Chapter 3: Ishan

# Chapter 3: Ishan

## The Baithak

The haveli's gate was twelve feet tall and made of teak. Teak that had been installed in 1923 when the haveli was built by Junaid's great-grandfather, Nawab Syed Qamar Ali, who had been a minor aristocrat with major taste and who had spent ₹47,000: a sum that in 1923 could buy four houses, on a single gate because the gate was the first thing a visitor saw and the first thing a visitor saw determined whether the visitor entered with respect or with indifference and Nawab Syed Qamar Ali required respect because respect was the currency of the Nawabi class, the class that had lost political power in 1856 and financial power by 1947 but that had never lost the expectation of respect, the expectation, which was heritable, the heritable thing passing from Nawab to son to grandson to Junaid, who was thirty-two and who worked as a civil engineer at the PWD and who maintained the haveli with the salary of a government engineer and the pride of a Nawab's descendant, the pride and the salary; in permanent conflict because the pride demanded Italian marble restoration and the salary provided cement patch-ups.

Ishan arrived at 12:40 PM. Twenty minutes early. The twenty minutes being the nervous man's buffer, the buffer that anxious people built between themselves and appointments, cushion against the catastrophe of latene, the bufferss, the catastrophe, : what if the auto gets stuck in traffic, what if the auto driver takes the wrong turn at Qaiserbagh crossing, what if the auto breaks down on Rana Pratap Marg, the what-ifs accumulating into a twenty-minute early arrival that left him standing at the teak gate with nothing to do but knock.

He knocked. The knock producing a sound that was not the knock of knuckle on wood but the knock of knuckle on history, the teak absorbing the sound the way history absorbed events: taking them in, holding them, releasing them slowly over decades.

Junaid opened the gate. Junaid, who was taller than Ishan by two inches and broader by thirty pounds and who looked nothing like a Nawab's descendant and everything like a civil engineer who ate four parathas every morning. The four parathas being the PWD engineer's fuel, the fuel that powered the inspection of roads and bridges and drains, the inspection requiring the stamina that four parathas provided, the parathas, aloo, the aloo, the universal, the universal: potato. She extended her wrist. His fingers steadied it. The contact was brief, dry, precise.

"Aa gaye, Ishan miya?" Junaid said. The miya being the Lucknawi honorific. The honorific that Lucknow's Muslims used for each other the way Pune's Marathis used bhau and Delhi's Punjabis used paaji, the honorific: linguistic marker of belonging, the belonging that language encoded.

"Haan. Bohot shukriya, Junaid bhai. Baithak ka intezaam—"

"Arre, baithak toh khali hi rehta hai. Koi use nahi karta. Tum log use karo, mujhe khushi hogi. Haveli ko zinda rehna chahiye."

The haveli should stay alive. The sentence; Ishan felt this — the sentence of a man whose inheritance was a building that was too large for one family and too expensive to maintain and too beautiful to sell, the building, the Nawabi burden, the burden that Lucknow's old families carried: the haveli, the gate, the marble, the chandeliers, the memory of grandeur that the present could not afford to restore but could not bear to abandon.

Junaid led him through the courtyard. The courtyard was square — forty feet by forty feet, with a dry fountain in the centre. The fountain had been dry for twenty years, the twenty years (period since the last time the plumbing h a)d worked, the plumbing, the haveli's circulatory system and the system having failed the way old circulatory systems failed: gradually, silently, the pipes rusting from inside, the rust: invisible until the water stopped and then the stopping was permanent because the repair cost ₹3.5 lakhs and the PWD salary did not accommodate ₹3.5-lakh plumbing repairs.

The courtyard had a neem tree. The neem tree was older than the haveli. Junaid had once told Ishan that the tree predated the construction, that Nawab Syed Qamar Ali had built the haveli around the tree because cutting the neem was haraam to him, the haraam being not the religious haraam but the personal haraam, the personal prohibition of a man who believed that trees were older than houses and that houses should accommodate trees and not the other way around.

The baithak was on the ground floor, to the left of the courtyard. The door was arched, a pointed Mughal arch, the arch that was architectural signature ofLucknow's Nawabi buildings, the signature that said: this is not a house. This is a statement. The statement is: we were rulers once. The arch remembers even if the bank balance does not.

Ishan stepped into the baithak.

The room was, the room was a room that made you stop. The stopping: involuntary, the way stopping before a beautiful view was involuntary: the body stopped before the mind decided to stop, the body recognising beauty before the mind could process it.

The room was rectangular. Thirty feet by twenty feet. The floor was white marble, not the modern vitrified tiles that Gomti Nagar apartments used but the old makrana marble, the marble from Rajasthan that the Mughals had used for the Taj Mahal and that the Nawabs had used for their palaces and that Nawab Syed Qamar Ali had used for his baithak because the baithak was where guests sat and where guests sat the floor must be: marble. White. Cool in summer. Cold in winter. The cold: the trade-off, the trade-off that marble demanded: beauty for warmth, the beauty winning because beauty always won in Lucknow.

The walls were pale yellow: the yellow having faded from the original saffron over a hundred years, the fading (colour's ageing), the ageing that plaster underwent the way skin underwent ageing: losing intensity, gaining character, thing that new paint could not replicate. The character, the thing that only time could produce.

The ceiling was high, fourteen feet; with a chandelier that no longer worked. The chandelier was Belgian crystal, sixty arms, imported in 1925 by Nawab Syed Qamar Ali from a catalogue that a British officer had shown him, the showing: colonial exchange: the British officer got the Nawab's loyalty, the Nawab got the Belgian chandelier, the exchange, which was colonial economy in miniature.

The chandelier hung dark and dusty and magnificent. Magnificent because the dust did not diminish the crystal — the dust was the crystal's crown, the crown of a hundred years of hanging in a room that had seen ghazal performances and kathak recitals and Nawabi dinners and family arguments and wedding preparations and funeral mourning, the room having absorbed all of it the way the teak gate absorbed the knock: taking it in, holding it, releasing it slowly.

Ishan walked to the centre of the room. His shoes. Brown leather chappals, Bata, ₹599 — clicked on the marble. The clicking. The marble's response to footwear, the response that said: *I am here. I am solid. I have been here for a hundred years. Your chappals are temporary.

He took off the chappals. He placed them at the edge of the room. He stood barefoot on the marble: the marble's cold shooting up through his soles into his ankles, shock that woke the feet — the cold, the feet, which was the dancers' instruments, the instruments that Kathak required to be naked on the floor because Kathak was the conversation between foot and earth and the conversation required the foot to feel the earth directly, without the intermediary of sole and leather.

The room smelled of old plaster and neem (from the courtyard tree, the neem's scent entering through the arched doorway) and the faint ghost of incense from a long-ago prayer, the prayer's incense having been absorbed into the plaster the way all smells were absorbed into old plaster: permanently, becoming part of the wall, the wall holding the smell the way the wall held the paint and the cracks and the memory.

Ishan opened his bag. The bag was a cloth jhola — the jhola being the North Indian man's bag, the bag that was not a bag but a statement: I am not corporate. I am not formal. I carry a cloth bag because cloth bags are honest and leather bags are pretentious and I am from Aminabad where pretension is forgiven only in the perfume, never in the man.

From the jhola he removed: one Bluetooth speaker (JBL Go 3, blue, ₹3,999, purchased from Flipkart during the Big Billion Days sale because Flipkart's sale was Aminabad's online shopping event the way Diwali was Aminabad's offline shopping event: annual, anticipated, financially devastating). One bottle of water (Bisleri, 1 litre). One small bottle of rose attar (Nakhlau Itr, 10ml, the 10ml: the sample size, the sample, his gift for Nandini: the first attar lesson, the first lesson being: this is rose. This is what you will learn first. Rose is the beginning. Rose is always the beginning). She pressed harder. The ink spread into the fibres.

He placed the speaker on the windowsill. He connected his phone. He scrolled through the music, the music, which was not film music and not pop but tabla: solo tabla by Zakir Hussain, the tabla, the Kathak's accompaniment, the accompaniment that defined the dance's rhythm the way the metronome defined the Western musician's tempo but with more: the tabla had personality, the tabla had voice, the tabla's dha dhin dhin dha was not mechanical counting but musical speaking, the speaking, which was conversation between drummer and dancer, the dancer's feet answering the tabla's question: can you keep up?

He pressed play. The tabla filled the baithak: the sound bouncing off the marble floor and the plaster walls and the Belgian chandelier and the arched ceiling, the bouncing producing a reverberation that was not echo but amplification, the room amplifying the tabla the way a concert hall amplified an orchestra: by design. The baithak had been designed for sound. The baithak had been built for ghazal mehfils. The mehfil, the Nawabi musical gathering, the gathering that required: a room with marble floors (for sound reflection), high ceilings (for sound expansion), arched walls (for sound diffusion), the three requirements producing the acoustics that made Lucknow's baithaks famous, the famous acoustics that recording studios spent millions trying to replicate and that a Nawab had produced in 1923 with marble and plaster and the instinct of a man who loved music and who understood that music required a room the way a painting required a wall.

The tabla played. Dha dhin dhin dha. Dha dhin dhin dha. Na tin tin ta. Ta dhin dhin dha.

Teentaal. The sixteen-beat cycle that was Kathak's default metre, the default: start here. Start with sixteen beats. Start with the basic. The basic: the foundation, the foundation on which everything else was built: the tatkar, the tukda, the toda, the paran, the chakkardar; all of them built on the sixteen beats of teentaal, the teentaal: the Kathak's ground, the ground that the feet struck.

Ishan stood in the centre of the room, barefoot on cold marble, tabla playing through a JBL speaker on a Nawabi windowsill, and waited for a woman he had met yesterday to arrive and teach him to dance.

The waiting was: the waiting was the quiet waiting of a man who did not know what was coming. The not-knowing being the state that Ishan inhabited rarely, in the shop, he knew everything. He knew which attar a customer would choose before the customer chose it (the knowing (perfumer's instinct), the instinct that thirty years in a perfume shop produced: the reading of faces, of gestures, of a certain way a customer leaned toward a bottle or away from a bottle, body's vote: the leaning, the body voting before the mind decided). In the shop, he was expert. Here, in the baithak, he was beginner.

Beginner. The word had a particular weight when you were thirty. At thirty, beginnership was not the charming state it was at six or ten or fifteen, at thirty, beginnership was the admission of deficiency, the admission that your body had not learned the thing that other bodies had learned and that you were now, at thirty, starting from zero, the zero that was the place where children started and where thirty-year-olds were embarrassed to start.

The gate creaked. Footsteps in the courtyard. The footsteps, he listened — the footsteps of shoes on stone, the shoes, which was flat-soled (the flat sole producing a different sound than heels: a pat rather than a click, the pat. Sound of practical footwear, working woman's choice, the practical footwear).

She appeared in the arched doorway.

Nandini Tiwari. Wearing: black churidar, grey kurta, white dupatta. Hair: same low bun as yesterday. Feet: Kolhapuri chappals, brown, the Kolhapuris, the chappal that Maharashtra had gifted to North India, the gift; adopted by Lucknow's women with the quiet selectiveness that Lucknow applied to all imports: we will take your chappals but we will not admit that we took them. We will say they have always been here.

She carried a cloth bag — a jhola similar to his, the similarity (coincidence that two people who were not s)imilar had made the same bag choice, the choice (anti-corporate choice), the choice that said: cloth, not leather.

"Assalamu alaikum," she said.

"Walaikum assalam."

She stepped into the baithak. She stopped. She stopped the way he had stopped, the involuntary stopping that the room produced, the room commanding attention the way a beautiful person commanded attention: by existing.

"Yeh. Yeh toh bohot khoobsurat jagah hai," she said. This, this is a very beautiful place.

"Junaid ke Dada ne banwaya tha. 1923 mein."

Junaid's grandfather built it. In 1923.

She looked at the chandelier. She looked at the marble. She looked at the arch. She took it in, the taking-in being different from his taking-in because she was seeing this room for the first time and he had seen it many times, the many times producing familiarity and the first time producing wonder, the wonder: the superior experience, the experience that you could never replicate because the first time was the first time and the second time was already memory.

"Kathak ke liye banaya tha?"

Was it built for Kathak?

"Ghazal ke liye. Lekin, marble floor, oonchi chhat; Kathak ke liye bhi perfect hai."

For ghazal. But: marble floor, high ceiling: perfect for Kathak too.

She removed her Kolhapuris. She placed them beside his Batas at the edge of the room, the two pairs of chappals sitting side by side on the marble, the side-by-side that was shoes' commentary on the situation: his brown Batas and her brown Kolhapuris, the shoes, which was stand-ins for their owners, the stand-ins waiting at the edge while the owners walked barefoot into the centre.

She walked to the centre. She walked and he watched her walk, the walk: different from yesterday's walk in the shop. Yesterday she had walked like a woman leaving a shop: quickly, purposefully, going somewhere. Today she walked like a woman entering a stage: slowly, feeling the floor with each step, the feet testing the marble's temperature and texture, the testing (dancer's assessment), the assessment of the surface on which the dance would occur. She shifted her weight. The cold followed.

Her feet were small. Her feet were: he noticed this: the feet of a woman who had danced for fourteen years, the dancing having produced feet that were wider at the ball and narrower at the heel than non-dancing feet, the width, the tatkar's legacy: thousands of flat-footed strikes widening the ball of the foot over years, the widening: foot's adaptation to its practice, the practice shaping the body the way the body shaped the dance.

"Tabla lag raha hai," she said, hearing the speaker. The tabla is playing.

"Haan. Zakir Hussain sahab."

She listened. She listened for four beats — dha dhin dhin dha — and then she nodded. The nod, the musician's nod, the nod that said: I hear the tempo. I know the taal. I am in.

"Theek hai," she said. "Shuru karein?"

Alright. Shall we begin?

"Haan."

She stood in front of him. She stood at arm's length, the arm's length being the instructional distance, the distance that allowed instruction without intrusion, the distance that Nani must have stood at when she taught the six-year-old Nandini: close enough to correct, far enough to observe.

"Pehle. sama," she said. First, sama.

Sama. The equipoise. The Kathak dancer's starting position, the position from which all movement began and to which all movement returned, the position that was: feet together, weight equal on both feet, arms at the sides, spine straight, chin level, eyes forward.

"Seedha khade ho jao."

Stand straight.

He straightened. The straightening: he felt this: the correction of thirty years of shop-leaning, the leaning that perfumers developed because the perfumer leaned over counters and leaned toward customers and leaned into bottles, perfumer's posture, the leaning, the posture of a man whose work was close and whose body had curved toward the close work the way a plant curved toward light.

"Zyaada seedha. Peeth ka nichla hissa andar. Seena bahar. Sar, sar aisa raho jaise koi upar se dhaaga pakadke khench raha ho."

Straighter. Lower back in. Chest out. Head, hold your head as if someone is pulling a thread upward from above.

The thread. The thread that was the Kathak teacher's metaphor, the metaphor that every Kathak student in India had heard, the metaphor; universal, the universality meaning: this was how Nani had taught Nandini and this was how Nandini was teaching Ishan and this was how Ishan's teacher would teach the next student, the thread passing through the generations like the thread itself: unbroken, invisible, pulling upward.

He pulled upward. He pulled upward from the crown of his head and felt his spine lengthen: the lengthening, which was sensation of height, the height that he already had (six foot one) being augmented by posture, the posture adding an inch that the slouch had stolen.

"Ab. Paanv. Paanv flat. Poore paanv zameen pe. Ungliyaan bhi. Ediyaan bhi. Koi hissa zameen se utha hua nahi hona chahiye."

Now. Feet. Feet flat. Entire foot on the ground. Toes too. Heels too. No part of the foot should be lifted off the ground.

He pressed his feet into the marble. He pressed every part of every foot: the pressing, which was the Kathak's first physical instruction, the instruction that said: *you are connected to the earth. The connection is through the foot. The foot must be fully on the earth. No part lifted. No part absent.

"Aisa. Ab. Main ginti karungi. Main boluungi tat: tum dahina paanv maaro. Flat. Poora paanv. Uthao aur maaro. Do inch se zyaada ooncha nahi."

Like that. Now: I'll count. I'll say tat: you strike with the right foot. Flat. Whole foot. Lift and strike. No higher than two inches.

She demonstrated. She lifted her right foot; two inches, exactly two inches, the precision, the teacher's precision, the precision that showed the student what two inches looked like because two inches was the Kathak's measure and the measure must be exact, and brought it down.

Tat.

The sound. The sound of her bare foot striking the marble was, the sound was not the sound of his foot on the shop floor. The sound was different. The sound was fuller, rounder, the sound of a trained foot striking a resonant surface, the training, which was fourteen years of Nani's instruction and the surface, a hundred years of marble and the combination producing a sound that was percussion, that was music, that was the sound that Kathak made when the dancer and the floor agreed. She extended her wrist. His fingers steadied it. The contact was brief, dry, precise.

"Ab tum."

Now you.

He lifted his right foot. He lifted it; how high? Three inches? Four? The uncertainty of the beginner, the beginner who did not know what two inches felt like in his body because his body had not been calibrated for two inches, skill that practice produced and that he: the calibrationdid not yet have.

"Zyaada hai. Do inch."

Too high. Two inches.

He lowered. He lowered and brought the foot down.

The sound was: the sound was wrong. The sound was not the tat that her foot had produced. The sound was a slap, a flat, dead slap, the slap of an untrained foot that struck without the control that training provided, the control, which was modulation of force and speed and angle that turned a slap into a tat, the turning: skill, the skill, which was what he was here to learn.

"Phir se. Dheere. Paanv poora flat. Aur, aur zameen ko maaro mat. Zameen ko chhuo. Chhuo, lekin taakat se. Chhuo jaise. Jaise tum attar lagaate ho. Dheere, lekin iraaday se."

Again. Slowly. Foot completely flat. And; don't hit the floor. Touch the floor. Touch, but with force. Touch the way, the way you apply attar. Gently, but with intention.

The metaphor. The metaphor, which was . She had found his language. She had translated the dance instruction into the perfumer's vocabulary: touch like you apply attar. The translation, which was the teacher's genius, the genius of finding the student's existing skill and using it as the bridge to the new skill, the bridge: you already know how to touch with intention. Now do it with your feet.

He tried again. He lifted the right foot: two inches, this time feeling the two inches, the feeling, which was approximate but closer, and brought it down.

Better. The sound was not yet a tat but it was no longer a slap. It was something in between: the in-between (beginner's territory), the territory between wrong and right, the territory that practice traversed over days and weeks and months.

"Phir se."

Again.

He struck again.

"Phir se."

Again.

Again.

The baithak filled with the sound of his foot on the marble. The sound was repetitive, imperfect, the repetition: the practice and the imperfection, which was the evidence that the practice was working. Not because the sound was improving (it was, slightly, with each repetition) but because the repetition was teaching his foot the vocabulary of the floor, the vocabulary: this marble, this temperature, this texture, this resonance. The foot learning the floor the way the tongue learned a new language: syllable by syllable, error by error, repetition by repetition.

She watched. She watched and she corrected: "Paanv zyaada flat." Foot flatter. "Ghutna thoda bend." Knee slightly bent. "Weight peeche mat jao." Don't shift weight back. The corrections, which was continuous, the continuous corrections being the teacher's method: not praise-then-correct but correct-then-correct-then-correct, learning stream: the correction stream, the learning happening inside the correction the way the river happened inside its banks.

After forty minutes, he was sweating. The sweat was on his forehead and his upper lip and his palms, the sweat, body's response to forty minutes of a single movement, the single movement being the tat, the tat being deceptively simple: one foot, lifted, struck. But the simplicity was the deception. The tat required the entire body. The core holding the spine, the knee bending and straightening, the hip stabilising, the ankle flexing, the foot striking, the entire chain firing in sequence for one sound, one tat, the tat being the Kathak's atom, the atom from which the molecule was built and the molecule — the tatkar and the tatkar being the rhythm and the rhythm (dance).

"Pani piyo," she said. Drink water.

He walked to the windowsill. He opened the Bisleri bottle. He drank — the water — warm (November warmth, the bottle having sat in the sun from the window), the warmth that was wrong temperature for thirst(thirst wanted cold, cold being the relief that heat sought) but the right temperature for the throat (the throat wanting gentle, the gentle: warm water's gift).

She sat on the marble floor. She sat cross-legged, the cross-legged sitting being the Indian floor-sit, the sit that Indian bodies learned in childhood and that Indian bodies maintained into old age, the maintaining: flexibility that the floor-sit required and produced, the flexibility, the gift that chairs threatened to steal because chairs reduced the need for floor-sitting and the reduced need reduced the flexibility and the reduced flexibility made the floor-sit harder and the harder floor-sit reduced the floor-sitting further: the chair's vicious cycle, the cycle that Western bodies had completed and that Indian bodies were in the process of completing.

"Attar ka pehla sabak," she said. First attar lesson.

He looked at her. She was reminding him, the reminder: enforcement of the deal, the deal that was: dance for attar, movement for scent.

He reached into his jhola. He removed the small bottle of rose attar. The bottle was 10ml, a glass bottle with a brass cap, the glass — the traditional attar container, the container that Nakhlau Itr used because Haji Nooruddin had used it and because glass was neutral, the neutral (container's requirement): the container must not add its own smell to the attar, the adding, which was contamination, the contamination that was perfumer's sin.

He sat beside her. He sat cross-legged on the marble, the marble's cold pressing through his salwar into his thighs, the cold; floor's constant presence: I am here. I am cold. You are sitting on me. Feel me.

He opened the bottle. The opening releasing. The releasing that was moment that the perfumer lived for: the moment when the cap was removed and the attar met the air and the air carried the attar to the nose and the nose received the attar the way the ear received music: immediately, completely, with the full attention that beauty demanded. She pressed harder. The ink spread into the fibres.

Rose.

The rose attar filled the space between them, the space — twelve inches, the twelve inches: distance between two people sitting cross-legged on a marble floor, the distance that the attar crossed in less than a second because smell was faster than sight and faster than sound and smell was the sense that arrived first and stayed last.

"Yeh gulab attar hai," he said. This is rose attar. "Nakhlau Itr ka. Mere Dada ne: Haji Nooruddin ne. Yeh formula banaya tha 1975 mein. Tab se yahi formula hai."

Nakhlau Itr's. My grandfather. Haji Nooruddin. Created this formula in 1975. The same formula since then.

"Kaise banta hai?"

How is it made?

"Deg-bhapka vidhi se. Hydro-distillation. Rose petals; Kannauj ke, copper deg mein paani ke saath garaaye jaate hain. Bhap uthti hai. Bhap ko bamboo ki nali se bhapka mein le jaate hain, bhapka matlab receiver. Receiver mein sandalwood oil hota hai. Bhap sandalwood oil mein ghulti hai. Rose ki khushboo sandalwood mein absorb hoti hai.

By the deg-bhapka method. Hydro-distillation. Rose petals. From Kannauj. Are heated with water in a copper deg. Steam rises. The steam is channelled through a bamboo pipe to the bhapka, the receiver. The receiver contains sandalwood oil. The steam dissolves into the sandalwood oil. The rose fragrance is absorbed into the sandalwood. That is attar.

She listened the way she had listened to his story about Zoya, with the data analyst's attention, the attention that collected and categorised. But her face was different. Her face was, her face was the face of a person smelling something beautiful, the smelling changing the face the way music changed the face: softening the jaw, loosening the forehead, relaxing the muscles around the eyes, the relaxation (body's response to sensory pleasure).

"Haath do," he said. Give me your hand.

She extended her left hand. She extended it palm-down: the palm-down (instinct of a person who had never had at t)ar applied, the instinct, wrong because attar was applied to the wrist, the wrist — where the pulse was, warmth that activated the attar, the pulse, the warmth (body's heat), the heat: attar's catalyst: the catalyst that turned the liquid on the skin into the cloud in the air.

He turned her hand over. He turned it gently, the gentle turning that was perfumer's touch, the touch that he had practised ten thousand times on ten thousand wrists of ten thousand customers, the ten thousand making the touch automatic but the automaticity not reducing the gentleness because the gentleness was the constant, the constant that his Abbu had taught him: *be gentle with the customer's wrist. The wrist is where the blood runs.

Her wrist was narrow. Her wrist was the wrist of a woman who typed for a living, the wrist having the familiar tension that keyboard work produced, the tension in the tendons, the tendons: taut from hours of finger movement, the finger movement transferring tension upward into the wrist the way tributary rivers transferred water upward into the main river.

He applied one drop. One drop of rose attar from the glass bottle to the inside of her left wrist, the drop landing on the skin, the skin absorbing the drop the way the marble absorbed the foot's strike: taking it in, holding it.

"Ab ruko," he said. Now wait. "Attar turant nahi khulta. Attar ko waqt lagta hai. Pehle: pehle tum sandalwood sunoge. Base note. Phir — das minute mein, gulab aayega. Heart note. Phir; aadhe ghante mein: poora khilega. Top note, heart note, base note. Sab milke."

Attar doesn't open immediately. Attar takes time. First, you'll smell sandalwood. The base note. Then — in ten minutes — the rose will come. The heart note. Then. In half an hour, it will fully bloom. Top note, heart note, base note, all together.

She brought her wrist to her nose. She smelled. She smelled the way a beginner smelled; with the entire nose, the entire inhale, the breath pulling the scent in without discrimination, without separation, without the trained nose's ability to distinguish layer from layer.

"Sandalwood," she said. "Aur — aur kuch aur. Kya hai woh?"

Sandalwood. And — something else. What is that?

"Woh mitti hai."

That's earth.

"Mitti?"

Earth?

"Haan. Kannauj ki mitti. Gulab ke khet ki mitti. Rose petals mein mitti hoti hai: thodi si, bohot thodi si: kyunki petals khet mein ugti hain aur khet mitti mein hai aur mitti ka thoda sa hissa petals mein rehta hai aur petals ka thoda sa hissa mitti mein rehta hai. Yeh alehda nahi ho sakta. Gulab aur mitti ek hain."

Yes. Earth from Kannauj. From the rose field's soil. Rose petals carry earth, a little, very little — because the petals grow in the field and the field is in the earth and a little part of the earth stays in the petals and a little part of the petals stays in the earth. They can't be separated. The rose and the earth are one.

She looked at him. She looked at him the way she had looked at the baithak when she first entered, with wonder. The wonder: this man who cannot walk without bumping into things and who cannot lift his foot two inches with precision is telling me about the earth inside a rose petal and the telling is poetry and the poetry is science and the science is beautiful. She shifted her weight. The cold followed.

"Tumne mujhe tat sikhaaya," he said. You taught me tat. "Maine tumhe pehla note sikhaaya." I taught you the first note. "Baraabari."

Equal.

She smiled. The smile; — the smile: second smile. The second smile between them. The first had been on the bench in the shop. This one was on the marble floor of a Nawabi baithak, with tabla playing through a JBL speaker and rose attar opening on her wrist and his right foot aching from forty minutes of tat practice.

"Kal, kal doosra sabak," she said. Tomorrow, the second lesson.

"Naach ka ya attar ka?"

Dance or attar?

"Dono."

Both.

He walked her to the gate. He walked her through the courtyard, past the dry fountain and the neem tree that was older than the haveli, to the teak gate that Nawab Syed Qamar Ali had installed in 1923 for ₹47,000 and that now opened with a creak that a hundred years of hinges had composed.

She stepped out into Qaiserbagh's lane. The lane was narrow: the narrowness, Lucknow's old-city standard, the standard that the Nawabs had set because the Nawabs had built for pedestrians and palanquins, not for cars, future that the, the carsNawabs had not anticipated and that the lanes could not accommodate, the not-accommodating — reason thatQaiserbagh's residents parked their Marutis and Hyundais on the main road and walked to their havelis through lanes that had been built for smaller vehicles and larger egos.

"Kal ek baje," she said, confirming.

"Kal ek baje."

She walked down the lane. He watched her walk, the watching that was teacher-to-student watching in reverse, the reverse —: the student watching the teacher walk away and noticing, for the first time, that the teacher's walk was the walk of a dancer, the walk that had rhythm even when there was no music, the rhythm, which was in the body the way the rose was in the petal: inseparable.

He closed the teak gate. He leaned against it. He breathed.

His right foot was sore. His spine ached from the straightening. His calf muscles were tight from forty minutes of rising and striking.

But his wrist, his left wrist, where he had tested the attar before applying it to hers, his wrist smelled of rose.

And somewhere in his feet, in the marble's memory, in the forty repetitions of tat that she had extracted from his clumsy body, somewhere in the feet was the beginning of something.

Ta thei thei tat.

The beginning.