Chapter 12: Mohit

The almond flour barfi turned out: good.

Not Maa-level good — Maa-level was a standard achieved through ten years of recipe refinement and the specific intuition of a mother who cooked for her daughter's survival. But good. The barfi was firm, the jaggery sweetness balanced by the cardamom, the pistachios adding the: crunch. Tanvi had eaten three pieces. Three. She had eaten three pieces of a sweet that I had made in her kitchen from her mother's recipe, and she had not said "good" or "nice" or any of the polite nothing-words that Indians deployed when they didn't want to: offend. She had said: "More."

"More" was: better than any compliment.

I made more. I made the coconut ladoo (page twenty-two, the jaggery melted: slowly this time, the coconut roasted to gold, the whole thing rolled into balls that were not uniform in size but were: honest). I made the til chikki (page thirty-one, sesame and jaggery, the brittle snapping between fingers like: music). I made enough sweets for two people and a: verandah.

The verandah became: Diwali headquarters. Tanvi brought the diyas — clay diyas from the potter in the lower bazaar, the potter who had been making Diwali diyas since before either of us was born, the diyas that were irregular and slightly lopsided and: perfect in the way that handmade things were: perfect, which was to say: imperfect and: alive. We lined them along the verandah railing. Twenty-three. Tanvi had wanted twenty. I had: added three.

"Twenty-three," she said.

"One for each year of Diya's life. If she were: alive."

Tanvi placed the twenty-third diya at the centre of the railing. She did not: speak. She lit it with a matchstick — the smell of sulphur, the small flame, the clay warming under the: fire. The twenty-third diya was: Diya's. And Tanvi had understood without: explanation.

This was the thing about Tanvi Kapoor. She understood without: words. She read the: spaces between sentences the way she read the kabaddi mat — the gaps, the angles, the things that were present in their: absence. She understood that the twenty-third diya was not: decoration. It was: remembrance. And she had placed it at the: centre.

*

Diwali evening. The flat smelled like: home.

Not the flat's usual smell — the flat usually smelled like espresso (carried home in Tanvi's clothes from the café), lavender (the sachets), and the faint antiseptic tang of a kitchen managed for: survival. Tonight it smelled like: jaggery, cardamom, sesame, the warm oil of the diyas burning on the verandah, and the incense that Tanvi had lit — agarbatti, the specific sandalwood that her family used for: puja.

We did puja. Tanvi's puja — the small brass Lakshmi from her parents' house, the one she'd brought to Kasauli when she moved, the Lakshmi that had been in the Kapoor family for three generations, small enough to fit in a palm, heavy enough to feel: consequential. She placed it on the kitchen counter — the only surface in the flat that was reliably clean, the surface that Tanvi maintained with the devotion of a: temple.

"You don't have to," she said. "If you're not — if it's not your: thing."

"My Nani does puja every morning at 5 AM. My thing is: hereditary."

We stood in the kitchen. The agarbatti smoke curled between us. Tanvi recited the: aarti. Her voice — the voice I associated with: orders, instructions, coaching corrections, the sharp-edged voice of a woman who managed the world by: managing it — was: different. Softer. The aarti voice. The voice that came from the part of Tanvi that was: faith, not: control.

"Om Jai Lakshmi Mata, Maiya Jai Lakshmi Mata..."

I joined. My voice was: untrained, off-key, the voice of a man who performed backflips for a living and did not: sing. But Nani's aarti had been my morning soundtrack for twenty-two years — the years I'd lived in Nani's house, before the flat, before the gymnastics hostel, the years when Nani and Diya and I had stood in the prayer room at 5 AM and the aarti had been: the sound that meant morning, that meant: family, that meant: the day was beginning and we were: together.

Tanvi looked at me. Mid-aarti. The look was: the one from the ridge road. Gratitude and something: else. The something else that we were both pretending was: not there, that we were managing with the same precision that Tanvi managed her: kitchen, labelling it, containing it, putting it on the: bottom shelf.

After puja, we ate. On the verandah. The sweets and rice and the dal that was: safe, always safe, the meal that anchored every evening. The diyas flickered in the Kasauli wind — the twenty-three flames wavering but not: dying, because the potter's diyas were deep-welled and the oil was: generous and the flames were: stubborn, like everything else in this: town.

Below the verandah, Kasauli was: lit. Every house, every shop, every building from Cart Road to the upper ridge was: glowing. The electric lights — the serial lights that Indians strung with the same fervour that Americans strung Christmas lights, the lights that transformed Kasauli from a sleepy hill station into something that looked like a: constellation had landed. And the diyas — hundreds of them, on windowsills and verandahs and doorsteps, the small clay flames that said: we are here, we endure, the: darkness has not won.

"Happy Diwali, Mohit," Tanvi said.

"Happy Diwali, Tanvi."

She held up a coconut ladoo. I held up a til chikki. We touched them together — the ladoo-chikki toast, the most absurd Diwali toast in the history of: Diwali — and ate.

The jaggery tasted like: celebration.

*

At 10 PM, my phone rang. Veer Malhotra.

"Happy Diwali, coach," he said. He called Tanvi "coach" — a habit that had started during their morning sessions and that I: noted every time, because "coach" was: respect, and respect was: proximity, and proximity was the thing that made my jaw: clench.

"She's — she's not here," I lied. Tanvi was: six feet away, on the verandah, looking at the diyas.

"I called her phone. She didn't pick up."

"It's Diwali. She's: busy."

"Right. Tell her I said Happy Diwali. And that I'll be at the academy at 6 tomorrow. The ankle feint she showed me — I want to: practice."

"I'll tell her."

"Thanks, Mohit. Happy Diwali."

"Happy Diwali."

I hung up. Tanvi was looking at me. The look said: who was that?

"Veer," I said. "Happy Diwali."

"Oh." She turned back to the diyas. "Tell him: thanks."

"Tell him yourself. Tomorrow. At 6 AM. When you're: coaching him."

The sentence was: meaner than I intended. The meanness surprised me — the way you're surprised when a door slams harder than you meant, the wind catching it, the: force exceeding the: intention. Tanvi's face shifted. The Diwali softness — the aarti voice, the ladoo toast, the twenty-third diya — retreated. What replaced it was: the wall. The Tanvi wall. The wall she built when someone was: unfair.

"You're being: ridiculous," she said.

"I'm being: honest."

"You're being jealous, and you're disguising it as: honest."

"I'm not: jealous."

"Your jaw is: clenching."

It was. The jaw was: clenching. The jaw was betraying everything my mouth was: denying.

"Goodnight, Tanvi," I said.

"Goodnight, Mohit."

I went to my room. Closed the door. This time: all the way. The twenty-third diya was still burning on the verandah, and from my window I could see its flame — small, stubborn, the diya for a girl who would have told her brother: stop being stupid. Stop being: afraid. Tell: her.

I didn't: tell her.