Chapter 19: Ishan

# Chapter 19: Ishan

## The Families

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

After the stage, the families.

The families converging in the Mahotsav grounds — inevitable meeting that the competition h — the convergencead produced, the competition having placed two families in the same audience and the same audience producing the same exit and the same exit producing the encounter that Indian families both dreaded and performed with the precise skill that Indian families possessed: the skill of being polite to strangers who might become family.

Sunita Tiwari reached them first. Sunita in the maroon saree, moving through the crowd with the purposefulness of a mother who had just watched her daughter win a dance competition and who needed to reach her daughter before the daughter disappeared into the shamiana or into the arms of the tall Muslim man in the black sherwani.

"Nandu!"

Sunita embraced her. The embrace, the mother's embrace, the embrace that contained: the pride (you won), the relief (you didn't fall), the surprise (you dance again), and the stubborn maternal squeeze that communicated more than words: *I am here. I saw.

Sudhir Tiwari arrived three seconds after Sunita: the three seconds: father's lag, the lag of a retired schoolteacher whose knees were not what they had been and whose crowd-navigation was slower than his wife's because Sunita navigated crowds the way she navigated kitchens: with authority, with speed, with the expectation that the crowd would part for her the way onions parted under her knife.

"Beta; bahut achha tha," Sudhir said. Child. It was very good. The sentence: the father's maximum: Sudhir Tiwari was a man of fewer words than his wife, the fewer words (teacher's conservation): a man who had spoken for thirty-five years in front of classrooms conserved his words outside the classroom the way a marathoner conserved energy outside the race.

Then; then the Farooquis arrived.

Waseem and Rukhsana. Waseem in the cream achkan. Rukhsana in the green silk. The two of them approaching from the right side of the audience. The right side being their seating, the seating that had placed them on the opposite side of the audience from the Tiwaris, the opposite side that now converged into the same space: the space around Ishan and Nandini, the space that was suddenly occupied by four parents and two children and the trophy and the cheque and the December air and the question that hung in the air the way oud hung in the shop: invisibly, persistently, unavoidably.

"Abbu, Ammi; yeh Nandini hain. Meri dance partner."

Abbu, Ammi, this is Nandini. My dance partner.

Nandini performed the adab: the Muslim greeting, the gesture of touching the forehead with the right hand and bowing slightly, the gesture that she had learned from, she had not learned this gesture from anyone. The gesture was Lucknow's gesture. The gesture that Lucknow taught to everyone who lived there for longer than six months, the teaching, city's osmosis: live in Lucknow long enough and you will say aadaab to Muslim elders because Lucknow's tehzeeb was not Hindu or Muslim but Lucknawi, the Lucknawi. The amalgam that the city had produced over centuries of coexistence.

"Aadaab, uncle. Aadaab, aunty."

Waseem looked at her. Waseem looked at her with the look that he gave to attars when he assessed them, the long, thorough look that took in all the notes: top (the amber dupatta, the kajal, the high bun. The visual impression), heart (the adab, the Lucknawi greeting from a Hindu woman, the cultural impression), base (the eyes, the eyes that were looking at his son with the look that Waseem had spent sixty-three years learning to read: the look of a woman who cared about the man she was looking at).

"Bohot achha tha, beta," Waseem said. It was very good, child. The beta being the word that Muslim fathers used for children, their own and others', the beta being the universal fatherhood, the fatherhood that did not ask the child's surname before deploying the word.

"Shukriya, uncle."

And then: the introduction that the convergence demanded.

"Abbu: yeh Nandini ke parents hain. Sunita aunty aur Sudhir uncle. Prayagraj se aaye hain."

Abbu. These are Nandini's parents. Sunita aunty and Sudhir uncle. They've come from Prayagraj. She shifted her weight. The cold followed.

The meeting. The meeting of Farooqui and Tiwari. The meeting that India performed every day: in offices and trains and markets and hospitals and schools and festivals: the meeting of different surnames, the meeting that was both ordinary (India was made of these meetings) and significant (each meeting carried the weight of the surnames, the weight: history that the surnames encoded).

Waseem extended his hand to Sudhir. The handshake — men's greeting, the handshake, the greeting that crossed the surname the way a bridge crossed a river: by connecting two sides that the water had separated.

Sudhir shook the hand. The handshake lasting three seconds, three seconds being the standard Indian male handshake, the standard —: firm, brief, with eye contact, the eye contact: bridge's toll: I see you. You see me. We have shaken hands. We are introduced.

Sunita and Rukhsana. The women's meeting, the meeting that was different from the men's meeting because women's meetings in India were either warmer or colder than men's meetings, the warmer/colder being the stakes: men's meetings were professional (handshake, nod, move on). Women's meetings were personal (the assessment was deeper, the assessment including: the saree's quality, the jewellery's quantity, the hair's style, the posture's confidence — the assessment, the women's intelligence-gathering, the intelligence that women gathered in the first thirty seconds and that men gathered in thirty years).

Rukhsana assessed Sunita. Sunita assessed Rukhsana. The assessment: mutual and simultaneous and invisible: invisible because Indian women's assessments were conducted without moving the eyes, the not-moving. Skill thatIndian women perfected: the peripheral-vision assessment, the assessment that saw everything without appearing to look at anything.

"Aayiye: chai peete hain," Waseem said. Come — let's have chai.

Chai. The universal Indian solution to the awkwardness of first meetings. Chai being the beverage that India deployed for every social situation: celebration (chai), mourning (chai), negotiation (chai), confrontation (chai), and the meeting of two families whose children had just won a dance competition together (chai). Chai being the Indian water: the substance without which no social interaction could begin and without which no social interaction could end.

They walked to the Mahotsav's chai stall. The chai stall being one of seventy-three food stalls that the Mahotsav had arranged around the Residency grounds. The stalls selling everything from galouti kebab (the Lucknawi kebab so soft that it melted on the tongue, the melting (kebab's identity): the galouti was named for gala, meaning throat, meaning the kebab so soft that it needed no teeth) to kulfi falooda (the Indian ice cream in the vermicelli milk, the combination — the Lucknawi dessert that tourists photographed and locals consumed without photography because the consumption was routine, the routine —: every Mahotsav, kulfi falooda, the way every Diwali, mithai).

Six people at the chai stall. Six cups of chai. Six people being: Waseem, Rukhsana, Sunita, Sudhir, Ishan, Nandini. The six, the two families, the Farooquis and the Tiwaris, sharing chai at a festival stall on a December evening, the sharing, act thatIndia performed every day without acknowledging the act's significance: two families of different religions sharing a beverage in a public space.

Waseem spoke first. Waseem spoke because Waseem was the eldest and the eldest spoke first, hierarchy that, the speaking-firstIndian families maintained: the eldest set the tone, the tone setting that was elder's privilege and the elder's burden.

"Aapki beti. Aapki beti bohot achhi dancer hai," Waseem said to Sunita. Your daughter. Your daughter is a very good dancer.

"Shukriya. Uski Nani ne sikhaya tha. Meri Ammi. Kathak. Chaudah saal tak sikhaya."

Thank you. Her Nani taught her. My mother. Kathak. Taught her for fourteen years.

"Nani, Allahabad mein?"

Nani, in Allahabad?

"Haan. Prayagraj; hum log toh Allahabad bolte hain. Ammi Kathak ki teacher thi. Poore Allahabad mein. Poore Allahabad mein Ammi ka naam tha."

Yes. Prayagraj — we still say Allahabad. Mother was a Kathak teacher. In all of Allahabad, all of Allahabad knew her name.

"Achha. Aur aapke beta ne; Ishan ne. Bataya ki Nani ki death ke baad Nandini ne dance chhod diya tha."

I see. And your son, Ishan told me: that Nandini stopped dancing after Nani's death. She extended her wrist. His fingers steadied it. The contact was brief, dry, precise.

"Haan. Pandrah saal pehle. Hum — hum bahut koshish ki ki woh phir se nache. Lekin, lekin grief ka apna time hota hai. Grief ka apna schedule hota hai."

Yes. Fifteen years ago. We, we tried very hard to make her dance again. But: grief has its own time. Grief has its own schedule.

Grief has its own schedule. The sentence that Sunita said. The sentence landing in the chai stall's noise (the heat of six conversations and twelve hands holding cups and the chai-wallah's kettle and the distant speaker playing an old Bollywood song); the sentence that Waseem heard and that Waseem understood because Waseem also knew grief's schedule: the schedule of a man whose father had died in 2009 and who had spent three years unable to enter the distillation room because the distillation room was Haji Nooruddin's room and entering the room without Haji Nooruddin was the thing that grief would not permit until grief's schedule said: now. You can enter now.

"Main samajhta hoon," Waseem said. I understand. "Mere Abbu.

I understand. After my father, after my father too: I didn't enter the distillation room for three years.

The bond. The bond forming in the chai stall: the bond of two parents who understood grief, the understanding, which was foundation on which the two families would build whatever they would build: the foundation — not religious commonality or caste compatibility or economic equivalence but the shared experience of loss, the loss: thing that connectedSunita Tiwari's dead mother to Waseem Farooqui's dead father, the connection, which was: both had left skills behind. Both had left traditions behind. Both had left children who could not enter the room where the skill was practised until grief allowed the entering.

Sudhir spoke. Sudhir, the quiet father, the teacher, Sudhir spoke the sentence that quiet fathers spoke when they had assessed the situation and had arrived at the conclusion that the situation deserved a sentence.

"Aapka beta; aapka beta achha insaan hai."

Your son: your son is a good person.

The sentence. The sentence that Zoya had used to reject Ishan. The same sentence. But from Sudhir Tiwari; from a father, the sentence was not a rejection. From a father, the sentence was an endorsement. The endorsement: *I have assessed your son. I have watched him on the stage. I have watched him hold my daughter's waist and apply attar to her wrist and dance with her in front of a thousand people.

"Shukriya, Sudhir sahab," Waseem said. And the sahab being the Lucknawi adab, the respect that Waseem deployed for all men who were fathers of women his son cared about, the deployment. The Nawabi courtesy that Lucknow inscribed in its Muslim men: respect the other father. The other father is also a father. Fatherhood is fatherhood.

Nandini was watching. She was watching the two fathers shake hands and the two mothers exchange sentences about grief and the chai growing cold in the Styrofoam cups and the festival continuing around them, the festival, which was world that contained this moment, the moment of two families meeting over chai at a stall in the Residency grounds, the meeting, ordinary and extraordinary, the ordinary that was: Indians met at chai stalls every day. The extraordinary —: these particular Indians, these particular surnames, meeting because their children had danced together on a stage.

Ishan was watching too. He was watching and he was holding the cheque, the ₹50,000 cheque that would go to Ehsaas Foundation, the cheque that was the promise kept, the promise that had started all of this: the notice in the Amar Ujala, the letter from Nandini, the bench in the shop, the marble in the baithak, the twenty-one days.

He looked at Nandini. She looked at him. The look: . Look of two people who were watching thei — the lookr families meet and who were discovering that the meeting was not the catastrophe that they had feared but the beginning of the thing that they had not dared to imagine: the beginning of a together that was larger than two people. The beginning of a together that included four parents and two religions and one chai stall and the particular Indian miracle of difference coexisting over a cup of too-sweet, too-milky, ₹20 festival chai.

"Galouti kebab khaayen?" Waseem asked the group. Shall we have galouti kebab?

And Sunita Tiwari, Sunita Tiwari, the Brahmin woman from Prayagraj whose kitchen had never contained meat and whose husband's kitchen had never contained meat and whose mother's kitchen had never contained meat; Sunita Tiwari said:

"Haan. Kyun nahi."

Yes. Why not.

The sentence, which was the sentence that changed everything. Or the sentence that changed nothing, because what changed was not the sentence but the willingness, the willingness of a Brahmin woman from Prayagraj to eat a Muslim man's kebab at a festival stall in Lucknow because the Muslim man's son had danced with her daughter and the dancing had been beautiful and the beautiful was more powerful than the dietary restriction.

They ate kebab. The six of them. At a festival stall. In December. In Lucknow.

The kebab was excellent.