Chapter 4: Mohit

She asked me at 11 PM on a Thursday.

Not directly. Tanvi Kapoor did not ask for things directly — she approached requests the way a cat approached a closed door, circling, investigating, pretending disinterest, until the need overcame the: pride. I was on the verandah, scrolling through the Wildcats' social media page (sixteen followers gained this week, a personal best, mostly because I'd posted a video of the tiger mascot attempting a backflip on a wet pitch and face-planting into the mud, which had, against all expectations, gone mildly viral in the Himachal Pradesh sports community), when she appeared in the doorway with her laptop and the expression of a woman carrying a live grenade.

"I need your opinion on something," she said.

"My opinion? On: something? This is unprecedented. Should I mark the calendar?"

"Don't make me regret this."

She sat on the other plastic chair — the verandah had two, both the white Nilkamal kind that every Indian household owned, the kind that looked fine for the first month and then began yellowing in the sun like aged newspapers. The verandah was narrow, barely wide enough for the two chairs and the railing, and the Shivalik hills were invisible in the dark, but you could feel them — the cold that rolled down from the higher ridges, the specific October night cold of Kasauli that wasn't quite winter but was: warning.

Tanvi opened the laptop. The document. The coaching philosophy statement. I'd heard her cursing at this document through the wall for the past three evenings — not loudly, but audibly, the specific under-breath cursing of a Hindi-speaking woman who had exhausted the polite expletives and was working through the: creative ones.

"It's terrible," she said.

I read it. It was: not terrible. It was competent, structured, correct. It listed her qualifications, her experience, her training methodology. It mentioned her Panjab University captaincy, her district championship win as coach, her understanding of physical conditioning for young athletes. It was the kind of document that a committee would read and say: fine. Acceptable. Next applicant.

"It's missing you," I said.

"What does that mean?"

"It means — this could be written by anyone. Any coach with your qualifications could have written this. But the board isn't deciding between qualifications. They're deciding between: people. And this document doesn't tell them who Tanvi Kapoor is."

"They don't need to know who I am. They need to know I can coach."

"They need to know why you coach. That's the: difference."

She looked at the screen. Then at the hills — the invisible hills, the darkness where the hills were. Then at her hands on the keyboard, the hands that had raided in competitive kabaddi until her body said: stop, the hands that now coached other bodies to do what hers couldn't, the hands that were: still.

"I coach because — because when I'm coaching, I'm not sick."

The sentence landed on the verandah like a stone. Small. Heavy. Final.

"Not literally," she added quickly. "I'm still — the IBS doesn't stop. The celiac doesn't stop. But when I'm in the training hall, when I'm watching a raider set up a bonus line touch, when I'm reading the defender's angle and shouting the correction before the play collapses — I'm not: thinking about it. I'm not calculating what I ate, whether it was safe, whether my stomach will betray me in an hour. For those two hours of practice, I'm just: a coach. Not a patient. Not a person with a: condition. Just: Tanvi, who knows kabaddi, who can see the game, who can: help."

"Write that."

"I can't write that. It's too — it's too: much."

"It's the truth. The truth is always too much. That's what makes it: true."

She stared at me. The stare of a woman recalibrating — the way you recalibrate when someone you have categorised (enemy, rival, annoyance) does something that doesn't fit the: category. I was supposed to be: Mohit. The mascot. The prankster. The boy who had put a rubber spider in her tiffin in Class 5 and had called her "Tanvi Trouble" through all of secondary school and who was currently sleeping in her spare room because he couldn't manage: plumbing.

I was not supposed to: understand.

"I'll help you write it," I said. "If you want. I'll type, you talk. You tell me why you coach. Not the CV version. The real version. And then we'll: edit it down to something the board can handle. The truth, but: board-appropriate."

She closed the laptop. Opened it. Closed it again. The oscillation of a woman whose pride and whose need were engaged in: combat.

"Fine," she said. "But if you tell anyone I asked for your help—"

"I will tell: everyone. I will take out an ad in the Himachal Darpan. 'Tanvi Kapoor asks Mohit Bhardwaj for help. Sources confirm: hell has frozen.' "

"You're insufferable."

"And you're asking an insufferable person for help. What does that make: you?"

"Desperate."

"Desperate is: honest. I'll take it."

We worked until 1 AM. The hills appeared slowly — not visually, but in the sounds that the late-night Kasauli hills made: the barking deer in the Wildlife Sanctuary, the distant truck gears on the Kalka-Shimla road, the wind through the deodar that sounded like the trees were: breathing. Tanvi talked. I typed. She talked about the first time she watched kabaddi — age six, at a mela in Ambala, sitting on her father's shoulders, watching a raider touch the bonus line and escape three defenders, and the crowd erupting, and the sound of that crowd becoming: the sound that meant joy. She talked about playing — the women's team at Panjab University, the coach who told her she had "the best spatial awareness I've ever seen in a raider," the matches where her body cooperated and she was: unstoppable. She talked about the diagnosis — fifteen, in a gastroenterologist's office in Chandigarh, her mother's face, the list of foods she could never eat again, the realisation that her body was: at war with itself. She talked about quitting competitive play — the last match, at a tournament in Jalandhar, where she'd had a flare-up during the second half and had played through it because the team needed her, and had: won, and had spent the night in a hospital, and had known, lying on the hospital bed with an IV in her arm, that she would never: play again.

And then she talked about coaching. The first session with the junior team. A group of eleven-year-olds who didn't know how to do an ankle hold. The patience required. The joy of seeing one of them — a girl named Komal, skinny, fierce, the kind of kid who ran like she was being chased by something only she could see — execute her first successful raid. The: sound of that. Not a crowd. Not a stadium. Just twelve kids cheering in a training hall in Kasauli, and Komal's face, and the feeling in Tanvi's chest that was the opposite of: sick.

"That," I said. "That's your coaching philosophy."

The document, by 1 AM, was: different. Not longer — actually shorter than her original. But every sentence contained: her. The committee wouldn't read a CV. They'd read: a person.

"It's good," she said. The highest praise Tanvi Kapoor had ever given me.

"You're welcome."

"I didn't say: thank you."

"You will. Eventually. Probably on your deathbed. 'Mohit, I should have thanked you for that coaching document in October 2024.' And I'll say, 'Too late, Tanvi. I've moved on.' And then you'll: haunt me."

She laughed. The laugh surprised both of us — the way a hiccup surprises, involuntary, unplanned, the body betraying the: mind. Tanvi Kapoor, laughing at something Mohit Bhardwaj said. On a verandah. At 1 AM. Under the Kasauli stars.

I filed the sound. In the filing cabinet of my memory, in the drawer marked "Tanvi Kapoor," which was larger than it should have been, which contained eighteen years of: evidence. The laugh went next to: the look. The look she'd given me yesterday when I'd asked about the cutting board. The look that said: you pay attention.

I paid attention. I had always paid: attention.