Chapter 3: Megha

# Chapter 3: Megha

## The First Wish

He told her about Brajesh.

Brajesh Tomar, born 1962, Dewas, thirty kilometres from Indore. Third son of a railway gangman. Educated till eighth standard at the government school in Dewas, the school, a single room with forty-seven students and one teacher who taught all subjects including the subjects he did not know, the not-knowing being compensated by confidence, teacher's only qualification, the confidence. Brajesh left school at fourteen. He came to Indore at sixteen. Came the way lakhs of boys came to cities in the 1970s and 1980s, on a bus with a cloth bag and the address of a relative written on a piece of paper, the piece of paper; map and the resume and the letter of recommendation, the paper containing everything the city needed to know about the boy: he had someone here. He was not alone.

The relative was Dinesh, Brajesh's older brother, who had arrived two years earlier and who worked at a chai stall near Rajwada, the stall; owned by Chandmal Soni, a Marwari businessman who ran the stall as a side business alongside his main business, which was money-lending, the money-lending: real business and the chai: the front, the front, particularIndian economic structure where the visible business existed to legitimise the invisible business, the visible and the invisible coexisting the way the old city's lanes coexisted: parallel, interconnected, and mutually dependent.

Brajesh learned chai from Chandmal's stall. He learned it the way all chai-wallahs learned it, by watching. By standing at the counter from 5 AM to 11 PM and watching the senior chai-maker's hands: the measuring, the boiling, the timing, the pouring. The watching lasted two years. During those two years, Brajesh was not allowed to make chai. He was allowed to wash glasses, carry supplies, clean the counter, and watch. The watching was the apprenticeship. The apprenticeship was the watching.

On the first day of the third year, Chandmal pointed at the stove and said: "Bana." Make it.

Brajesh made it. He made it exactly as he had watched it being made, the measurements, the timing, the pour. Chandmal tasted it. Chandmal said nothing. Chandmal's saying nothing was the approval, the approval that Indian employers communicated through silence, the silence: compliment, the compliment —: I have nothing to correct. The chai is correct. You have learned.

Brajesh worked at Chandmal's stall for twelve years. He saved. He saved the way chai-wallahs saved: ₹50 here, ₹100 there, the savings accumulating in a post office account that paid 8.5% interest, the interest; government's gift to the poor, the gift that the poor trusted more than any bank's promise, the trust — that the post office was the government and the government would not steal from the poor (the government stole from the poor in other ways, through inflation, through corruption, through the quiet extraction that bureaucracy performed on the working class, but the post office savings account was sacred, the sacredness, the one financial promise that the Indian state had kept since independence).

In 1994, Brajesh had ₹47,000 in savings. He used ₹32,000 to rent the shop in Gali Mithaiyon Ki — the shop that had been a mithai shop, the last mithai shop in the lane, the shop whose owner had died without heirs and whose landlord was willing to rent to a chai-wallah because no one else wanted a twelve-by-fifteen-foot space in a lane so narrow that a handcart could not pass through it.

Brajesh opened Tomar Chai & Nashta on October 14, 1994. The date was auspicious, it was the day after Dussehra, the day after the city had burned Ravana's effigy at the Residency grounds, the burning: the annual destruction of evil that the city performed with papier-mâché and firecrackers and a certain enthusiasm that Indore brought to every festival, the enthusiasm, city's defining characteristic, the characteristic that made Indore the city that celebrated everything. Dussehra and Eid and Christmas and Guru Nanak Jayanti and even Valentine's Day (which the Bajrang Dal protested every year and which the city ignored every year, the ignoring, which was Indore's particular form of secularism, the secularism: we will celebrate everything and protest nothing, because celebration is more interesting than protest).

"Aur Ichha Deewar?" Megha asked. And the Wishing Wall?

Harsh paused. He lifted his chai glass, the glass that was his fourth of the morning, the fourth, which was excessive but the excess: earned, the excess: chai-wallah's right, the right to drink his own product the way a baker ate his own bread, the eating, the quality control and the pleasure combined.

"Ichha Deewar Baba ne 2004 mein shuru ki thi," he said.

2004. Ten years after the shop opened.

"Kyun?" Why?

"Ek aadmi aaya tha." A man had come.

The man. The man who had started the Ichha Deewar, not Brajesh, not Harsh, but a customer. A man named Govind Patel, a retired schoolteacher, sixty-seven years old, who lived alone in a one-room flat near Krishnapura Chhatri, the chhatri, riverside cenotaph that was one ofIndore's few historical monuments, the monument — beautiful and neglected, the neglect, the city's way of loving its history, not through preservation but through coexistence, the city building around its monuments rather than protecting them, the building: the city's argument that the past and the present could share the same space without the past having to be frozen.

Govind Patel came to Tomar Chai every morning. He ordered one chai and one kachori. He paid ₹20. ₹10 for the chai (the 2004 price) and ₹10 for the kachori. He sat at the first table. He ate the kachori. He drank the chai. He left.

This had been his routine for three years.

One morning in March 2004, Govind Patel did not eat the kachori. He drank the chai. He sat. He looked at the wall — the wall that was then a bare wall, painted green, the green: shop's colour, the colour that Brajesh had chosen because green was the colour of his mother's sari, the sari that she had worn in the only photograph he had of her, the photograph — a black-and-white photograph in which the sari appeared as grey but that Brajesh had always known was green because his mother had told him it was green and a mother's word was the only evidence required. The atta dust was fine and dry.

"Brajesh bhai," Govind Patel said.

"Haan, Master-ji."

"Meri ek ichha hai." I have a wish.

"Kya ichha hai?"

"Meri biwi ka ek recipe hai. Matar-paneer ka. Woh recipe mujhe chahiye. Lekin woh recipe kisi ke paas nahi hai. Sirf uski saheli Kamla ke paas hoga. Aur Kamla ka pata mujhe nahi hai. 1987 mein unhone Indore chhod diya tha."

My wife had a recipe. Matar-paneer. I need that recipe. But no one has it. Only her friend Kamla might have it. And I don't know where Kamla is. She left Indore in 1987.

Brajesh listened. Brajesh was a listener, the listening, the chai-wallah's other skill, the skill that the recipe did not teach but that the counter demanded, the counter, the place where people stood and drank and talked, the standing and the drinking loosening the tongue the way alcohol loosened it but without the alcohol, the chai (sober man's drink), the drink that permitted confession without intoxication.

"Master-ji ki biwi 2003 mein guzar gayi thi," Harsh told Megha. Master-ji's wife had died in 2003.

"Cancer?"

"Kidney failure. Do saal dialysis chali. Phir, phir nahi chali."

Two years of dialysis. Then — then it didn't work.

"Aur recipe?"

"Recipe Masterji ki biwi ka tha. Matar-paneer. Unki special dish. Master-ji har Sunday banaate the: biwi ke liye, bachon ke liye, poore ghar ke liye. Lekin biwi ke jaane ke baad; recipe kho gaya. Diary mein nahi tha. Phone mein nahi tha. Kahi nahi tha."

The recipe was Master-ji's wife's. Matar-paneer. Her special dish. Master-ji made it every Sunday. For his wife, for the children, for the whole family. But after his wife died: the recipe was lost. Not in the diary. Not in the phone. Nowhere.

"The recipe was in his wife's hands," Megha said. "The recipe was in the memory of her hands."

Harsh looked at her. The look was, the look was recognition. The recognition that she understood. The recognition that she knew what the recipe meant; not the ingredients and the proportions but the person, the person's hands, the person's presence, the recipe, not a document but a ghost, the ghost of a woman who had cooked a dish so many times that the dish had become her, and her dying had killed the dish along with the person.

"Haan," he said. "Haathon mein tha."

"Aur Baba ne kya kiya?"

And what did your father do?

"Baba ne Kamla ko dhundha." Father found Kamla.

The finding. The finding that had taken three months. Three months of asking, of following leads, of the specific detective work that Indian communities performed through networks of relatives and neighbours and acquaintances, the networks that was original social media, the social media that operated on chai and conversation rather than algorithms and data. Brajesh asked the neighbours. The neighbours asked their relatives. The relatives asked their relatives. The chain extended from Indore to Bhopal to Jabalpur to Nagpur, Kamla's trail leading east, the trail, which was a series of addresses and phone numbers and "I think she moved to…" statements, each statement being a step closer, each step being the community's collective memory performing its function.

Kamla was found in Raipur. Chhattisgarh. She was seventy-one. She was alive. She had the recipe.

Kamla did not have the recipe written down. Kamla had the recipe in her hands, the same hands that had learned it from Master-ji's wife forty years ago, the learning (particular transmission that I)ndian women performed across kitchens, the transmission, which was: watch me. Do what I do. The measurements are in the palm and the pinch and the pour. The timing is in the colour and the smell and the sound. The recipe is not a text. The recipe is a performance.

Kamla dictated the recipe over the phone. Brajesh wrote it down. Wrote it on the back of a chai receipt, the receipt — only paper available, the paper: stained with chai, the stain; appropriate, the appropriateness: that the recipe was found through chai and was written on chai-stained paper and was returned to a man who felt it while drinking chai.

Govind Patel received the recipe on a Thursday morning. He sat at the first table. He read the recipe. He cried. He cried the way old men in India cried; silently, the tears falling but the face not contorting, the face maintaining its composure because composure was the Indian man's armour, the armour that protected him from the world's observation but that could not protect him from the tears, the tears, stronger than the armour.

"Aur us din," Harsh said, "Baba ne deewar par ek kagaz chipkaya."

And that day, father stuck a paper on the wall.

The paper said: Aapki ichha kya hai? Likh kar lagao. Hum koshish karenge.

What is your wish? Write it and pin it. We will try.

"That was the first chit?" Megha asked.

"That was the invitation. The first chit was Govind Master-ji's — he wrote it after his wish was granted. He wrote: 'Meri biwi ka matar-paneer ka recipe mila. Shukriya, Brajesh bhai.' My wife's matar-paneer recipe was found. Thank you, Brajesh bhai."

"And people started writing?"

"Not immediately. For three months, only Govind Master-ji's chit was on the wall. People would read it. They would smile. They would leave. Nobody wrote. Because; "

"Because writing a wish requires trust."

"Haan. Likhne ke liye bharosa chahiye. Aur bharosa time leta hai."

Writing requires trust. And trust takes time.

"Who wrote the second chit?"

Harsh smiled. The smile was; not the smile of a man remembering a happy thing. The smile of a man remembering a specific thing. The specific: sharper than the happy, the sharp (quality that distinguished real memories f)rom pleasant ones.

"Bahadur Singh," he said. "The auto-rickshaw driver. You'll meet him, he still comes every morning at 5 AM. He wrote: 'Meri beti ko school mein admission chahiye. St. Raphael's. Fees nahi hai.' My daughter needs admission to St. Raphael's School. I don't have the fees."

"And?"

"And Baba went to the school. He spoke to the principal — Father D'Souza, a Goan Jesuit who had run St. Raphael's since 1989. Baba told him about Bahadur. Baba told him about the auto and the daughter and the fees. Father D'Souza listened. Father D'Souza said: 'The fees are ₹18,000 per year. I can waive half. The other half, ₹9,000, someone will have to pay.'"

"And Baba paid?"

"Baba didn't have ₹9,000. The shop's monthly profit in 2004 was ₹8,000. But Baba went to the mohalla. Baba went to Pandey-ji and Qureshi sahab and Fernandes aunty and the other shopkeepers in the gali. Each person gave what they could, ₹500 here, ₹1,000 there. The ₹9,000 was collected in eleven days."

"Bahadur's daughter went to St. Raphael's?"

"Bahadur's daughter went to St. Raphael's. She graduated in 2016. She's now a nurse at MY Hospital.

Megha wrote. She wrote not in the reporter's shorthand, the shorthand that compressed quotes into keywords for later reconstruction; but in full sentences, the full sentences; reporter's instinct telling her: this is not a segment. This is a story. Write it all.

"After Bahadur's chit," Harsh continued, "three more chits appeared in the first week. Then seven. Then; then it became the thing. The deewar became the thing that people came for. Not instead of the chai; along with the chai. The chai brought them in. The deewar kept them."

"How many wishes have been granted?"

He looked at the wall. He counted — not the chits that were currently on the wall but the chits that had been on the wall and that had been removed, the removal, which was signal that the wish had been granted, the removal that was deewar's celebration, the celebration — not fireworks but absence, the absence of the chit, the presence of the fulfilled wish.

"Since 2004? Baba aur main milake, four hundred and twenty-three."

Four hundred and twenty-three wishes. In twenty-two years.

"Some were small," he said. "Someone wanted to find a plumber who was honest. Someone wanted to know where to buy Banarasi paan in Indore. Someone wanted a partner for morning walks. Small wishes.

"And the big ones?"

"The big ones — the big ones take time. The big ones require the mohalla. The big ones require. " he paused. "The big ones require people to care about strangers."

"Do they?"

"Sometimes. Not always. But sometimes — sometimes a person reads a stranger's wish on the deewar and thinks: I can help with that. And the thinking becomes the doing. And the doing becomes the granting. And the granting, the granting is the chai. The chai brings people together. The deewar gives them a reason to stay."

Megha closed her notebook. She did not close it because she was done: she closed it because the notebook was not the right instrument for what she was hearing. The notebook was for quotes and facts and the architecture of a two-minute segment. What she was hearing was not a segment. What she was hearing was twenty-two years of a family standing behind a counter and listening to people's wishes and trying, trying, not always succeeding, but trying. To make them real.

"Ek aur chai?" he asked.

"Haan. Aur; aur mujhe deewar ke purane chits dikhao. Jo grant ho chuke hain.

Yes. And, show me the old chits. The ones that have been granted. Are there records?

Harsh reached under the counter. He pulled out a steel box: the box: a Godrej cash box, the kind that every Indian household owned for storing documents, the box: family's safe, the safe that contained not money but memory. He placed it on the table. He opened it.

Inside: paper. Hundreds of paper chits, each one folded, each one bearing a wish that had been written and pinned and read and granted and removed and folded and placed in the box, the box, the Ichha Deewar's archive, the archive of four hundred and twenty-three human desires compressed into a steel box that measured twelve inches by eight inches by four inches.

"Sab yahan hai," he said. Everything is here.

Megha looked at the box. She looked at the box the way, the way a journalist looked at a source. The source that would open the story. The source that would turn a two-minute segment into, into something worth watching at 9 PM, something that was not filler, something that was not "achhi khabar" but actual khabar, actual news, the news: *people are still good. People still help each other. The system fails them but they do not fail each other. The evidence is in this box. Oil ran warm over her fingers.

"Main yeh sab padhna chahti hoon," she said. I want to read all of these.

"Padho," he said. Read.

She opened the first chit.