Chapter 27: The Award

The email arrives on a Monday morning at 9:47 AM, sandwiched between a Slack notification about a client call and a WhatsApp message from Vandana about a new face serum. The email is from: the Advertising Club of India. The subject line is: "Shortlist Notification — Abby Awards 2025."

I read it three times. The first time: to absorb the words. The second time: to verify that the words are addressed to me and not to someone else whose name happens to be Madhuri Srivastava. The third time: because the words — "We are pleased to inform you that your campaign 'Doosri Chai: Pehli Se Zyada Kadak' has been shortlisted for the Gold Abby in the category of Best Integrated Campaign" — the words need to be read three times before they become: real.

The Abby Awards. The same awards where I won silver in 1998 — twenty-seven years ago, at twenty-three, in a different life. The awards that I'd kept in a cardboard box and that now hang on my apartment wall because Chetan said "hang them" and hanging them was: the first act of reclamation.

And now: gold shortlist. Not silver. Gold.

"ZOYA!" I shout across the office.

Zoya looks up from her screen. Zoya, who has the hearing of a twenty-six-year-old (which is: superhuman, capable of detecting a whispered comment about her outfit from across a room while wearing AirPods playing music at full volume), turns to me with the expression of someone who has never heard me shout because I don't shout, I am not a shouting person, and the shouting is: an event.

"What happened? Client fire? Server down?"

"Abby shortlist. Gold. Doosri Chai."

The scream that Zoya produces is: the scream of a generation that has grown up on reaction videos and that has therefore perfected the art of: vocal response to good news. The scream is: high-pitched, extended, and attracts the attention of every person on the floor, which is: the entire team of twenty-two, who turn from their screens to look at me and Zoya with expressions ranging from concern (is someone dying?) to curiosity (is someone being fired?) to hope (is someone ordering lunch early?).

"GOLD SHORTLIST!" Zoya announces to the floor. "DOOSRI CHAI! ABBY AWARDS! MAR DIDI IS A GENIUS AND WE ALL WORK WITH A GENIUS!"

The floor erupts. The eruption that advertising agencies produce when awards happen — the eruption that is: part professional pride, part personal joy, part the specific vindication that creative people feel when the work they believed in is: believed in by others.

Prerna emerges from her glass office. She's holding her phone — the phone that received the same email, as agency head. She walks to my desk. She stands in front of me. She says:

"Twenty-seven years. The industry missed you. The Abby Awards just: confirmed it."

The ceremony is in November. Mumbai. The Jio Convention Centre — the venue that hosts events that are: too large for taste and too important for anywhere else. I need a dress.

"I'll handle it," Vandana says. Vandana, who handled the first dress (navy, wine tasting with Nikhil), the second outfit (chaniya choli, Navratri), and who has become: my unofficial stylist, the stylist being: a role she was born for and that her career in fashion-adjacent-wellness has prepared her for with the precision of a military training programme.

"Not navy this time," she says. "Navy was: the return. This is: the arrival. We need — " She pauses, accessing the internal fashion database that Vandana carries where other people carry: anxiety. "Red."

"Red?"

"Red. Not the red of: emergency. The red of: announcement. The red that says: I am here, and I am not leaving, and if you haven't noticed me yet, you are about to."

The dress is: custom. Made by a tailor in Bandra that Vandana knows — because Vandana knows every tailor, every salon, every boutique within a three-kilometre radius, the radius being: her kingdom, the kingdom of a woman who understands that looking good is not: vanity but: communication.

The dress is red silk. Floor-length. Simple — no embellishment, no mirror-work, no distraction. The fabric does the work. The fabric says: this woman doesn't need decoration. This woman is: the decoration.

I try it on. In Vandana's apartment this time — Vandana has a full-length mirror that she calls "the truth-teller" and that I call "the anxiety-machine." But tonight the truth-teller shows me: a woman in a red dress who looks like she belongs at an awards ceremony. Not because the dress is expensive (it isn't — Vandana's tailor charges artist-rates, the rates that artists charge when artists understand that some garments are: collaborations, not transactions). But because the woman in the dress is: present. Fully present. Not hiding. Not disappearing. Standing in front of a mirror in a red dress and: staying.

"Well?" Vandana asks.

"I look —"

"You look like a woman who's about to win a gold Abby. That's what you look like."

The night of the ceremony. I bring: everyone.

Not "everyone" in the vague sense — specifically everyone. Vandana (emerald green, naturally). Jaya (black, predictably, but with silver earrings that catch light — a Jaya concession to: occasion). Cheryl (navy, the dress that I wore to the wine tasting, because Cheryl borrowed it and never returned it and has claimed it as: Doug's proxy — "Doug would have looked great in navy"). Aditi (gold, because Aditi dresses her age, which is: twenty-eight and unafraid). Sunaina (white, always white, the yoga teacher's commitment to: simplicity). Nikhil (suit, dark grey, the suit of a man who attends events and who attends them: correctly). Jai (black shirt, dark jeans, the Jai uniform upgraded from gym to: gala, the upgrade being: minimal, because Jai's approach to formal wear mirrors his approach to conversation: stripped to essentials).

And Chetan. Chetan in a white kurta and dark churidar — the outfit that Indian men wear when Indian men want to look: literary and elegant and like they don't care about fashion while actually caring: deeply. Chetan, who stands beside me in the lobby of the Jio Convention Centre and says:

"You look like the cover of a book I want to write."

"Is that a compliment?"

"That's the highest compliment a writer can give. The cover is: the promise. You are: the promise of a story that the reader can't put down."

The ceremony is: long, the way awards ceremonies always are — speeches, categories, the parade of work that advertising produces and that is, at its best: art, and at its worst: wallpaper. I sit through fifteen categories. The Doosri Chai campaign is in category sixteen.

"The Gold Abby for Best Integrated Campaign goes to —"

The envelope. The pause. The pause that award ceremonies produce for dramatic effect but that the human heart experiences as: cardiac event. The pause where you think: maybe not, maybe I was wrong to hope, maybe the shortlist was: the end and the gold is: someone else's, and the someone-else is: fine, because the shortlist was enough, the shortlist was: more than I expected, the shortlist was —

"Doosri Chai: Pehli Se Zyada Kadak. Spark & Co."

The sound. Not the sound of my name being called — the sound of: everyone. Zoya screaming (again). The team of twenty-two jumping. Prerna's face — the face of a woman who founded an agency on the belief that good work wins and who has just been: vindicated. And behind me: Vandana gripping my arm so hard I'll have fingerprints tomorrow, and Jaya's single nod (the nod that says: of course), and Cheryl saying "Doug, did you hear that?", and Aditi filming on her phone, and Chetan — Chetan's hand on my lower back, warm, steady, the exact same pressure that Sunaina's hand had on my back during pigeon pose, the pressure that says: you are here, you did this, this is: yours.

I walk to the stage. The red dress moves. The jhumkas catch the spotlight. The woman walking to the stage is: not the woman who arrived at Seaside Fitness in salwar kameez ten months ago. The woman walking to the stage is: Madhuri Srivastava, copywriter. Gold Abby winner. Fifty years old. Short hair. Mumbai.

The trophy is: heavy. Heavier than the silver I won in '98. The gold Abby is: a solid thing, the weight of industry recognition compressed into: metal and a plaque that reads my name.

I stand at the podium. The microphone produces the feedback squeal that all microphones produce when you get too close, and the squeal is: the sound of reality saying: this is happening.

"This award," I say, "is for every woman who made chai for someone else for twenty-seven years and then decided to make it for herself. Pehli se zyada kadak."

The applause is: not polite. The applause is: the sound that a room makes when a room recognises truth, and the truth is: not just a tagline but a life, my life, the life that was: interrupted and that has been: resumed.

I walk off the stage. Chetan is waiting. He takes the trophy — holds it while I hold him, the holding that happens in public but that is: private, the private moment in the public space, the moment that says: we did this, together, separately, the way lives are lived: together and separately, simultaneously.

"You were electric," he says.

"I know," I say.

And I do. I know. Finally, irrevocably, without qualification or caveat or the old Lucknow voice saying "theek hai" — I know. I am: electric. I always was.