Chapter 12: Harsh

# Chapter 12: Harsh

## The Morning After

The first stranger arrived at 5:47 AM.

This was unusual. The 5 AM to 6 AM slot belonged to the regulars: Bahadur and the auto-rickshaw drivers and the sweepers and the milk vendors, the people whose faces Harsh knew the way he knew the floorboards, each face producing its own sound in his memory, each face being a note in the morning's chord. A stranger at 5:47 AM was a wrong note. Not unpleasant but unexpected, the expectation having been set by six years of the same faces at the same times.

The stranger was a woman. She was perhaps forty-five: dressed in a salwar kameez, the kameez — a cotton print, the print that was small flowers that theIndori middle class favoured, the flowers, uniform of the woman who worked at a school or a bank or a government office, the uniform, which was recognisable from thirty feet away.

"Yeh Ichha Deewar wali dukaan hai?" she asked. Is this the Wishing Wall shop?

"Haan."

"Kal raat TV pe dekha. IBN MP pe."

I saw it on TV last night. On IBN MP.

She ordered chai. She sat at the table near the wall. She read the chits. She read them the way Megha had read them on the first night, slowly, carefully, each chit receiving the attention that the chit deserved, the attention, the respect, the respect — thing that the deewar demanded of its readers.

Then she took a pen from her purse. She took a piece of paper: a receipt from a medical store, the receipt showing ₹340 for Crocin and Combiflam, the receipt, the paper that was available, the available paper (deewar's material), the material, which was whatever the writer carried, the carrying, which was proof that the wish was spontaneous, unplanned, the unplanning, deewar's requirement: *do not prepare your wish.

She wrote. She pinned the chit to the wall with a yellow pushpin. The pushpin from the small box that Harsh kept on the shelf below the wall, the box, the deewar's supply, the supply: the only expense that the deewar incurred, the expense, which was ₹30 per box of hundred pushpins, the ₹30 being the cost of a hundred wishes.

She finished her chai. She placed ₹100 on the counter: the ₹100 being ₹75 more than the chai's price, the ₹75 being the donation, the donation: unprompted, the unprompting, which was segment's effect: the segment had shown the collection, the collection had implied the need, the need had prompted the giving, the giving: voluntary, thing that. The voluntaryHarsh had wanted. Not the ask but the offer, the offer, the audience's response to the story.

"Shukriya," she said. She left.

Harsh read her chit after she left:

Mere bete ko stammering hai. School mein bachche chidhate hain. Koi achha speech therapist mil jaaye toh, Nirmala

My son has a stammer. Children tease him at school. If a good speech therapist could be found.

A wish. A new wish from a new person. A person who had seen the segment and who had come to the shop not for the chai (though the chai was what she ordered) but for the wall, for the permission to write, for the possibility that the writing would be read and the reading would lead to action and the action would lead to a speech therapist for a boy who stammered.

By 10 AM, seven strangers had visited. Seven people who had never been to Gali Mithaiyon Ki before, seven people who had watched the segment the previous night and who had come because the scroll at the bottom had given them the address and the address had given them the permission and the permission had given them the courage to walk into a narrow lane and enter a twelve-foot shop and read a wall and write a wish.

Three of the seven donated, ₹100, ₹200, ₹500. Total: ₹800.

Four of the seven wrote chits:

Meri naukri chhoot gayi hai. 6 mahine se ghar pe hoon. Koi bata do kahan apply karoon. MBA hai.. Ashwin

I lost my job. Been at home for 6 months. Someone tell me where to apply. I have an MBA.

Ek baar apni maa ko mandir le jaana hai. Woh 78 saal ki hain. Paidal nahi chal sakti. Wheelchair chahiye. Kirayye pe bhi chalegi.: Vikrant

I want to take my mother to a temple once. She's 78 years old. She can't walk. Need a wheelchair. Rental is also fine.

Mere husband ko diabetes hai. Unhe diet plan chahiye. Doctor ka time nahi milta. Koi free dietician mil jaaye.. Anon

My husband has diabetes. He needs a diet plan. Can't get a doctor's appointment. If a free dietician could be found. The atta dust was fine and dry.

Meri beti painter hai. Uske paintings koi nahi kharidta. Exhibition lagaani hai lekin jagah nahi milti.. Devendra K.

My daughter is a painter. Nobody buys her paintings. She wants to hold an exhibition but can't find a place.

Four new wishes. Four new responsibilities. Four new entries in the notebook that Harsh maintained behind the counter — the notebook that was the deewar's working document, the document that tracked each wish from arrival to resolution, the tracking (labour), the labour: the thing that the segment had not shown and that the audience did not see and that the audience did not need to see because the audience's role was to write and the chai-wallah's role was to read and the reading was the beginning and the granting was the end and between the beginning and the end was the work.

At 11 AM, the phone rang. The phone — the shop's phone, the landline that hung on the wall behind the counter, the landline: a relic, the relic, from 2003 when Brajesh had installed it because mobile phones were expensive and landlines were ₹600 per month and ₹600 was affordable. The landline had survived the mobile revolution the way the brass mortar had survived the electric grinder revolution — by being present, by being reliable, by being the thing that the older customers used because the older customers had memorised the number and the memorising had made the number permanent in their minds.

"Tomar Chai."

"Harsh bhai? Salim bol raha hoon."

"Bol."

"Bhai, segment dekha kal raat?"

"Haan."

"Bhai: mere phone pe 14 messages aaye hain. WhatsApp pe. Logon ne segment share kiya hai. Log pooch rahe hain; 'Yeh dukaan kahan hai? Yeh Ichha Deewar kya hai? Hum kaise help kar sakte hain?' Bhai: segment viral ho raha hai."

Fourteen messages. On WhatsApp. People shared the segment. People are asking: "Where is this shop? What is this Wishing Wall? How can we help?" The segment is going viral.

"Viral?"

"YouTube pe. IBN MP ke channel pe, segment ka view count check kar."

Check the view count on IBN MP's YouTube channel.

Harsh opened his phone. He opened YouTube. He searched: "IBN MP Ichha Deewar." The segment appeared, the thumbnail, Harsh's own face, the face performing the high pour, the pour that was image that the editor had chosen for thethumbnail because the pour was visual and the visual was what YouTube required.

View count: 47,328.

The segment had been uploaded eleven hours ago. Forty-seven thousand views in eleven hours. For a regional Hindi news channel that typically got 2,000-5,000 views on its segments. Forty-seven thousand.

"Dekha?" Salim asked.

"47,000."

"Aur badh raha hai. Bhai — mere kuch contacts hain. Media mein. Dainik Bhaskar ka web editor — Tripathi: usne segment share kiya hai. Free Press Journal waalon ne bhi. Aur — aur NDTV India ke Bhopal bureau ne retweet kiya hai."

And it's growing. I have some contacts in media. Dainik Bhaskar's web editor shared the segment. Free Press Journal too. And NDTV India's Bhopal bureau retweeted it.

The retweet. The NDTV retweet being the escalation — the escalation from local to national, the national that was territory where the story would grow from an Indori chai shop story to an Indian chai shop story, the growing, story's ambition, the ambition that the story had developed on its own without Harsh's planning or Megha's expecting.

"Salim, collection mein kitna chahiye tha?"

"₹28,000 se ₹35,000."

"Ab tak kitna aaya?"

"Kal tak ₹24,800. Aaj subah ₹800 aur. ₹25,600."

₹25,600 so far.

"Bhai, agar yeh viral hota raha toh: toh paise ki kami nahi rahegi. Lekin; lekin paise se zyada log aayenge. Log dukaan mein aayenge. Log deewar pe likhenge.

If this keeps going viral: money won't be the problem. But, more than money, people will come. People will come to the shop. People will write on the wall. People will want to meet you.

The warning. The warning that Salim embedded in the excitement, the warning that the viral segment would bring not just money but attention, and attention was not always benign, attention being the thing that could make a twelve-foot shop famous and that could also make a twelve-foot shop unbearable, the unbearability, which was weight of expectations, the expectations of forty-seven thousand people who had watched a four-minute segment and who now believed that a chai-wallah in Indore could grant their wishes.

"Main sambhal loonga," Harsh said. I'll manage.

"Tujhe help chahiye hogi."

You'll need help.

"Mujhe chai banana aata hai aur ichhayein padhni aati hain. Baaki, baaki ka dekh lenge."

I know how to make chai and read wishes. The rest. We'll figure it out.

He hung up. He stood behind the counter. The shop was, the shop was filling. The lunch crowd was arriving earlier than usual. Not the regulars but the new people, the people who had seen the segment, the people who were walking into Gali Mithaiyon Ki with their phones open to Google Maps (the Maps; wrong, as always, the wrongness directing people to the mobile repair shop two doors down before they corrected and found the green board).

By 1 PM, the shop had served forty-three customers, twenty-seven regulars and sixteen new visitors. The sixteen, which was the segment's effect, the effect; measurable in glasses served and chits written and money collected, arithmetic of virality — the measurement: one segment × forty-seven thousand views = sixteen visitors on day one.

By 3 PM, the Ichha Deewar had nine new chits. The wall was running out of space. The blue plywood board that had held twenty or thirty chits at any time was now holding forty-three, sum of the old wishes and the new wishes. The forty-three, the sum, which was larger than the board, the board; physical constraint, the constraint that Harsh had not anticipated because the board had been built for a neighbourhood's wishes and was now receiving a city's.

He found a solution. The solution: a second board. He went to the timber shop in Rajwada Market. The timber shop that his father had used when building the first board in 2004, and bought a plywood sheet, four feet by three feet, ₹180. He bought sky-blue paint, ₹85. He bought a brush, ₹25. Total: ₹290.

He painted the board that evening, painted it between serving customers, the painting; done in five-minute intervals between pours, the intervals: the chai-wallah's method of doing two things at once, the method, which was same method that had allowed his father to find Kamla in Raipur while running a chai shop, the method —: *use the gaps.

By 8 PM, the second board was hung, mounted on the wall next to the first, the two boards forming a diptych, the diptych — the Ichha Deewar's expansion, response to the demand, the expansion, the demand: city's wishes, the city having more wishes than one board could hold.

At 9 PM, Harsh counted the day's donations. The counting, which was done after the last customer left, the counting: private, money's requirement. The privacy: money was counted alone, in silence, the emptiness (respect that money demanded).

Total donations for the day: ₹4,700.

₹4,700 in one day. Added to the ₹25,600 from before: ₹30,300.

₹30,300. More than the minimum ₹28,000. More than enough for sleeper class and budget hotel. Enough; possibly, for AC three-tier and a slightly better hotel.

The wish was funded. The collection was complete.

Harsh called Salim. "₹30,300."

The silence on the phone was the silence of a man doing mathematics and arriving at a number that exceeded his expectation, the expectation having been ₹28,000-₹35,000, the arrival, which was at ₹30,300, the ₹30,300 being inside the range and above the minimum.

"Bhai," Salim said. "Train tickets book kar."

Book the train tickets.

"Kal. Subah. Pehle Santosh se milna hai. Date fix karni hai."

Tomorrow. Morning. First I need to meet Santosh. Fix the date.

"Aur journalist ko?"

"Megha ko parson bata raha hoon. Usne kal chutti li hai."

I'm telling Megha the day after. She took tomorrow off.

"Chutti kyun?"

"Maine bola; ek din chutti le."

I told her to take a day off.

Another silence. This silence being the silence of a man who was grinning. The grin audible in the silence, the audibility (particular quality of S)alim's silences, the silences that communicated more than his words.

"Harsh bhai."

"Kya?"

"Tu usse chai-wallah ki tarah nahi dekh raha."

You're not looking at her like a chai-wallah.

"Main sab ko chai-wallah ki tarah dekhta hoon."

I look at everyone like a chai-wallah.

"Nahi. Isko alag dekhta hai. Isko kesar wali dekhta hai."

No. You look at this one differently. You look at her the kesar way.

Harsh hung up without responding. He hung up because responding would require acknowledging the thing that Salim had named, and acknowledging the thing would make the thing real, and the thing: real would require action, and action would require courage, and courage was the one thing that Harsh Tomar, the man who asked sixty shopkeepers for ₹500 and who called strangers in Raipur to find lost recipes and who ran a wishing wall that had granted four hundred and twenty-three wishes. The one thing that Harsh Tomar did not have when it came to the thing that Salim had named.

He closed the shop. He bolted the door. He climbed the eleven stairs; each stair knowing his weight, each stair speaking its note in the chord. He checked on Baba. Baba was asleep. The Parkinson's medication having its sedative effect, the sedation, drug's night-time gift, the gift of stillness that the day did not provide.

He lay on the cotton mattress. He stared at the ceiling — the ceiling, the wooden floorboards from above, the floorboards that his father had laid in 1994, the floorboards through which the smell of tea leaves rose.

₹30,300. Santosh was going to see the ocean.

The thought should have been the only thought. The thought should have filled the ceiling the way the tea-leaf smell filled the room. But the thought shared the ceiling with another thought, the thought of Megha, the thought of the kesar chai, the thought of the "tu" that had slipped out and the correction to "tum" and the overcorrection to "aap," the correction that was most honest thing he had said to her, the honesty: in the correction rather than the word, the correction: I almost said something. I stopped myself. The stopping is the story.

He slept. He slept and dreamed of the high pour, the amber stream, the eighteen inches, the stream catching the light. But in the dream the light was not the tube light's fluorescence. In the dream the light was the unmistakable warm light of a face. A face that he was learning to read the way she was learning to read his, the face; only text that the deewar could not hold, the text: too alive for paper, too present for pushpins, too real for the blue board's patient surface.

Tomorrow he would book the tickets. Tomorrow the wish would have a date. Tomorrow the ocean would have a schedule.

Tonight, the ceiling held two thoughts: the ocean and the face.

Both were far away. Both were getting closer.