Chapter 18: The Second Saturday

Chetan and I have a routine now.

Saturday mornings. Banganga, then chai, then walking — the walking that takes us through parts of Mumbai I haven't seen and that he knows the way a writer knows a city: not by maps but by stories. Every street has a story. Every building has a character who lived there, or died there, or fell in love there, and Chetan tells me these stories while we walk, and the walking becomes: not exercise but education. The education of a city that I thought I knew (I'd lived here before Lucknow, briefly, during the Lintas years) but that I didn't know at all, because knowing a city when you're twenty-three and knowing a city when you're fifty are: different forms of knowing.

Today: Chor Bazaar. The thieves' market — not because thieves shop here (or maybe they do; the market is: non-judgmental about its clientele) but because the market sells things that look stolen even when they're not. Antiques, furniture, brass, old Bollywood posters, gramophones that may or may not work, cameras from the 1950s, typewriters that remind me of Lintas.

"Meera used to bring me here," Chetan says. We're standing in front of a stall that sells brass figurines — Ganesh, Saraswati, Hanuman, the entire pantheon arranged on a wooden shelf with the care of a curator and the pricing of a pirate. "She'd buy things. Not for the apartment — for the idea. She said antiques carry: memory. The brass has been touched by hands we'll never know. The wood has stood in rooms we'll never enter. Buying an antique is: adopting someone else's history."

"That's beautiful."

"That's Meera. Everything she touched became: beautiful. Even this." He picks up a small brass Saraswati — the goddess of knowledge, seated on a lotus, holding a veena. The figurine is tarnished, the brass darkened by decades of: existence. But the craftsmanship is: visible. Whoever made this made it with: attention.

"For you," he says.

"Chetan —"

"For your desk. At Spark & Co. A goddess of knowledge for a woman who writes words for a living."

He pays the stall-keeper — three hundred rupees after bargaining that the stall-keeper enjoys more than Chetan does, the bargaining being: the commerce of Chor Bazaar, the commerce that requires both parties to pretend they're angry when both parties are: delighted.

I hold the Saraswati. The brass is cool in my palm — the coolness of metal that has been sitting in shade, the coolness that will warm to my body temperature and become: mine. The weight of it is: satisfying. Not heavy — substantial. The substance of a thing that has existed longer than my problems and that will exist after my problems have become: irrelevant.

"Thank you," I say. "For the goddess. And for the walks. And for —" I stop. The stopping of a woman who wants to say something and is afraid that saying it will change: the shape of things. Because the shape of things between Chetan and me is: undefined, and undefined is: safe, and safe is: what I need while I'm still learning to be: unsafe.

"And for?" he prompts.

"For not rushing. Whatever this is — you're not rushing it. And I need that."

"I'm not rushing because I'm not in a hurry. I've been alone for three years. I've learned that alone is: not empty. Alone is: a room. And the room can be: spacious if you let it."

"That sounds like something from your novel."

"Everything I say sounds like something from my novel. Occupational hazard of being a writer. My thoughts arrive: pre-edited."

I laugh. The laugh that Chetan produces in me — not Jaya's cutting laugh, not Vandana's buoyant laugh, not Aditi's irreverent laugh, but: the quiet laugh. The laugh that comes from a place of: recognition. Recognising a person who understands you. Recognising a person who has been where you are and who is not trying to pull you forward but is willing to: walk beside you.

We walk through Chor Bazaar. The market is: a sensory assault — the smell of old brass and incense and the particular dust that antiques produce (the dust of other eras, the dust that carries: time). The sound of bargaining in Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati — the trilingual commerce that Mumbai conducts with the fluency of a city that has been: trading since before trading was called trade. The touch of objects — I run my fingers along a wooden cabinet that's older than Indian independence, the wood smooth from decades of: use, the kind of smooth that human hands produce by touching the same surface every day for years.

"Can I ask you something?" I say.

"You can ask me anything."

"Do you still talk to Meera?"

He doesn't flinch. The question that would make some widowers: retreat, he receives with the openness of a man who has integrated his grief into his: architecture.

"Every morning. On the walk. I tell her about my day. What I'm writing. What I ate. Small things. Not because I think she hears — I'm not religious in that way — but because the telling is: a practice. Like Sunaina's yoga. The practice of maintaining a conversation even when the other person can't: respond."

"That's —" I search for the word again. Not sad (it isn't). Not sweet (too diminishing). "— faithful. In the old sense. Keeping faith."

"Keeping faith. Yes. That's what it is." He looks at me. The look that Chetan gives me — the look that I've been receiving on Saturday mornings for four weeks now — is not the look of a man who is replacing his wife. It's the look of a man who has enough room in his life for: the dead and the living. For Meera and for: whoever comes next. The room that grief creates when grief is: processed, not suppressed.

"Have you told her about me?" I ask. The question is: bold. Bolder than anything Lucknow-Mar would have asked. But Mumbai-Mar asks bold questions because Mumbai-Mar has learned from Jaya that questions are: respect.

"I have."

"What did you tell her?"

"I told her I met a woman who writes taglines that make me think of poetry. I told her this woman has short hair and silver jhumkas and she eats vada pav after yoga and she's the first person in three years who's made me want to: continue the conversation."

"And what did Meera say?"

He smiles. The smile of a man who talks to his dead wife on Marine Drive walks and who finds: humour in the absurdity, not irreverence.

"She said: 'About time.'"

We end the walk at a small café in Girgaon — the café that Chetan stops at during his Marine Drive walks, the café that serves: Irani chai and bun maska, the breakfast of old Bombay, the breakfast that existed before avocado toast and cold brew and the entire vocabulary of contemporary café culture.

The Irani chai arrives in a glass — not a cup, a glass, because Irani cafés serve chai in glasses the way their ancestors served it in Isfahan and that has survived colonisation, independence, urbanisation, and the gentrification of Indian food culture. The chai is: milky, sweet, the particular sweetness that Irani chai has — not the ginger-sharpness of street chai or the cardamom-warmth of home chai but a sweet, buttery, almost caramel quality that makes you feel like you're drinking: a hug.

The bun maska is: simple. A soft white bun, split, spread with Amul butter that has melted into the warm bread and produced: a sheen. The sheen of butter on bread. The sheen that says: this is not health food, this is: soul food, and the soul is: what we're feeding.

"Tell me about the Doosri Chai campaign," Chetan says. "How's it going?"

"It's going. We're shooting next week. Zoya found a director — a young woman named Meghna who shoots everything on film, actual film, not digital, because she believes film has: texture that digital doesn't."

"She's right."

"She's right and she's expensive. But Prerna approved the budget because Prerna believes in: the work."

"What's the concept?"

"Women making chai. That's it. Different women, different kitchens, different lives — but all of them making their second cup. The cup after the first cup failed. The campaign isn't about the chai. It's about the women."

"And the tagline?"

"Pehli se zyada kadak."

He says it back to me. "Pehli se zyada kadak." Tasting the words. "I keep thinking about that line. It works on three levels — the chai is stronger, the woman is stronger, the life is stronger. And the 'kadak' — it's not a gentle word. It's: fierce. A kadak woman is not: soft. She's: formidable."

"That's exactly what we intended."

"That's exactly what you are."

The sentence lands. Not as a compliment — as a: truth. The kind of truth that Chetan speaks because Chetan is a writer and writers are people who notice truths that others feel but can't articulate. "That's exactly what you are." Kadak. Formidable. Not soft — not in the way that people expected me to be. Strong in the way that the second cup is strong: because the first cup taught me how much: heat I could take.

I drink my Irani chai. The sweetness coats my tongue. The bun maska butter melts on my lips. The café around us produces the sounds of old Bombay — spoons on glass, chairs on tile, Marathi conversation at the next table, the whir of an ancient ceiling fan that has been turning since: independence and that turns still, with the persistence of a thing that has decided to: endure.

"Chetan," I say.

"Hmm?"

"This is a date."

He looks at me. Not surprised — as if he's been waiting for me to say it. Waiting for the word that changes the not-a-date contract into: a new contract.

"Yes," he says. "This is a date."

The first date of my second life. In a Girgaon café, with Irani chai, with bun maska, with a man who talks to his dead wife on morning walks and writes novels that win awards and sells twelve hundred copies and who has just been told, by a fifty-year-old woman with short hair and a brass Saraswati in her bag, that this is: a date.

And it is. It is: exactly that.