Chapter 30: Aakhir
“Bataoonga toh,” he said. A beat. “Tum naaraaz ho jaaogi.”
She looked at him steadily. “Batao.”
He didn’t start immediately. His eyes were on the garden — the particular way he looked at it when he was organizing something inside himself that resisted organization. She waited. The night around them quiet. The chamomile cooling on the table between them.
“Factory mein,” he said finally. “Jab hum dono wahan the — partnership terms decide ho rahe the. Ek baar tumhara dhyan zaraa doosri taraf tha.” A pause. “Tumhara card holder mere saamne tha. Maine — kuch cards nikaal liye aur chupke se apne pocket me rakh liye. Isse pehle ki koi dekhta.”
She looked at him for a moment.
Something moved through her face — quickly, privately — the particular flicker of a woman who cannot decide whether to be amused or outraged and is choosing, for now, to be neither visibly.
She kept her expression entirely level.
“Tumne mere cards churaaye.” Not a question. Just the word, placed precisely where it belonged
A pause. Then a thought occurred to her.
“Woh bhi tab —” She stopped. Let it land. “Jab hamare divorce ki baat shuru ho gayi thi.”
“Haan.”
“Kyun?”
The garden filled the silence. He was looking at it still — unable, it seemed, to look at her.
“Kyunki — main chahta tha — kuch cards mere paas rehen.” His voice strange. Rougher than usual. Something in it she hadn’t heard in a long time. “Tumhara naam tha unpe. Bandhej ka. Jo tumne banaya. Akele. Main chahta tha — mere paas kuch tumhara rahe.” He stopped. “Bas itna hi samajh aata hai mujhe. Theek se explain bhi nahi kar sakta.”
She said nothing. Waiting.
“Aur uss exhibition mein—” He shifted — something restless moving through him. He didn’t know the reason but he now felt like sharing this too with her. “Jab tum jeeti thi. Tulsi — main andar se itna khush tha. Itna. Virani Industries haari — aur main — hamare room me — dil hi dil mein — akela - celebrate kar raha tha tumhari jeet.” A sound that was almost a laugh and entirely wasn’t. “Apni hi company ki haar pe. Kyunki tum jeeti thi. Tumne banaya tha — akele — kuch itna achha ki tum jeeti thi.”
A long silence.
He stood up. Not toward her — just up, as if the chair had become impossible. He moved to the railing. His back partially to her. His hands finding the railing and holding on.
“Mujhe idea tha ki tum kahan thi,” he said. Quietly. To the garden.
She went very still.
“Pure chhe saal — main almost sure tha. Baa ne woh property tumhare naam ki thi — toh tum wahin jaa sakti ho. Main jaanta tha yeh.” He stopped. “Kutch mein Virani Industries ka ek supplier hua karta tha. Toh ek baar usne phone pe casually pooch liye ki unke ek buyer business ki head koi — Tulsi Virani — hain. Same surname hai toh kya main tumhe jaanta hoon. Maine badi mushkil se khud ko sambhaalte hue kaha — nahi jaanta main kisi Tulsi Virani ko. Aur uske baad jaldi hi maine uss supplier se saare business taalukaat khatam kar diye. Kyunki main nahi chahta tha ki Noina ko koi bhi raasta mile tum tak pahunchne ka. Lekin at least mujhe ye toh pata chala ki tum shayad theek ho. At least itni ki koi business kar rahi ho. Theek ho.” His voice caught slightly on that last word. “Aur itna kaafi tha. Khud ko yahi kehta raha — itna kaafi hai.”
His hands moved on the railing. Restless. Helpless.
“Teen baar — teen baar raat ko — gaadi nikali. Anjaar ki taraf.” He said it to the dark garden. “Akele. Beech raat ko. Ek baar toh kafi door tak nikal bhi gaya tha—” He stopped. “Aur phir petrol ke liye ruka toh dekha Noina peechha kar rahi hai. Apna raasta badalke use gumraah kiya aur phir wapas ghar aa gaya. Uss din samajh aa gaya — Noina kis hadd tak jaa sakti hai hamare divorce ke liye. Woh paagal aurat — aur Suchitra — aur Mitali — inke paas aankhein thi poore ghar mein. Har cheez ki khabar. Agar main pahunchta tumhare paas — trail ja sakta tha tum tak. —”
He stopped. His jaw working.
“Divorce rokne ke liye hi — Noina ko bhanak tak nahi lagne dee— ki tum kahan ho.” Still to the garden. As if he couldn’t say it to her face. “Yeh — yeh jo bhi main karta raha — yeh sab usi wajah se tha.”
The balcony was completely silent.
She looked at his back. At his hands on the railing. At the set of his shoulders.
She had guessed it. Had told herself she knew it. That he had stayed away only to prevent their divorce. But hearing it said — plainly, without performance — was different from knowing it. It sat in her chest differently. It weighed differently.
She said nothing. There was nothing to say.
“Aur—” His voice dropped further. Something fracturing at the edges of it now. “Aur ek aur wajah thi. Jo mujhe rok rahi thi.”
She waited.
“Mujhe lagta tha—” He stopped. Started again. “Chhe saal tak mujhe yahi lagta raha — ki maine dobara tum se bewafaai kee hai — ki uss raat Noina aur main — ki main—” He couldn’t say it cleanly. The words resisting him. “Ki main kaise tumhara saamnaa karoon. Ki mujhe koi haq nahi tha — tumhare saamne aane ka. Toh — agar Anjaar tak pahunch bhi jaata — toh shayad tumhe door se hi dekhta. Saamne aane ki himmat nahi hoti mujhe.”
Something moved through her face. Complex — old pain and something newer moving through it simultaneously.
“Aur Tulsi — tumhe lagta hai,” he said. His voice entirely different now — stripped of everything, raw at the center of it. “Ki agar hamara divorce ho jaata — toh main jee paata?”
The words fell and stayed.
She went very still.
In six and a half years she had made many versions of him in her mind. That he was repentant. That he was guilty. That he missed her. That he was lonely. And in the darker hours — that he had never thought of her at all. That he had been happier with Noina than he had ever been with her. That she had simply — stopped mattering to him.
The second set of versions she had discarded. She had learnt and exposed the truth before she returned to Shantiniketan — what Noina had done, what he had been, what these six years had actually been for him.
But this — this she had not imagined. Not in any version. That she had been the condition of his survival. Not his comfort. Not his happiness. His survival.
She looked at his back. At his hands on the railing.
She said nothing. Could not.
“Aur phir hum Mumbai me mile — aur maine poori koshish ki Noina ko ye jaataane ki — ki mujhe tumse koi matlab hi nahi. Taaki woh tumse door rahe. Lekin hua wohi jis cheez ko rokne ke liye maine itna sab kiya. Tum use dikhi aur usne immediately divorce papers banwa liye. Factory mein — uss din — kagaz aaye.” The fracturing more audible now. “Tum dus foot door thi. Sirf dus foot. Aur main — main dekh raha tha tumhara chehra — jab tumne padha — aur main khud padh raha tha — aur—”
He stopped. His eyes were bright. He looked away — at the garden, at the ceiling, anywhere — the particular movement of a man trying to hold something in that has decided it is done being held.
“Uss din jo tumne kaha — Bangalore mein.” Barely audible now. “Chhe saal. Aur toota hua dil.”
A silence that lasted a long time.
“Tulsi—” His voice broke on her name. Completely. “Tulsi — uss pal — pehli baar mujhe ehsaas hua ki — apne dard mein itna dooba hua tha main ki main nahi soch paaya — tumhara dukh — ki tum akeli —”
He couldn’t finish it. The sentence dissolved.
He was shaking now. She could see it from where she sat — the slight tremor in his hands gripping the railing, the effort of staying upright. His back still partially to her. Six and a half years of carried weight with nowhere left to go.
She stood.
She crossed to him quietly. Came to stand beside him at the railing. And placed her hand — gently, carefully — on his shoulder.
He stilled at the touch. The way a person stills when they have forgotten that being touched like this is something that can still happen to them.
Then he turned. Towards her.
Just his face. No words left — they were all gone, every one of them, spent. Just his face in the low light of the balcony. Completely undone. The face of a man who has said everything and has nothing left to hold himself together with. The face she had not seen like this in — she did not count. Could not.
Her arms came up.
Not decided. Not planned. Simply — what happened. What the body knew to do when this face was in front of her after so many years.
She put her arms around him. One hand on his back. The other at his shoulder. Simply. Steadily. The way you hold someone not to comfort them but to say — I am here. I am not going anywhere. Fall apart. I have you.
He went completely still.
The stillness of a man who has forgotten what this feels like. Who had told himself for six and a half years that he had forfeited the right to this forever. Who is remembering it now — all at once, without warning — the specific weight of her arms. The specific warmth of her. The thing he had not allowed himself to even miss properly because missing it would have finished him.
Then his arms came up. Slowly. Trembling slightly — uncertain, as if asking permission from the air itself. As if even now, even here, he was not sure he was allowed.
They came to rest around her. Carefully. Holding on.
She felt him shaking. Felt the six and a half years of it moving through him. Her own eyes were wet now — she wasn’t trying to stop it. There was no point. Not here. Not on this balcony at this hour with his grief finally given its full weight and her own finally witnessed.
A long moment. Just the garden around them. Shantiniketan breathing in its sleep.
Then — muffled, into her shoulder. Broken. Barely words:
“Sorry.”
A breath.
“Sorry — Tulsi—”
Another breath. His arms tightening slightly — the involuntary tightening of someone trying to say something they have no words left for.
“Samajh nahi aata — kis kis cheez ke liye maafi maangoon. Kitni baar. Kahan se shuru karoon — kahan khatam karoon—”
She said nothing for a moment. Her hand moved — once, slowly — across his back.
Then:
“Haan,” she said. Quietly. Into the dark above his shoulder. “Akeli thi.”
He made a sound at that. Small. Involuntary. The sound of someone receiving a truth they asked for and cannot fully carry.
“Bahut akeli thi,” she said. Her voice not entirely steady now. “Pehle kuch mahine — Anjaar mein — samajh nahi aata tha kaise ek ke baad ek din nikaloon. Yehi sochti thi ki mujhme — mere pyaar me —aisi kaunsi kami reh gayi thi ki mera pati mujhe baar baar dokha de.”
His arms tightened. She let them.
Then he pulled back. Just slightly. Just enough to look at her face.
“Koi kami nahi thi, Tulsi.” Fierce. Certain. The only certain thing left in him. “Samjhi? Koi kami nahi thi. Kabhi nahi thi. Tum mein. Tumhare pyaar mein. Koi kami nahi thi. Yeh saari galti meri thi. Yeh kamzori meri thi. Sirf aur sirf meri.”
She didn’t look at him. Her eyes were on the garden.
A single tear rolled down her cheek. She didn’t wipe it. Didn’t acknowledge it.
He saw it.
He drew her back in — gently, quietly, differently from before. Not the desperate holding-on of a man asking forgiveness from the air. Just — his arms around her. Steady. Certain. The way you hold someone when you want them to know — *I have you. I am not going anywhere.*
She let him.
A moment passed.
Then:
“Aur tum—” She stopped. Steadied herself. “Tum bhi akele the. Yahan. Sab ke beech — phir bhi akele. Yeh main jaanti hoon. Tumhara BP, raaton ko neend naa aana — mere jaate hi tumhari tabiyat bahut bigad jaana — yeh sab pata hai mujhe.”
He pulled back then — just slightly, just enough to look at her. His face wrecked. His eyes — she hadn’t seen his eyes like this in — she didn’t count.
He looked at her for a long moment. This woman. After everything. Still here.
Then his forehead came down to her shoulder again. And he held on.
She held him back. Her own tears quiet — not the kind that demand anything, just the kind that come when something held too long is finally allowed to be set down.
The chamomile on the small table between their chairs had gone completely cold.
The garden breathed around them. Shantiniketan slept.
The words had all been said — on this very balcony, on a February night that neither of them had forgotten. The accounting was done. What remained was not more words.
Just this. His arms around her. Her arms around him. The weight of six and a half years — his and hers both — finally, finally shared. Not explained. Not resolved. Just — held. By both of them. Together.
After six and a half years.
She still couldn’t bring herself to forgive him fully. She wasn’t even sure she ever could. But somewhere in this night — she couldn’t say exactly when, or how — something had shifted. Quietly. Without announcement. The way the hardest things always moved in her. Without her quite realizing it, she was further along the journey than she had known. A journey she had begun — without naming it, without intending it — on a Dhuleti morning.
This was not the end of anything.
It was just — finally — the beginning.
They stood there for a while longer. The garden. The night. Neither moving first.
Then, quietly, she stepped back. He let her go.
She picked up both cups from the small table — the chamomile long cold, untouched — and went inside. He stood at the railing for a moment. Then followed.
The house was quiet around them. The small night lights in the corridor doing their quiet work. She went to the kitchen. Set the cups in the sink. Stood there for a moment — her hands on the edge of the counter, the way you stand when you need something solid and the nearest thing is a kitchen counter at midnight.
Then she reached for a glass. Filled it. Turned and held it out to him.
He was standing in the kitchen doorway. He looked at the glass. Then at her. Then took it. Both hands — the way he took things from her now, as if each small receiving mattered. He took a sip. Then another.
She watched him for a moment. Then turned back to the sink.
He set the empty glass down. Reached for another. Filled it. Held it out to her.
She looked at it. Then took it.
They stood in the small kitchen light — two cups in the sink, two glasses of water, the house sleeping around them — and drank.
Then she set her glass down. Quietly.
“So jao,” she said. Not unkind. Just — the end of the night, stated simply.
He nodded. Once.
She moved first — toward the corridor, toward her room, across the kitchen on the ground floor. He stayed for a moment in the kitchen. Then switched off the kitchen light and moved toward the stairs.
Two directions. The way it was.
The house settled around them.
-----
He didn’t switch on the light.
Just closed the door and stood in the dark for a moment. Then moved to the bed and sat on the edge of it — the way he had sat on countless nights before this one. The photograph wall invisible in the dark. The shapes of it familiar without being seen.
He didn’t try to think. There was nothing left to think with. Everything that had been inside him for six and a half years — the carrying, the guilt, the midnight drives, the supplier’s phone call, the cards in his wallet, all of it — was out. Said. Given. He felt the specific hollowness of a man who has been emptied of something he has carried so long he had forgotten what it felt like to not carry it.
Not lighter. Not resolved. Just — empty. And still.
And then — in the stillness — her words came. *Anjaar mein — yehi sochti thi ki mujhme — mere pyaar mein — aisi kaunsi kami reh gayi thi.*
She had spent six and a half years asking herself that question. In the dark. Alone. Because of him.
The weight of it settled into him differently here than it had on the balcony. On the balcony he had answered it — fiercely, certainly, the only certain thing he had left. Here, in the dark of his room, the answer was gone and only the question remained. That she had asked it at all. That she had needed to.
He sat with that for a long moment.
Then — her arms.
The specific weight of them. One hand on his back, the other at his shoulder — steady, present, not asking anything of him except to fall apart, which he had. The warmth of her. The thing he had not let himself miss properly because missing it would have finished him — and now it was in his body again, the memory of it fresh, real, no longer something to be kept at careful distance.
She had crossed to him. She had placed her hand on his shoulder. She had held him while he broke.
After everything. After all of it.
He lay down. Didn’t pull the covers up. Just lay in the dark with the photograph wall invisible above him and her arms still present in his body the way certain things stay — not as thought, not as memory, but as sensation. As fact.
Sleep came slowly. But it came.
The last thing he held — not the sorries, not the words, not the six and a half years of accounting — just her arms. Around him. Steady. Certain.
That was enough. For tonight, that was everything.
-----
She didn’t sit at the desk.
She sat on the edge of the bed instead — her hands in her lap, the room quiet around her, Shantiniketan breathing in its sleep above her.
She sat with the versions.
She had made so many. Repentant Mihir. Guilty Mihir. Mihir who missed her. Mihir who had moved on completely, who had never thought of her, who was happier without her than he had ever been with her. She had cycled through all of them — in the early months especially, in the dark hours when the work was done and the house was quiet and there was nothing left to do but think.
She had discarded the second set before she ever came back. The truth had made that easy.
But none of the versions — not one — had included this. A man who had driven toward her three times in the middle of the night. A man who had cut off a supplier to protect her location. A man who had stood in their room — *hamare room* — alone, and celebrated her victory in the dark. A man who had carried her card in his wallet since months.
*Ki agar hamara divorce ho jaata — toh main jee paata?*
Not his comfort. Not his happiness. His survival.
She hadn’t imagined that version. Hadn’t let herself.
And then — the water glass. Him wrecked, hollowed, barely standing — and still reaching for a second glass. Still filling it. Still holding it out to her. Thirty-eight years. Still intact underneath everything. The body remembering what the heart had lost its way to.
She lay down.
She still couldn’t forgive him fully. She didn’t know if she ever could — fully, cleanly, without remainder. That was still true. Would be true for some time yet.
But she thought of Dhuleti. The teeka. The sindoor. The choice she had made that morning without naming it to herself.
She had already been walking. She just hadn’t looked down to see it.
Her eyes closed.
The garden was still outside her window. The night held Shantiniketan gently in its dark.
She slept.
-----
He heard her before he saw her.
The familiar sounds from below — the particular clink of cups on the tray, the soft movement of someone who knows a house well enough to move through it without disturbing it. He had been lying awake for a while already, the room lightening gradually around him. Not thinking. Just — lying there. Present in a way he hadn’t been in a long time.
He got up. Went through the motions of the morning — unhurried, quiet. When he came out to the landing and started down the stairs she was just coming out of the kitchen, tray in both hands, moving toward the balcony.
She heard him on the stairs and looked up.
He looked at her.
He opened his mouth. Something was there — some instinct toward words, toward the ordinary morning greeting, toward anything that could bridge the space between last night and this moment. He stayed there for a second, reaching for it.
Then gave up. Quietly. Without performance.
She held his gaze for a moment. Then that became difficult too — not painful, just — too much, too early, too soon after everything. Her eyes dropped to the tray. Then she moved toward the balcony.
He came the rest of the way down the stairs. Picked up the newspapers from the dining table where she had left them. Followed her to the balcony door. Stepped ahead. Opened it.
She went through without comment. He followed.
They settled into their chairs. She set the tray down. He set the newspapers beside it.
The kaada first. Both of them. The garden still in the early light, the city beyond the walls not yet fully awake. The cups warm in their hands.
Neither spoke.
The silence was not the silence of distance. It was not managed or careful or held at arm’s length. It was just — the morning. The two of them in it. The garden doing what it always did.
The kaada cooled in their hands. The garden did its quiet work. The newspapers sat folded between them where he had placed them — neither reaching for them. Neither making the move. Usually by now one of them would have. Today — neither did.
The silence was not uncomfortable exactly. But it had weight. The particular weight of two people sitting with something too large and too recent to be spoken about and too present to be ignored. The garden filled it as best it could. The city beyond the walls. The early morning sounds of Shantiniketan waking above them — a door, footsteps, somewhere a tap running.
He picked up his kaada cup. Set it down again without drinking.
She looked at the garden.
He looked at the garden.
After a while — long enough that the silence had become almost too much, long enough that something needed to be said even if it was small, even if it was only practical — she spoke.
“Aaj — factory — main driver ke saath jaaungi.” She said it to the garden. Quietly. “Tum mat aao.”
He looked at her. “Kyun?”
“Suchitra se milne jaana hai. Pehle.” A pause. “Usse milke phir factory.”
Something shifted in his face. “Kyun jaa rahi ho tum uss aurat ke paas.”
Not harshly. Just — the honest resistance of a man who has his reasons and isn’t pretending otherwise.
“Mitali ki maa hai woh,” she said. Simply. “Akeli hai. Sirf isliye ki usne humara saath diya.”
He was quiet.
“Aur hume ye bhi sochna chahiye ki —” She turned her cup slightly in her hands. “Noina woh motion haar jaati. Uske vote ke bina bhi. Usne jo kiya — use karne ki zaroorat hi nahi thi. Apni behen ke khilaf jaana — usne khud chuna yeh. Toh ab —” A small pause. “Ab humari zimmedaari banti hai. Use support karna.”
He said nothing for a moment. The garden around them doing its thing.
“Tumhe nahi jaana usse milne isiliye —” she began.
“Main bhi chaloonga.”
She looked at him.
“Uski Noina ke saath jo stake hai — properties, business — woh baat bhi karni hai.” He said it to the garden. The practical reason, placed carefully. Both of them knowing what it was covering.
She looked at him for a moment longer. Then looked away.
“Theek hai,” she said. Quietly.
A beat.
“Mitali ko bol deti hoon — apni maa ko inform kare. Hum aa rahe hain.”
“Haan,” he replied quietly.
The silence returned. But it sat differently now — not the unbearable weight of before. Something had moved through it. Small and practical and sufficient for this morning.
The kaada finished. They picked up the chai.
The newspapers stayed folded.
-----
The breakfast table had filled in its usual way. Angad and Vrinda with Akshay and Madhvi on one side, the children already in negotiation — Akshay wanting more butter on his paratha, Madhvi insisting the marmalade was hers and hers alone, the particular low-grade diplomacy of five-year-old twins that required periodic adult intervention. Ritik and Mitali with Timsy between them. Damini had slid into the table’s rhythms as though she had never left them — quietly, without fuss, in the way of someone relearning what she had once known without wanting to make anything of the relearning. Daksha Chachi and Gayatri Chachi at their usual places. Garima had materialized at Tulsi’s elbow at some point, in the specific gravity of a child who knows where the best food comes from.
Water glasses filled. Plates passed. The ordinary morning in full motion.
But — something.
Nothing that could be named or pointed to. Nothing so legible as a touch or a word. Just — the particular quality of two people at one end of the table who were simply present. Not careful. The effort that had been there — that low, almost invisible tension of two people managing the distance between them — was gone this morning. Or not gone, but resting. Set aside for now. They moved through the breakfast in their usual way — Mihir filling a plate, Tulsi attending to Garima’s paratha — but without the stiffness. Quieter than usual, both of them. But lighter.
Ritik noticed. He said nothing — just passed the achaar and looked at his own plate.
Angad noticed. His jaw did a small thing. Vrinda, beside him, continued separating Madhvi’s marmalade from Akshay’s butter situation with complete concentration.
Daksha Chachi noticed, and pressed her lips together in the particular way of a woman who has been waiting a long time for something and is now being careful not to breathe too loudly in case it disappears.
Damini noticed with the attention of someone who had sat in a Bangalore courtyard two nights ago and watched these two people walk through it as though six and a half years had been quietly set aside. She picked up her water glass. Said nothing.
Gayatri Chachi — who noticed everything and had spent the better part of a decade doing the wrong thing with what she noticed — looked once, carefully, and then devoted herself entirely to her paratha.
This was the family’s great collective discipline: what they saw, they kept.
Tulsi looked up from Garima’s plate.
“Mitali.” Quietly, passing a small piece of information across the table the way you pass the achaar. “Apni maa ko bata do — hum milne aayenge. Aaj — kaam pe jaate waqt, raste mein.”
The table didn’t stop. The butter-marmalade negotiation continued. Timsy was demanding more chutney. But something in the air shifted — several people finding their plates suddenly requiring close attention.
Mitali looked at her. Her face — for one unguarded moment — doing several things at once. Surprise. Then something settling underneath it. Then the small private thought of a woman who has been watching Tulsi for months now and understands she should have stopped being surprised.
“Ji, Maa,” she said. Simply. Then turned back to Timsy’s chutney.
Mihir reached for the water jug. Refilled his glass. Said nothing.
The table moved on. Garima decided she wanted more ghee. Akshay finally conceded the marmalade to Madhvi in exchange for extra butter, the terms apparently satisfactory to both parties. Angad asked Ritik something about the office. Damini and Daksha Chachi fell into quiet conversation about something domestic.
After a while, as the meal wound down, the chai arrived for the adults. Children’s juice already half-finished, Timsy’s glass somehow entirely empty despite the fact that no one had seen her drink it.
-----
Suchitra’s building was modest — the kind that had been respectable once and was still kept clean, still maintained with a certain quiet dignity. Third floor. The lift was slow.
Neither of them spoke on the way up.
Suchitra opened the door before they rang the bell. She had been watching, perhaps, or simply listening for the lift. She was dressed carefully in a kurta suit — not overdressed, but the effort visible. The particular effort of someone who wants to show they have taken this seriously.
“Tulsiji — please aaiye.” Her voice careful, genuine. Then: “Mihir — please aaiye.”
Tulsi smiled at her. Small, real.
Mihir’s voice came out differently than he had intended.
“It’s Mr. Virani for you.”
Suchitra’s face — a flinch, quickly absorbed. “Sorry — Mr. Virani.”
She stepped back. They came in.
The flat was small and very clean. Arranged with care — a few good pieces of furniture, a prayer corner in the far wall, a window with afternoon light coming through it. The kind of space a woman makes for herself when she is starting over and determined to do it with some dignity.
Tulsi looked around. “Kaisi ho tum?”
“Theek hoon.” Then, more honestly: “Aadat pad rahi hai. Dhheere dheere.”
“Nayi jagah hoti hai toh waqt lagta hai.” Tulsi settled into the chair she was gestured toward. “Koi problem toh nahi yahan? Building mein, neighbors —”
“Nahi nahi. Sab theek hai.” Suchitra shook her head, something releasing slightly at being asked. “Log theek hain yahan. Quiet hai yahan.”
Mihir sat. Said nothing. His eyes moving across the room — not with curiosity, with something else. The held quality of a man keeping a promise to himself through visible effort.
Suchitra disappeared to the kitchen. Returned with a tray — chai, small bowls of namkeen, biscuits, mithai, etc. Offered to Mihir first since he was sitting nearest to the door as she reentered from the kitchen.
Mihir looked at the tray and noticed something. He tried to control his anger with visible effort and shook his head, “main kuch nahi loonga.”
“Please Mi — Mr. Virani sab aapke —” She stopped. Completed with effort, “pasand ki cheezen hain.”
“Nahi.” Flat. Final.
A small silence.
“Woh toh dekh hi raha hoon,” he said. His voice too controlled to be controlled. “Ki tumhe meri pasand ka pata hai. Bahut dhyan rakha hai tumne.” A beat. “Tulsi ki pasand ka bhi pata kar leti. Unki pasand ka khayal rakhti.”
Suchitra blinked. Genuinely confused — the confusion of someone who truly had not thought of it. “Sorry — yeh socha hi nahi —”
“Socha nahi.” Something in his voice sharpened. “Waise toh bahut kuch sochti thi tum. Bahut dimaag chalta tha. Perfect timing hoti thi — exactly kab phone karna hai. Exactly kya bolna hai. Exactly kaunsa pressure point kab use karna hai.”
“Mr. Virani — I am really sorry”, she tried to genuinely apologize.
Somehow it stroked his rage further, “kisi ki life tabaah kar do aur phir sorry bol -“
“Mihir.” Tulsi’s voice — quiet, even.
He didn’t look at her. But the sentence didn’t finish.
Tulsi took a small piece of namkeen from the tray. Unhurried. Let the moment breathe.
Suchitra sat with her hands in her lap. Not defending herself. Just — present in her own guilt.
“Main jaanti hoon,” she said finally. Quietly. “Jo main ne kiya — uska koi excuse nahi hai.”
“Nahi hai.” Mihir said it immediately.
“Haan.” She didn’t flinch. “Nahi hai.”
Tulsi took a sip of chai, not interfering in the exchange but wanting to avoid further escalation.
She looked at Mihir for a brief moment. Mihir looked away but kept calm after that.
Tulsi looked at her. “Tum akeli ho ab. Financially — kya haal hai? Theek se manage ho raha hai?”
Something in Suchitra’s face shifted — the relief of a question she could actually answer usefully. “Mere naam pe do chhote flats hain. Yeh —” She gestured around her. “Aur ek aur — woh main ne rent par de diya hai. Uske rent se kaam chal jaata hai. Aur kuch savings bhi hain. Main apna bojh kisi par nahi daalti.”
“Baaki sab?”
A pause. “Baaki sab — Di ke paas tha. Main ne khud de diya tha.” Said simply, without self-pity. “Mujhe finance samajh nahi aata tha — kabhi aaya hi nahi. Meri shaadi ke baadi mere husband finances sambhaalte the— aur jab woh gaye toh main ghabra gayi. Di ne kaha — mujhe de do, main sambhal loongi. Toh maine de diya.” A beat. “Properties, investments — sab. Usne apne business mein lagaya. Jo usne apne late husband se inherit kiya tha woh toh tha hi — mere resources bhi add kiye. Toh —” She stopped.
“Toh Noina ka business tumhare paise se bhi khada hua.” Mihir’s voice flat.
“Haan.”
“Aur tumne jab apna sab transfer kiya toh formal legal registration karaya tha?” He asked.
“Haan.Di ne kaha tha — legally mere naam se transfer kar do. Handle karna aasaan hoga uske liye. Toh maine kar diya.”
He looked at her for a long moment. Then looked away. At the window.
Tulsi set her cup down and spoke quietly. “Ek kaam karo. Yeh jo do flat hain — unke documents dekho. Ek baar kisi achhe lawyer se check karwao. Sirf yeh ensure karne ke liye ki sab tumhare naam par sahi tarike se hai. Koi discrepancy nahi.”
Suchitra hesitated. “Tulsiji — mujhe koi lawyer nahi pata. Mere saare kaam Di ke lawyer se hote the. Unke alawa —” She stopped. The particular helplessness of someone who has just understood how completely one person controlled every corridor of her life.
“Waise toh Hemant aur Gautam hain. Lekin abhi dono mein se koi Mumbai mein nahi. Toh koi aur hai jo Bandhej ka kaam dekh raha hai. Main bhejti hoon,” Tulsi said simply. “Bharosemand hai. Tum bas documents nikaalo — jo bhi hai tumhare naam par. Sab. Rakh lo taiyaar.”
Suchitra looked at her. Then nodded. The nod of someone being looked after by the last person who owed her anything.
Mihir reached into his jacket. Put his phone on the table. Opened contacts. Clicked a contact. Turned it toward Suchitra.
“Yeh number — ab bhi tumhara haina?”
Suchitra looked at the screen. Then at him, “Ji.”
In her full view, he clicked: Delete Contact. And then confirmed the action.
He looked up at her, “Ab tum bhi mera contact delete karo apne phone se”.
Suchitra looked up at him.
“Aur agar Tulsi ka number nahi hai tumhare paas toh le lo abhi.” He said it to the table, not to her. “Aage se — jo bhi kaam ho — Tulsi ko call karna. Mujhe nahi. Agar kabhi mujhse bhi koi baat karni ho tab bhi Tulsi ke phone pe karogi.”
The room was quiet.
Tulsi looked at Suchitra briefly. Not unkindly. The look of a woman confirming that yes, this is how it will be, and yes, this is workable. Suchitra held her gaze for a moment. Nodded once — the careful nod of someone receiving an instruction and understanding everything it means.
She took her own phone from the nearby table. Deleted the number. Then looked at Tulsi.
Tulsi gave her the number. Suchitra saved it. Set the phone down.
Mihir stood.
“Mihir.” Tulsi said it quietly. Not a command — just his name.
He looked at her. Something passing between them — her eyes asking him for a few more minutes. He sat back down. The visible effort of it in his jaw, in his hands flat on his knees.
Tulsi turned back to Suchitra. “Main jaanti hoon akele rehna aasaan nahi hota.” Simply. “Jo hua— woh nahi hona chahiye tha. Lekin ab — tum akeli nahi ho. Samajh rahi ho? Mitali hai. Aur —” A small pause. “Hum hain.”
Something broke open in Suchitra’s face.
Not the controlled guilt she had been holding since they walked in — something underneath that. Something that had been waiting much longer.
“Tulsiji —” Her voice dissolved at the edges. “Aap — aap chhe saal bilkul akeli thin. Hamare sadyantra ki wajah se. Aur humne — humne ek baar bhi nahi socha — ki aap theek hain ya nahi. Zinda bhi hain ya nahi. Kis haal me hain —” Her hands came up. Pressed together in her lap. “Aur aap — phir bhi —”
She couldn’t finish it.
“Di ka koi jawab nahi tha. Koi jawab nahi hai. Usne zindagi me jo bhi haasil karna chaha, woh haasil karke hi chhoda.” She looked at Tulsi — direct, wrecked, entirely honest. “Lekin yeh bhi sach hai ki — itna sab hone ke baad bhi — aapki ek bhi cheez Di le nahi payi. Ek bhi nahi. Uss ghar mein — unke saath rehke bhi — aapki jagah ek pal ke liye bhi nahi le payi.” A breath. “Aur ab sochti hoon toh ye surprising nahi lagta. Aap aap hain. Aur aap — aap jaisa koi ho hi nahi sakta.”
The room was very quiet.
Tulsi looked at her for a moment. Then reached across. Placed her hand over Suchitra’s.
Just that.
Suchitra’s eyes closed briefly.
Mihir sat very still. Looking at the window. His jaw no longer tight — something else in his face now. Older and quieter than rage.
After a moment Tulsi withdrew her hand. Picked up her chai — cold by now. Drank it anyway.
“Mitali se milti rehna,” she said. Practical, gentle. “Timsy ko bhi bhej diya karoongi kabhi kabhi. Aur jab mann kare, ghar aaya karo sab se milne. Ghar mein sab khush honge.”
Suchitra nodded. Wiped her face. Composed herself with the quiet efficiency of a woman who has had to do this many times recently.
They stood to leave.
At the door Suchitra touched Tulsi’s feet. Tulsi let her - she understood the apology. Then put her hand briefly on her head — the gesture of someone giving what is asked without making a ceremony of it.
Mihir walked out first. Did not look back.
In the lift — going down — neither spoke. The lift slow, as before.
He stood with his hands in his pockets. His face — not the rage of thirty minutes ago. Something emptied out. The specific quality of a man who went in armed with justified anger and came out having witnessed something that had quietly taken the weapon out of his hands.
She stood beside him. Said nothing.
The lift opened. They walked to the car.
He unlocked it. She got in. He sat behind the wheel and closed the door and the smallness of the car settled around them — no flat, no Suchitra, no witness. Just the two of them and the enclosed quiet and the building they had just come out of still visible in the windshield.
He started the engine.
Pulled out of the gate into the street. The city doing its indifferent midmorning work around them.
She was looking ahead. She didn’t need to look at him. She could feel it — the way the air in the car had changed from the lift. Something returning that the flat had briefly emptied out. The hands on the wheel not loose. Not loose at all.
She waited another minute. Then:
“Theek ho?”
He didn’t answer.
His hands tightened on the wheel — the particular grip of a man who has been asked the exact question he cannot answer. Then without a word he eased the car to the side of the road and stopped. Left the engine running.
The street ahead. Ordinary. Indifferent.
“Use dekhke —” He stopped. Something working in his jaw. “Woh saari baatein yaad aa jaati hain. Jab mujhe manipulate karke — hamaara rishta —”
He stopped.
His hands on the wheel.
The engine running quietly.
She said nothing. Didn’t finish it for him. Didn’t look away from the windshield.
She didn’t say: *hamara rishta — woh sirf hamaari zimmedaari thi. Doosron ki saazish ko itni jagah dene ki zaroorat hi nahi thi.*
She didn’t say it.
After a while his grip loosened. Slightly. Then a little more.
He sat with it for another moment. Then exhaled — slowly, without sound. The particular exhale of a man returning to himself from somewhere he hadn’t intended to go.
He put the car in gear.
She looked ahead at the road.
They drove the rest of the way to the factory in silence. The kind that had weight but didn’t ask anything of either of them.
-----
The car stopped at the factory gate.
She gathered her bag. Opened the door. Then paused — half out, half still in — and looked at him.
Not his face. His hands. The way they were on the wheel — still carrying something, not yet set down.
“Andar aao,” she said. Quietly. “Thodi der baitho. Phir jaana.”
He looked at her.
“Office thoda late jaaoge toh shayad chalega. Ritik hai wahan.” Simply. Not unkindly. Just — the fact of it.
A beat. He almost said something. Then didn’t. Then he turned off the engine. Got out. Followed her.
-----
Bandhej smelled the way it always did — thread and dye and the particular warmth of a space where things were made by hand. The looms in the back already going, the sound of them a low steady rhythm underneath everything else.
The floor was alive in the quiet way of a place where serious work is happening. Heads bent. Hands moving. The particular concentration of people who know their craft completely.
A woman near the entrance looked up. Then another. Then from the back — one of the older workers, a woman who had come from Anjaar, who had been there from the beginning:
“Jai Shree Krishna, Kaki.”
Then another. “Jai Shree Krishna, Kaki.”
From the Mumbai side — a younger woman passing with a bolt of fabric: “Jai ho, Tai.”
Another: “Aao Tai.”
Simple. Genuine. Not the greeting of workers performing for an owner. The greeting of people who are genuinely glad she has arrived — the way a household is glad when the right person walks in.
Tulsi moved through it naturally — a nod here, a word there, her hand briefly on the shoulder of one of the older karigars who had said something quietly to her. She didn’t stop to make anything of it. This was simply — how it was here. How she had made it.
Mihir walked slightly behind her. Taking it in.
He had known, in the abstract, what Bandhej was. He had gotten an idea at the exhibition. He had heard Arora recalibrate mid-sentence while waiting for the flight to Bangalore. He had carried her card in his wallet for months. He had known.
But knowing and seeing were different things.
Then — near the far end of the floor, bent over a length of fabric spread across a wide table, a pair of scissors in one hand and a measuring tape in the other, her brow furrowed in the specific concentration of someone solving a problem —
Pari.
She hadn’t seen them yet. She was entirely somewhere else — in the work, in whatever calculation her hands were making. Her dupatta pinned back out of the way. A pencil behind her ear that she clearly didn’t remember putting there.
He stood for a moment and watched his daughter.
This daughter — who had been, for so many years, the one who he spoilt rotten with his over-pampering. Who he had perhaps protected too fiercely and seen too partially and understood too late. Who had married wrong twice and come home and found her way here, to this table, to this pencil behind her ear, to this particular furrow of concentration.
Something moved through his chest. Quiet and complete.
She looked up then — some instinct — and saw him. Her face opened for one unguarded second. Then she smiled — not the bright performance of a daughter greeting a father in company. Just — a smile. Between the two of them. Across the factory floor.
He smiled back.
She went back to her fabric.
He followed Tulsi to her cabin.
-----
It was a small room — a desk, two chairs across from it, a shelf of files along one wall, a window that looked out onto the factory floor. Functional. Entirely hers. The desk had the organized density of someone who knows exactly where everything is.
Tulsi sat behind it. Reached for the worksheets — the day’s production schedule, delivery timelines, worker assignments. Her eyes moving across the pages with the quick efficiency of someone who has done this every morning for years.
He sat in one of the chairs across from her. Said nothing. Let her work.
Two minutes. Maybe three. The factory sounds coming through the window — the looms, the occasional voice, someone laughing briefly at something.
Then a knock — the door already half open — and Vaishnavi came in with the particular energy of someone for whom stillness is a temporary condition.
“Jai Shree Krishna, Kaki.” Bright. Then turning: “Hello, Mihir uncle — aap aaj yahan?”
“Haan,” he said. Warmly. “Thodi der ke liye.”
“Achha hua aaye.” Said with complete sincerity, already looking back at Tulsi with something to report — then stopping herself. Then looking between them. Then: “Uncle — aaj aap aaye hi hain toh — ganne ka ras mangwaati hoon. Paas mein bhaiya hai, ekdum fresh —”
“Nahi nahi.” He shook his head. “Main bas paanch minute mein nikalta hoon. Kaam hai.”
Vaishnavi looked at him with the expression of someone who has already decided and is merely waiting for him to catch up. “Bas do minute mein aa jaayega. Main abhi bhejti hoon.”
He looked at her. Then — something in the complete certainty of her warmth making refusal feel beside the point — nodded once. “Theek hai.”
She disappeared.
Tulsi picked up a file to check the order details and tallied with the worksheet. Looked at him briefly. Then set the papers down and stood. “Main ek round leke aati hoon. Roz karti hoon — paanch minute.”
He nodded. She went out. The door stayed half open. The factory sounds continued their steady work.
He sat, taking in the surroundings.
A minute passed. Then Vaishnavi reappeared — two tall glasses of sugarcane juice, beads of cold on the outside, a wedge of lemon on each.
She set one in front of the chair Tulsi had vacated. Put the other on the desk corner near him. Sat down in the second visiting chair with the ease of someone who has done this many times.
He picked up his glass. Looked at it for a moment. Then set it down — the particular deliberateness of someone who has been thinking about how to begin this.
“Vaishnavi — tumse ek baat karni thi.” A beat. “Bandhej ke baare mein. Tumhari kaki ke baare mein.” He paused. “Tumhara perspective chahiye tha — shuru se. Anjaar se. Woh sab jo tumne dekha — jo main nahi dekh paaya.”
Vaishnavi looked at him. Something shifting in her face — not confusion, just attention. The particular attention of someone who understands that what is being asked is larger than what has been said.
The factory sounds came through the half-open door. Someone calling out in Gujarati. The steady rhythm of the looms.
“Kaki ko pata nahi chalna chahiye,” he said. “Abhi nahi.”
She held his gaze for a moment. Then nodded — once, the nod of someone who has decided to trust without needing the full picture.
He saw Tulsi through the cabin window, coming back across the factory floor.
“Shaam ko baat karte hain, main tumhe call karunga,” he said quietly. Picked up his glass. Took a sip. Arranged his face into an expression of complete innocence.
Tulsi came in. Vaishnavi stood, “kaki main chalti hoon, kaam hai” and slipped out, pulling the door behind her.
They were alone.
Tulsi set her bag down. Her eyes moved — almost automatically, the way they might move to check anything familiar — to her card holder on the desk.
The corner of her mouth shifted.
“Cards toh nahi churaaye tumne phir se?”
Almost teasing. The lightest thing she had said to him in six and a half years.
He met her eyes. Entirely straight-faced. “Nahi churaaye. Ab chahiyenge toh tumse maang loonga.”
She looked at him for one more second — the particular look of a woman who is approximately sixty percent certain she has missed something and has decided to let it go for now.
Then his phone rang. Angad’s name on the screen.
He stood. Answered it briefly — *haan, aa raha hoon* — and ended the call. Picked up his jacket from the back of the chair.
“Chalta hain,” he said. Tulsi nodded, looking at him— just briefly, just enough. He seemed calm enough now.
He left the cabin. Then walked out through the factory floor. Past the looms. Past the karigars. Past Pari, who didn’t look up this time but whose pencil paused for just a moment as he passed.
Out into the Mumbai morning.
-----
Munni arrived at half past six — still in her office saree, a crisp cotton tant in soft grey with a red border, the kind that said she had come directly from work and hadn’t thought to change, or had thought about it and decided this was who she was now. She carried a small bag from which four identical chocolate boxes peeked out, and she rang the bell the way she always had — twice, quickly, the particular ring that Shantiniketan had always known as hers.
Tulsi opened the door.
“Malkini.” The word landing with the particular warmth of something that had never changed between them regardless of what everything else had become. She touched her feet. Then, taking in Tulsi’s face with the quick accurate eye of someone who has always been able to read this woman: “Aap theek hain?”
“Haan.” Simply. “Aa jaa Munni.”
She came in. Damini was in the sitting room with Mitali — they looked up. Munni’s face opened.
“Bhabhi.” She crossed to Damini directly, touched her feet. Damini — surprised for just a moment — put her hand on her head warmly. “Bahut khushi hui ki aap aa gayi. Sach mein.”
“Aur tum?” Damini looked at her — this young woman in a government saree who had once swept these floors. “Collector ho gayi. Sach mein collector.”
“Aapke aashirvaad se.” Said simply, without performance.
Mitali looked at Munni. “Munni. Aao. Baitho.”
“Mitali.” A nod — warm but even. The careful warmth of two people who have a history neither of them references.
She sat. The room settled into itself — chai appeared from somewhere, Tulsi taking the armchair across, Damini and Mitali on the sofa, Munni between them in the way of someone who fits without having been assigned a place.
They talked — easily, the way women talk when the room is safe. Damini asking about the district, the work, what a collector actually does on an ordinary Tuesday. Munni answering with the dry precision of someone who loves her work and doesn’t need to perform that love. Mitali listening more than speaking, which was new, which Munni noted without commenting on.
The front door opened. Voices in the corridor — Angad first, then Ritik, then Mihir.
Mihir came in and saw Munni rise.
She touched his feet. “Sahabji.”
He put his hand on her head. “Khush raho.” Warmly, the way he always had with her — the particular warmth of a man who knows this young woman’s story and respects what she made of it.
Angad came around the doorway and saw her. His face did the thing it always did when he saw someone he was proud of.
“Namaste collector sahiba.”
Munni laughed — real, unguarded, the laugh of someone who knows exactly what is behind the formality and finds it both embarrassing and deeply warming. “Namaste bhaiya.”
Then Ritik came in.
He saw her and something in his face simply — eased. The particular easing of a man who has been carrying a long day and has walked into a room containing something that makes the day lighter without him deciding it should.
“Arre — kab aayi?”
“Abhi.” She looked at him. “Sab theek? Aapka message mila tha. Socha Bhabhi se milke jaati hoon.”
“Haan.” He settled into the chair nearest to where she was sitting — not next to her, just — nearest. “Achha kiya.”
The ease between them was immediate and total. Not the charged ease of two people managing something — just — ease. The kind that comes from having known someone in an uncomplicated way for a long time, except that it had never been uncomplicated, except that neither of them showed that, except that the room felt it anyway without being able to name it.
“District mein kaisa chal raha hai?” He reached for the chai someone had put in front of him. “Woh water project — aage badha?”
“Badha.” She told him about it — briefly, precisely, the way she told him things. He listened the way he listened to her — with actual attention, not the polite attention of someone waiting for their turn to speak.
Angad watched them for a moment. Then looked at Vrinda, who had come in quietly from the other side and settled beside him. She raised an eyebrow fractionally. He looked at his chai.
Then from upstairs — feet on the stairs, the particular thunder of four children who have collectively decided that whatever is happening downstairs is more interesting than whatever they were doing.
Akshay first, then Madhvi, then Garima, then Timsy — the specific cascade of small people who had been doing their homework which was, for now, presumably abandoned somewhere above.
Timsy came around the sofa and saw Munni and stopped.
Then climbed directly into her lap. Without asking. Without preamble. The complete confidence of a small person who knows where she is welcome.
“Jury aunty.”
“Timsy.” Munni’s arms came around her automatically. “Badi ho gayi.”
“Haan.” Timsy said this with great satisfaction. Then: “Chocolate layi?”
“Timsy—” Mitali began.
“Layi hoon.” Munni reached for the bag. Four identical boxes came out — one each, names written on them in her precise hand. Timsy’s first, then Garima’s, then Akshay’s, then Madhvi’s.
Garima looked at her name on the box. Then at Munni. “Aapko mera naam pata hai?”
“Hamesha se pata hai.” Simply.
Garima considered this. Then sat down next to Munni’s chair with the box in her lap, apparently satisfied.
Mitali watched Ritik lean forward to say something to Munni about the water project — some follow-up question, something specific, the question of a person who had been paying attention the last time too. Munni turned toward him. Answered. He said something back. She tilted her head slightly — the gesture of someone recalibrating a point. He nodded.
Mitali looked at her chai.
She knew this room. She knew what she was looking at. She had always known — that was the problem, had always been the problem. She had known and she had used it, back when using things was what she did.
She looked at Timsy in Munni’s lap. At Munni’s hand resting on Timsy’s back — easy, present, not performing anything.
She picked up her chai. Drank it. Set it down.
Said nothing
Tulsi watched.
She watched Ritik’s face when Munni tilted her head. She watched Munni’s careful *aap*, the precise boundary of it, the way she held to it even when the conversation was easy and the room was warm. She watched Mitali watching.
She knew this story. All of it — what had happened, what had been said, what Ritik had done in the shock of it, what Munni had done afterward. She had helped Munni leave. She had helped her become what she was now. She had never told anyone.
And now Munni was sitting in this room with Timsy in her lap and Ritik was asking about water projects and Mitali was watching with a face Tulsi couldn’t fully read, and Ritik was married, and none of it had anywhere to go.
She didn’t show any of it. Just sat with her chai. Listened to Damini ask Munni something about the district courts. Answered something Gayatri Chachi said from the doorway.
But her eyes moved, without her entirely meaning them to, back to the three of them.
Mihir noticed.
He had been half in a conversation with Angad about something from the office — numbers, a supplier, the ordinary end-of-day exchange. But some part of him was always tracking her, had always tracked her since her return, the particular frequency of Tulsi in a room.
He followed the direction of her gaze.
Ritik. Munni. Mitali.
He looked at them. Looked back at Tulsi. Something in her face that he recognized as worry — the specific quality of it, the way she held her chai cup slightly tighter than necessary.
He looked back at the three of them.
Ritik and Munni were talking about something — easy, comfortable, the conversation of two people who have always found each other simple to be around. Mitali was quiet. Munni was being careful about something he couldn’t identify. Timsy was eating chocolate in Munni’s lap with complete concentration.
He didn’t know what he was looking at. That much was clear to him — there was something here he didn’t have the context for. Something Tulsi knew and he didn’t.
He looked at her once more. She hadn’t looked at him — still watching, still holding her chai slightly too tightly.
He looked back at the room.
Filed it away. Said nothing.
Munni left at eight — she had an early district meeting, she said. Touched Tulsi’s feet at the door.
“Malkini — yahan aake hamesha acha lagta hai.”
“Aa jaaya kar,” Tulsi said. Simply. “Jab mann kare.”
Ritik had walked with her to the door — not escorting her, just — happening to be in the corridor. They said goodbye the way they always did. Easy. Ordinary. His hand briefly on the doorframe, hers on the strap of her bag.
“Take care, Munni,” he said.
“Aap bhi.” The *aap* precise as always. A small smile. Then she was gone.
He stood at the door for a moment after it closed. Then turned back toward the sitting room.
Mitali was already back on the sofa. Ritik came in. Sat in his chair.
Neither said anything.
The evening continued around them.
-----
in her absence?? Or hijacked it from her bag /desk??
Seher Hone Ko Hai
Dr Aarambhi
20