Chapter 4: Harsh

# Chapter 4: Harsh

## The Wish That Walked In

The pushpin resisted and then gave, sliding into the plywood with a small satisfying pressure under her thumb.

The afternoon brought the wishes.

The morning was chai. The afternoon was the deewar. This was the shop's rhythm, the rhythm that had established itself over twenty-two years, the rhythm that was not designed but evolved, the evolution, which was shop's response to its customers, the customers having taught the shop when to serve and when to listen, the serving and the listening: different muscles, the muscles (chai-wallah's body doing what the chai-wa l)lah's mind had not planned.

The afternoon crowd was different from the Malwa morning crowd. The morning crowd came for fuel. The chai, engine that started the day, the engine, mechanical, the chai — consumed the way petrol was consumed, not for pleasure but for function. The afternoon crowd came for, the afternoon crowd came for the wall. They came between 2 PM and 5 PM, the hours when the lunch rush had ended and the evening rush had not begun, the hours that was shop's quiet period, the quiet, the condition that the wall required, the wall, which was a thing that could not function in noise, the wall requiring the unmistakable silence that allowed a person to write their deepest wish on a scrap of paper and pin it to a blue board without feeling observed.

Today — the day after the journalist's second visit, the afternoon brought seven new chits.

Harsh read them the way he read every chit: carefully, privately, standing behind the counter after the customer had left, the reading, a solitary act, the solitude, respect that the wish demanded, the demand that was: read me alone. Do not make me public until I am ready. I was written in private and I deserve to be read in private.

Chit 1: Meri maa ko knee replacement surgery chahiye. AIIMS mein date 8 mahine baad hai. Private mein ₹2.5 lakh lagenge. Itne paise nahi hain, Deepak

My mother needs knee replacement surgery. The AIIMS date is 8 months away. Private will cost ₹2.5 lakh. I don't have that much money.

Chit 2: *Mujhe ek guitar chahiye. Naya nahi — purana chalega. Seekhna hai. 40 saal ki umar mein bhi seekh sakte hain kya?.

I want a guitar. Not new: old is fine. I want to learn. Can you learn at forty?

Chit 3: Mere Papa 2019 mein ghar se nikal gaye the. Kabhi nahi aaye. Mujhe unka address chahiye. Milna nahi hai. Bas jaanna hai ki zinda hain.. Anon

My father left home in 2019. Never came back. I need his address. I don't want to meet him. I just want to know he's alive.

Chit 4: Ek baar poori family ke saath Goa jaana hai. Kabhi samundar nahi dekha, Santosh (Chappan Dukaan, Chaat Stall #14)

I want to go to Goa with my entire family once. I've never seen the ocean.

Chit 5: *Meri beti ki shaadi mein 50 log aaye the.

Fifty people came to my daughter's wedding. My wish is that the whole mohalla comes to my second daughter's wedding.

Chit 6: ITI ka certificate mila hai lekin koi interview call nahi aa raha. 6 mahine ho gaye. Koi bata do ki galti kahan hai. — Vikas K.

I got my ITI certificate but no interview calls are coming. Six months now. Someone tell me what I'm doing wrong.

Chit 7: Mujhe ek dost chahiye. Bas ek. — Anon

I need a friend. Just one.

Harsh folded the chits. He placed them in his shirt pocket. The pocket: the chits' first home, the home lasting until the evening when he would transfer them to the notebook, the notebook, the working document, the document where he recorded each wish and the steps he was taking to grant it and the status — pending, in progress, granted, unable to grant. The atta dust was fine and dry.

Unable to grant. The category that he did not like to use but that honesty demanded. Some wishes could not be granted, the wish for a dead person to return, the wish for a disease to be cured, the wish for time to reverse. These wishes Harsh could not grant. These wishes he left on the wall, left them because removing an ungranted wish was a cruelty that the wall did not permit, the wall's rule being: every wish deserves to be seen. Even the wishes that cannot come true deserve to exist on the blue board, deserve to be read by strangers, deserve the precise dignity of being known.

He looked at today's seven chits. He assessed them the way a doctor assessed patients — triaging, prioritising, identifying which wishes he could address immediately and which required time and resources.

Chit 2, the guitar: was easy. Harsh knew a music teacher in Palasia, Govind Sharma, who ran a small school and who had a collection of donated instruments. A phone call would solve this. Ten minutes of work. Perhaps less.

Chit 6: the ITI certificate with no interview calls: was also manageable. Harsh's friend Salim ran a printing shop in Cloth Market and knew the HR managers at several manufacturing units in Pithampur industrial area. A referral. A phone call. A connection.

Chit 5: Qamar Bi's wish for a bigger wedding, was a community wish. It required the mohalla. It required conversations with the other shopkeepers, with the mosque committee, with the women's self-help group that Qamar Bi's daughter-in-law ran. It required a coordination that Indian weddings demanded: the coordination that was not a task but a performance, the performance that was community proving to itself that it was still a community.

Chit 7; "I need a friend. Just one.". Was the hardest. The hardest because it was the simplest. Because it required not money, not connections, not the community's collective effort. It required a person. A single person willing to be a friend to a stranger. And a single person was the hardest thing to find, because a single person had to choose; choose to care, choose to show up, choose to be present, and choosing was the most expensive thing in the world.

Chit 1: the knee replacement, was expensive. ₹2.5 lakh. The shop's annual profit was approximately ₹5.4 lakh. Half the annual profit for one wish. This wish required, this wish required what the big wishes always required. It required Harsh to go beyond the shop, beyond the gali, beyond the mohalla. It required him to enter the territory of hospitals and insurance and government schemes and a bureaucracy that Indian healthcare had become, the bureaucracy, a maze designed not to help the patient but to protect the system, the system, protected from the patients the way a fort was protected from invaders.

Chit 3. The absent father. Was dangerous. The dangerous wishes were the wishes that involved other people's choices, the choices that had been made deliberately, the deliberateness that was cruelty: a father who left home in 2019 had left by choice, and the choice to leave was the choice to not be found, and the wish to find him contradicted his choice, and the contradiction was the danger. The danger that finding the father would cause more pain than not finding him, the danger that the answer to "Is he alive?" would be worse than the question.

Harsh would work on these. He would work on them the way he worked on every set of chits; methodically, patiently, using the hours between the afternoon quiet and the evening rush, the hours, his working hours for the deewar, the deewar; his second job, the job that paid nothing and cost everything and that he would not stop doing because stopping would be; stopping would be closing the wall. And closing the wall would be closing the thing that his father had built. And closing the thing that his father had built would be killing the thing that his father had been. And killing the thing that his father had been was not something that Harsh Tomar would do. Not while the shop stood. Not while the chai was made. Not while the wall had space for one more chit.

---

The journalist. Megha. Came back at 4 PM.

She came with a proposal. She sat at the table near the wall. She ordered chai. Regular, not kesar, the ordering of regular, the signal that this visit was business, the kesar — reserved for the visits that were not business, the distinction having been established over two visits and being already a pattern, the pattern, which was beginning of a language, the language that two people built when they met repeatedly in the same space and ordered the same things and sat in the same chairs.

"Mera ek idea hai," she said. I have an idea.

"Sunao." Tell me.

"Main chahti hoon ki ek wish ko, ek wish ko follow karoon. Beginning se end tak. Camera ke saath. Wish aane se lekar wish poori hone tak. Poori journey."

I want to follow one wish. Beginning to end. With a camera. From the wish arriving to the wish: granted. The full journey.

Harsh considered this. He considered it the way he considered every proposal that involved the deewar, with the caution of a man who was protecting something. The deewar was not his to give away. The deewar belonged to the people who wrote the chits, and the chits belonged to the people who wrote them, and the people's privacy was the deewar's foundation, the foundation that was: your wish is safe here. Your wish will not be broadcast without your permission. Your wish is between you and the wall and the man behind the counter.

"Wish kisne likhi hai; uski permission chahiye," he said. You need permission from the person who wrote the wish.

"Of course. Main bina permission ke kuch nahi karungi."

"Aur wish kaunsi?"

And which wish?

She looked at the wall. She looked at the chits, the new chits, the seven that had arrived today, plus the fourteen that were already there from previous days, the fourteen, wishes in various stages of Harsh's triage: some being worked on, some waiting, some stuck.

"Tum batao," she said. You tell me.

"Main?"

"Tum jaante ho ki kaunsi wish, kaunsi wish mein sabse zyada story hai.

You know which wish has the most story. Which wish has Indore in it.

Harsh looked at the wall. He looked at the seven new chits in his pocket. He thought about which wish would: which wish would show the journalist what the deewar actually was. Not the cute human-interest version. Not the two-minute-segment version. The real version. The version that involved phone calls and walking and knocking on doors and asking favours and being refused and asking again and being refused again and asking a third time and being told yes, the yes coming not because the asking was persuasive but because the asking was persistent, the persistence: the deewar's method, the method: keep asking. Someone will say yes. The world has enough yes for every wish, if you ask enough people.

"Santosh," he said.

"Santosh?"

"Chaat Stall #14, Chappan Dukaan. He wants to take his family to Goa. He's never seen the ocean."

"Why this one?"

"Because Santosh has worked at Chappan Dukaan for twenty-seven years. He is fifty-one years old. He has a wife, two sons, and a daughter. He has never taken a holiday. Never. Twenty-seven years without one day off. Because the stall operates seven days a week, because if Santosh doesn't work, the family doesn't eat, because the daily earnings are ₹800-₹1,200 and the daily expenses are ₹700, and the margin of ₹100-₹500 does not permit a holiday, does not permit the luxury of not working."

"He's never left Indore?"

"He went to Ujjain once. For Simhastha Kumbh. 2016. One day.

"And you think you can grant this wish?"

Harsh looked at her. The look was. The look was the look of a man who was about to say something that he knew sounded foolish and that he was going to say anyway because foolishness was the deewar's fuel, foolishness being the belief that a chai-wallah in a twelve-foot shop could send a chaat-vendor's family to Goa when the chaat-vendor's annual income was approximately ₹3.5 lakh and the cost of a Goa trip for five people, train tickets, hotel, food, two days: would be approximately ₹45,000-₹50,000.

"Koshish karunga," he said. I'll try.

"Kab tak?"

How long?

"Ek mahina. Maybe do."

One month. Maybe two.

"Main film karungi. Poori journey. Wish se lekar samundar tak."

I'll film it. The whole journey. From the wish to the ocean.

"Santosh ki permission lo."

Get Santosh's permission.

"Kal milti hoon usse. Chappan Dukaan."

I'll meet him tomorrow. Chappan Dukaan.

She finished her chai. She placed the glass on the counter, not on the table, on the counter, the placing on the counter, the gesture of a person who had been taught to return her plate to the kitchen, the teaching, a middle-class upbringing, the upbringing — particular combination of discipline andconsideration that Indian middle-class families instilled in their daughters (the sons were less consistently taught, the inconsistency (patriarchy's double standard), the standard that expected daughters to be considerate and sons to be served).

"Shukriya," she said. Thank you.

"Chai ke liye?"

"Story ke liye."

For the story.

She left. The shop was quiet. The afternoon light came through the door, the light. Particular golden light of4:30 PM in October, the October light in Indore being warm and slanting, the slanting light entering the shop at an angle that illuminated the Ichha Deewar, the illumination making the coloured pushpins glow like small jewels, the jewels — wall's ornaments, only luxury that the shop permitted itsel: the ornamentsf.

Harsh looked at the wall. He looked at Santosh's chit: the chit that was now not just a wish but a story, the story — thing that the journalist would make, the making — her craft the way the chai was his.

He picked up his phone. He called Salim, Salim Mansuri, the printing shop owner in Cloth Market who knew everyone in the old city the way a taxi driver knew every lane, the knowing: professional and personal combined.

"Salim bhai. Ek kaam hai."

"Bol, Harsh."

"Santosh jaanta hai? Chaat Stall #14, Chappan Dukaan?"

"Haan, jaanta hoon. Dahi-puri wala na?"

"Haan. Uski family ko Goa bhejna hai."

Silence. The silence of a man processing an unusual request. Then:

"Goa? Kyun?"

"Ichha Deewar. Usne likha hai. Samundar dekhna chahta hai. Kabhi nahi dekha."

More silence. Then:

"Kitna kharcha hoga?"

How much will it cost?

"Andaaza, ₹45,000 se ₹50,000. Paanch log. Train. Do raat."

"Bahut hai, yaar."

That's a lot.

"Haan. Isliye tujhe bula raha hoon. Tere paas ideas hain."

That's why I'm calling you. You have ideas.

Salim laughed. The laugh: the laugh of a man who was being asked to perform a miracle and who was flattered by the asking. "Chal, sochte hain. Kal milte hain. Chai pe."

Let's think. Meet tomorrow. Over chai.

"Chai pe."

Harsh hung up. He looked at the wall again. The chits. The seven new ones in his pocket. The fourteen on the wall. The four hundred and twenty-three in the Godrej box. The numbers, the deewar's history, the history, which was not his but Indore's, the city's wishes pinned to a blue board in a twelve-foot shop in a lane named after sweets that no longer existed.

He made himself a chai. He made it with saffron: the kesar that the journalist had tasted on her first visit, the kesar that he reserved for the evenings, the evenings, which was the time when the day's work was done and the chai could be slow, the slowness. Luxury, the luxury, the only luxury that a chai-wallah permittedhimself.

He sat at the table near the wall. He sipped. The chai was warm. The shop was quiet. The wall was full of wishes.

Tomorrow, he would begin granting them.