Chapter 2: Nandini

# Chapter 2: Nandini

## The Long Story

The perfumer's long story was not, in fact, long.

It was. Measured by the time it took to tell, the length of one kahwa. Twelve minutes. Twelve minutes being the time between the first sip and the last sip, the time — kahwa's clock, the clock that measured the story of Zoya Siddiqui.

Zoya Siddiqui. Twenty-seven. Art curator at the Lucknow State Museum. Daughter of Dr. Farhan Siddiqui, who ran the ENT department at KGMU. King George's Medical University, the medical university that Lucknow treated as its own personal hospital because every Lucknawi family had at least one relative who either worked at KGMU or had been treated at KGMU or knew someone who worked at KGMU, the knowing, the Lucknawi social network, the network that functioned without the internet because the network was older than the internet by approximately three hundred years.

Nandini listened. She listened the way she processed data; collecting inputs, identifying patterns, withholding conclusions until sufficient data had been gathered, analyst's discipline, the gathering: do not conclude before the dataset is complete.

The dataset was this:

Ishan had met Zoya three months ago at an exhibition at the State Museum. The exhibition, which was a display of Awadhi perfume bottles from the Nawabi era, the bottles, glass and copper and silver, artefacts that connected the modern perfu, the bottlesme shop to its Nawabi ancestry. The museum had borrowed three bottles from Nakhlau Itr's private collection — the private collection. Bottles thatHaji Nooruddin had collected over fifty years, the fifty years of collection that was grandfather's hobby, the hobby of a man who loved perfume containers as much as he loved the perfume they contained. Her feet ached from the tatkar practice. The balls of her feet were tender, almost bruised.

Ishan had gone to the exhibition to deliver the bottles. Zoya had received them.

"Woh. Woh aisi thi ki," he said, and stopped. She was, she was like. And stopped.

Nandini noticed the stopping. The stopping, the perfumer's inability to describe the woman in words, the inability: — she understood this: the inability of a man who described the world in smells, not in sentences. A man who could tell you that a particular attar had top notes of bergamot and heart notes of jasmine and base notes of sandalwood but who could not tell you what it felt like to meet a woman in a museum and lose the ability to form coherent thought.

"Aap ko woh pasand hain," Nandini said, helping him. You like her.

"Bohot."

Very much.

"Aur woh?"

And her?

"Ek date hua. Ek. Hussainabad ke Clock Tower ke paas, woh café hai na, Château. Wahan." The notebook paper was smooth under her pen. She pressed harder. The ink spread into the fibres.

One date. One. Near the Hussainabad Clock Tower, there's that café, Château. There.

Nandini knew Château. Everyone in Lucknow under thirty-five knew Château. It occupied the ground floor of a restored Nawabi-era house, the house having been converted into a café by a returnee NRI couple from Toronto who had come back to Lucknow with Canadian savings and Indian nostalgia and who had produced a café that was half heritage restoration and half Instagram trap, the trap — arched doorways and the courtyard with the fountain and the hand-painted Awadhi tiles that every Lucknow influencer had photographed at least once, the photographing (caf é)'s marketing, the marketing — free, the free that was reason the couple could charge₹350 for a cappuccino in a city where chai cost ₹15.

"Ek date ke baad kya hua?" she asked. What happened after one date?

"Woh. Usne kaha ki woh Lucknow Mahotsav mein dance competition mein participate karna chahti hai. Couple dance. Usne mujhe partner banaya. Maine haan keh diya. Kyunki; kyunki woh keh rahi thi aur main haan keh raha tha. Woh kuch bhi kehti toh main haan kehta."

She, she said she wanted to participate in the dance competition at the Lucknow Mahotsav. Couple dance. She made me her partner. I said yes. Because: because she was speaking and I was saying yes. She could have said anything and I would have said yes.

Nandini placed her kahwa on the glass counter beside the bench. The glass counter held six attar samplers: six small vials in a velvet-lined tray, each labelled in Urdu calligraphy that she could not read but that she could smell: the smell reaching her from the counter's surface, the smell (ambient perfume of the shop), the ambient perfume that Ishan no longer noticed because he lived inside it but that visitors noticed immediately, the noticing that was shop's first impression, the impression of rose and oud and sandalwood and the old marble and the incense, the combination producing an olfactory signature that was as distinctive as a fingerprint.

"Phir?" she prompted. Then?

"Phir; us date ke do din baad. Woh Gomti riverfront pe cycling kar rahi thi. Giri. Haath toot gaya. Left wrist fracture. Plaster mein hai. Six weeks ka plaster."

Then — two days after the date: she was cycling on the Gomti riverfront. She fell. Broke her hand. Left wrist fracture. In a cast. Six weeks.

"Competition kab hai?"

When's the competition?

"December chaudah-pandrah. Teen hafte."

December fourteenth and fifteenth. Three weeks.

"Toh Zoya dance nahi kar sakti."

So Zoya can't dance.

"Nahi. Lekin — lekin usne kaha ki agar main koi aur partner dhoondh loon, toh hum competition jeet sakte hain. Aur competition ki prize money; ₹2,50,000; woh Zoya ki choice ki charity ko jaayegi.

No. But, she said if I find another partner, we can win the competition. And the prize money — ₹2,50,000, goes to the winner's charity of choice. She wants the money to go to Ehsaas Foundation.

"Ehsaas Foundation kya karti hai?"

What does Ehsaas Foundation do?

"Alzheimer's patients ke liye kaam karti hai. Lucknow mein. Zoya ki Dadi ko Alzheimer's tha. Isliye."

Works for Alzheimer's patients. In Lucknow. Zoya's Dadi had Alzheimer's. That's why.

Nandini sat with this information. She sat with it the way she sat with a dataset: absorbing, categorizing, cross-referencing. The cross-reference being: this man wants to win a dance competition to impress a woman and donate money to her grandmother's disease. The motivation structure being: romance + charity + competition. Three variables. Three variables that together produced a motivation stronger than any one alone.

The data was clear. The data said: this man is trying very hard to be a good person for a woman he has met exactly once.

"Aur aap ko Kathak nahi aata," Nandini said, and the sentence was not a question but a summary, analyst's skill, the summary: reduce the dataset to its essential variables.

"Bilkul nahi. Mujhe koi dance nahi aata. Main — main aisa hoon ki chal bhi nahi sakta bina kisi cheez se takraaye."

Not at all. I don't know any dance. I, I'm the kind of person who can't even walk without bumping into something. She shifted her weight. The cold followed.

She watched him as he said this. She watched him the way she watched data on a screen, looking for the pattern beneath the surface, the pattern that the data revealed when you looked at it long enough. The pattern she found was: embarrassment. The stubborn embarrassment of a tall man who had grown too fast for his coordination, the coordination that most men achieved by twenty but that some men, the gentle ones, the ones who moved carefully through the world: never fully achieved, the never-achieving being not a failure but a quality, the quality of a man who was aware of his body's capacity for clumsiness and who moved with the deliberate care that awareness produced.

"Aap dukaan mein toh achhe se chalte hain," she observed. You walk fine in the shop.

"Dukaan mein main jaanta hoon ki sab cheezein kahan hain. Main, andhera mein bhi chal sakta hoon yahan. Bahar: bahar alag hai."

In the shop I know where everything is. I could walk here in the dark. Outside — outside is different.

Outside is different. The sentence: she recognized this — the sentence of a man whose comfort zone was exactly twenty feet by twelve feet, the twenty by twelve, shop, the shop, known world, place where his body knew every shelf and: the known world every tile and every bottle and where his body moved with the fluency that familiarity produced, the familiarity; opposite of the outside world, the outside world; place where things were not where he expected them to be and where his long body encountered obstacles that his mind had not mapped.

"Teen hafte mein Kathak seekhna, yeh possible nahi hai," Nandini said. Learning Kathak in three weeks. That's not possible.

"Main jaanta hoon."

I know.

"Lekin, lekin Kathak nahi seekhna padega. Competition mein Kathak compulsory nahi hai. Couple dance hai. Koi bhi form ho sakta hai."

But. Kathak isn't required. The competition is couple dance. Any form works.

"Toh?"

So?

"Toh; main soch rahi thi ki.

I was thinking, if we take a Kathak base, tatkar, tukda, basic footwork, and mix in some contemporary. We could make something in three weeks.

He looked at her. He looked at her with the look that a man gave a woman who had just solved a problem he had been wrestling with for eleven days, the look: gratitude and surprise and the precise relief that came when someone else's mind produced the solution that your own mind could not.

"Aap karogi?" he asked. Will you do it?

The question. The question, the moment — the moment of decision, the moment that the letter had led to and the red dupatta had signaled and the bench had facilitated.

Nandini considered.

She considered the way she considered every decision. With data.

Variable 1: She had not danced in fifteen years. Fifteen years since Nani. Fifteen years of not-dancing, the not-dancing, which was mourning, the mourning that had calcified into habit, the habit that had become identity: I am a person who does not dance. I am a person who used to dance. The used-to being the permanent state.

Variable 2: She worked sixty hours a week at TCS. The sixty hours being the Indian IT industry's standard: nine official hours plus the unofficial hours that reports and presentations and the stubborn anxiety of quarterly reviews produced, the anxiety — fuel that ran theIT industry, the fuel; unlimited and renewable because there was always another quarter, always another review, always another dataset to crunch.

Variable 3: She was twenty-nine. She was twenty-nine and she lived alone in a 2BHK in Gomti Nagar that her parents had helped her buy (the parents — in Allahabad. Prayagraj, the renaming (political change that her parents acknowl e)dged with the exact eye-roll that Prayagraj's residents performed when they said the new name: "Prayagraj; matlab Allahabad, tum samajh gaye"). She was twenty-nine and she worked sixty hours a week and she had not danced in fifteen years and the last man she had gone on a date with had been Manish from the Bangalore office, fourteen months ago, the date: a disaster because Manish had spent the entire dinner talking about cryptocurrency and the characteristic cryptocurrency that he had invested in and the quiet return that the distinctive cryptocurrency had produced, the return, imaginary because the cryptocurrency had crashed two weeks later and Manish had lost ₹4.7 lakhs, the losing that was reason he had stopped calling.

Variable 4: The Lucknow Mahotsav was a real event. The prize money was real. The charity was real. The man sitting next to her smelled like sandalwood and rose attar and kahwa, the smelling: involuntary, the involuntary: the nose's independence, the nose smelling without permission the way the ear heard without permission, the hearing and the smelling that was senses that could not be shut off. She extended her wrist. His fingers steadied it. The contact was brief, dry, precise.

He smelled good. That was the variable she had not expected, the variable that did not fit the analyst's framework, the variable that was not quantifiable, the variable: he smells like a person I would like to sit next to for longer than twelve minutes.

"Haan," she said. Yes.

"Sachchi?"

Really?

"Haan. Lekin, conditions hain."

Yes. But. There are conditions.

The conditions. The conditions, the analyst's terms, framework within which the partnership wo — the termsuld operate, the framework; necessary because frameworks were what kept chaos at bay, chaos being the state that unstructured arrangements produced, the unstructured, the enemy of the data-driven mind.

"Bataiye," he said. Tell me.

"Pehla. Practice sham ko saat baje ke baad. Weekdays. Aur Sunday ko din mein."

First, practice after seven PM on weekdays. And daytime on Sundays.

"Done."

"Doosra. Practice space aap arrange karoge. Mujhe jagah nahi pata yahan."

Second — you arrange the practice space. I don't know places here.

"Mere dost Junaid ka haveli hai Qaiserbagh mein. Andar ek baithak hai; baithak bahut bada hai. Marble ka floor. Kathak ke liye perfect."

My friend Junaid has a haveli in Qaiserbagh. Inside there's a baithak; a sitting room. Very large. Marble floor. Perfect for Kathak.

Qaiserbagh. The Qaiserbagh — the old Nawabi palace complex. The complex that had been subdivided into private residences over the decades, the decades of subdivision producing a neighbourhood that was part palace, part private house, part ruined wall, the combination that was Lucknow's particular architectural style: grandeur in decay, decay in grandeur, the grandeur and the decay, same thing becauseLucknow did not distinguish between them.

"Theek hai," Nandini said. Fine.

"Teesri condition?"

Third condition?

"Teesri, main instructor hoon. Meri baat sunoge. Agar maine kaha ki paanv yahan rakho, toh paanv wahan rakhoge. Main strict hoon. Nani strict thi. Maine unse seekha."

Third, I'm the instructor. You listen to me. If I say put your foot here, you put your foot there. I'm strict. Nani was strict. I learned from her.

He nodded. The nod, she noticed, the nod of a man who was not threatened by a woman's authority, the non-threat being unusual, the unusual —: most Indian men of his age, in his profession, in his market, would have bristled at a woman ten months younger than them declaring instructorship. Ishan did not bristle. Ishan nodded the way a student nodded at a teacher's first instruction; with acceptance.

"Aur: chauthi condition," she said, and this condition she added without having planned it, the adding. Impulse, the impulse that the kahwa and the bench and the oud incense and the sandalwood scent had produced:

"Mujhe attar sikhao."

Teach me about attar.

His face changed. His face changed the way the kahwa had changed her face — the relaxation, the loosening, the familiar ease that came when someone asked you about the thing you loved, the thing you loved being the thing you could talk about without effort, the talking, as natural as breathing because the thing was inside you and the words were just the thing coming out.

"Attar seekhogi?"

You'll learn about attar?

"Haan. Fair exchange. Main tumhe naach sikhaoongi. Tum mujhe attar sikhao."

Yes. Fair exchange. I'll teach you dance. You teach me about attar.

"Deal," he said, and extended his hand.

She looked at the hand. She looked at the hand with the precise consideration that Indian women gave to handshakes, the consideration: is this a handshake between professionals, or is this a handshake between a man and a woman who have just agreed to spend twenty-two evenings together in a Nawabi baithak, the answer determining the formality of the grip, the formality, gauge of the relationship's boundaries.

She shook his hand.

His hand was dry. His hand was dry and warm and it smelled. The smell travelling from his hand to her nose in the half-second that the handshake lasted. Of rose attar. Rose attar on his fingers. The rose: the constant. The constant, the thing that defined him: rose.

She released his hand.

"Kal se?" she asked. Starting tomorrow?

"Kal Sunday hai. Din mein. Ek baje?"

Tomorrow's Sunday. Daytime. One o'clock?

"Theek hai. Qaiserbagh mein Junaid ka haveli. Address bhejo."

Fine. Junaid's haveli in Qaiserbagh. Send the address.

He pulled out his phone. A Redmi Note 13 Pro, the Redmi — Aminabad's standard phone, the standard because Aminabad's shopkeepers were practical people who needed phones that worked and did not need phones that impressed, the impressing, which was left to the iPhones of Gomti Nagar and the Samsung Galaxies of Hazratganj, the Hazratganj, which was old money and the Gomti Nagar being new money and the Aminabad, which was working money, the working money buying Redmi.

"Number?"

She gave him her number. She gave him her number and he typed it in and sent a location pin: the pin dropping on Qaiserbagh, the pin: the modern pathfinder, the pathfinder that had replaced the instruction "Junaid ke haveli ke saamne ek neem ka ped hai, uske baayein gali mein jaao, doosra darwaaza": in front of Junaid's haveli there is a neem tree, turn left into the lane, second door: the instruction — the Lucknawi direction system, the system that Google Maps was rendering obsolete but that every Lucknawi over forty still used because the system worked and because the system contained information that Google Maps did not: the neem tree, the lane, the door, the landmarks of a city that oriented itself by trees and temples and shops, not by coordinates.

"Kal ek baje," he confirmed. Tomorrow, one o'clock.

She stood. She closed the laptop, the closing, the workday's end, the end that the kahwa had marked, the kahwa, the transition beverage, the beverage that separated the work from the not-work, the not-work being: dance.

Dance. She was going to dance again.

The thought settled in her body; settled in the feet first, the feet; where Kathak lived, the Kathak living in the feet the way data lived in the spreadsheet: in the cells, in the rows, in the smallest unit of the structure. Her feet remembered. Her feet remembered the tatkar: the basic footwork, the flat-footed strikes on the floor, the strikes that produced the rhythm, the rhythm that Nani had taught her: ta thei thei tat, aa thei thei tat, the rhythm, the Kathak dancer's heartbeat, the heartbeat that you learned at six and that your feet remembered at twenty-nine even if your mind had told them to forget. She pressed harder. The ink spread into the fibres.

"Shukriya," she said. Thank you. "Kahwe ke liye."

For the kahwa.

"Shukriya aap ka. Aane ke liye."

Thank you. For coming.

She walked out of Nakhlau Itr. She walked through the oud incense at the threshold, through the narrow lane of Aminabad Market, through the crowd of Saturday shoppers, the Saturday crowd being the weekly peak, the peak of Aminabad's commerce, the commerce that had sustained this market for decades and that continued to sustain it despite the malls, despite the online shopping, despite the familiar threat that Amazon posed to every brick-and-mortar shop in India, the threat, which was existential and the response —: we are still here. We have been here since before your servers were born. We will be here after your servers die.

She walked to the Aminabad bus stop. She waited for the city bus; Bus Route 14, Aminabad to Gomti Nagar, the route taking thirty-five minutes in traffic, the traffic, the Lucknow traffic, the Lucknow traffic being: autos that stopped without warning, e-rickshaws that moved at the speed of thought (the thought; slow, contemplative, Lucknawi), SUVs that honked as if honking would part the sea, the sea (traffic itself), the traffic: thing that honking could not solve but that Lucknow honked at anyway because honking was the Lucknawi driver's prayer: move. For God's sake. Move.

On the bus, she held the overhead bar with her right hand and her laptop bag with her left and she thought about the perfumer's hand.

Rose attar. His hand had smelled of rose attar.

She thought about Nani. She thought about Nani teaching her the tatkar on the veranda of the Allahabad house: the house in Civil Lines, the house with the red floor and the neem tree in the courtyard, the neem tree that dropped its small bitter berries on the veranda floor and that Nani swept every morning with the jhadu before the dance lesson began, the sweeping, which was the preparation, the preparation: Nani's first instruction: *before you dance, clean the floor. The floor is your stage. The stage must be clean.

Fifteen years. Fifteen years since the last lesson. Fifteen years since the last ta thei thei tat. Fifteen years since the last time her feet had struck a floor with purpose, the purpose, rhythm, the rhythm — the Kathak's language, the language that her feet still spoke even though her mind had declared the language dead.

The language was not dead. Languages did not die in the body. Languages died in the mind, the mind declared them dead, the mind said I do not dance, I do not speak this language, I have stopped; but the body remembered. The body's memory was deeper than the mind's declaration. The body remembered the way muscle remembered: without words, without decisions, through the tissue itself, the tissue holding the pattern the way a hard drive held data: encoded, dormant, waiting for the prompt.

The prompt was: a perfumer who could not dance and who needed her to teach him.

The bus lurched over a speed breaker: the speed breaker being the Lucknow road's punctuation, the punctuation that appeared without warning and that the bus driver took at full speed because the bus driver had the relationship with speed breakers that Lucknow had with obstacles: acknowledge them, absorb the impact, continue.

Nandini's body absorbed the lurch. Her knees bent, her ankles flexed, her weight shifted, the shifting, which was the dancer's balance, the balance that fifteen years of not-dancing had not erased, the balance; in the body, the body that was archive, the archive that the mind could not delete.

She got off at the Gomti Nagar bus stop, the bus stop being a concrete shelter with a tin roof and a bench that had been painted blue by the municipal corporation and that had been repainted by local advertisements: Sharma Classes; IIT-JEE, NEET, UPSC. Gomti Nagar Branch, Call: 98XXXXXXXX; the advertisement, the bus stop's wallpaper, the wallpaper that no one read and everyone saw, the seeing, the unconscious registration of information that the brain stored without permission.

Her apartment was seven minutes from the bus stop. A 2BHK on the third floor of Eldeco Residency. The Eldeco, a builder that Lucknow trusted because Eldeco had been building in Lucknow since before Gomti Nagar existed, the existing, which was recent: Gomti Nagar was the new Lucknow, the Lucknow that had been built in the 1990s and 2000s, the building, which was expansion, the expansion (city's response to the population's deman d) for space, the demand: more. Always more. Lucknow wanted more of everything; more space, more food, more conversation, more chai, the wanting, which was the Lucknawi temperament, the temperament of a city that believed in abundance.

She unlocked the apartment. She placed the laptop bag on the dining table. The dining table being a four-seater Godrej table from the Sahara Ganj Mall's furniture section, the table: one of the few pieces she had bought herself (the rest — from her parents' house in Allahabad: the sofa, the bookshelf, the bed, the alna, the wooden clothes rack that every North Indian household possessed, the alna being the piece of furniture that IKEA could not replace because IKEA did not understand that Indian clothes needed to be hung flat, not folded, the flatness that was ironed shirt's preservation, the preservation that was working woman's morning time-saving: hang it flat at night, wear it pressed in the morning).

She stood in the middle of the living room. She stood on the white vitrified tiles: the tiles, which was cold under her bare feet, the cold — the November floor's temperature, the temperature that socks could defeat but that she did not wear socks against because she wanted to feel the floor.

She wanted to feel the floor because the floor was where Kathak began.

She lifted her right foot. She lifted it two inches off the tile. She held it. The holding, the sama, the equipoise, the balanced stillness that Kathak required before the first strike. And then she brought it down.

Tat.

The sound was small. The weight of one bare foot striking one vitrified tile in a third-floor apartment in Gomti Nagar, Lucknow. The sound was small and it was the first tat in fifteen years.

She brought the left foot down.

Thei.

Right.

Thei.

Left.

Tat.

Ta thei thei tat.

Four strikes. Four strikes on the living room floor. Four strikes that Nani had taught her at six and that her feet remembered at twenty-nine — the remembering, which was body's gift, the gift that the body gave to the mind: you may have decided to stop. I never did. I have been waiting. I am here.

She stood still. She stood still on the cold tile and she pressed her palms together and she closed her eyes and she performed the namaskar; the Kathak dancer's bow, the bow to the stage, the bow to the guru, the bow to the dance itself. She shifted her weight. The cold followed.

"Nani," she whispered.

The apartment was silent. The apartment was silent the way Lucknow was never silent, the silence. Absence of the city's usual sounds: the azan from the nearest mosque, the traffic from the Gomti Nagar main road, the pressure cooker whistle from the neighbour's kitchen (the neighbour; Mrs. Radhika Awasthi, fifty-three, retired schoolteacher, whose pressure cooker whistled at exactly 7:15 PM every evening because Mrs. Awasthi cooked dal at 7:15 PM the way other people set alarms: with the precision of a woman who had lived alone for eight years since her husband's death and who had replaced the husband's presence with the pressure cooker's whistle, the whistle: the sound that said I am cooking, I am alive, I am here).

The silence lasted four seconds. Then the pressure cooker whistled from next door.

7:15 PM.

Nandini opened her eyes. She picked up her phone. She opened WhatsApp. She typed:

Kal ek baje. Main aa rahi hoon.

Tomorrow, one o'clock. I'm coming.

The message was read at 7:17 PM. The reply came at 7:18 PM:

In sha Allah. Junaid ne haan keh diya. Haveli tayyar hai.

God willing. Junaid said yes. The haveli is ready.

She placed the phone on the dining table. She walked to the kitchen. She opened the refrigerator. The refrigerator, a Whirlpool single-door, silver, 190 litres, the size: single person's refrigerator, the size that said: *one person lives here.

She took out the milk. She poured it into a steel pan. She placed the pan on the gas stove, the gas stove being an HP connection, the HP; Hindustan Petroleum, the petroleum: the government's fuel, the fuel that powered the Indian kitchen, the kitchen that powered the Indian family, the family that powered India: the chain, gas → stove → kitchen → family → country, the chain — unbreakable because India ran on dal and rice and the dal and rice ran on gas.

She heated the milk. She added a teaspoon of haldi, turmeric; and a pinch of black pepper, the pepper; turmeric's activator, the activator that Nani had taught her: haldi alone is nothing. Haldi with kali mirch is medicine. The pepper unlocks the turmeric. Remember this.

She drank the haldi milk standing at the kitchen counter. She drank it and she felt the warmth travel from her throat to her chest to her stomach, evening's surrender, the warmth, the surrender of the day's tension, the tension of nine hours at TCS and one hour at a perfume shop and four tats on a living room floor.

Four tats. That was the beginning.

Tomorrow she would teach a perfumer to dance.

The thought should have been absurd. The thought should have produced the familiar absurdity that unlikely partnerships produced, the comedy of a data analyst teaching a clumsy perfumer to dance Kathak in a Nawabi baithak for a competition they had no business entering, for a charity that mattered to a woman who had broken her wrist on a bicycle.

The thought was not absurd. The thought was, she searched for the word and found it in the data analyst's vocabulary. optimal. The thought was optimal because the variables aligned: she had the skill (dormant but present), he had the need (urgent and real), the timeline was fixed (twenty-two days), the outcome was measurable (win or lose), and the exchange was fair (dance for attar, movement for scent).

Optimal.

She washed the steel pan. She washed the glass. She placed them on the drying rack, the drying rack being a steel jali that hung above the kitchen sink, the jali being the Indian kitchen's universal utensil storage, the storage that every Indian kitchen possessed regardless of class or city or income, the jali being the great equaliser: the billionaire's kitchen in Juhu and the clerk's kitchen in Aminabad both had the jali, the jali holding the same steel glasses and the same steel plates and the same steel chamach: the spoon, the chamach being the Indian utensil that no fork had ever replaced because the fork was the West's eating instrument and the chamach was India's and India had chosen the chamach and the chamach had stayed.

She brushed her teeth. She changed into her night clothes, a cotton salwar kameez, the cotton, which was sleepwear fabric ofNorth Indian women, the fabric that her mother wore and her Nani wore and that she wore because the cotton was the tradition and the tradition was the comfort and the comfort was the home.

She got into bed. She pulled the razai, the quilt, over herself. The razai was from Allahabad. Her mother's razai, the razai that her mother had sent with her when she moved to Lucknow, the sending: mother's gesture: this will keep you warm when I am not there to keep you warm. The razai was stuffed with cotton: not the polyester filling that modern quilts used but the cotton that the rajai-wala; the quilt-maker. Had stuffed by hand, the hand-stuffing: craft thatAllahabad's quilt-makers practised, the practice, which was tradition, the tradition: cotton, hand-stuffed, stitched by hand, the hand, the tool that no machine had replaced because the machine could not feel the density of the cotton the way the hand could, the hand knowing when the cotton was enough, the enough; quilt-maker's judgment, the judgment passed from father to son to son.

She lay in bed under her mother's razai in a Gomti Nagar apartment in Lucknow and she thought about rose attar on a perfumer's hand and the ta thei thei tat of feet on a cold floor and the twenty-two days that lay between this evening and December fourteenth.

Twenty-two days.

She had processed the data. She had accepted the variables. She had agreed to the terms.

Tomorrow, she would begin.