Chapter 13: Ishan

# Chapter 13: Ishan

## The Dress Rehearsal

The attar was cool on her wrist, a single drop that spread slowly into the skin's warmth.

Day twenty.

Two days. Two days until the stage. Two days being the final countdown, the countdown that had started at twenty-two and that had ticked through the marble and the tabla and the attar and the conversations and the touches and the confessions and the mother's phone call and the father's silence and the Zoya visit and the rose and the bergamot and the base notes and the top notes and the twenty days of two lives intersecting on a Nawabi floor.

Two days.

Today was the dress rehearsal. The full rehearsal, costume, music, choreography, attar, everything. The rehearsal that would be the performance minus the audience, the minus: Sultan and Junaid instead of a thousand people.

Ishan arrived at the haveli at noon. He arrived carrying: the black sherwani in a garment bag (the garment bag being borrowed from Saba, his sister, who had called from Delhi to ask why her brother was borrowing a garment bag and who had received the answer competition ke liye and who had responded with kaun si competition? Tum toh chal bhi nahi sakte dhang se. What competition? You can't even walk properly — the response, the sister's love, the love that expressed itself through mockery because Saba Farooqui's love language was the roast). She extended her wrist. His fingers steadied it. The contact was brief, dry, precise.

He also carried: the rose attar bottle. The performance bottle: not the forty-five-year-old bottle that he had given Nandini (that bottle was hers now, stored in her apartment, on her bedside table, the placement, which was indication that the bottle was not just attar but talisman: the thing you kept close, the thing you smelled before sleep, the thing that connected you to the person who gave it). The performance bottle was a fresh 10ml of Nakhlau Itr's current-batch rose, the batch distilled six months ago, the batch, which was younger and brighter than the forty-five-year-old batch but carrying the same DNA. The same Kannauj roses, the same copper deg, the same Farooqui hands.

He changed in the zenana. The changing, the changing — transformation. The transformation from shopkeeper to performer, from kurta-and-salwar to sherwani, the sherwani: the garment that changed the body's story: the kurta said I work here, I sell things, I am functional. The sherwani said I am here for an occasion. The occasion is significant. I am significant within the occasion.

The sherwani was black. Black silk, mandarin collar, silver buttons. The seven silver buttons running from collar to waist, the buttons that was sherwani's detail, the detail that elevated the garment from uniform to statement. His salwar was black; churidar, the tight-at-the-ankle style that Kathak dancers wore because the tight ankle showed the foot's movement, the foot, which was the star and the ankle: the frame that presented the star.

He looked at himself in the zenana's mirror: the mirror: an old oval mirror in a carved wooden frame, the mirror, one of the haveli's original furnishings, the furnishing that had survived a hundred years because mirrors survived: the glass endured, the frame aged, the combination producing a mirror that showed you not just yourself but the ghosts of every person who had looked into it before you.

In the mirror: a man in a black sherwani. Tall. Spine straight. The straightness, which was Nandini's gift, the gift of twenty days of thread from the crown. Hair black, combed back with the coconut oil that his Abbu applied. Face: the face of a man who was nervous and who was trying not to be nervous and who was failing at not being nervous because the nervousness was stronger than the trying.

He descended the staircase. He entered the baithak.

She was already there.

She was. She was standing in the centre of the room and she was wearing the costume and the costume was, the costume was the thing that stopped him.

The black lehenga. Floor-length. The black: the background: the background that she had prescribed: everything else is background. The dupatta is the star. The lehenga was the night sky. The lehenga was the darkness that the amber dupatta would fly against.

The amber Banarasi silk dupatta. Draped across her left shoulder, falling to her knees, the silk glowing in the baithak's afternoon light with the luminescence that forty-five years of sandalwood-trunk storage had produced. The dupatta was. The dupatta was his Dadi's dupatta. The dupatta that his Dada had commissioned in 1978 from a Banarasi weaver. The dupatta that his Dadi had worn once, at his Phuphi's wedding. The dupatta that had been in a trunk for decades. The dupatta was now on Nandini's shoulder, in a Nawabi baithak, two days before the stage.

Her hair was different. Not the low bun of the workday. Today, today her hair was in the Kathak style: a high bun at the crown, secured with pins, the bun: dancer's hairstyle, the hairstyle that elevated the head and exposed the neck and that created the visual line that Kathak required: from bun to neck to spine to waist to feet, the line, dancer's architecture, the architecture that the audience followed with the eye the way the ear followed the tabla.

She had applied kajal. The kajal being the Indian woman's eye-lining — the black line on the lower eyelid that Indian women had been applying for three thousand years, the applying, not cosmetic but cultural: the kajal was the eyes' frame, the frame that made the eyes larger, darker, more present. Her eyes, her eyes with the kajal were, her eyes were the eyes of a dancer. The eyes of a woman who was about to perform. The eyes that said: I am here. Watch me.

He stood in the doorway. He stood in the black sherwani in the arched doorway of the baithak and he looked at her in the black lehenga with the amber dupatta and he did not move because moving would break the moment and the moment was: the moment was the moment when you saw the person you had been seeing every day for twenty days and you saw them new, the newness (costume), the costume that was revelation: this is also who she is. Not just the data analyst with the laptop. Not just the teacher with the counting voice. This. This woman in the amber silk. This dancer.

"Kaisa lag raha hai?" she asked. How does it look?

The question — question that required an honest answer a. The questionnd that he could not give an honest answer to because the honest answer was the mogra without a partner: too much, overwhelming, the scent that needed dilution.

"Achha," he said. Good.

The understatement. The understatement — the only safe word. The word that acknowledged without overwhelming, the word that stayed on the deal's side of the boundary, the boundary that was thinner now than it had been twenty days ago but that still existed, still held, still said: not yet. Not here. Not before the stage.

"Tumhara sherwani bhi achha hai," she said. Your sherwani looks good too.

The exchange of achha. The two achhas being the two people's mutual understatement, the mutual understatement, which was agreement: we will not say what we see. We will say achha. Achha is safe. Achha holds the boundary.

"Chalo," she said. "Poora run-through."

Let's go. Full run-through.

She pressed play on the JBL speaker. The tabla began. Dha dhin dhin dha.

They took their positions. Opposite ends of the baithak. Him at the doorway. Her at the window. The distance between them being twenty feet, the twenty feet of the room, the twenty feet that the entrance required them to cross, the crossing, which was walk, the walk, first impression.

He walked. She walked. Toward each other. Across the marble. The marble receiving their feet, his feet in the black churidar-pajama, her feet bare, the bare feet; dancer's requirement: skin on marble, the conversation between foot and earth that could not happen through fabric. She pressed harder. The ink spread into the fibres.

They met in the centre. They assumed the frame, his right hand on her waist, her left hand on his shoulder. The frame assembling in one and a half seconds: faster than last week, the faster, which was practice, the practice having made the frame automatic, the automatic, the goal: the frame appearing as if it had always existed, as if his hand had always been on her waist and her hand had always been on his shoulder.

Her solo tatkar. She released the frame. She stepped back. She danced, the tatkar building from slow to moderate to fast, her feet on the marble producing the percussion that the baithak amplified, the amplification filling the room with the sound of Kathak, the sound of feet speaking.

She was, she was magnificent. The word that he had not used. The word that achha had replaced. She was magnificent in the amber silk with her feet on the white marble and the tabla in the air and the kajal on her eyes and the high bun at her crown and the twenty days of rediscovery in her body — the body that had remembered, the body that had returned, the body that was doing what it was built to do.

The duo section. The tempo dropped. He entered. Their tatkar together, right, left, right, left, the synchrony, 85% now, the 85% being the best they had achieved, the best: fifteen out of eighteen strikes landing at the same time, the same time, the beat, the beat — shared rhythm that twenty days had builtbetween them.

The tukda. His tukda, and his tukda was clean. Clean being the word she used: saaf. Clean. The foot-strikes at the right beats. The slides smooth. The pauses placed correctly. The tukda being his, owned by his body, stocked in his muscle memory, available on demand.

The contemporary section. The sitar. His arms extending; claiming the space, the space that his height entitled him to, the space that he had learned to claim over twenty days of being told be tall, be present, do not shrink. His arms extending and his body moving slowly, deliberately, with the quality that she had identified as his gift: slow beauty. The beauty of a tall man who moved with the care that care produced: the care of a perfumer, the care of a man who held glass bottles and applied drops and who had translated that care from hands to body.

The silence section. No music. Just feet. Their feet on the marble. In the baithak's silence. The conversation between four feet and one floor. The conversation that the audience would hear. The conversation that was: the conversation that was them. The sound of them. The sound of twenty days compressed into sixteen beats of shared tatkar in silence.

The finale. The sitar's single note. She spun; one, two, three, four, five chakkars: the amber dupatta flying in the baithak's light, the silk catching the sun from the arched windows, the catching producing the glow that amber produced: the colour of attar, the colour of sandalwood, the colour of everything that connected him to her and her to him.

She stopped. Sama. Stillness. The dupatta settling.

He walked to her. He walked with the rose attar bottle in his right hand: the walk: the walk that the choreography required: slow, deliberate, the perfumer's walk, the walk of a man approaching a wrist the way a man approached a prayer: with reverence.

She extended her left wrist.

He opened the bottle. He applied one drop. One drop of rose attar on her wrist — the drop landing on the skin, the skin receiving the drop, the receiving, the same receiving that had happened fifteentimes before in this room but that was different now because now it was choreography, now it was performance, now it was the thing that a thousand people would watch.

But it was also the same. The same drop. The same wrist. The same rose. The same two people. The choreography had not changed the gesture. The choreography had revealed the gesture, revealed that the gesture had always been a dance, the dance that a perfumer performed every day without knowing it: the approach, the wrist-taking, the drop-applying, the waiting. The approach: the entrance. The wrist-taking being the frame. The drop-applying being the tat. The waiting: the sama.

She smelled her wrist. The smelling — the response, the response that completed the gesture, the gesture that was call-and-response: he applied, she smelled. He gave, she received.

Then: the final tatkar. Together. With rose attar on her wrist and the amber dupatta on her shoulder and the black sherwani on his body and the marble under their feet. Together. Ta thei thei tat. Aa thei thei tat. Sixteen beats. Together. The final sixteen beats that said: we are here. We danced. We are done.

Sama. Stillness. End.

The speaker was silent. The baithak was silent. Sultan was on his shelf near the doorway. Junaid was on his stool in the corner.

Junaid stood. Junaid clapped — the clapping, civil engineer's applause, the applause of a man who assessed structures and who had just assessed this structure and found it: sound. Structurally sound.

"Competition jeetoge tum log," Junaid said. You two will win the competition.

The prediction. The prediction —: the prediction that was engineer's assessment, the assessment of a man who dealt in probabilities and load-bearing capacities and structural integrity. The prediction; data-backed: he had seen the rehearsal. The rehearsal was sound. The prediction followed from the data. She shifted her weight. The cold followed.

Nandini looked at Ishan. The amber dupatta on her shoulder. The rose attar on her wrist. The kajal on her eyes.

"Jeetenge," she said. We'll win.

The confidence. The confidence. The confidence that was teacher's confidence, the confidence of a woman who had assessed her student's progress and who had determined that the progress was sufficient for the stage. The confidence — also the dancer's confidence: I know what I can do. I know what my feet can do. I have danced in a Nawabi baithak for twenty days and my feet remember everything that Nani taught them and my feet will not fail me on the stage.

Two days to go.