Chapter 9: Tampon Wali Ladki Ki Wapsi (Return of the Tampon Girl)

Kiara disappeared on a Wednesday. Not the dramatic disappearance — not the missing-person, police-report disappearance. The invisible disappearance. The kind that homeless teenagers performed when the couch they'd been sleeping on was no longer available and the McDonald's night-shift staff had changed and the new staff enforced the thirty-minute seating rule and the rule-enforcement meant the shelter was gone and the gone meant: movement. The movement that was not travel but survival — the movement from one temporary arrangement to the next, the next being unknown until it became current and the current lasting until it became former and the former being discarded the way temporary things were discarded: without ceremony, without record.

Kiara missed Thursday. This was the fact. Kiara who had not missed a single Thursday in nine weeks — Kiara who was the job club's tech team, the girl who formatted resumes on borrowed laptops and navigated government portals with the speed of someone whose survival depended on digital fluency. Kiara who sat cross-legged on the church floor and who ate dal-rice with the particular focus of someone for whom the Thursday meal was not a meal but a certainty, the certainty being the thing that homelessness destroyed and that the Thursday kitchen restored: you knew, on Thursday, that you would eat. The knowing was the gift.

Ananya noticed at 11:30 AM. The dal service was underway — Nikhil's dal was on the table, the queue was moving, the folding chairs were filling. Kiara's spot — the spot on the floor near the electrical socket where she charged her phone while working — was empty. The emptiness being the particular emptiness of a missing person's space: the space that was defined by absence, the absence making the space more visible than presence ever had.

"Kiara nahi aayi?" Ananya asked Nikhil, ladling dal. The ladle had become her instrument, the way Nikhil's was the wooden spoon and Payal's was the register.

Nikhil shook his head. "Kal bhi nahi dikhi." Didn't see her yesterday either.

Ananya's body registered the worry before her mind processed it. The stomach-tightening — the particular tightening that mothers felt when the child was late, the tightening that Ananya had not felt for Liza and Vivek in two years (the children who were with Karan and who were safe in Karan's Koregaon Park house with its Netflix and its imported cheese and its Areesha). The tightening that was — the tightening was maternal. The tightening was for Kiara. The tightening was the body saying: this girl matters to you and the mattering has crossed the line from volunteer-and-beneficiary to something else, the something-else being the particular unnamed relationship that formed between the woman-without-a-daughter and the girl-without-a-mother.

She served the remaining dal mechanically. Smile, ladle, "aur chahiye?", ladle. The mechanics of service continuing while the mind ran the calculations: where could Kiara be? The McDonald's on FC Road (but the staff had changed). The British Council library (but it closed at 6 PM and it was now Thursday morning, meaning Kiara had been somewhere for at least sixteen hours since the library's last opening). A friend's couch (but which friend? Kiara's friends were as unstable as Kiara — the unstable being the condition of the young-homeless network, the network that was made of similar nodes and similar nodes meant similar precariousness).

After the kitchen closed, Ananya did something she had not done before. She went looking. Not the corporate-looking (the looking that involved phone calls and emails and the particular infrastructure of the connected). The physical-looking. The looking that was: walking. Walking through Hadapsar's lanes with her phone in her hand and Kiara's face in her mind and the particular anxiety of a woman who was looking for a teenager who might not want to be found, the might-not-wanting being the possibility that Ananya had to hold alongside the anxiety: Kiara was not her child. Kiara had not asked to be looked for. Kiara's disappearance might be voluntary — the voluntary-disappearance being the teenager's prerogative, the prerogative that adults were not entitled to override.

She checked the paan stall. Ramu Kaka, who gave free meetha paan to the Thursday children, said: "Woh ladki? Kal yahan aayi thi. Phone charge karne ko bola tha. Maine karne diya. Phir gayi." That girl? She came yesterday. Asked to charge her phone. I let her. Then she left.

"Kahan gayi?" Where did she go?

Ramu Kaka shrugged. The shrug that was the Indian street vendor's response to questions about street people — the response that said: I see everyone but I track no one, the not-tracking being the street's social contract: you could exist without being monitored, the not-monitoring being the freedom that the street offered and that the offering was also the danger.

She checked the library. The Hadapsar branch — smaller than the Kothrud branch, two rooms, the librarian an elderly woman named Mrs. Joshi who wore spectacles that she cleaned every three minutes with the end of her pallu and who said: "Woh ladki nahi aayi do din se. Usually woh rozana aati thi. Current affairs section mein baithti thi." That girl hasn't come in two days. She usually came every day. Sat in the current affairs section.

Current affairs. Kiara read current affairs at the library — the reading being not academic interest but survival strategy: knowing what the government was doing, which schemes were available, which deadlines were approaching. The reading that was the self-education of the systemically excluded: you read the newspaper because the newspaper told you which doors were open and the open-doors were the only doors you could use.

Ananya walked back to the church. The afternoon sun — November sun, the Pune November that was warm during the day and cold at night, the temperature-swing being the season's personality disorder. The church compound was empty. The dal vessels had been cleaned (Nikhil's post-service ritual: clean everything immediately, the immediately being the chef's discipline that Infosys had not taught him and that the teaching had come from his grandmother's kitchen, the grandmother who said "bartan garam garam dho, thande hone pe nichod nahi nikalti" — wash vessels while hot, cold ones don't release their grip).

She sat on the church steps. The steps where she and Govind had made his first resume. The stone warm from the sun, the warmth seeping through her cotton salwar. She called Kiara's number. The number that she had saved as "Kiara - Job Club" in her phone, the saving being the formal designation and the formal designation being the lie — the lie being: Kiara was not "Job Club" to Ananya. Kiara was the girl with the Whisper pads and the library card and the hands that held the plate with both hands and the voice that said "didi, aur dal milegi?" and the voice was the voice that had entered Ananya's life through the serving table and had not left.

The phone rang. Six rings. Seven. Eight. Ananya counted the rings the way you counted contractions — not because the counting changed the outcome but because the counting was the only action available when the outcome was not in your control.

Nine. Ten. Voicemail. The voicemail that was the automated Jio voice, the voice that said "the person you are calling is not available" in English and then Hindi, the bilingual unavailability being the Indian telecom's particular courtesy: your anxiety is served in two languages.

She called again. Voicemail. Again. Voicemail. Three calls — the three being the threshold, the threshold after which continued calling became harassment and the harassment was the thing that Ananya, who had been harassed by Karan's calls for years, would not replicate. Three was the limit. After three, you waited. The waiting being the discipline of the person who had been on the other end of obsessive calling and who knew that the other end was not helped by the calling but suffocated by it.

She texted: "Kiara, sab theek hai? Thursday pe nahi aayi. Main yahan hoon agar kuch chahiye toh. - Ananya didi"

Kiara, is everything okay? You didn't come Thursday. I'm here if you need anything.

The text being — the text was careful. Careful not to demand. Careful not to mother. Careful not to cross the line that Ananya knew existed between caring and controlling, the line that Karan had obliterated for twenty years and that the obliterating had taught Ananya where the line was: you learned the line by having it crossed repeatedly, the repeated-crossing being the education and the education being painful and the pain being useful because the useful-pain was: you did not cross others' lines once you understood what crossing felt like.

She put the phone in her bag. Rode the 154 home. The bus was less crowded in the early afternoon — the early-afternoon 154 being the bus of housewives returning from markets and retired men returning from morning errands and the occasional student skipping afternoon lectures and the student's skipping being visible in the particular body language of guilt: the shoulders slightly hunched, the phone held at an angle that suggested texting excuses to someone.

At home, she made chai. Ginger-elaichi. The recipe she'd made every evening since the redundancy — the recipe that had become the evening's punctuation mark, the mark that said: the day is over, the worrying is done, the chai is the boundary between the day's problems and the evening's rest.

Her phone buzzed. 7:43 PM. Kiara.

"Sab theek hai didi. Thoda scene ho gaya tha. Kal aa rahi hoon church. Sorry."

Everything's fine sister. Had a bit of a situation. Coming to church tomorrow. Sorry.

The relief was — the relief was physical. The relief that lived in the body: the shoulders dropping, the jaw unclenching, the stomach-tightening releasing. The body that had been holding the worry for eight hours and that the holding had been unconscious and the unconscious-holding was: love. The unconscious-holding of worry was the body's definition of love, the definition that the mind had not yet articulated but that the body had already committed to.

Ananya typed a response. Deleted it. Typed another. Deleted it. The deleting being the editing that caring required — the editing that said: don't say too much, don't say too little, find the sentence that communicates availability without obligation.

Final text: "Theek hai. Kal milte hain. Dal extra rakhungi."

Okay. See you tomorrow. I'll keep extra dal.

The dal being the language. The dal being the currency of this relationship — the relationship that was built on Thursdays and dal and church steps and borrowed laptops and the particular bond that formed between women of different ages who needed each other in different ways and whose needing was the finding and the finding was the family that biology had not provided and that the not-providing had been the loss and the loss had been the space and the space had been filled by Thursdays and dal and a girl with a library card.