Chapter 14: Nandini

# Chapter 14: Nandini

## The Night Before

December thirteenth. The night before the competition.

She could not sleep.

She lay in her apartment in Gomti Nagar — the apartment that was the one-bedroom that TCS Lucknow's salary afforded, the affording: ₹14,000 per month for a flat on the third floor of Shanti Apartments, the Shanti, ironic because the apartment building was on the main road and the main road produced the opposite of shanti: the opposite: auto horns at 6 AM, the chai-wallah's kettle at 6:30 AM, the schoolchildren at 7 AM, the construction at 8 AM, and the general symphony of Gomti Nagar's awakeness that began before Nandini's alarm and that continued until Nandini's sleep.

Tonight the symphony was absent. December thirteenth, 11:47 PM. The road was quiet. The auto horns were parked. The chai-wallah's kettle was cold. The construction workers were sleeping on the building's unfinished third floor, sleeping on the concrete that they would pour tomorrow, the sleeping-on-the-worksite (migrant worker's accommodation): sleep where you work, work where you sleep, the sleeping and the working happening in the same space because separate space was a luxury and luxury was the thing that ₹350 per day did not buy.

She lay on her bed. The razai pulled to her chin. The phone on the bedside table showing 11:47 PM. The forty-five-year-old rose attar bottle on the bedside table next to the phone. The bottle that she had uncapped before bed and that she had held to her nose and that she had smelled: the deep, aged rose that was different from the fresh rose, the different, the forty-five years of patience, the patience producing the mellowness that fresh roses did not have because fresh roses had not yet learned to wait.

She could not sleep because her feet would not be still.

Her feet. Under the razai, on the mattress, her feet were tapping. Ta thei thei tat. The rhythm that twenty days of practice had installed in her body the way software was installed on a computer: the installation complete, the software running in the background, the background process being: ta thei thei tat. The rhythm running even when the conscious mind was trying to sleep, the trying failing because the feet had their own agenda and the agenda was: *practice. The stage is tomorrow.

She threw off the razai. She stood. She stood on the cold tiles of the apartment floor, the tiles — vitrified, not marble, the vitrified tiles: apartment-builder's substitution for marble, the substitution: cost-driven: marble was ₹200 per square foot, vitrified tiles were ₹60 per square foot, the ₹140 difference being the builder's margin, the margin that built the builder's house in Mahanagar while the tenants lived on tiles.

She performed tatkar on the tiles. In the dark. In her apartment. At 11:52 PM on December thirteenth.

The tiles were not marble. The tiles did not resonate the way marble resonated, the tiles absorbing the foot's impact rather than reflecting it, the absorbing: tile's nature and the reflecting, the marble's nature and the difference: on tiles, Kathak was muted. On marble, Kathak was amplified. The amplification, the baithak's gift, the gift that the apartment could not provide.

But the rhythm was the same. The rhythm did not change with the surface — the rhythm was in the body, not in the floor. The rhythm was: ta thei thei tat, aa thei thei tat. The rhythm that Nani had placed in her body at age three and that twenty days of practice had resurrected and that was now running, running, running the way a river ran after the dam was opened: with the force of everything that had been held back.

She danced in the dark. She danced the solo tatkar, the building sequence from slow to moderate to fast. She danced the tukda. She danced the toda. She danced in a cotton nightie on vitrified tiles at midnight in a Gomti Nagar apartment with the rose attar on the bedside table and the razai on the floor and the neighbour below probably hearing the footsteps and probably cursing the woman upstairs who was doing whatever she was doing at midnight.

She stopped. She stopped in sama. Breathing hard. Sweating. The sweat, which was the body's evidence of effort and the effort (body's preparation for tomorrow and the p r)eparation being: the body saying to the mind, I am ready. I have been ready for fifteen years. The not-dancing was the delay. The delay is over. I am ready.

She sat on the floor. Cross-legged. Breathing. The breathing slowing. The heartbeat slowing. The sweat cooling on her skin, the cooling, which was December's contribution, December in Lucknow being the month that the cold arrived, the cold that was not Delhi's cold and not Shimla's cold but Lucknow's cold: damp, foggy, the fog that rolled off the Gomti river at 4 AM and that covered the city in a white blanket that burned off by 10 AM and that returned at 6 PM, the returning, the fog's schedule, the schedule as reliable as the market's schedule and the prayer's schedule and the chai-wallah's schedule.

She picked up her phone. She opened the gallery. She scrolled to — she scrolled to the folder labelled Nani.

The folder contained thirty-seven photographs. Thirty-seven being the total number of photographs that existed of Savitri Devi Tiwari, née Pandey, of Allahabad; thirty-seven photographs from a life of seventy-two years, the thirty-seven being the archive that the pre-smartphone era produced: photographs taken on special occasions, developed at the studio, stored in albums, the albums that was family's memory in physical form, the physical form being paper and chemical and the particular sepia-at-the-edges that old photographs acquired.

She had scanned the thirty-seven photographs three years ago — scanned them from the album in Prayagraj during a visit home, the scanning; digitization of grief: converting the paper memory to digital memory, the digital — permanent, the permanent: assurance that the photographs would survive even if the album did not.

She opened the seventh photograph. The seventh: — the seventh, which was Nani dancing.

Nani in a white saree. Nani with a ghoonghat. The ghoonghat being the head-covering that married Hindu women of Nani's generation wore, the wearing, which was custom and the custom, the identityand the identity; : I am married. I am adabable. I cover my head. Nani with the ghoonghat and the white saree and the bare feet: the bare feet on a stone floor, the stone floor being the courtyard of the house in Allahabad, the courtyard where Nani taught and practised and performed. She extended her wrist. His fingers steadied it. The contact was brief, dry, precise.

The photograph was from 1987. Nani was forty-three. The forty-three-year-old Nani in the photograph was doing tatkar; the tatkar frozen by the camera's shutter, the freezing capturing the moment of the foot's strike, the right foot lifted, the left foot flat, the body in the vertical line that Nani called the thread.

She looked at the photograph. She looked at Nani's face, the face that was forty-three and that was concentrated and that was doing the thing that the face did best: expressing the dance's emotion while the feet expressed the dance's rhythm, the face and the feet (two channels of K)athak, the two channels that carried the two messages: the feet said the what, the face said the why.

"Kal main stage pe hoon, Nani," she whispered to the phone. Tomorrow I'm on stage, Nani.

The phone did not respond. The phone: a phone and the photograph — a photograph and Nani being dead, dead for fifteen years, dead since 2011, dead since the January morning when the heart that had beaten for seventy-two years stopped and the feet that had danced for sixty years were still and the voice that had counted ta thei thei tat was silent.

"Kal main naachungi. Aapki Kathak. Aapke marble pe nahi: stage pe. Lekin aapki Kathak. Wohi tatkar. Wohi tukda. Wohi sama. Aapne mujhe jo sikhaya, woh main kal sab ko dikhaungi."

Tomorrow I'll dance. Your Kathak. Not on your marble, on a stage. But your Kathak. The same tatkar. The same tukda. The same sama. What you taught me, I'll show everyone tomorrow.

She placed the phone on the bedside table. She picked up the rose attar bottle. She uncapped it. She applied one drop to her left wrist; midnight attar, the drop, the midnight application that was not a lesson and not a performance but a prayer, the prayer: let me dance well. Let Nani's Kathak be visible. Let the stage hold me. Let the marble receive my feet. Let the audience see what Nani taught me.

The rose on her wrist. The rose in the dark. The rose in December.

She lay down. She pulled the razai over herself. She closed her eyes.

The feet were still now. The feet had said what they needed to say. The saying, which was midnight practice, the practice: preparation, the preparation, which was complete. The feet were ready. The body was ready. The tatkar was ready. The tukda was ready. The chakkar was ready. The amber dupatta was hanging in the cupboard, pressed and folded. The black lehenga was beside it. The kajal was on the dressing table. The ghungroo, the ankle bells that she had purchased three days ago from Chowk, ₹1,800 for a pair of fifty bells, the ghungroo were in a cloth pouch on the shelf.

Everything was ready.

Except; except the thing that she could not prepare for. The thing that no amount of practice could prepare for: the audience. The audience that would include her parents and his father and Zoya and a thousand strangers and three judges and a pressure that an audience created by the simple act of watching, the watching (audience's power), the power that converted a practice session into a performance, the conversion, the addition of stakes, the stakes: I can fail. I can succeed. The audience will see both.

She breathed. She breathed the way Nani had taught her to breathe before a performance: long breath in through the nose, long breath out through the mouth, the breathing (calming), the calming: preparation that was not physical but mental, the mental preparation being: I will be on the stage. The stage is the marble. The marble is the floor. The floor is Nani's veranda. The veranda is home. I am home. I am ready.

She slept. She slept and the rose attar on her wrist was the last thing she smelled before the sleep took her. The sleep, the body's rest before the body's performance, the rest that the body demanded and that the mind permitted and that December's cold encouraged: sleep now, dance tomorrow.

One day to go.