Chapter 3: Nandini

# Chapter 3: Nandini

## The Haveli

The haveli on Chandpole was not a haveli in the way that tourists imagined havelis: not the restored, museum-quality, Shekhawati-fresco havelis of the heritage hotels, with their courtyards converted to swimming pools and their zenana quarters converted to spa rooms. The Rathore haveli was a lived-in haveli, which meant: paint peeling from the jharokha windows, electrical wiring that predated independence running along the walls like varicose veins, a courtyard that served simultaneously as a drying area for clothes, a parking space for two motorcycles, a playground for the neighbour's children who climbed the wall daily, and, on Sundays, a stage for Badi Maa's yoga routine which involved a rubber mat, a transistor radio playing bhajans, and a flexibility that defied her seventy-eight years.

Nandini's room was on the second floor, the room that had been the storeroom until she cleared it out fourteen months ago when she started Rathore Events. The room contained: a desk (IKEA, purchased from the Jaipur store on Tonk Road, assembled incorrectly on the first attempt, correctly on the third), a laptop (HP, inherited from her cousin Vikrant who had upgraded and who had not wiped the hard drive, which meant Nandini occasionally found his engineering exam notes in the downloads folder), a steel almirah containing her files and fabric swatches, and a single bed pushed against the wall beneath the window that overlooked the lane.

The window was her favourite part of the room. The window was a jharokha, the traditional Rajasthani projected window, the window that jutted from the building's facade like a stone balcony enclosed in carved sandstone lattice, the lattice allowing air and light and sound to enter while providing the privacy that the zenana architecture had originally been designed for. From the jharokha, Nandini could see the lane below, the lane that connected Chandpole to Kishanpole, the lane where the morning commerce of the old city unfolded, the vegetable vendor's cart, the milkman on his cycle with the steel cans, the schoolchildren in their blue uniforms heading to Maharaja Sawai Bhawani Singh School, and, if she leaned out slightly, the green wooden board of Qureshi Chai.

She could see the green board from her window. She had not noticed this until the third visit.

The third visit was yesterday. The third visit was the visit that confirmed the pattern, the pattern: Nandini, on her way to or from the flower market or the caterer or the venue, stopped at Qureshi Chai at approximately 5:30 AM, ordered one adrak wali, drank it standing at the counter, ordered a second, drank it sitting on the bench, paid ₹30, said "shukriya," and left.

The pattern had established itself without permission. The pattern had arrived the way patterns arrived in the old city — through repetition, through the body's navigation of familiar routes, through the careful, gravitational logic of a city whose lanes were narrow enough that you could not avoid passing the same stalls, the same vendors, the same faces every day.

But the chai was not an accident of geography. The chai was a choice. The chai was, Nandini had to be honest with herself, and she was honest with herself because Badi Maa had taught her that dishonesty with oneself was the most expensive habit a Rathore woman could develop: the chai was the best chai she had ever tasted.

This was not hyperbole. This was the assessment of a woman who had grown up in a household where chai was a four-times-daily event, where her mother Kamla's masala chai was the household's default beverage, where the aunts debated the merits of Brooke Bond versus Tata Gold with the seriousness of cricket commentators analysing pitch conditions. Nandini's palate had been calibrated by twenty-six years of Rathore household chai, and her palate said: the Qureshi adrak wali was superior.

The superiority was in the ginger. The ginger was fresh; actually fresh, not the dried powder that most stalls used, not the paste from a jar, but the root, grated to threads, added at a temperature that Nandini's hotel-management-adjacent brain (she had briefly considered IHM before choosing event management at NIAM instead) recognised as precisely controlled. The ginger hit the back of the throat with a warmth that was sharp without being aggressive, the sharpness dissipating into a lingering heat that stayed in the chest for minutes after the last sip.

And the man who made it was, the man who made it was interesting.

"Interesting" was the word she used in her head. Not handsome: Nandini had learned, from the Karthik experience, that handsomeness was a category she no longer trusted. Karthik had been handsome. Karthik had been the specific, Rajasthan Royals-watching, craft-beer-drinking, Instagram-bio-that-said-"wanderlust" kind of handsome that Jaipur's young professional men cultivated. Karthik's handsomeness had been a surface that concealed a depth of approximately four millimetres, the four millimetres containing his entire emotional range, which ran from "let's go to Nahargarh for sunset" to "I think we should see other people" to "Engagement Party: March 15" in the space of six months.

No. Not handsome. Interesting.

The chai-maker. Farid, his name was Farid, she had learned this from the regulars who called him by name. Was interesting because of the contradiction. The contradiction between the tapri (old, traditional, three-generation family business, steel tumblers, Parle-G biscuits) and the changes (the bench, the menu board, the Instagram account she had found and scrolled through at 1 AM, the Shahi Qureshi Special that cost ₹40 and came in a kulhad). The contradiction between the man's hands (chai-maker's hands, calloused from the grating, stained with turmeric at the fingertips) and the man's vocabulary (he had used the word "volatile" when describing the ginger oils, "volatile" being a word that chai-makers in the old city did not typically use, "volatile" being a word that suggested education beyond the stall).

She had asked. On the second visit. She had asked, not directly, because direct questions in the old city were considered impolite between strangers who were not yet acquaintances, but obliquely, in the way that Jaipur's conversational culture preferred. She lifted her hair. The air touched the damp skin.

"The menu is new," she had said, indicating the green board.

"Three years new," he had said.

"And before that?"

"Before that, just adrak wali. One item. Fifty-five years."

"Why change?"

He had looked at her, the look of a man assessing whether the question was casual or genuine, the assessment, the chai-maker's skill, the skill of reading customers that three years behind the counter had developed. He decided: genuine.

"Because the formula is permanent but the format can change. The chai is the same. The experience is different."

The sentence had stayed with her. The formula is permanent but the format can change. The sentence was the sentence of a man who thought about his work with the specificity of someone who had studied the thinking, not just the doing. The sentence was, Nandini realised, the sentence of someone who could have done something else; something more conventionally ambitious, something with a salary and a designation and a LinkedIn profile. And who had chosen this instead.

The choosing interested her. The choosing was the thing that separated "interesting" from "nice". "nice" being the category where men who made good chai and had pleasant faces lived, "interesting" being the category where men who had made a deliberate, considered choice to do the unconventional thing lived.

---

The wedding work did not permit extended contemplation of chai-makers.

The Shekhawat-Agarwal wedding was in nine days, and Nandini's to-do list had grown from 847 rows to 903 rows, the growth: organic, unstoppable expansion of Indian wedding planning, where every solved problem generated two new problems, where every confirmed vendor introduced a new requirement, where the phrase "sab theek ho jayega" (everything will be fine) was the mantra of an industry that operated on optimism and adrenaline.

Today's crisis: the baraat route.

The baraat — the groom's procession — was scheduled to proceed from the Shekhawat residence in Bani Park to the Narain Niwas Palace venue in Kanota Bagh, a distance of approximately 4.2 kilometres. The procession would include: the groom (Harsh) on a white mare, a brass band (14 musicians, uniforms to be confirmed), 200 baraat guests (walking, dancing, some inevitably inebriated by the time the procession began at 8 PM), a flower-decorated vintage car (a 1962 Ambassador, sourced from a collector in Amer, rental ₹15,000 for four hours), and the fireworks display that the police had denied twice and that the Shekhawat family continued to believe would happen through what they described as "connections."

The problem: the Jaipur Traffic Police had rejected the proposed route. The route required closing Mirza Ismail Road; MI Road, the city's main commercial thoroughfare — for approximately forty-five minutes during the evening rush. The Traffic Police's response, delivered via a letter that Nandini had collected from the Collectorate office, was: "Request denied. Alternative route may be proposed for consideration."

Alternative route. The alternative route was the back-roads route, through the residential lanes of Bani Park, past the railway crossing on Hasanpura Road, down the narrow streets of Adarsh Nagar, and onto Station Road. The back-roads route was longer (6.8 km instead of 4.2), narrower (the lanes could not accommodate a brass band marching fourteen abreast), and passed through a neighbourhood where an 8 PM baraat with fireworks and drums would generate noise complaints from every household within a 200-metre radius.

The Shekhawat father, Brigadier Himmat Singh Shekhawat (Retd.); had received this information with the stubborn displeasure of a man who had commanded a brigade in the Indian Army and who could not understand why the Jaipur Traffic Police would deny the reasonable request of a retired Brigadier whose family had lived in the city since before the Traffic Police existed.

"Nandini ji," the Brigadier had said, in the voice that Brigadiers used when they were controlling their volume, "my family's baraat has gone down MI Road for three generations. My baraat went down MI Road. My father's baraat went down MI Road. This boy's baraat will go down MI Road."

"Sir, the police. "

"The police will be managed. I have spoken to DCP Meena. He is a family friend."

DCP Meena. Nandini had noted this. DCP Meena was either going to solve the problem or create a new one, the new one (particular I)ndian-wedding problem of a powerful family expecting a government official to bend the rules because of a personal connection,.

The government official either bending (in which case Nandini's job was easy) or not bending (in which case Nandini would be blamed for not "managing" the situation).

She sat in her jharokha room, the laptop open, the spreadsheet glowing. The spreadsheet was the control centre, the document that tracked every vendor, every payment, every deadline, every decision, every change (and the changes were constant, the changes: the natural state of Indian wedding planning, where the bride changed her lehenga colour three times, the groom changed the DJ playlist twice, the mother-in-law changed the menu four times,.

The pandit changed the muhurat once, causing a cascade of rescheduling that rippled through the entire event like a stone dropped in a pond).

Row 847: Mandap flowers, CHANGED — Rajnigandha → Marigold. ₹2,800 additional cost — ABSORBED BY COORDINATOR MARGIN.

Row 848: Mandap pillar garlands; ADDED, Marigold, ₹3,200 estimated — SOURCE: Gopal Phoolwale — ABSORBED BY COORDINATOR MARGIN.

The margins were disappearing. The margins were the space in which Nandini's business lived, the space between what the client paid and what the vendors cost, the space that was supposed to be ₹1.8 lakhs on an ₹18-lakh wedding (10%, the industry standard) and that was now approximately ₹1.1 lakhs and shrinking with every pandit-mandated flower change and every mother-in-law-mandated menu addition.

₹1.1 lakhs for three months of work. For three months of 4 AM phone calls and vendor negotiations and autocad seating charts and WhatsApp group management (the wedding had four WhatsApp groups: "Shekhawat-Agarwal Wedding Main," "Vendor Coordination," "Family Updates," and "URGENT, Nandini Only," group where the bride's mother sent her, the last4 AM revelations).

₹1.1 lakhs. Divided by three months was ₹36,667 per month. Less than what a mid-level corporate employee earned. Less than what the Oberoi's housekeeping supervisor earned. Less than, Nandini did not complete this calculation because completing this calculation led to the question that she did not want to answer, the question —: is this sustainable?

The question lived in the margins of the spreadsheet. The question lived in the ₹2,800 she absorbed for the flower change.

The ₹3,200 she would absorb for the pillar garlands. The question was the question of a twenty-six-year-old woman running a one-person business in a city where wedding planning was dominated by established firms — Devika Events (fifteen years, thirty staff, a warehouse in Sitapura), Rajputana Celebrations (twelve years, the Rambagh Palace preferred vendor), Pink City Weddings (ten years, a fleet of Innovas for airport transfers). Against these firms, Nandini Rathore had: a jharokha room, an HP laptop, a Sanganeri dupatta for luck, and a reputation that was one wedding old.

The phone rang. Not WhatsApp. An actual phone call, which in 2026 meant either a spam call or a person over fifty.

"Nandini?"

"Aunty."

It was the bride's mother. Mrs. Shekhawat — Padma Shekhawat, the Brigadier's wife, a woman whose energy was inversely proportional to the amount of sleep she had gotten and who appeared to have gotten none.

"Beta, ek aur change hai."

One more change. The phrase that Nandini heard in her sleep, the phrase that was the soundtrack of Indian wedding planning, the phrase that contained the infinite capacity of Indian families to modify their celebrations at the last possible moment.

"Haan Aunty, boliye."

"The sangeet. The sangeet choreographer, the girl from Delhi, Rhea: she says the stage needs to be fifteen feet, not twelve. Because of the formation. The boys need more space for the lift."

The lift. The choreographed lift where four groomsmen would hoist the groom onto their shoulders during a Bollywood medley. The lift required fifteen feet of stage. The current stage was twelve feet. The three additional feet would cost, Nandini calculated, approximately ₹8,000 for the additional staging panels, ₹2,000 for the labour, and the destruction of whatever remained of her margin.

"Aunty, fifteen feet stage will mean we need to adjust the seating layout for the sangeet. The front row will be three feet closer to the stage."

"Adjust it, na. You're the expert."

You're the expert.* The phrase that meant: *I am giving you a problem and I expect you to solve it and I do not want to hear about the difficulties involved in the solving because the solving is your job and your job is to make my daughter's wedding perfect.

"Ji Aunty. I'll coordinate with the stage vendor."

"Accha. And Nandini, the paneer at last night's tasting. It was too soft. Tell the caterer: firm paneer. Rajasthani-style. Like my mother used to make."

The paneer. The paneer that the caterer; Sharma Caterers, Vaishali Nagar, thirty years in business, the caterer who had fed 400 weddings a year and whose paneer was the paneer that 400 weddings a year had not complained about: the paneer was now being judged against the standard of the bride's maternal grandmother's paneer, a standard that existed only in Mrs. Shekhawat's memory and that no living caterer could verify or replicate.

"Ji Aunty. Firm paneer. Noted."

Nandini hung up. She looked at the spreadsheet. Row 903 became row 904: Sangeet stage extension: 12ft to 15ft: ₹10,000 estimated, ABSORBED BY COORDINATOR MARGIN.

The margin was now ₹98,000. For three months of work.

She closed the laptop. She looked out the jharokha window. The lane below was filling with the morning's commerce — the vegetable cart, the schoolchildren, the motorcycles navigating the narrow space between the buildings. And at the far end of the lane, visible if she leaned out: the green board. Qureshi Chai.

She could see the steam rising from the stall. At this distance. Perhaps 200 metres, perhaps 250 — the steam was a wisp, a suggestion, the ghost of the chai that was being poured at that moment for a customer who was standing at the counter and receiving the eighteen-inch pour and tasting the ginger that was fresh and grated and added at the first conversation of the water.

She wanted that chai. She wanted the chai not because she was thirsty: she was, but thirst was the excuse, but because the chai was the thing in her morning that was not a problem. The chai was not a vendor negotiation. The chai was not a mother-in-law's demand. The chai was not a spreadsheet row absorbing her margin. The chai was the fifteen minutes of her day where nothing was required of her except to hold a steel tumbler and drink.

And the man who made it — the interesting man, the man with the formula and the contradiction and the word "volatile" — was the person in her day who did not want anything from her. The watchmen wanted chai. The bride's mother wanted perfection. The Brigadier wanted MI Road. The caterer wanted payment. Badi Maa wanted grandchildren. Kamla wanted to know when she was getting married. Everyone wanted something.

The chai-maker wanted ₹15 per cup. The transaction was clean. The transaction was the cleanest human interaction in her day.

She would go back tomorrow. 5:30 AM. One adrak wali, then another.

The formula didn't change. The formula was permanent.

And right now, permanent was the most attractive quality in the world.