Chapter 4: Nandini

# Chapter 4: Nandini

## The Second Lesson

The rose petals in the copper deg were soft and bruised, yielding between his fingers like wet silk.

The second lesson was feet.

Not the tat: he had learned the tat yesterday, or at least his body had begun the negotiation with the tat, the negotiation, the process by which an untrained body accepted a new movement the way an untrained tongue accepted a new language: reluctantly, with errors, the errors (evidence that learning was happening beca u)se perfect performance was not learning but mastery and mastery came later, much later, after the errors had been committed and corrected and committed again and corrected again until the error rate dropped below the threshold of consciousness and the movement became the body's property rather than the mind's instruction.

Today was the tatkar.

The tatkar was the tat multiplied, the single foot-strike becoming a sequence, the sequence —: right foot, left foot, right foot, left foot, in rhythm, in tempo, the tempo, set by the tabla and the tabla; set by the taal and the taal: teentaal, the sixteen-beat cycle that Kathak danced inside the way a fish swam inside water: immersed, surrounded, the sixteen beats that was environment, not the constraint.

Nandini arrived at the Qaiserbagh haveli at 12:55 PM. Five minutes early. The five minutes being her own buffer. Smaller than his twenty-minute buffer because her anxiety was different: his anxiety was the anxiety of performance (will I be able to dance?) and her anxiety was the anxiety of return (will my body remember?).

The gate was open. The courtyard was empty except for the neem tree and the dry fountain and a grey cat that sat on the fountain's rim with the careful stillness that cats achieved when they were watching something invisible to humans — the invisible something being, perhaps, the ghost of water that had once flowed through the fountain, the ghost: memory that the fountain held: I was once alive. I had water. The water is gone. The memory of water remains.

She entered the baithak. Ishan was already there, standing in the centre of the room, barefoot, his JBL speaker playing tabla. He was practising the tat. She watched him from the doorway, the watching, teacher's privilege: the observation of the student when the student did not know he was being observed, the observation revealing the truth of the practice, the truth: he was trying. His foot was lifting and striking with a determination that was clumsy but genuine, the clumsiness. Honesty of a beginner's body, the honesty that professionals lost because professionals had replaced the clumsy truth with the smooth lie of technique.

His tat was better than yesterday. Not good, not yet, but better. The foot was flatter. The lift was closer to two inches. The strike had lost some of its slap and gained some of its percussion. The gaining: the progress, the progress of one day's practice, the practice — she calculated, approximately four hours of solo rehearsal between yesterday's lesson and this moment, the four hours that was perfumer's homework, the homework that she had not assigned but that he had given himself.

"Mujhe pata chal gaya ki tum aa gayi ho," he said without turning around. I know you've come. She extended her wrist. His fingers steadied it. The contact was brief, dry, precise.

"Kaise?"

"Khushboo. Kal maine tumhari kalaai pe gulab attar lagaya tha. Abhi bhi hai. Abhi bhi aa rahi hai."

Fragrance. Yesterday I applied rose attar on your wrist. It's still there. I can still smell it.

She lifted her left wrist to her nose. She smelled, and yes, there it was: the rose, faint now, eighteen hours old, the eighteen hours having reduced the rose from its full bloom to a whisper, the whisper, the attar's longevity, the longevity that synthetic perfumes could not match because synthetic perfumes evaporated and attars lingered, the lingering, which was attar's quality: I do not leave quickly. I stay. I am patient.

"Tumhari naak itni tez hai?"

Your nose is that sharp?

He turned. He smiled. The boyish, awkward smile that she was beginning to recognize as his default expression, the default: uncertain but willing.

"Naak tez honi zaroori hai. Yeh kaam hi naak ka hai. Mera Abbu kehte hain. Attar-wallah andhera mein bhi kaam kar sakta hai. Aankh band kar sakta hai. Kaan band kar sakta hai. Lekin naak, naak kabhi band nahi hoti."

The nose has to be sharp. This work is the nose's work. My Abbu says. A perfumer can work in the dark. He can close his eyes. He can close his ears. But the nose, the nose never closes.

The nose never closes. The sentence, she filed it. The sentence of a man who lived in a world organized by smell the way her world was organized by data. His operating system was olfactory. His inputs were scents. His outputs were attars. Everything between input and output was the nose: filtering, categorizing, discriminating, the discriminating (nose's talent and the talent, heredi t)ary, the hereditary — three generations of Farooqui noses, the noses having been trained from childhood the way concert pianists' ears were trained from childhood — by immersion, by repetition, by the constant presence of the raw material.

"Chalo," she said. Let's go. "Aaj tatkar seekhoge."

Today you learn tatkar.

She stood in front of him. She stood in the sama; the equipoise, the starting position, the position that she assumed the way a singer assumed the first note: naturally, without effort, the effort having been spent decades ago and the spending producing the ease that looked like talent but was actually practice.

"Tatkar matlab. tat ka silsila. Sequence. Right, left, right, left. Tabla ke saath. Lekin: lekin pehle bina tabla ke."

Tatkar means: a sequence of tat. Right, left, right, left. With the tabla. But, first without the tabla.

She paused the speaker. The silence that followed was, the emptiness was the baithak's native state, the state that the tabla had interrupted and that the silence now restored. The silence was not empty. The silence held: the neem tree's rustling from the courtyard, the distant traffic from Rana Pratap Marg, the grey cat's purr from the fountain's rim (the cat having followed them inside and settled on the marble near the doorway, the settling: cat's decision to audit the lesson).

"Main ginti karungi. Ek; dahina paanv. Do: baayaan. Teen: dahina. Chaar; baayaan.

I'll count. One; right foot. Two, left. Three. Right. Four, left. Understood?

"Haan."

"Dheere. Bohot dheere."

Slowly. Very slowly.

"Ek."

He struck with his right foot.

"Do."

Left.

"Teen."

Right.

"Chaar."

Left.

Four strikes. Four separate strikes, each one a tat, each tat landing on the marble with the uncertain percussion of a beginner's foot, the uncertainty that was rhythm's enemy; rhythm required confidence, the confidence that the foot would land at the right time, and the right time was not a matter of intention but of training, the training that converted intention into reflex and reflex into rhythm.

"Phir se. Jaldi."

Again. Faster.

She counted faster. He struck faster; and the faster striking revealed the weakness that the slow striking had hidden: his transitions. The transition from right foot to left foot, the weight-shift that the transition required, the weight shifting from one leg to the other, this was where his body failed. The shift was too large, too visible, the shifting producing a rocking motion that was not Kathak but stumbling, the stumbling: tall man's problem: too much body to move, too many limbs to coordinate, the coordination (thing that six-foot-one men struggled wit h) and that five-foot-four women achieved without thinking about it.

"Ruko," she said. Stop.

He stopped. He was breathing hard, the breathing: the effort's evidence, the effort of four minutes of counting that had felt like forty.

"Tumhara problem yeh hai ki tum weight shift karte ho," she said. Your problem is you shift your weight. She pressed harder. The ink spread into the fibres.

"Weight shift nahi karoon toh giruunga."

If I don't shift weight I'll fall.

"Nahi giroge. Sunno: Kathak mein weight centre mein rehta hai. Tumhara weight na dahine paanv pe hona chahiye, na baayein pe. Beech mein. Dono ke beech mein. Aur jab tum dahina paanv maarte ho; tum dahine taraf nahi jhaakte. Tum centre mein rehte ho. Bas paanv uthta hai aur girta hai. Baaki sab. Koolhe, kamar, seena, sar. Sab jagah pe rehte hain."

No, you won't. Listen: in Kathak, the weight stays in the centre. Your weight shouldn't be on the right foot or the left. In between. Between both. And when you strike with the right foot: you don't lean right. You stay centred. Only the foot lifts and falls. Everything else, hips, waist, chest, head: everything stays.

She demonstrated. She demonstrated and the demonstration was, the demonstration was the thing that words could not convey, the thing that the body had to show because the body spoke a language that words translated poorly. She stood in sama. She lifted her right foot. Two inches, struck. Lifted the left; struck. Right. Left. Right. Left. And her body, her body did not move. Her torso was still. Her head was still. Her hips were still. Only her feet moved, the feet moving independently of the body, the independence: the Kathak's secret: the feet were musicians. The feet played the floor. The body was the instrument's stand, still, stable, holding the instrument in position while the instrument played.

He watched. He watched with the attention of a man watching someone do the impossible, the impossible: movement without movement. The feet moving while the body stood still. The stillness: the discipline, the discipline; art.

"Nani kehti thi. Kathak ke paanv baat karte hain. Baaki sab sunte hain. Paanv baat karte hain, zameen sunti hai, aur dekhne wala; dekhne wala sirf paanv aur zameen ki baat sun-ta hai."

Nani used to say: in Kathak, the feet speak. Everything else listens. The feet speak, the floor listens, and the viewer. The viewer only hears the conversation between feet and floor.

The conversation between feet and floor. The metaphor, he recognized this, the perfumer's metaphor translated: in his world, the attar spoke to the skin, and everything else; the bottle, the cap, the label: everything else was the container. The conversation was between scent and skin. The conversation was between the essential and the receptive.

"Ek aur cheez," she said. One more thing.

She walked to him. She walked to him and stood close. Closer than the instructional arm's-length, the closer (correction's requirement): she needed to touch him to correct him, teacher's tool. The touching, the tool that words could not replace because the body learned from the body, not from the word.

She placed her right hand on his left hip. The placement was. The placement was professional, instructional, the hand pressing lightly against the hip bone through the cotton of his kurta, the pressing saying: this. This is what I need you to feel. This is the hip that must not move.

"Jab tum right foot maarte ho. Yeh hip move hota hai. Dahini taraf jaata hai. Yeh nahi hona chahiye. Yeh hip jagah pe rehna chahiye. Solid. Jaise. Jaise dukaan ka counter. Counter hilta nahi. Tum counter ho. Tumhare paanv — tumhare paanv customer hain. Customer aata hai, jaata hai. Counter jagah pe rehta hai."

When you strike with the right foot, this hip moves. It goes to the right. This shouldn't happen. This hip should stay in place. Solid. Like, like the shop counter. The counter doesn't move. You are the counter. Your feet, your feet are the customer. The customer comes and goes. The counter stays.

The shop counter. She was using his language again — the translation again, the translation that made the unfamiliar familiar, the unfamiliar; Kathak's body mechanics and the familiar, which was shop's architecture. He understood the counter. He had stood behind the counter for fifteen years. The counter was permanent. The counter was the shop's axis. The counter did not move.

He tried again. Right foot, strike. And this time he felt what she was describing: the hip wanted to move, the hip was a traitor, the hip was the body part that swayed when the foot struck, the swaying: the tall man's compensation for the impact, the compensation: absorb the shock by swaying. And the Kathak's instruction being: do not compensate. Do not absorb. Let the foot take the impact. Let the floor take the impact. The hip has no role in this conversation. The hip is the counter. The hip stays.

He held the hip. He held it with the conscious effort that the instruction required, effort of overriding the body's habit: the effort, the habit — thirty years of swaying, the swaying, tall man's default response to imbalance, and the Kathak requiring him to refuse the default, to choose the still centre, to become the counter.

The tat was different. The tat, when the hip stayed, was different, the sound was fuller, the impact was cleaner, the strike having lost the muffled quality that the swaying had produced because the swaying had stolen energy from the strike and the not-swaying returned the energy to the strike, the returning (efficiency that stillness produced).

"Better," she said. And the word: the English word in the middle of the Hindi instruction; was the word she used for data that passed validation. Better. The data was better. The tat was better. The validation was the same: *this meets the criteria. She shifted her weight. The cold followed.

They worked for an hour. One hour of tatkar; right, left, right, left, with her counting and him striking and her correcting and him absorbing, slow process by which his body took the i — the absorbingnstruction in, the instruction entering through the hip (hold still) and the feet (strike flat) and the knees (bend slightly) and the spine (stay tall) and the instruction becoming, over the hour, less instruction and more habit, the habit (goal): the movement that required no thinking, the movement that the body performed while the mind watched.

By the end of the hour, his tatkar was — his tatkar was recognizable. Recognizable being: a Kathak teacher would identify it as tatkar rather than as a man stomping on a marble floor. The identification was not praise. The identification was the minimum: this is what you are attempting. I can see what you are attempting. The attempt is visible.

"Theek hai," she said. Okay. "Ab: attar."

Now; attar.

He wiped his forehead with his dupatta, the dupatta — the white cotton cloth that he had draped over his shoulder, the shoulder-draping being the Lucknawi Muslim man's habit, the habit of carrying a cloth for wiping and covering and the occasional prayer, the cloth, the Swiss Army knife of North Indian clothing: one item, many uses.

He reached into his jhola. Today's bottle was not rose. Today's bottle was vetiver, khus; the grass-root attar that smelled of wet earth after rain, the wet earth being the petrichor, the petrichor: the smell that every Indian person recognized because every Indian person had stood in the first rain of monsoon and breathed in the earth's response to the water, the earth responding to the water the way a sleeping person responded to a touch: waking, exhaling, releasing.

"Aaj, khus," he said.

"Khus kya hai?"

What is khus?

"Khus ek ghaas ki jadh hai. Vetiver grass. Yeh ghaas Rajasthan mein ugti hai: Bharatpur, Tonk, Ajmer: aur iski jadh — root; ko paani mein bhigote hain, phir distil karte hain."

Khus is a grass root. Vetiver grass. This grass grows in Rajasthan, Bharatpur, Tonk, Ajmer. And the root is soaked in water, then distilled.

He opened the bottle. He applied a drop to her right wrist. The right wrist that was untouched wrist, the untouched (blank canvas), the canvas that would receive the khus without the interference of yesterday's rose on the left wrist.

She smelled.

"Yeh, yeh mitti jaisi hai," she said. This, this smells like earth.

"Haan. Lekin sirf mitti nahi. Baarish ke baad ki mitti."

Yes. But not just earth. Earth after rain.

"Baarish ke baad ki mitti," she repeated, and the repeating was the learning: the learning of the vocabulary, the olfactory vocabulary that he was teaching her the way she was teaching him the Kathak vocabulary, the vocabularies, parallel: his vocabulary of notes (top, heart, base) and her vocabulary of beats (tat, thei, tukda), the vocabularies: languages that they were exchanging, the exchange, deal, the deal; fair: movement for scent.

"Gulab aur khus mein fark kya hai?" she asked. What's the difference between rose and khus?

"Gulab. Gulab asmaan hai. Upar jaata hai. Naak mein ooncha mehsoos hota hai. Khus, khus zameen hai. Neeche jaata hai. Naak mein neeche mehsoos hota hai. Gulab halka hai. Khus bhaari hai. Gulab tez khilta hai. Khus dheere. Gulab mohabbat hai. Khus. Khus ghar hai."

Rose; rose is the sky. It goes up. You feel it high in the nose. Khus, khus is the earth. It goes down. You feel it low in the nose. Rose is light. Khus is heavy. Rose blooms fast. Khus slowly. Rose is love. Khus: khus is home.

Rose is love. Khus is home. She held the two definitions, the definitions that were not definitions but poetry, the poetry of a man who understood the world through smell and who translated that understanding into words that she could hold, the holding, the data analyst's instinct: receive, store, cross-reference.

The cross-reference being: rose was love and he had met Zoya at a rose-bottle exhibition.

She did not say this. She stored it. She stored it the way she stored interesting correlations in datasets: noting the pattern, flagging it for later review, not drawing conclusions from a sample size of one because a sample size of one was statistically insignificant and statistically insignificant correlations were noise, not signal.

"Kal, kal tukda sikhaaungi," she said. Tomorrow — I'll teach you tukda.

"Tukda kya hai?"

What's tukda?

"Tukda ek chhota piece hai. Ek chhoti composition. Tatkar ke andar. Jaise, jaise tumhari dukaan mein ek bottle ek tukda hai. Shelf poora hai lekin ek bottle — ek bottle apne aap mein complete hai."

Tukda is a small piece. A small composition. Within the tatkar. Like. Like in your shop, one bottle is a tukda. The shelf is the whole but one bottle: one bottle is complete in itself. She extended her wrist. His fingers steadied it. The contact was brief, dry, precise.

The translation, her translation into his language. She was doing it too. She was translating Kathak into perfume the way he was translating perfume into Kathak. The translation — the bridge: the bridge that they were building between their two languages, the two languages meeting on the bridge and recognizing each other: ah. You are me. In a different vocabulary. But you are me.

He walked her to the gate. The grey cat followed: the cat having attended the entire lesson from the doorway, the attendance, which was cat's audit, the audit's conclusion being: these humans make interesting sounds with their feet. I will return tomorrow.

At the gate, she paused.

"Ishan."

"Haan?"

"Tumhara tat better ho raha hai."

Your tat is getting better.

The sentence. The sentence, the sentence — praise, but not the excessive praise that anxious people gave to make others feel good. The sentence was the minimal praise of a data analyst: the metric has improved. The improvement is noted. Continue.

He smiled. She smiled. The smiles — the smiles, the third exchange of smiles, the third, which was : shop, baithak, gate. The locations accumulating. The accumulation — the cartography of a new relationship, the mapping of the places where two people had smiled at each other, the mapping that couples in old age could trace backward and say: *here. This is where we smiled.

But it had not begun. Not yet. Not the way beginnings were recognized. With declaration, with confession, with the word that changed the relationship from one state to another. No. What had begun was the exchange: dance for attar, movement for scent. What had begun was the deal. The deal was the safe space: the space in which two people could spend twenty-two evenings together in a Nawabi baithak without the pressure of the unsaid, the unsaid, kept at bay by the deal's structure: we are here for the competition. We are here for the exchange. We are here for Kathak and khus and tatkar and rose.

The unsaid could wait. The unsaid, like the attar, needed time to open.

She walked down the lane. He watched from the gate. The grey cat sat at his feet and watched with him, the two of them, the perfumer and the cat, watching the data analyst walk away with rose on her left wrist and khus on her right wrist and the first signs of tatkar in her feet, not the student's tatkar but the teacher's tatkar; the teacher's feet having remembered the rhythm during the lesson, the feet's memory having been activated by the teaching the way a dormant program was activated by a command: run. Execute. Resume.

Her feet remembered. His feet were learning.

Twenty days to go.