Chapter 28: Jaya's Blog

Jaya's blog post about Jai's exhibition goes viral on a Thursday.

"Viral" in Jaya's world means: twelve thousand views in twenty-four hours, which is twelve times her usual readership and which she announces at the juice bar with the expression of a woman who has been writing for four years and who has just discovered that the internet is: listening.

"Twelve thousand," she says. "Twelve. Thousand."

"That's wonderful, Jaya."

"That's terrifying. Twelve thousand people read my words. My words about Jai's photographs. My words that I wrote at 2 AM after the exhibition while eating Maggi straight from the pot because cooking at 2 AM requires: effort, and writing requires: Maggi."

The post is titled: "The Man Who Hid Thirty-Seven Masterpieces." The title that Jaya wrote with the instinct of a woman who understands that headlines are: doors, and the best doors are the ones that make you want to: enter.

I read the post on my phone. Jaya writes the way she speaks — directly, without ornament, with the precision of a scalpel and the warmth of a mother's hand, the combination being: impossible and yet Jaya.

I have a friend who photographs the way some people pray — with total attention and zero expectation. His name is Jai. He doesn't want me to write his last name, which is fine because Jai is: enough. One syllable. Like the sound a camera makes when the shutter opens. Like the sound of something beginning.

For twelve years, Jai travelled India with a camera. He shot fishermen and potters and children playing cricket in streets that had bullet marks on the walls. He shot his mother's hands without knowing they were his mother's hands. He shot the country the way the country needs to be shot: with love and with anger and with the understanding that love and anger are: the same impulse wearing different clothes.

Then he stopped. He put the cameras away. He started shooting corporate headshots — the photographs that LinkedIn profiles require and that nobody remembers. He did this for eight years. Eight years of forgetting what his hands were for.

Last week, in the lobby of a gym in Bandra, Jai hung thirty-seven photographs on the walls. He hung them because a woman told him: "Not maybe. Yes." And the woman was right. The photographs are: extraordinary. Not because they're technically perfect (they are) or because they're compositionally brilliant (they are) but because they are: honest. Each photograph says: I saw this. I saw this person, this moment, this light. And I kept it. For you.

The post continues — descriptions of specific photographs, the Varanasi hands, the Kashmir cricket, the Ladakh doorway. Jaya's writing is: the kind of writing that makes you feel like you were: there. Present. Seeing what she saw. Feeling what she felt.

And the internet responds.

Not the usual internet — not the trolling, the noise, the performative outrage. The other internet. The internet of people who read and feel and share because sharing is: the impulse that honest writing produces. The internet that says: this moved me, and I need you to know it moved me.

The comments:

"Where can I see these photographs?" (Sixty-three times, in various phrasings.)

"This is the best art writing I've read in years."

"Who is this writer? I need to read everything she's written."

"The line about the camera shutter — 'like the sound of something beginning' — I've been thinking about that all day."

And: a message from a gallery. Not just any gallery — Experimenter Gallery in Colaba, one of Mumbai's most respected contemporary art spaces, the space that shows: serious work. The message is to Jaya's blog email, which forwards to Jaya's phone, which Jaya reads at the juice bar while I'm sitting next to her, and the reading produces: a sound from Jaya that I've never heard before. A sound that is: between a gasp and a laugh and that suggests her body doesn't know which response to produce so it's producing: both.

"They want to show Jai's photographs," Jaya says. "Experimenter. They want to — they want to do a full exhibition."

"Jaya."

"A real gallery. Not a gym lobby. A real, actual, art-world gallery where people who know about photography will come and see and —" She stops. The stopping of a woman who has been writing about other people's lives for four years and who has just accidentally changed: someone's life.

"You need to tell Jai," I say.

"I can't tell Jai. Jai will have a cardiac event."

"Jai survived the gym exhibition. He'll survive this."

Jai doesn't have a cardiac event. Jai does something worse. Jai sits in the lobby — the gallery-lobby, the scene of his thirty-seven photographs — and he is: silent. The silence of a man processing information that his brain has classified as: impossible.

"Experimenter," he says. Finally.

"Experimenter," Jaya confirms.

"They want: me."

"They want: your photographs. Which are: you. So yes. They want you."

"I haven't shot new work in eight years."

"They don't want new work. They want the twelve years. The work you hid. The work that Madhuri told you to show and that you showed in this lobby and that I wrote about and that twelve thousand people read about and that Experimenter read about and now — now they want to: show."

The sequence. The extraordinary sequence that begins with a woman on a treadmill saying "not maybe, yes" and that moves through a gym lobby exhibition and a blog post and twelve thousand readers and a gallery email and that arrives: here. In this lobby. With a man sitting in a chair processing the fact that his life is about to: change.

"What do I do?" Jai asks. To me. To Jaya. To the room.

"You say yes," I say.

"Not maybe," Jaya adds.

"Yes," Jai says. The word. The word that I've been practising since January and that Jai is now practising for the first time. The word that changes things. The word that is: terrifying and necessary and the only word that matters.

But the viral post does something else. Something that Jaya didn't anticipate.

It brings attention to Doosri Innings.

Not just the Jai post — the entire blog. Twelve thousand people who came for Jai's photographs stayed for: Jaya's writing. They read the archives. Four years of posts about life after divorce — the honest, unflinching, sometimes funny, sometimes devastating posts that Jaya has been writing in the dark (not literally dark; Jaya writes in the morning, with chai, at her desk in Khar, but metaphorically dark — writing without the assurance that anyone is: reading).

The readership quadruples. From twelve hundred to forty-eight hundred regular readers. The numbers that, in the world of blogs, mean: a following. Not a massive following — not influencer-level, not book-deal-level. But: enough. Enough readers that Jaya's words matter to: more than herself.

And with the readers comes: an email. From a literary agent. Not any literary agent — Kavitha Rao of Rao & Partners, the agency that represents three Sahitya Akademi winners and four JCB Prize longlistees, the agency that represents: serious writing.

"She wants to talk," Jaya tells me. We're walking — Carter Road, evening, the walking that we do when we need to process things that are too large for: sitting. "She wants to talk about turning Doosri Innings into a book."

"Jaya."

"A book. An actual book. With pages and a cover and an ISBN and the whole — the whole thing."

"That's extraordinary."

"That's — I don't know what that is. I've been writing this blog for four years. Four years of telling my story and other women's stories and the stories that live in the space between: what happened and what I felt about what happened. And now someone wants to: collect them. Bind them. Publish them."

"What did you say?"

"I said I'd think about it."

"Jaya. We've been through this. With Jai. What's the word?"

"The word is: yes. I know the word is yes. But — Mar, the blog has posts that are fiction. I told you. In the monsoon. Some of the posts are: made up. And a book — a book has to be: true. Or labeled. Fiction or nonfiction. And Doosri Innings is: both. It's the truth of emotion written in the form of: sometimes fiction. How do you publish that?"

"You publish it as: what it is. A collection of writing that lives between truth and fiction. The literary world has a word for that."

"Creative nonfiction?"

"Autofiction. Chetan told me. The form where the writer's life is: the material, but the material is: shaped. Not raw truth but: crafted truth. Truth with structure."

"Autofiction." Jaya rolls the word. "Doosri Innings as: autofiction."

"Talk to Kavitha. Tell her exactly what you told me — some posts are fiction, some are real, readers don't know which. And see what she says."

"What if she says no?"

"Then you find a different agent. But she won't say no. Because a writer who can make fiction feel like truth and truth feel like fiction is: the writer every publisher wants."

Jaya stops walking. Carter Road stretches behind us and before us — the sea on one side, the buildings on the other, the promenade that we've walked a hundred times and that has heard a hundred conversations and that is: patient with us, the way roads are patient with the people who walk them.

"Mar," she says.

"Hmm?"

"When you came to Seaside Fitness in January — in salwar kameez, lost, fresh from Lucknow, not knowing anyone — I thought: this woman needs help. I'm going to help her."

"You did help me."

"I know. But I didn't expect you to: help me back. I didn't expect that the woman I was helping would be the woman who told Jai to show his photographs and who told me about autofiction and who — who made this group into what it is. You're the centre, Mar. You arrived and we became: a group. Before you, we were: individuals at a gym. After you, we're: this."

"Don't give me that much credit."

"I'm a writer. I give credit where the story: demands it. And the story demands it here."

The sea does what the sea always does on Carter Road at sunset — it turns orange. The orange that Mumbai produces when the sun hits the Arabian Sea at the correct angle, the angle that exists for approximately: seven minutes and that makes everything — the water, the promenade, the faces of two women standing on a road — everything: gold.

"Say yes," I tell her.

"Yes," she says.