivery by 4 PM today. All sorted. Jai Shree Krishna.

The reply came in eleven seconds: Bahut accha beta. Ab mandap ke pillars ke liye bhi marigold lena. Panditji ne woh bhi bola.

Mandap pillars. Additional marigold. Additional cost. Additional erosion of the margin that was already a rumour. She pressed her thumb into the garland knot. The string was rough, hemp, biting into her skin.

Nandini breathed. The breath was the breath that wedding planners took. The breath that was not meditation and not yoga and not any of the wellness-app recommendations that her phone suggested at 9 PM every night, but the functional, survival breath of a woman who was managing seventeen simultaneous crises and who needed the oxygen to fuel the seventeenth.

She walked out of the flower lane. The sun was coming up over the old city wall. The wall that Sawai Jai Singh had built, the wall that enclosed the Pink City in its grid of streets and bazaars and havelis, the wall that was now mostly decorative but that still defined the boundary between Jaipur's old heart and its new suburbs. The sun hit the sandstone and the sandstone turned pink. The famous pink. The pink that was actually terracotta, that was actually the colour of the local stone mixed with lime plaster, that was actually not pink at all but that everyone called pink because "The Terracotta City" didn't have the same tourism appeal.

Nandini's phone said 5:34 AM. She had, she did the calculation; approximately ninety minutes before she needed to be at the caterer's kitchen in Vaishali Nagar to taste-test the wedding menu. Before that, she needed chai.

Not the chai from the stall near her haveli in Chandpole, where the chaiwala made it too sweet and too milky and called her "beta" in a way that made her feel fourteen instead of twenty-six. Not the chai from the hotel coffee shops in C-Scheme, where they served it in glass cups with lemongrass and charged ₹180 for the privilege of feeling cosmopolitan. His hand was dry and warm when it closed around the chai glass she handed him.

She needed the chai from that place.

The place was on Kishanpole Bazaar. The place was a tapri, a street-side tea stall, the smallest unit of commerce in the Indian food chain, the kind of establishment that consisted of a counter, a stove, a man, and chai. Except this tapri was not the standard tapri. This tapri had been, the word was "transformed," though the man who ran it would have objected to "transformed" and would have said "cleaned up a bit", from a standard roadside chai stall into something that fell between a tapri and a café.

The place was called Qureshi Chai. The sign was hand-painted; white letters on green wood, the green that was colour that theQureshi family had used for three generations, the three generations of chai-making that the sign referenced with the tagline: "1971 se. Asli Adrak Wali."

Asli adrak wali. Real ginger chai. Since 1971.

Nandini walked toward Kishanpole Bazaar. The walk from Johari Bazaar was seven minutes through the old city's lanes. Lanes that were designed for elephants and horses and that now accommodated motorcycles and autos and the occasional cow that had decided the middle of the lane was the optimal location for its morning rest. The lanes were narrow, the buildings on either side rising three and four storeys, their facades painted in the faded pinks and blues and yellows that gave the old city its lived-in, weathered, not-yet-gentrified beauty.

She turned the corner onto Kishanpole. And there it was.

Qureshi Chai. Open. At 5:30 AM. Because of course it was open at 5:30 AM — the Qureshi tapri had been opening at 5 AM for fifty-five years, the opening time established by Farid's grandfather, Rahim Qureshi, who believed that "subah ki pehli chai se din banta hai" — the first chai of the morning makes the day. The haveli floor tiles were cool under her bare feet in the morning.

And behind the counter, making that first chai, was Farid.