CHAPTER TWO

Friday arrived the way it always did for the three of them -- not as a day on the calendar but as a collective exhale, a permission slip to stop performing normalcy and simply be themselves for a few hours.

Doolally Taproom in Koregaon Park was their spot. They had tried other places over the years -- Toit, which was perpetually crowded with tech bros comparing stock options; Arbor, which was beautiful but pretentious; The Permit Room, which had excellent cocktails but tables so close together that your neighbour could critique your life choices in real time. Doolally had found the sweet spot: good food, decent drinks, enough noise to provide cover for honest conversation, and a corner table near the back that the staff had started keeping available for them on Friday evenings without being asked.

Sanika arrived first, as she almost always did. Being in finance meant her day ended with a clear stop -- the numbers either balanced or they didn't, and once the reports were filed, there was nothing more to be done until Monday. She ordered a Virgin Mary (she was driving), pulled out her phone, and scrolled through the day's notifications with the glazed efficiency of someone who had long ago learned to separate signal from noise. Three emails from Rao (urgent, urgent, urgent -- none actually urgent). A message from her mother asking if she had eaten properly. A Zomato notification for a restaurant she would never visit. And seventeen -- seventeen! -- notifications from Instagram, all from people she didn't know, commenting on something she hadn't posted.

She frowned and opened the app. The notifications were all on Mira's profile, on a video that Sanika had been tagged in. She tapped play and felt her stomach drop.

But before she could process it, Shruti slid into the chair opposite her with the controlled grace of a woman who was holding herself together through sheer force of willpower.

"Hey," Sanika said, looking up from her phone. One glance at Shruti's face told her everything she needed to know. "That bad?"

"I found perfume on his shirt," Shruti said, without preamble. "Not mine. I was doing the laundry on Sunday. He'd gone off to work -- on a Sunday, Sanika. An important meeting, he said. And I found his shirt, and it smelled of perfume that I don't use. That I've never used."

Sanika's jaw tightened. "Did you ask him?"

"No." Shruti's voice was perfectly steady, which was worse than if she had been crying. Crying meant she was processing. Steady meant she had shut down. "I wasn't ready to hear the answer. If I ask and he denies it, I'll know he's lying. And if he doesn't deny it..." She trailed off, her finger tracing the rim of her water glass. "Then it becomes real."

"It's already real, Shratz."

"I know." A pause. "Her name is Zara. She's his colleague. She sends him emails suggesting which shirt to wear to client meetings." Shruti's mouth twisted into something that was trying to be a smile and failing. "He wore the blue one. The one she recommended. I watched him put it on."

Sanika reached across the table and took her hand. She didn't say I'm sorry or that bastard or you deserve better -- all of which were true but none of which would help right now. She just held her friend's hand and waited.

"The worst part," Shruti continued, "is that I'm not surprised. I've been watching him drift away for months. Maybe longer. We used to be best friends, you know? Before we were lovers, before we were married, we were friends. We'd sit up all night talking about everything -- politics, movies, his family, my family, what we wanted from life. Now we barely exchange ten sentences a day that aren't about groceries or bills or whose turn it is to call the plumber."

"When did it change?"

"Gradually. Then all at once." Shruti withdrew her hand gently and straightened in her chair, composing herself as Mira approached the table, slightly breathless, her helmet hair not quite tamed. "I'll tell you both together. I don't want to say it twice."

Mira dropped into the third chair, ordered a Pina Colada, and looked from one face to the other. "OK, who died?"

"Nobody died," Sanika said. "Yet. Tell her, Shratz."

Shruti told her. The Sunday morning. The laundry. The perfume on the shirt -- faint but unmistakable, a floral-musky scent that was nothing like the light citrus Shruti wore. The email from Zara she'd found on Runal's phone while he was in the shower. Client meeting at 11 today. Hope you'll wear that new blue shirt. It suits you to a T. The fact that he'd worn the blue shirt. The fact that he'd barely looked at her as he left. The fact that when she'd packed his lunch, he'd said I don't need the lunch box today -- because, presumably, he would be lunching with someone else.

Mira's eyes were wide. "Oh, Shratz. Oh no."

"I haven't confronted him yet," Shruti said. "I'm not ready. Right now it's just... suspicion. Evidence, if you want to be clinical about it. But if I confront him and he admits it, or if he lies about it, either way our marriage enters a different phase. And I need to be prepared for that."

"What do you need from us?" Sanika asked.

"Just this. Just Friday. Just you two." Shruti's composure cracked for just a moment -- a tremor in her lower lip, a brightness in her eyes that was not from the restaurant's fairy lights -- before she pulled it back together. "Now. Enough about my drama. Mira, what's happening with the toad?"

The toad was their nickname for Karan, established after the incident where he had taken Mira on a weekend trip to Pondicherry and then asked her to pretend they were "just colleagues" when they ran into his cousin at the hotel restaurant.

Mira took a long sip of her Pina Colada. "His sister and family are coming next week."

"And?"

"And I am to pretend I don't exist. We are to be 'just neighbours' for the duration of their visit." She made air quotes with her fingers. "Know what I mean?" she added, mimicking Karan's voice with savage accuracy that made Sanika snort despite herself. "He literally winked at me when he said it. Like it was a fun little game. Like asking me to erase myself from his life for a week was a reasonable request that any reasonable girlfriend would accept with a smile."

"You said no, right?" Sanika asked.

Mira stared at her drink. "I didn't say anything. I just... left. Grabbed my bag and went to work."

"Si." Sanika's voice carried the particular weight of a friend who had watched this pattern repeat itself for two years and was running out of patience. "You know what this is, right? It's not about his family. It's not about timing. It's about the fact that you don't matter enough for him to be honest."

"I know."

"Do you? Because we've had this conversation before. We had it after Pondicherry. We had it after his birthday party where he introduced you as a colleague from work. We had it after he--"

"I know, Su. I know all of it." Mira's voice was quiet but steady. "I've been thinking about it. A lot. And I think... I think I'm tired."

That was new. Sanika and Shruti exchanged a glance. Mira didn't get tired. Mira was the eternal optimist, the one who saw potential in every man and every relationship, the one who believed that love could fix anything if you just gave it enough time and patience. Mira getting tired was like watching the sun decide it had had enough of rising.

"Good," Sanika said, and meant it.

---

The food arrived. Thai green curry, pad Thai, spring rolls, tom yum soup -- they always over-ordered, splitting everything three ways, a habit born from the first few months of their friendship when they had discovered that their taste in food was as compatible as their taste in conversation topics. The spring rolls arrived first, golden and glistening, and Mira immediately claimed two because she had skipped lunch. Shruti rearranged the table with the practised efficiency of a woman who had spent three years managing their Friday dinners like a project -- napkins here, sauces there, everyone's drink within reach but not in the splash zone of Sanika's emphatic hand gestures.

This was the thing about their friendship that outsiders never quite understood. It wasn't built on shared backgrounds -- Sanika was Maharashtrian, Shruti was Rajput, Mira was Assamese. It wasn't built on shared temperaments -- Sanika was a storm, Shruti was a steady flame, Mira was sunlight. It was built on something simpler and rarer: the absolute, bone-deep certainty that nothing you said at this table would ever be used against you. Not your failures. Not your fears. Not the ugly, petty, unflattering thoughts that you kept locked away from the rest of the world because the rest of the world would judge you for having them.

They had met at Prisma, thrown together in the peculiar way that Indian workplaces forge friendships -- through proximity, shared canteen tables, and the universal bonding experience of surviving a particularly brutal town hall presentation by the CEO. Sanika had been the first to crack a joke about it. Shruti had been the first to laugh. Mira had been the first to suggest they continue the conversation over chai. Four years later, they were less like friends and more like a small, fiercely loyal nation-state of three, with its own language (a mix of Hindi, English, and inside jokes so layered that deciphering them would require a postgraduate degree), its own traditions (Friday dinner, Saturday morning WhatsApp catch-ups, annual birthday celebrations that were mandatory and non-negotiable), and its own constitution (Article 1: We do not judge. Article 2: We do not lie. Article 3: We do not let each other suffer alone).

As they ate, Sanika told them about her neighbour. She hadn't intended to -- the man occupied far too much of her mental real estate already without giving him airtime in conversation -- but it came out anyway, the way things do when you're with people you trust.

"He came stomping out at eight-thirty in the morning because of my reverse horn," she said, jabbing a spring roll for emphasis. "Eight-thirty! This is the same man who woke me at 2:45 AM with that motorcycle of his. Do you know what a Royal Enfield Bullet sounds like at 2:45 in the morning? It sounds like the apocalypse with a kick-start."

Shruti's lips twitched. It was the first time she'd almost smiled all evening. "What does he look like?"

"Like trouble. Big. Tall. Permanent scowl. Bloodshot eyes. Clothes that look like they've been slept in for a week. Moustache." She paused. "He has nice eyelashes, though. Dense. The kind that would touch his cheeks when he sleeps."

Mira put down her fork. "Excuse me. Did Sanika Joshi just notice a man's eyelashes?"

"I noticed them because his porch light was shining directly into my bedroom and his face was lit up like a Diwali lamp. It was an observation, not an appreciation."

"Uh-huh." Mira was grinning now, the first genuine grin of the evening. "What else did you observe?"

"That he needs to learn basic human decency. And possibly invest in a muffler for that bike. And that whoever leased the house to him should be charged with disturbing the peace." She took a pointed sip of her Virgin Mary. "That's all."

"She noticed his eyelashes," Shruti whispered to Mira.

"I heard that."

They all laughed then -- really laughed, the kind of laughter that comes not from anything being particularly funny but from the sheer relief of being with people who know you well enough to find humour in your contradictions. For a few minutes, the shadow of Runal's infidelity and Karan's cowardice and the unnamed neighbour's eyelashes lifted, and they were just three friends sharing food and honesty in a noisy restaurant on a Friday night.

The waiter came to clear the starters and take the main course order. Shruti rattled it off without looking at the menu -- after three years of Friday dinners, they knew each other's preferences by heart.

"OK but seriously," Mira said, leaning forward. "You don't even know his name?"

"No. And I don't want to. He's a temporary nuisance. My parents will be back in five weeks and then I'll have backup."

"What if he's a serial killer?" Mira asked, eyes wide with theatrical concern.

"Then at least his porch light will serve as a warning beacon. Danger: homicidal insomniac with bad taste in motorcycles. Approach at your own risk."

"You're going to find out he's like, a doctor or something, and feel terrible," Shruti predicted.

"Doctors don't come home at 2:45 AM on motorcycles smelling like they've been in a bar fight."

"Actually, they do," Shruti said mildly. "Emergency room shifts."

Sanika opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again, and then changed the subject with the grace of someone who had just lost an argument and preferred not to acknowledge it.

---

Saturday morning dawned bright and beautiful, the kind of Pune morning where the air was cool enough to make you believe the city's weather was still the paradise everyone's grandparents remembered, before the traffic and the construction and the relentless concrete expansion had turned it into just another sweating Indian metropolis with good coffee.

Shruti loved Saturday mornings. Monday to Friday she had work to rush to, and Sunday meant a day closer to Monday and was spent preparing for the week ahead -- ironing clothes, packing lunch ingredients, reviewing the sales pipeline on her laptop. But Saturday was hers. Saturday she could sit in the basket swing on their balcony, sip her tea, watch the morning light move across the rooftops, and pretend, for a little while, that her life was as peaceful as it looked from the outside.

She was doing exactly this when Runal joined her, coffee in hand, wearing yesterday's t-shirt and a pair of old shorts.

"Good morning."

Shruti smiled. "Good morning. You're up early today."

He shrugged and left it at that, settling into the chair beside the swing. For a moment they sat in companionable silence -- the kind that, once upon a time, would have been comfortable, even intimate. Now it felt like a held breath.

"Want to go for a walk?" she asked, keeping her voice light. "The weather looks lovely."

"I have a call in twenty minutes. You go ahead and I'll join you after that?"

Shruti shook her head. "No, it's no fun walking alone. Finish your call and we'll go out for breakfast. I can pick up the vegetables on my way back."

He made a face at the mention of chores but relented. She had a long, relaxing shower -- the kind where you actually condition your hair instead of just shampooing and rinsing in a rush -- and got dressed in tracks and a loose-fitting t-shirt. After being in formals the whole week, weekends were for comfort. She let her hair down, literally and figuratively.

Grabbing her wallet, she grinned at him. "Shall we go? I'm hungry."

Runal looked her up and down. "Going out with your husband doesn't warrant dressing well, I suppose?"

The good mood wavered. "It's just for breakfast."

"Yeah, but you wouldn't think of going dressed like that to meet a client or even your colleagues, now, would you?"

"I would go like this to meet my friends," she replied calmly, though she could feel the familiar downward spiral beginning.

"Those two?" Runal's voice carried an edge that was no longer disguised. He had never liked Sanika and Mira, never understood what his wife saw in them. "They don't count."

"Runal, it's the weekend and I don't want to fight. Come, let's go. I'm hungry."

"Where has the woman I married gone, Shruti?" he asked, almost resentfully. The woman who always had a special smile for him. Who wanted to look her best for him. Who wrote him love letters despite the fact that they met every day.

"I'm sure she's with the guy I married," Shruti replied without hesitation. "Wherever he is."

The silence that followed was louder than any argument.

---

Mira opened her door to find Karan standing there with the easy grin of a man who had never had to earn his welcome.

"Hey, what's the plan today?" he asked, walking past her into the apartment without waiting for an invitation. He settled himself on her couch with the familiarity of someone who considered her space an extension of his own.

She shrugged. She hadn't forgotten his instructions that they would act as strangers starting next week when his family arrived. "Nothing much." She paused before asking, "Why?"

Firm, gentle hands led her to a chair, where he made her sit and stood behind her to massage her shoulders. His touch was expert -- he knew exactly where she held tension, exactly how much pressure to apply, exactly how to make her body relax even when her mind was screaming. It was, she thought with a flash of clarity that surprised her, the thing he was best at: making her body forget what her heart already knew.

"Both of us have been busy the whole week, so I was thinking maybe we can go for a long drive. Relax and generally chill out. What say?"

A small smile of delight formed on her lips despite everything. "Long drive? Where to?"

It was his turn to shrug. "Do we have to decide right away? Let's just play it by ear. We can take turns driving, stop when we feel like stopping... go on our own little adventure."

Mira felt the excitement take over before she could stop it. She sprang up from the chair. "OK. I'll go and get ready. Want me to pack anything?"

"Nah. No overnight stay. My sister and her family will be coming tomorrow night."

Her smile slipped but she refused to let the reminder ruin her mood. "When shall we leave?"

"The others are on their way, so as soon as you get ready?"

Mira's face went still. "Others?"

"Yeah, Vikram and Neha. And Sunil might come too." At her uncomprehending look, he asked, "What?"

"I thought it was just you and me."

He rolled his eyes. "Where is the fun in that? Now move, move." He patted her butt, nudging her towards the bedroom.

Mira stood in her bedroom doorway and looked at the man she loved -- handsome, careless, already scrolling through his phone as if the conversation was over -- and felt something shift inside her. Not break. Not yet. But shift, the way tectonic plates shift before an earthquake: a slow, deep movement that changes the landscape permanently even if the surface looks the same.

She went to get ready. But the excitement was gone.

---

Saturday morning found Sanika in her parents' bedroom, having relocated there after a particularly brutal 2:45 AM motorcycle symphony from next door. The room was on the far side of the house, away from the neighbour's driveway, and with the windows shut and the curtains drawn, the noise was muted enough to allow sleep. She had heard the jeeps -- two of them, she thought, screeching to a halt sometime after three -- and the distant thud of the Bullet's engine. But she had been too exhausted to care.

She slept like a log and woke at seven-thirty, fresh and lazy. She did not mind lazy. It was the weekend, and lazy was a luxury she had earned through five days of Vijay Khandekar and his urgent-flagged emails.

After brushing her teeth and making herself a cup of extra-strong coffee -- caffeine was her lifeline, her religion, the one substance she would defend to the death -- she settled on the living room sofa and made her morning calls. FaceTime with her parents in New Jersey first -- her mother looked ten years younger without the daily burden of worry, and they asked about the house, the garden, her eating habits, but not about marriage, which meant her eldest brother had coached them into restraint. A quick call to said brother, who ran through his usual safety checklist as though she were a forward operating base rather than a grown woman in a residential neighbourhood.

Then she called her army brother, Captain Saket Joshi, who picked up on the first ring.

"Hey, Choti."

"Hey, bhaiya. How's the arm?" He had sustained a minor training injury -- nothing serious -- but had made her promise not to tell their parents. Their mother would drive seven hundred kilometres to Rajasthan to inspect the damage personally.

"Fine. How's everything there?"

"Great. Sleeping in your room, actually. Safer from the noise."

"What noise?"

"Neighbour situation. It's handled."

"Do I need to--"

"No. Go back to doing army things."

After munching on cornflakes in milk, she planned her day. Groceries, vegetables, washing machine, and gardening. The last one perked her up immediately. She and her father shared the gardening gene -- the front garden was their joint project, their pride -- and her mother never had to buy flowers for her daily puja.

Her father had been planning to get chrysanthemums after returning from his trip, but Sanika decided to surprise him. She would buy them now, plant them, and have them blooming by the time he got back. The thought gave her a burst of energy that carried her through the boring mundane tasks -- groceries, vegetable shopping, washing machine loading -- at twice her usual speed. By four in the evening, she was back from the nursery with two chrysanthemum plants (orange with yellow centre and pink with white centre), additional soil, and organic fertiliser.

She backed her car out of the shaded portico until it was in front of the small garden, connected her phone to the car's Bluetooth, put on the Rock On soundtrack -- because Bollywood rock was the only acceptable accompaniment to gardening -- and grabbed her shovel.

The evening was beautiful. The cool Pune breeze was gentle enough to sway the roses without bending them. Several neighbours were out doing weekend things -- Mr. Kulkarni washing his car, Mrs. Rao pruning her hedge, the Menon kids cycling up and down the street with the fearless abandon of children who haven't yet learned about traffic statistics. Sanika smiled and waved at them, feeling the contentment that came from simple physical work in good weather. Planting things was meditative. You dug the hole, mixed the soil, placed the seedling, patted it down, watered it. No quarterly projections. No Vijay Khandekar. No broken engagements. No existential questions about whether you would die alone. Just dirt and roots and the quiet miracle of growth.

She was so absorbed in digging a hole for the second chrysanthemum that she didn't hear anyone approach. Something tapped on her shoulder.

She shrieked and swung.

The shovel came up in a defensive arc, stopping inches from the face of her neighbour. The jerk. Standing right behind her with bloodshot eyes, wrinkled clothes, and a scowl that could curdle milk from across the street.

Without a word, he reached past her, leaned into her car, and switched off the music. Silence descended on the garden like a judgement.

"What the hell!" she roared. The day had been going so well. Her face flushed red with fury, she stood with her feet apart, shovel raised like a weapon. "Just what the hell is your problem?"

"I am trying to sleep," he said, enunciating each word with deliberate spacing, the way one might explain gravity to a particularly stubborn child. "Do you have to blast my ears with that thing that is supposed to be music?"

Sanika gaped at him. "It's four in the evening."

"So?"

"So get to bed at a decent hour, mister. It's not my problem."

"Just what is it that you have against letting me get some sleep? You're the noisiest woman I've ever encountered."

The sheer, towering injustice of that statement vaporised whatever remnant of fear she might have felt. She strode up to him until she stood directly in front of him, the top of her head coming up to his neck. Almost. So what if he was big? She was mad. And mad beat big any day. Any time.

"I'm noisy?" She gritted her teeth. It was tough to shout with her jaw locked that tight, but she tried. "I'm noisy?" She jabbed a finger at his chest. "I'm not the one who woke the entire street at two forty-five in the night with that thing you call a bike. I'm not the one who accelerated it before turning it off, banged the door twice, and forgot to switch off the porch light -- which, by the way, shines directly into my bedroom like an interrogation lamp." She advanced another step. He took a step back. The jabbing finger followed. "Furthermore, it is a reasonable assumption to expect people to be asleep at two in the morning rather than four thirty in the evening. You have a problem with daytime noise in this city? Get a pair of earplugs."

She lifted the shovel and slung it on her shoulder like a warrior. "The day had been going so well and now you've gone and ruined it." She glared. "Don't tempt me to use this on you."

"Yeah," he nodded, with the infuriating calm of a man who held all the cards. "You better not use it, or I would have to arrest you."

"What?" She stared at him.

"I'm a cop." His pause was deliberate, almost taunting. "Samar Rane. DCP, Crime Branch."

Disbelief flooded her face. "You're a DCP?"

"Yes." And with that, social niceties apparently discharged, he switched back to jerk mode. "Look, I don't hold a nine-to-five job like you. I get sleep when I can, which hasn't been much in the last couple of days."

"Fine," she snapped. "I'll switch off the music when I garden -- which is the only time I get to listen to it, let me add. Am I allowed to dig and plant my plants?" she asked sarcastically. "Or would that disturb your precious sleep too?"

"Not unless you're going to be hitting a bass drum with that shovel," he snapped back, before turning and striding toward his house.

I can't hit a cop. I can't hit a cop. I can't hit a cop.

She watched him disappear into his house and slam the door (of course he slammed it), and then she stood there for a full thirty seconds, shovel on her shoulder, chest heaving with indignation.

DCP, Crime Branch. The man was a senior police officer. She had been living next to a senior police officer for two weeks and hadn't known it because he looked and behaved like a sleep-deprived bouncer with a grudge against the concept of daytime.

She turned back to her chrysanthemums. Planted them both with considerably more force than the delicate seedlings warranted. Watered them. Cleaned up. And went inside, where she stood under the shower for fifteen minutes, replaying the confrontation and thinking of all the devastating comebacks she should have delivered.

DCP, Crime Branch. That explained the insane hours. The 2:45 AM arrivals. The jeeps she heard sometimes. The perpetual exhaustion. It also explained why a man like him had chosen to rent a house in a quiet residential lane in Baner instead of the countless apartments closer to the city centre. She would learn later -- much later, from Salim, after three glasses of whisky and a loose tongue -- that Samar had deliberately chosen this neighbourhood because of its proximity to the Hinjewadi IT corridor. He'd been working an organized crime case that had its tentacles deep in the tech parks -- a money-laundering operation running through shell companies registered in the IT SEZs -- and he needed a safe house in a residential area close enough to his operations that he could move fast when he needed to, but quiet enough that no one would think twice about a man coming and going at odd hours. The Deshpandes' house, available at short notice after the elderly couple's departure, had been perfect. That his neighbour turned out to be a sharp-tongued woman with a vendetta against his motorcycle had not been part of the operational plan.

It did not, however, excuse the porch light. Or the door-slamming. Or the motorcycle.

I can't hit a cop,* she reminded herself one more time. *But I can fantasise about it.

---

End of Chapter Two.

---