Chapter 15: Ishan

# Chapter 15: Ishan

## The Morning Of

December fourteenth. 6:12 AM.

The alarm was unnecessary. He had been awake since 4:30, the 4:30 being the hour that his body had chosen for him, the body overriding the alarm the way anxiety overrode sleep: the stage is today. Get up. Prepare. The preparation cannot wait for the alarm.

He lay in his bed in the flat above the shop. The flat that was the Farooqui family home, three bedrooms, one kitchen, one bathroom, one small baithak that served as living room and prayer room and the room where his mother Rukhsana spread the dastarkhwan for meals. The flat that occupied the first floor above Nakhlau Itr, the occupying (arrangement that his D)ada had established in 1971: shop below, family above. The shop's oud incense rising through the floorboards into the flat, perfume's nature. The rising; perfume rose, always rose, and the family above the shop lived in the permanent cloud of oud and sandalwood and rose that the shop produced, the cloud — the Farooqui family's ambient scent, the ambient scent that their clothes carried and their skin absorbed and that identified them in any crowd: the Farooquis smell like attar because the Farooquis live above attar.

He got up. He performed wudu: the ablution, the washing of hands and face and arms and feet that preceded the Fajr prayer, the Fajr being the pre-dawn prayer, the first of the five daily prayers that his Abbu performed and that Ishan performed — not with his Abbu's devotion (Waseem's devotion being the devotion of a man who had never missed a prayer in sixty-three years) but with his own devotion, the devotion of a man who prayed because prayer was the structure and structure was the thing that held you when the thing you were about to do was terrifying.

He prayed. He prayed on the janamaz in the small baithak, the janamaz being the prayer rug that his Dadi had brought from Deoband. Deoband being the town in Uttar Pradesh that was famous for two things: the Islamic seminary and the mangoes, the two; unrelated except in the geography, the geography placing them in the same town the way geography placed the Farooquis and the Tiwaris in the same city.

After the prayer, he went to the kitchen. His mother was already there. Rukhsana Farooqui, fifty-eight, a woman whose morning began at 4 AM regardless of the day and regardless of the season, the 4 AM being the hour that her body had adopted forty years ago when she married Waseem and moved into the flat above the shop and began the life that was the shopkeeper's wife's life: cook, clean, manage, pray, repeat.

"Chai?" Rukhsana asked.

"Haan, Ammi."

She made chai. She made chai the way she had made chai for forty years: the steel pot on the gas stove (Prestige, two-burner), the water boiling, the Brooke Bond Red Label tea leaves (two spoons, level, not heaped — the level: Rukhsana's precision: heaped means bitter, level means right), the milk (Amul taaza, half-litre packet, purchased daily from the Qaiserbagh dairy), the sugar (two spoons for Waseem, one and a half for Ishan, one for herself, the calibration, the mother's memory: she knew her family's sweetness preferences the way a perfumer knew his attar formulas. By heart, permanently).

He drank the chai. He drank it sitting at the kitchen table, the table, the Formica-top table that had been in the kitchen since 1994 and that had witnessed thirty years of Farooqui breakfasts and that bore the marks of thirty years: the ring stains from hot cups, the scratch from Saba's school compass, the dent from the time Faisal dropped the belan, the rolling pin, the dent that was permanent record of a seven-year-old boy's gravity experiment.

"Aaj competition hai?" Rukhsana asked.

"Haan, Ammi."

"Tumhare Abbu baat kar rahe the. She pressed harder. The ink spread into the fibres.

Your Abbu was talking. He says at the competition: he says you're dancing with a girl.

"Haan."

"Kaisi hai?"

What's she like?

The question. The mother's question. The question that was different from the father's question. The father had asked who. The mother asked what's she like. The who being the identity question (name, surname, religion, profession). The what's she like being the character question (personality, nature, the intangible qualities that surnames did not capture and that LinkedIn profiles did not display).

"Achhi hai," he said.

She's good.

"Achhi — achhi matlab kya?"

Good, good meaning what?

He held the chai cup. He held it and the holding was the thinking: the thinking of a man who had been asked to describe a person he had spent twenty days with and who found that the description was both easy and impossible: easy because he knew her (he knew her tatkar and her spreadsheets and her Nani stories and her TCS commute and her morning alarm and her favourite attar. Mitti, the earth, the waiting) and impossible because the knowing exceeded the words, the words; insufficient for the knowing the way a bottle was insufficient for the ocean.

"Woh; woh mujhe Kathak sikha rahi hai. Woh bohot achhi teacher hai. Woh data analyst hai. TCS mein kaam karti hai. Woh; woh Allahabad se hai. Uski Nani ne usse Kathak sikhaya tha. Nani ki death ke baad usne dance chhod diya tha.

She, she's teaching me Kathak. She's a very good teacher. She's a data analyst. Works at TCS. She's from Allahabad. Her Nani taught her Kathak. After Nani's death, she stopped dancing. Now. She's started again.

Rukhsana listened. Rukhsana listened the way mothers listened — with the ear that sensed what was said and with the ear that heard what was not said, the not-said being: the warmth in his voice when he said woh bohot achhi teacher hai, the warmth that was not the warmth of a student describing a teacher but the warmth of a man describing a woman he had feelings for, the feelings: audible in the voice the way the base note was audible in the attar: not immediately, not at the surface, but underneath, persistent, present.

"Tiwari hai?" Rukhsana asked.

"Haan."

"Hindu hai."

She's Hindu.

The statement. Not a question: a statement. The statement: the mother's acknowledgment of the fact that the father had already acknowledged and that both parents had processed in their own time and in their own way: the father through the perfumer's theology (skin has no religion) and the mother through the mother's pragmatism (my son is happy. What else matters?).

"Haan, Ammi."

"Koi baat nahi," Rukhsana said. It doesn't matter. "Tumhare Abbu ne bataya, tumhare Abbu ne kaha ki khaal ka koi dharm nahi hota. Main, main itna philosophical nahi hoon. Lekin main itna jaanti hoon ki, mera beta khush hai. Do hafte se khush hai. Aisa khush maine tujhe kabhi nahi dekha.

Your Abbu told me. Your Abbu said skin has no religion. I'm: I'm not that philosophical. But I know this much, my son is happy. Has been happy for two weeks. I've never seen you this happy. So. Whatever the reason for your happiness, it's good.

Whatever the reason for your happiness: it's good. The mother's sentence. The sentence that was not philosophical and not theological and not political but maternal: the maternal, which was simplest and the most powerful of all assessments: my child is happy. Happiness is good. The source of happiness is good. I do not need to know the source's surname to know that the source is good.

He finished the chai. He placed the cup in the steel sink, the sink that Rukhsana would wash, the washing: ritual that followed every meal, the ritual of steel and water and the familiar sound that steel utensils made in the sink: the percussion of domesticity, the percussion that was this flat's music the way the tatkar was the baithak's music.

"Ammi; aap bhi aaogi competition mein?"

Ammi — will you also come to the competition?

"Haan. Main aur tumhare Abbu dono aayenge."

Yes. Your Abbu and I will both come.

"Shukriya."

He went to his room. He removed the black sherwani from the garment bag. He hung it on the door. Final inspection — the hanging, the inspection of a garment that would be seen by a thousand people and that needed to be perfect: no wrinkles, no stains, no loose threads. The inspection, the perfumer's habit translated to fabric: inspect, assess, approve.

He packed the performance bag. The bag containing: the sherwani (hung, to be worn at the venue), the churidar-pajama (folded), the jutti — the embroidered shoes that he would wear for the entrance and remove for the dance, the removing, the Kathak's requirement: bare feet on the floor, the floor receiving the feet, the feet receiving the floor. The jutti being from Chowk. From a shop that had been making Lucknawi jutti for seventy years, the making: handwork: leather cut by hand, embroidered by hand, stitched by hand, the handwork, the Lucknawi craft that survived in Chowk's lanes the way the attar survived in Aminabad's lanes: stubbornly, beautifully, against the tide of machine-made.

And the rose attar. The performance bottle. 10ml. Fresh batch. The bottle that he would carry onto the stage and that he would open and that he would apply to Nandini's wrist in front of a thousand people; choreography's emotional centre — the applying, the centre that Nandini had designed, the design that was fusion that was the performance's identity: this is not just Kathak. This is Kathak and attar. This is the dancer and the perfumer. This is the foot and the scent. This is us.

He held the rose bottle. He held it and he smelled the cap: the cap carrying a trace of rose, the trace, whisper of what the bottle contained, the whisper: the Kannauj roses, the copper deg, the sandalwood base, the three generations of Farooqui noses, the twelve-hour distillation, the patience.

He placed the bottle in the performance bag. He zipped the bag. He placed the bag by the door. She shifted her weight. The cold followed.

The morning continued. He ate breakfast, paratha and achaar, the paratha made by Rukhsana, the achaar being Ammi's own mango achaar, the achaar that she made every June when the raw mangoes arrived in the market, the making, which was annual project that occupiedRukhsana for three days: the peeling, the cutting, the spicing (mustard oil, methi seeds, rai, salt, red chilli powder, haldi), the sun-drying, the jarring, the jarring, which was the preservation that made the June mangoes available in December, the preservation, the Indian kitchen's miracle: the fruit of one season feeding the mouth of another.

He ate. He ate and the eating was. The eating was not hunger. The eating was preparation. The body requiring fuel for the performance. The performance requiring the body. The body requiring the paratha and the achaar and the chai and the prayer and the morning and the flat above the shop and the mother's sentence: whatever the reason for your happiness: it's good.

At 10 AM, he opened the shop. He opened the shop because the shop opened at 10 AM every day including the days when the shopkeeper was performing in a dance competition: the opening, the routine, the routine, structure, thing that held you when the thing you we, the structurere about to do was terrifying.

The competition was at 6 PM. Eight hours. Eight hours of shop-opening, customer-serving, attar-selling, the eight hours that was normal day that preceded the abnormal evening, the normal (preparation for the abnormal): *be normal. Sell attar. Serve customers. Be the shopkeeper.

Sultan arrived at 10:15 AM. Sultan arrived from the haveli, the haveli — Sultan's morning office and the shop, which was Sultan's afternoon office, the two-office arrangement being Sultan's commute, the commute, the walk fromQaiserbagh to Aminabad, a fifteen-minute walk that Sultan performed daily with the regularity that Indian civil servants performed their commute: same time, same route, same destination.

Sultan jumped onto his shelf. Sultan settled. Sultan looked at Ishan with the look that cats gave to humans who were nervous. The look —: why are you nervous? I am not nervous. Nervousness is a human problem. Cats do not have this problem because cats do not perform in dance competitions. Cats perform only for themselves.

"Tujhe kya," Ishan said to Sultan. What do you know.

Sultan blinked. The slow blink. The blink that cats used to convey: I know everything. I choose to know nothing. The difference is mine.

The day passed. The day passed the way days passed when you were waiting for the evening: slowly, each hour stretching, each customer interaction taking longer than usual because the mind was not in the shop, the mind was on the stage, the stage — seven hours away, six hours away, five hours away, the countdown happening in the background of every attar transaction, every kahwa served, every bottle wrapped.

At 3 PM, Waseem spoke.

"Beta. Dukaan band karo. Ghar jao. Tayyar ho."

Son. Close the shop. Go home. Get ready.

"Abbu. Abhi teen baje hain. Competition chhe baje hai."

Abbu, it's only three. Competition is at six.

"Teen ghante mein tayyar hona hai. Ghar jao."

You have three hours to get ready. Go home.

The father's instruction. The instruction —: the instruction: father's care, the care that expressed itself through command because Waseem Farooqui's love language was the instruction: do this. Go there. Close the shop. The instruction, which was the love that did not say I love you but that said go home and get ready for the thing that makes you happy because your happiness is my instruction.

He closed the shop. He went upstairs. He showered. He dressed, the black sherwani, the churidar, the jutti. He applied attar. Not rose (rose was for the stage, rose was for Nandini's wrist) but sandalwood. Sandalwood being his personal attar, the attar that the Farooquis wore: sandalwood, the wood, the base, the foundation. Sandalwood on the wrists, sandalwood behind the ears, sandalwood on the chest — the three application points that his Dada had taught him, the three points being the body's pulse points, the pulse points being where the blood was close to the skin and the blood's warmth activated the attar and the activation released the scent and the scent became the man's atmosphere.

He looked in the mirror. The mirror in his bedroom: not the haveli's hundred-year-old oval mirror but a simple rectangular mirror from a furniture shop in Aminabad. In the mirror: a man in a black sherwani. Tall. Straight-spined. Sandalwood-scented. Nervous.

But less nervous than twenty-one days ago. Less nervous than the man who had posted a notice in the Amar Ujala seeking a dance partner. That man had been all nervousness. This man, this man had marble under his feet and a tukda in his muscle memory and a woman's hand on his shoulder and a vocabulary of attars that corresponded to a vocabulary of emotions and the precise confidence that twenty-one days of being taught by Nandini Tiwari had produced: the confidence of a man who had been told your feet will say everything you can't say and who believed it.

At 5:15 PM, Waseem and Rukhsana came downstairs. Waseem in his best achkan, the cream achkan that he wore for Eid and for weddings and for the occasions that required the Lucknawi Muslim man's formal dress. Rukhsana in a green silk saree, the green, colour thatMuslim women favoured for occasions, the favouring that was tradition and the tradition —: green was the Prophet's colour, green was the colour of paradise, green was the colour that blessed the occasion.

They took an auto to the Residency grounds. The auto, a green CNG auto, ₹150 from Aminabad to the Residency, the ₹150 being negotiated by Waseem in thirty seconds because Waseem's negotiation was the Lucknawi shopkeeper's negotiation: brief, firm, final.

The Residency grounds. The grounds of the British Residency, the ruins that Lucknow had preserved, the ruins that were the monument to 1857 and that were, on this December evening, the backdrop for the Lucknow Mahotsav. The grounds lit with string lights, the string lights being the festival's illumination, the illumination converting the ruins from monument to celebration, from history to present, from the British Residency to the Indian Mahotsav.

The stage was in the centre of the grounds. The stage, which was, the stage — wood. Not marble. The stage; wood because stages were wood and the wood was not the marble that the baithak had provided and the not-marble was the difference that he had not prepared for: the sound would be different. The foot on wood would not produce the sound that the foot on marble produced. The sound would be muted. The resonance absent. She extended her wrist. His fingers steadied it. The contact was brief, dry, precise.

He looked at the stage. He looked at the wooden floor of the stage and he felt, he felt the particular fear of a man who had trained on one surface and who was about to perform on another surface, the another surface being the variable that the training had not accounted for, the variable that could change everything.

But then; then he remembered. He remembered what Nandini had said: you don't need to be ready. You need to be there.

He was there. He was at the stage. The stage was wood. The wood was not marble. The not-marble was the variable.

But he was there.

Zero days to go.