Chapter 17: Arun Ka Pyaar (Arun's Love)

Arun Patwardhan learned to be present the way he had learned everything else in his life: methodically, with effort, and with the particular determination of a man who had spent forty-two years solving problems with numbers and who was now faced with a problem that numbers could not solve.

The problem was this: how do you love a woman you have been loving wrong?

Not wrong in the obvious ways — Arun had not been cruel, had not been absent, had not been the kind of husband that films warned against and that aunties discussed at weddings with the particular relish of women who had survived their own marriages and who collected stories of marital failure the way some people collected stamps. Arun had been present. Arun had been kind. Arun had provided — the house, the income, the stability, the forty-three years of consistent partnership that was the foundation of the Patwardhan household.

But the loving had been wrong because the loving had been incomplete. He had loved the surface — the performance-Gauri, the puran-poli-Gauri, the Ganpati-organising-Gauri — and the loving of the surface was real and genuine and had sustained a marriage and raised three children and built a life. But it was the loving of a woman he didn't fully know. And not fully knowing the person you love is not a crime — it is the human condition, the particular limitation of intimacy that means we are always, at best, loving an approximation — but in Arun's case, the not-knowing was not the ordinary not-knowing. It was the not-knowing of a man whose wife had been carrying a wolf for fifty-five years and whose wife's carrying had been invisible because the wife was excellent at carrying and the husband was excellent at not seeing.

The not-seeing was the thing that Arun could not forgive himself for.

Dr. Joshi — Gauri had given him her number, and Arun had called, not for himself but for instructions, the banker in him seeking the procedure, the protocol, the manual for How to Be a Husband When You Discover Your Wife Has Been Hiding a Monster — Dr. Joshi had said: "The not-seeing is not your fault. The not-seeing was her protection. She needed you to not see. Your not-seeing was the safety she required."

"That's not comfort."

"It's not meant to be comfort. It's meant to be clarity. Comfort comes later."

"When?"

"When you stop trying to fix and start trying to be."

The fixing was the instinct. Arun was a fixer — a man who saw problems as equations and equations as solvable and solutions as the point. The solution to a leaking tap was a plumber. The solution to a financial deficit was a restructured budget. The solution to his wife's fifty-five-year trauma was — was what? What was the solution? There was no plumber for this. There was no budget. There was no equation where Arun could input variables and produce an answer that made the wolf stop visiting at three AM.

The absence of a solution was the hardest thing Arun had ever faced. Harder than the bank audit of 2003. Harder than the retirement. Harder than Asha's death. The absence of a solution required a skill that Arun did not have and had never needed: the skill of being present without acting. The skill of standing next to a person in pain and not reaching for the toolbox.

He tried.

*

The trying looked like this:

He learned her chai recipe. Forty-three years of marriage and he had never learned it — not because Gauri had kept it secret but because learning it had never occurred to him, the way learning to breathe had never occurred to him: the thing was done, the thing was reliable, the thing did not require his participation. But now he learned. Ginger — three pieces, crushed with the back of a spoon, not sliced, the crushing releasing the oils that slicing missed. Cardamom — two pods, cracked, the cracking done with the heel of the palm on the cutting board, the pod splitting to reveal the black seeds inside. Sugar — one spoon, level, Gauri's sugar, the sugar that had been hers since the children left and no one else's preferences needed accommodation. Milk — from the Katraj Dairy packet, the red stripe, opened with scissors because Gauri was a scissors woman. Tea leaves — two spoons of Wagh Bakri, the cheap one, the one that Arun had been buying in bulk for twenty years without ever asking whether Gauri actually liked it or simply tolerated it (she liked it — the liking was genuine, and the genuine liking of a cheap tea was the most Gauri thing about Gauri: unpretentious, loyal to the familiar, resistant to the upgrade).

He made it. On a Tuesday morning. Before she woke. He made it the way she made it — the same pot, the same sequence, the same ratios. And when she came to the kitchen at six AM, the chai was on the counter in her steel tumbler, and the making of it was the most intimate thing Arun had done in their marriage, because the making was the knowing, and the knowing was: I learned the thing you do. I learned the order. I learned the crushing and the cracking and the cutting-with-scissors. I learned you.

"You made chai," she said.

"I made your chai."

She tasted it. The tasting was — Arun watched her taste it with the particular anxiety of a man who has attempted something new and who is waiting for the review, the banker awaiting the audit result, the examination candidate awaiting the score.

"Too much ginger," she said.

"I put three pieces."

"Your pieces are bigger than my pieces. Your crushing is — enthusiastic."

"I'll crush less enthusiastically next time."

"You'll crush correctly next time. There is a correct crush. The correct crush is firm but not aggressive. The ginger should be bruised, not pulverised."

"I bruised the ginger."

"You destroyed the ginger. There's a difference."

"Is the chai drinkable?"

She drank. The drinking was the answer — the drinking was the acceptance, not of the chai (the chai was, by Gauri's standards, a B-minus, which by any other standard was excellent but by Gauri's standard was the particular mediocrity that required correction), but of the making. The making was an A-plus. The making was: you learned.

"It's drinkable," she said.

"High praise."

"It's the highest praise I've given your cooking in forty-three years."

"You've never given my cooking any praise."

"Because you've never cooked."

"I'm cooking now."

"You're making chai. Chai is not cooking. Chai is — chai is the beginning of cooking. Chai is the preface."

"Then consider this my preface."

She smiled. The smile was — Arun noticed it and filed it and held it the way he held all the new things he was noticing about his wife, which were: the smile that was real versus the smile that was performance (the real smile involved the eyes, the performance smile involved only the mouth, and the difference was the difference between a lamp that was lit and a lamp that was displayed), the way she held her tumbler (two hands, always two hands, the hands wrapped around the steel the way hands wrap around a thing they need, not a thing they want), and the particular sound she made when the chai was right, which was not a word but a hum, a low hum, the hum of a body receiving warmth that it needed.

He was learning her. After forty-three years, he was learning her. And the learning was — it was the most important work he had ever done. More important than the bank. More important than the career. More important than the house and the income and the stability. The learning was the loving, and the loving had been wrong, and the wrongness was fixable not by fixing but by learning.

*

He learned other things.

He learned that three AM was her hour. Not a good hour — the hour. The hour when the wolf came. And he learned that his job at three AM was not to solve or comfort or fix. His job at three AM was to wake up. To wake up when she woke up. To not sleep through it. To be the man who was awake when his wife was afraid.

The first time he did this — the first time he woke at three AM because he had set an alarm (an alarm! the banker setting an alarm for the wife's nightmare, the particular absurdity of scheduling compassion, but Arun was Arun and schedules were his language the way puran poli was Gauri's) — Gauri was in the kitchen. As always. With Moti. With the chai. With the routine.

He came down. She looked up. The look was — surprise. Forty-three years of three-AM aloneness and now: the husband in the kitchen doorway at three AM.

"What are you doing up?" she said.

"I'm up."

"Why?"

"Because you're up."

"I'm always up at three."

"And from now on, so am I."

"Arun, you don't have to—"

"I know I don't have to. I want to. I have slept through forty-three years of your three AMs and the sleeping was — the sleeping was the cotton. My version of the cotton. The sleeping through was the not-knowing, and the not-knowing was the comfort, and the comfort was the cowardice. I'm done sleeping through."

The reference to Pramod's cotton was deliberate. Arun had heard the cotton story from Gauri, who had heard it from Nandini, who had heard it from Pramod. The cotton had become the family's metaphor — the metaphor for all the ways that all the people around Gauri had managed to not know, the various cottons that had been placed in various ears by various people for various reasons, all of which led to the same result: Gauri alone at three AM.

"You don't have to stay," Gauri said. "The routine is — the routine is mine. The chai and the kitchen and the dog. The routine works. The routine has worked for fifty-five years."

"The routine worked for survival. I'm not offering routine. I'm offering company."

"Company at three AM is not company. Company at three AM is insomnia."

"Insomnia by choice is solidarity."

"That's the most ridiculous thing you've ever said."

"I've been married to you for forty-three years. I've said many ridiculous things. This is not even in the top ten."

She made him chai. At three AM. In the kitchen. With Moti at their feet. Two steel tumblers on the table instead of one. The two-ness was — the two-ness was everything. The two-ness was the end of the aloneness. Not the end of the nightmare — the nightmare still came, would always come, Dr. Joshi had said this and Gauri believed it and Arun was learning to believe it too: the wolf was permanent. But the aftermath was no longer solo. The aftermath now included: the husband. The chai. The two tumblers. The company that was not routine but was choice.

They sat. At three AM. In the kitchen. The fluorescent tube flickering and then committing. The tiles cold under their feet. Moti between them, the living comma in the sentence of their marriage that now read differently: not "Gauri (alone) at three AM" but "Gauri and Arun (together) at three AM."

He did not ask about the dream. He did not ask "was it bad?" or "what did you see?" or "are you okay?" He did not ask because asking was fixing and fixing was not his job. His job was the tumbler. His job was the presence. His job was being the other person in the kitchen at three AM who did not need an explanation, who did not need a report, who just needed to be there because being there was the thing, and the thing was the love, and the love was not the forty-three-year love that he'd been practicing (the automatic love, the kiss-on-the-cheek love, the functional love of partnership and provision) but a new love, a harder love, the love that required waking up at three AM and sitting in a cold kitchen and not fixing anything.

The not-fixing was the loving.

*

He also learned to be angry on her behalf without the anger being about him. This was the hardest lesson — harder than the chai recipe, harder than the three-AM waking, harder than the entire curriculum of learning-to-be-present. The anger was volcanic. The anger was the anger of a man who had shaken Laxman's hand and served him samosas and played crossword with him and who now knew that the man he'd been hosting was the man who had destroyed his wife's childhood, and the hosting was the complicity, and the complicity was Arun's even though Arun hadn't known, because not knowing was not innocence, not knowing was the luxury that the not-seeing had purchased.

The anger wanted to go to Satara. The anger wanted to find Laxman and — the anger's plan was violent, specific, the plan of a man who had never been violent and whose violence was therefore theoretical but intense, the particular rage of a gentle man who discovers that gentleness has been insufficient.

But Gauri had said: this is not about your feeling. This is about mine.

And so the anger was — managed. Not suppressed, not denied, but directed. The anger went into: calling Meera every week (the father-daughter calls that had been quarterly and were now weekly, the particular investment of a man who was rebuilding his relationship with his children around the truth). The anger went into: the kitchen (Arun cooking, badly but persistently, the dal too thin and the roti not round and the sabzi over-salted, the cooking of a man who was learning and whose learning was the channel for the feeling that had no other outlet). The anger went into: the three AM. The waking. The being present. The particular transmutation of rage into attendance.

Dr. Joshi had said: "The anger is appropriate. The anger is yours. But the anger must not become the centre. The centre is Gauri. And Gauri needs not your anger but your presence."

Presence. The word that Arun — a man of numbers, of schedules, of the particular certainty that problems have solutions and solutions have steps — was learning to make his entire vocabulary.

I am present. I am here. I am in the kitchen at three AM with the chai that I made badly and the roti that isn't round and the love that is not the love I thought it was but is, somehow, more.

The more was the thing. The more that came from knowing. The more that came from the crack. The more that Asha's letter had started and Gauri's telling had continued and the therapy had expanded and the confrontation had solidified and that now, in a kitchen on Prabhat Road, at three AM, with two steel tumblers and a dog — the more was here.

Not fixed. Not solved. Not the balanced equation that Arun's banker brain craved.

But present. And the present was enough.