Chapter 33: Naya Rainbow
The house had gone quiet by the time she entered her room.
She stood in front of the mirror on Baa’s almirah — the same mirror, the same evening light long since replaced by the room’s single lamp — and began, piece by piece, to undo what she and Shobha had put together hours earlier.
The ring first. She slipped it off and set it on the small dish by the mirror, the champagne stone catching the lamp’s weaker light without any of the conviction it had carried under the ballroom’s chandeliers.
*Mihir par phir se bharosa kar rahi ho. Good for you.*
The earrings next. One, then the other. Her fingers knew the screws without her having to look.
*Lekin I hope — jab woh tum par gusse mein haath uthaye, ya dhakka de — tab at least koi outsider wahan present na ho.*
She set them down beside the ring.
*Take care, Tulsi.*
Her hands went still for a moment, resting at her own collarbone, at the necklace she hadn’t yet reached for.
She chose that memory on purpose. The thought arrived without heat, almost clinical in its clarity. Not randomly. Noina had never studied only Mihir. She had studied what Tulsi herself would do in any given room — that she would stay quiet rather than make a scene, that she would carry the worst of something alone rather than hand it to someone else to hold. Noina had built her architecture on both of them at once: Mihir’s impulsiveness and temper on one side, Tulsi’s predictable silences on the other, and then simply stood back and let the two of them do the rest of the damage to each other.
This was not new information delivered tonight. This was the same instrument Noina had used for years — find the load-bearing fear, press there, step back. Tonight she had simply turned it on Tulsi directly, for once, instead of routing it through him.
Noina did this to him for years. Studied him. Studied her too — long enough to know exactly which story he would believe, and exactly how she would behave once he believed it. Built the whole thing, brick by brick, so neither of them could tell anymore where her hand ended and their own choices began.
*Tonight she tried to do it to me,* thought Tulsi.
Tulsi reached for the clasp at the back of her neck.
The necklace came away and she held it for a moment in her palm before setting it down with the others — the three pieces together now, finished, the box still open on the bed waiting to receive them.
*Aur uska gussa.*
She thought of his fist on the seat between them. The sound of it. His voice climbing in the closed car, asking her — no, demanding, the particular demanding of a man who had decided he would rather be hurt by the truth than protected from it.
Fear was not the word. Even seven years ago — at the pillar, with his hand stopped an inch from her face — what she had felt was shock, not fear. She had never lived a single day being afraid of him.
His outburst in the car hadn’t shocked her tonight.
She turned this over slowly, the way she turned over most things — without rushing toward a conclusion, simply sitting with what was there until it settled into its proper shape.
This was not new. Mihir’s temper had never been new to her. Thirty-eight years had taught her its weather long before Noina had ever entered their lives — the way it built, the particular things that struck the match, the swiftness of it and, just as reliably, the swiftness with which it passed and left him standing on the other side of it looking faintly ashamed of himself. She had known this about him at twenty, when he shouted at her because of something his mother had complained about her, at twenty-five watching him lose his temper with a contractor over a missed deadline. She had known it at thirty-five, at forty, across every decade of being his wife. And across every one of those decades, she had also been, for the greater part of it, genuinely happy with him.
She picked up the ring first and turned it once before setting it into its own bed of cream silk — the exact shape cut for it, no other space in the box would have taken it right.
You did not get to love a person in installments.
The earrings next, one and then the other, each settling into its fitted hollow with the small certainty of something returning to where it belonged.
That was the thing nobody told you when you married someone — that you didn’t get to keep the parts that were easy and quietly return the rest, the way you might send back a dress that didn’t fit.
She lifted the necklace last and took a moment finding the curve of silk shaped to hold it. The box had been made for exactly this. Three shapes. Nothing extra. Nothing missing.
His anger had always lived in the same body as his patience, his particular formality with strangers, the unhurried way he’d once driven her himself rather than send the driver, back when driving her somewhere had simply been a husband’s pleasure — and the tenderness underneath all of it that she had never once doubted. She had married all of it forty-four years ago. Not an edited version. Not the parts that behaved.
Either you took the whole person home with you, or you hadn’t really taken him home at all.
The necklace settled into its place.
To love someone selectively was not love. It was an accounting. And whatever this marriage had been — across the good years and the broken ones and now this strange, careful third thing they were both still learning the shape of — it had never once been that.
This was not the same as excusing what had happened seven years ago. The pillar was real. What his hand had almost done was real, and she had not forgotten it, and she did not intend to.
But Noina had wanted her to fold the two things into one — to hear his anger tonight and feel, underneath it, the particular shock that belonged to that other day. And they were not the same thing. She knew the difference the way she knew the difference between thunder and the storm that sometimes, but not always, followed it.
Noina had wanted to frighten her out of Mihir’s life again.
She had not reckoned with forty-four years.
She closed the lid. It met the box’s edge clean and flush, the way it only could when every piece was exactly where it belonged.
-----
The room upstairs hadn’t found the same quiet yet.
Mihir shrugged out of his jacket and the card slipped from the inside pocket — the Bandhej card that had let him through the door tonight as her plus one. His own invitation, Virani Industries printed across the top in gold, had been gone for days now — torn up in front of the whole family, the night they’d decided on Daksha’s advice that they couldn’t keep shunning society forever. At the time it had felt like the easiest decision for him in weeks.
He set the card on the dresser and didn’t look at it again.
The anger hadn’t stayed in the car. It had simply gone looking for somewhere else to land, the way it always did when there was nowhere left to put it — and it had finally found him here.
She had stood in that room and taken it. Alone. The way she always did.
He had watched her dismantle a woman twice as dangerous as anyone else there, without raising her voice once — and what had he done. Torn up a card. Sat beside her in the car like a man waiting to be told what to feel.
She had always carried things. Even before Noina had a name in their lives, it had been Tulsi who remembered which relative needed calling, Tulsi who absorbed his mother’s moods so he wouldn’t have to, Tulsi who kept the house standing while he went out and was, by every account, a man other people respected. He had built a whole life on being decisive in rooms full of strangers and useless in the one room that actually mattered.
*Not anymore,* he decided. If she was going to carry something, she was going to carry it where he could see it now — even if all he could manage some days was sitting beside her while she did the work alone.
And still, underneath that — something angry, smaller, less fair — wanted to know why she couldn’t just *say* it to him. Why the explaining always came later, in pieces, on her terms, instead of in the car, when he was sitting right there.
His phone lit on the dresser, beside the card.
*Dawai le lee?*
He looked at the screen for a moment before the words actually reached him — and then, underneath the question, a smaller realization: he hadn’t. The strip was still inside the drawer, untouched since returning home, because he’d spent the thirty minutes since, arguing with the inside of his own head instead.
And still he wasn’t, in any real way, surprised that she’d asked. She had spent the entire evening being picked apart by people who dressed it up as conversation, had carried his own outburst home in a closed car without once raising her voice back at him — all of it, if he was honest, the direct cost of his own choices, his own past failures — and somehow she still had room left over to wonder whether he’d remembered a tablet.
It had always been like this. Even tonight, when by any fair accounting it should have been him asking after her.
Then he thought of what she’d actually said in the car, before the silence had taken over the rest of the drive.
*Kyunki jo usne kaha — uska koi jawab nahi hai. Na tumhare paas, na mere paas. Aur abhi, is gaadi mein, itne gusse mein — tumhare yeh sunne se kuch nahi badlega. Sirf aur bigdega.*
In the car he had heard it as a door shutting. He heard it now as something closer to a hand laid flat against his chest — not pushing him out, only asking him to wait.
She hadn’t been keeping something from him. She’d been keeping the worst ten minutes of the night from getting worse, the only way she knew how — by carrying the cost of the silence herself instead of handing it to him while his fist was still closed.
He picked up the phone.
*Abhi le raha hoon,* he typed and sent. Then, after a moment: *Tum theek ho naa?* Pressed send and put his phone down for a moment.
He went to the drawer without pausing and sat on the edge of the bed to wrap the cuff around his arm — by now it took no more thought than tying a shoe. The machine hummed. He watched the numbers climb and settle without flinching, the way you watch a number that has long since stopped being able to surprise you.
Higher than it should have been. Not by much. Enough.
He folded the cuff back into its place and reached for the small box beside it, pushed one tablet free, and after the briefest pause, a second.
He took both with water, the faint bitterness settling at the back of his throat exactly as it always did, and sat a moment with his elbows on his knees, letting the quiet move through him.
Usually, by this hour, something would already be broken — a word said too loud, a door shut too hard, the kind of damage that took both of them days to quietly repair. Tonight there was nothing to repair. Someone had asked if he’d remembered his medicine. He had, finally, taken it.
-----
After putting the jewelry box on the desk, she changed her saree.
Then she picked up her phone from the desk — the decision arriving without much thought behind it, the way decisions did once you’d already made up your mind about something larger.
Dawai le lee?
Three words. She didn’t need more than that to ask what she actually meant.
If he answered with silence, she would know exactly where he was — upstairs, lying with his back to the room, the anger left to burn through itself in the dark because there was nowhere else for it to go. That was the old pattern. After an argument, the old Mihir didn’t talk and didn’t sleep. He turned onto his side, faced the wall, and let the quiet do what shouting couldn’t — convince both of them that nothing more needed to be said tonight. She had learned, across enough of those nights, not to wait for him to turn back. Sometimes he didn’t, until morning made it easier for both of them to behave as if the night before hadn’t happened.
The phone lit in her hand.
*Abhi le raha hoon.*
She read it once, then again, the way you reread something to make sure it says what you think it says.
*Tum theek ho naa?*
Four words, and what they told her had nothing to do with their meaning. It was that he’d thought to ask at all. The version of him she’d just described to herself — the one who went silent and turned to the wall — did not pick up his phone in the middle of his own anger to check on someone else. Whatever he’d been sitting with up there, he was sitting with it calmly enough now to ask after her instead of only himself.
She typed back: *Haan. So jao, kal subah baat karte hain.*
-----
He was already there when she came out, the chair angled slightly toward the garden rather than the door — though she suspected he’d been watching for her, not for the sun.
“Jai Shree Krishna,” she said, the tray balanced with both hands.*
“Jai Shree Krishna.” He was reaching for it before she’d finished saying it, the way he had every morning for weeks now, and set it down on the table between their two chairs without being asked.
Both cups of kaada usually sat within easy reach, each of them picking up their own without needing to think about it. This morning, as he opened his mouth — “Tulsi, kal raat—” — she already had his cup in her hand.
“Kaada,” she said, holding it out to him. The word told him nothing he couldn’t already see, and she heard how unnecessary it was even as she said it.
He took it. Whatever he’d meant to say folded itself back down, for now.
She took her own and reached for one of the four newspapers lying rolled on one side of the tray, smoothing it flat across her knee before she’d so much as looked at the first line.
They drank the kaada in the kind of silence that had become its own sort of conversation between them. She felt him test it once, gently, somewhere around the third sip — a breath drawn in as if to speak. She turned a page that didn’t need turning. He let it go.
The chai came next, and it was over the chai that he tried again, properly.
“Tulsi—”
*“Mujhe pata hai tum kya pooch rahe ho,” she said, not unkindly, still looking at the newspaper. “Pehle chai pee len. Phir baat karte hain.”*
He finished his chai quickly, the way a man does when he’s waiting for permission to speak. She let hers go a little colder than she needed to, as if finishing it might force the conversation to start before she was ready.
In the garden below, flower plants swayed gently in the spring breeze, and a koel somewhere refused to stop insisting on being heard. She watched none of it, particularly. She simply let her eyes rest past the newspaper’s edge until there was no reasonable way left to hold onto the cup.

She set it down.
“Kal raat,” she said, before he could ask again, “Noina ne exactly wohi kiya jo woh hamesha se karti aayi hai.”
It was true. It was also the least she could say and still call it an answer.
He was quiet long enough that she almost looked up.
“Dekho Tulsi.” His voice, when it came, carried none of the urgency she’d braced for — only a tiredness that sounded older than the conversation itself. “Main jaanta hoon tumhe aadat hai har cheez akele handle karne ki.”
Her hands went still in her lap.
*“Aur ye bhi maanta hoon,” he went on, “ki tum mujhse kahin zyaada acche se sambhal leti ho sab kuch. Lekin please—”
He stopped there, just long enough for the word to sit between them on its own, asking to be taken seriously before the rest of the sentence arrived to explain it.
“— ab main chahta hoon ki tum akele deal na karo. Main kuch handle kar paaoon ya na kar paaoon — kam se kam mujhe itna toh pata ho ki tum kis cheez se guzar rahi ho. Please, batao mujhe.”
She didn’t look up. Instead took her time folding up the newspapers with unnecessary care.
What struck her first wasn’t what he’d asked. It was that he’d asked it at all — out loud, in plain morning light, with no closed car or dark room to make it easier to say. The old Mihir would have let this sit unspoken for days, circling it in silence until it resolved on its own or curdled into something worse. This one had simply said it.
And there was something almost unbearable in being asked, this plainly, to do the one thing she had spent thirty-eight years training herself out of.
She thought of her own words to him in the car, the ones meant to spare him a single bad night — tumhare yeh sunne se kuch nahi badlega, sirf aur bigdega — and felt them turn over now in her own hands, aimed back at her. He hadn’t asked her for anything that would fix it. He’d only asked to be let into the room while it happened.
She didn’t answer right away.
When she finally did, she chose her words the way she used to choose jewelry for an evening — for what they would show, and just as carefully, for what they wouldn’t.
“Noina jab humari life mein aayi,” she said, “usne sabse pehle hum dono ko bahut achhe se samajh liya tha — taaki woh hamari har reaction ko manipulate kar sake.”
“Kal raat usne pehle tumhare gusse ka istemal karna chaha. Lekin jab usse laga ki tum ab uss tarah react nahi karte — poori tarah ignore kar rahe ho — toh usne pehli baar seedha mujhe nishana banaya.”
She looked at him directly then, for the first time since she’d sat down.
“Main nahi chahti,” she said, “ki hum dono apni zindagi mein uss aurat ko itni importance den ki uske baare mein isse zyaada baat karein.”
He nodded slowly at what she’d said — she could see him agreeing with the principle of it even as something in his jaw stayed unconvinced.
“Tum sahi kehti ho,” he said. “Hume usse itni jagah nahi deni chahiye.” A pause, his eyes not leaving her face. “Lekin phir bhi — bas bata do mujhe. Woh shabd, jo usne kahe the.”
She held his gaze for a moment longer than the question needed.
“Woh shabd,” she said, “mujhpe tab kaam karte, agar main tumhe ache se jaanti nahi hoti.”
She meant it as the end of the conversation. He could see that in her face — a small, hopeful stillness, as if she’d just handed him something solid enough to stand on.
It did the opposite.
Three things arrived almost together, too close behind one another to separate until afterward.
The first was simple, and stubborn. Knowing that her words hadn’t worked on Tulsi was not the same as knowing what they were. He was not going to feel settled until he did.
The second came with her own voice from the night before, returning whole, unasked for. *Main tumhe bacha rahi hoon, khud se.* She had been doing exactly that all morning — over a kaada cup handed to him before he could ask, over a newspaper she hadn’t read a word of. Protecting him from himself, one small deflection at a time, and never once calling it by its name.
The third arrived last, and stayed the longest.
*Main tumhe ache se jaanti nahi hoti.*
She knew him. That was her whole defense — she knew him too well for Noina’s words to find any purchase.
He too had known her practically all his life.
It had not been enough.
“Kaash!”
It escaped him before he could stop it — not even a full thought by then, just a sound, low and almost involuntary, the way a sound leaves you before you’ve decided to let it.
She looked up sharply.
He couldn’t hold her eyes. He found something else to look at instead — the garden, the koel that hadn’t stopped calling all morning — and made himself finish it anyway.
“Kaash mujh mein ye clarity hoti.”
She was confused for a moment — the word “kaash” landing somewhere she hadn’t expected, not yet attached to a meaning she could place. Then, slowly, it arranged itself.
He meant himself. He meant six and a half years ago when Noina manipulated him, and every year since that he hadn’t quite believed he deserved to be let back in.
She didn’t know what to do with this version of him — the one who no longer looked away from what he’d done. The one who insisted on carrying his share of things now. Thirty-eight years of one rhythm did not retrain itself in a single morning, and some old, tired part of her reached for the only response she had ready, which was to stop him before he went any further down this road by himself.
“Mihir… please.”
He didn’t answer that directly. He got up instead, the chair scraping once against the tile, and reached for the tray — the four cups, the newspaper she’d stopped pretending to read a while ago — gathering it the way a man gathers an excuse to leave a room before either of them has to say anything harder than they already have.
He paused before he’d taken a single step.
“Theek hai. Mat batao.” His voice had gone flat, careful, the way it went when he was working hard to keep something out of it. “Lekin mere dimaag mein yehi chalta rahega. Yehi sochta rahoonga ki mere baare mein aisa kuch kaha usne, ki ek pal ke liye hi sahi — tum itni zyaada disturb ho gayi.”
He turned toward the door.
“Woh sirf ek pal tha —“ she started.
He stopped mid-step, his back still to her.
“Tha toh sahi naa.”
He didn’t wait to hear what she might have said to that. He started walking again, the tray steady in his hands, his shoulders set the way they used to be set on nights he’d meant to disappear into the rest of the house until morning made things easier for both of them.
She was on her feet before she’d decided to be.
“Main isiliye nahi bata rahi,” she said, to his back, because that was the only way left to say it before he reached the door, “ki mujhe jis cheez ne sirf ek pal ke liye affect kiya — main jaanti hoon, ye tumhe usse kahin zyaada affect karega.”
He stopped.
For a moment he didn’t turn around — the tray still balanced in his hands, his back still to her. When he finally spoke, his voice had nothing careful left in it.
“Karne do, Tulsi.”
She sighed — a long, resigned breath, the kind that comes after deciding there’s no point anymore in holding shut a door that’s already been pushed open.
“Mihir par bharosa kar rahi ho?” Her voice had gone flat, almost reciting, as if saying it in monotone might drain some of what the words still carried. “I hope jab gusse mein tum pe haath uthaye ya dhakka de, tab outsiders na hon.”
The tray tilted in his hands. The cups rattled once, sharply, against each other.
She crossed the distance between them without deciding to, and took the tray from him — both hands closing around it where his had stopped being steady, her eyes searching his face the whole time she did it.
He wouldn’t meet them.
“Thank you,” he said, so quietly she almost lost it under the sound of the cups settling. “Batane ke liye.”
And then he was gone — past her, through the door, before she could set the tray down, before she could say his name again, before she could do anything at all with the concern still sitting on her face with nowhere to land.
By the time she came back inside, tray balanced carefully in her hands, he was already halfway up the stairs.
She stood there a moment in the doorway, watching the empty space where he’d been — the landing at the top, his door not yet closed behind him, the house starting to move above her.
She set the tray down on the kitchen counter without quite registering she’d done it, her hands already moving on to the next thing before the first task had properly finished.
She went to her room. The jewelry box was still where she’d left it the night before. Not that she really needed an excuse to go to that room, but she had meant to put it back even otherwise. She picked it up and started for the stairs.
Shobha was just coming out of her own room when Tulsi reached the top, phone still in one hand, a call she ended mid-sentence the moment she saw her mother’s face.
“Mumma?” Her eyes went to the box first, then down the hall — to Mihir’s door, closed. “Main rakh doon? Main waise bhi jaa rahi thi Papa ki dawai rakhne. Shayad khatam ho gayi hongi toh—”
“Nahi, main rakh deti hoon,” Tulsi said, too quickly, and watched it land — not the refusal itself, but the speed of it.
Shobha looked at her a second longer than the moment needed, then glanced once more at the closed door at the end of the hall, and didn’t ask the question that was clearly forming.
“Papa kal raat se thoda… disturbed lag rahe the,” she said instead, careful, leaving the sentence open enough for Tulsi to fill in or walk past. “Sab theek hai na?”
“Haan,” Tulsi said. “Bas baat karni hai unse.”
Shobha held her gaze a moment more, then stepped aside without another word, the kind of quiet that came from someone who’d learned long ago when to stop asking and just make room.
The door wasn’t locked. It never was — not since she’d come back.
He’d told her once, not too long ago, that for the six years Noina had lived in this house, he’d kept this door locked without exception — from the inside when he was in it, from the outside when he wasn’t — so that nothing of Noina’s ever crossed that threshold. It was, she understood, the one room in the house he’d managed to keep entirely hers, even through the years he believed he’d lost the right to call anything in it theirs.
Since she’d come back, he had never locked it again.
She pushed it open slowly enough that the sound of it wouldn’t announce her before she was ready to be seen, and found him exactly where she might have guessed, if she’d let herself guess.
He wasn’t crying. He wasn’t doing anything at all.
He sat on the edge of the bed with his back too straight, the posture of a man who’d forgotten to let it go even now, his hands resting open on his knees — not clenched, not reaching for anything, just open, the way you leave something out in plain sight once you’ve stopped trusting yourself to hold onto it.
She looked at his hands longer than she meant to. He didn’t look up at her, although she knew he had sensed her presence by now.
She set the jewelry box down on the dresser without quite registering where she’d put it, and crossed the room.
He didn’t move, even when she sat beside him on the edge of the bed. He didn’t move when she reached for his hands either.
She took them both in hers — not testing, not hesitating at any threshold, though some part of her recognized she could have, given what Noina had just handed her every excuse to feel. She simply took them, the way you take something that already belongs to you.
“Mihir.”
He still wouldn’t look at her.
“Main jaanti hoon tum kya soch rahe ho,” she said. “Lekin main yahan hoon. Aur mujhe in haathon se koi darr nahi hai. Kabhi nahi tha.”
For a moment nothing in him moved at all.
Then his hands turned in hers — not pulling away, but turning, until it was his fingers closing around hers instead of the other way around, his grip tighter than anything that had happened in this room in longer than either of them would say out loud.
His head came down. Not all at once — slowly, the way something finally gives after holding too long — until his forehead came to rest against the back of her hands, and she felt, more than heard, the breath that left him.
He didn’t say anything for a long time.
When he finally did, his voice had nothing careful left in it.
“Tumhe andaaza bhi nahi hai,” he said, “kitna darr lagta hai mujhe khud se. Apne inn haathon se.”
She let the quiet sit for as long as it needed to. There was a version of her, even now, that wanted to fill it — with something reassuring, something neat enough to close the conversation the way the kaada and the chai and the newspaper had all been meant to close it, minutes ago. She didn’t reach for that version of herself.
Instead she gently freed one of her hands and rested it against the back of his neck, where his head was still bent low over her other hand.
“Woh ek pal tha, Mihir,” she said. “Jo beet gaya. Zindagi beete hue palon mein nahi jee jaati.”
At length, he lifted his head.
His eyes met hers directly — fully, for the first time since “Kaash” had left him — and whatever he might have said instead arranged itself into a single word.
“Tulsi.”
It wasn’t her name the way he usually said it. It carried everything underneath it that hadn’t found its way into words yet — the night, the morning, the hands, all of it folded into two syllables, the way only certain people can make a name mean fifteen sentences at once.
The door banged open before either of them could move.
“Mujhe Dadu aur Baa ko apni drawing dikhaani hai!” Timsy announced, already halfway across the room, a sketchbook, held open in front of her like a flag.
Ritik appeared a step behind her, one hand half-raised in apology before he’d even fully entered. “Sorry, maine kaha tha thodi der ruk jao, lekin—”
“Koi baat nahi,” Tulsi said, already shifting on the bed to make room, her hand sliding from Mihir’s neck to rest, briefly, against his shoulder instead — a small handoff, not a withdrawal.
“Bachchon ko kabhi mat roka karo,” Mihir added, and there was something in his voice now that hadn’t been there a minute ago — something steadier, almost amused, the kind of recovery that didn’t erase what had just happened, only set it down gently to make room for what was here now.
Ritik nodded, “main shower lene jaa raha hoon.” And he left Tumsy with her grandparents.
Timsy was already climbing onto the bed between them, entirely unbothered by anything she might have walked in on, the sketchbook thrust toward them both at once.
“Yeh dekho!” she announced, flipping it open to a half-finished drawing of what looked like a peacock, mostly purple, one wing considerably larger than the other. “Maine khud banaya!”
“Arre, yeh toh bahut hi sundar hai!” Tulsi said, leaning in properly, one hand coming up to her own chest as if the drawing had genuinely moved her. “Itne saare colours, Timsy!”
Mihir took the sketchbook from her hands entirely, turning it this way and that with great seriousness, as though appraising a piece for auction. “Yeh wing dekho — kitna bada hai. Real peacock se bhi zyaada shaan se khada hai yeh.”
Timsy beamed, climbing half onto his lap to see it from his angle. “Usse udna hai na, Dadu. Isliye bada wing banaya maine.”
“You’re absolutely right beta,” Mihir said gravely, handing it back. “Logical bhi hai.”
Pleased beyond measure, she turned the page to show another — a sun with too many rays, a dog that was mostly legs — narrating each one in great detail, Tulsi and Mihir trading looks of exaggerated wonder over her head at every fresh masterpiece. And then, reaching to flip forward once more, her small hand overshot and the pages fell the wrong way instead — back into the sketchbook, not forward.
The page that came up was smudged through its center, the colors dragged sideways into each other until whatever had once been there was mostly gone, just a blur of multiple colors where a drawing used to be.
Timsy went quiet.
“Arre yeh kya hua, beta?” Mihir asked gently, his thumb resting at the corner of the damaged page.
Timsy’s chin dropped. “Mera rainbow tha. Sabse acha banaya tha maine — teacher ne bhi bola sabke saamne ki sabse best hai.” A pause, her voice getting smaller. “Phir Raina ne paani gira diya uss par. Jaan-boojhkar.”
“Jaan-boojhkar?” Tulsi repeated. Confirming.
Timsy nodded, not looking up. “Haan Baa. Kyunki teacher ne mujhe bahut praise kiya tha. Usse achha nahi laga.”
Mihir smoothed a hand once over Timsy’s hair. “Timsy, yeh bahut galat kiya usne. Mujhe bhi bura laga yeh sunke.”
“Mujhe bhi,” Tulsi said. “Tumne bahut achha banaya tha. Sirf isliye usne kharab kiya kyunki usse pasand nahi aaya ki sabne tumhe praise kiya.”
Timsy sniffed, still looking at the ruined page like it might fix itself if she stared long enough.
“Suno, Timsy, ek baat samjhaati hoon,”Tulsi said, taking her into her lap.
“Kya baa?” Timsy asked in a small voice looking down.
Tulsi tilted Timsy’s chin up gently with one finger, “jab Raina ne paani giraya tha — usne chaha tha ki tum sad ho jao. Right?”
Timsy nodded.
“Lekin yeh tum decide karti ho ki tum sad hogi ya nahi — Raina nahi. Agar tum bahut der tak sad rehti ho, toh woh jeet jaati hai. Lekin agar tum smile karke apna naya rainbow banati ho, aur uss pehle wale se bhi achha — toh woh haar jaati hai.”
Timsy considered this with the particular seriousness of a five-year-old deciding whether an idea was acceptable. “Naya rainbow banaungi. Pehle se bhi acha.”
“Ye hui naa baat. I’m proud of you Timsy,” Tulsi said kissing her forehead and looked up — not at Timsy anymore, but at Mihir.
“Kisi insaan ko,” she said, still holding his eyes, “khud ke upar itni power nahi deni chahiye ki woh decide kare hum happy hain ya sad. Woh chahegi humein sad dekhna. Lekin yeh humein decide karna hai — naa ki use.”
Mihir held her gaze a moment longer than the child’s conversation required.
He understood exactly what she was really saying.
-----
Breakfast, once they all made it downstairs, settled into the particular looseness that only happened on Sundays — no school bags by the door, no one checking the clock between bites. The four kids had invented some new game overnight that seemed to require the entire table’s participation, rules shifting every few minutes depending on who was winning, Akshay and Madhvi arguing good-naturedly over whose turn it actually was while Garima narrated the whole thing to anyone who’d listen. Gayatri Chachi presided over all of it from her end of the table with the specific patience of someone who had raised children through far louder mornings than this one. Shobha moved between the kitchen and the table refilling things no one had quite finished. For a while, it was simply a house being a house — nothing underneath any of it, or nothing that needed attending to just yet.
Breakfast had thinned out by the time Angad mentioned it — Daksha chachi was occupied with the four children in the sitting room who were amused with the story of Hanuman she was narrating to them today. The only ones who remained at the table were Mihir, Tulsi, and the ones with nowhere urgent to be. So they were relaxing with extra cups of chai.
“Aaj golf hai mera,” Angad said, mostly to his plate. “Naya member club mein — Vikram Mehta. Bank wala.”
Mihir looked up. “Vikram Mehta? Yeh toh usi bank ka manager hai jisme Noina ka loan hai.”
“Ji, Papa.”
“Tujhe pata haina kya karna hai?”
Angad set his cup down slowly. “Pata toh hai, Papa. Lekin pata nahi kar paaoonga ya nahi.” A small pause, the kind that came from genuinely not wanting to disappoint. “Aap hi chale jaate toh better rehta.”*
Mihir shook his head. “Nahi. Tu jaa. Mere jaane se woh formal ho jayega — businessman se businessman ki baat. Tu age-wise usse zyaada close hai. Game ke beech mein, casually baat karega — use lagega tu bas friendly chat kar raha hai, kuch maangne nahi aaya.”
He leaned forward slightly, lowering his voice though there was no one left at the table to hear it.
“Bas itna karna — kahin beech mein, bina kisi reason ke, mention kar dena ki Virani Industries ka ab Noina ya uske business se koi lena dena nahi raha. Aur phir, jaise tune koi gossip suna ho, ek dum casually bolna — suna hai usne kuch loans default kiye hain.”
Angad frowned. “Lekin Papa, Noina ne abhi tak koi default nahi kiya.”
“Mujhe pata hai.”
Angad looked at him for a moment, working it out. “Toh main jhoot bolun?”
“Tu khud apne confirmation se kuch nahi bolega,” Mihir said. “Bas ‘suna hai’ kahega. Itna kaafi hai. Uska poora business sirf ek cheez pe chal raha hai — goodwill. Hamara naam uske saath jud ke jo bharosa banta tha, ab woh khatam ho gaya hai. Bas usse thoda push karna hai ki bank apna naya assessment khud kare uske loans ka.”
He sat back.
“Hum jhoot nahi failaa rahe, Angad. Hum sirf itna kar rahe hain ki jis bank ko apna kaam karna chahiye tha shuru se, woh ab kare. Due diligence.”
Tulsi, who had been quiet through all of this, glanced at him — not disapproving, exactly, but watching him with something close to recognition. This was a different kind of steadiness than the one she’d seen an hour ago, upstairs. But it was still him deciding, finally, to use what he had instead of sitting with his hands open and useless.
Angad nodded slowly, the discomfort in his face giving way to something more settled. “Theek hai, Papa. Main try karunga.”
“Bas casually,” Mihir said again. “Jaise tujhe khud yaad nahi ki tu yeh kyun bol raha hai.”
-----
Mitali walked in toward the tail end of it, one hand still holding Timsy’s toy, and stood there a moment too long for it to be a normal entrance — her eyes moving from Angad to Mihir to the half-cleared table, her face giving nothing away.
Mihir saw her and didn’t try to hide what he’d been saying.*
*“Sorry, Mitali,” he said. “Mujhe pata hai woh tumhari Maasi hai. Lekin yeh karna padega. Maine use offer diya tha — apna stake Virani Industries mein chhod de, market value se teen guna zyaada keemat pe. Usne manaa kar diya. Ab humare paas koi aur raasta nahi bacha.”
Mitali’s expression didn’t change right away.
“Meri Maasi?” she said. “Meri koi Maasi nahi hai, Papa.”
The flatness in it stopped him for a second.
“Main toh kuch aur hi soch rahi thi,” she went on, before he could say anything to that.
“Kya soch rahi thi, beta?”
“Paanch minute mein batati hoon.” She was already turning toward the hallway. “Mom se baat kar loon pehle.”
She was gone longer than five minutes, though no one at the table seemed inclined to remark on it. When she came back, she went straight to Tulsi instead of Mihir.
“Maa,” she said. “Mom abhi aapko call karengi.”*
Tulsi barely had time to ask why before her phone rang.
Suchitra’s voice, when it came, carried the particular care of someone who’d rehearsed exactly what she wanted to say before dialing. “Tulsi ji,” she began apologetically “Maaf kijiyega agar itni subah disturb kar rahi hoon.”
“Nahi, nahi, Suchitra. Kya hua?”
A pause, as if she were still deciding, even now, exactly how to phrase it.
“Mitali ne bataya aap log kya karna chaah rahe hain. Agar isse koi help milti hai,” she said finally, “toh main Di — Noina — ke khilaaf case file karne ke liye taiyaar hoon. Uske business mein mera bhi stake hai. Main apna haq maangungi.”
“Suchitra,” Tulsi said, her voice gentling, “tumhe zarurat nahi hai aisa kuch karne ki. Woh tumhari behen hai.”
*There was a pause on the other end — not hesitation, but the particular stillness of someone who’d already moved past needing reassurance on this point.
“Tulsiji,” Suchitra said, “mujhe poori zindagi lag gayi samajhne mein ki woh kisi ki sagi nahi hai. Woh sirf logon ka istemaal karti hai.” A breath. “Usne toh Mitali tak ko apna mohra banaya tha.”
Tulsi looked up, across the table, at Mihir.
*“Ek minute, Suchitra,” she said, and pressed the speaker icon, setting the phone down between them on the table. “Mihir bhi yahan hain. Unhe bhi sunna chahiye yeh.”
She briefed Mihir on what Suchitra was offering to do.
“Suchitra.” Mihir’s voice gave away nothing — flat, businesslike, the same register he’d have used with anyone else offering something this large. “Yeh bahut bada step hai. Hum isse halke mein nahi le sakte.”*
“Ji, Mr. Virani. Mujhe pata hai,” Suchitra said. “Main soch samajh kar hi bol rahi hoon.”
“Theek hai.” A short pause, nothing in it. “Hum Gautam se baat karke tumhe call karte hain.”
He ended the call before she could say anything else, and looked at her phone for a moment rather than at anyone at the table.
Tulsi didn’t comment on how little he’d said. There was nothing to comment on — she’d known, walking into this, exactly how much of him Suchitra would get and how much he’d keep for himself.
He picked up his phone, scrolled, found the name, and put the phone on speaker again before setting it down between them.
Gautam answered on the second ring. “Dad?”
“Gomzi, sun ek legal advice chahiye - family ki baat hai isiliye office wale lawyer se poochna theek nahi lag raha.”
“Ji Dad, boliye?”
“Suchitra apni behen ke khilaaf case file karna chahti hai. Apna stake maangna chahti hai uske business mein. Usne apni properties aur investments sab kuch Noina ko de diya tha aur Noina ne apne business mein laga diya.”
There was a pause on the other end — the particular pause of a man putting his coffee down to actually listen.
“Okay.” A beat. “Pehle yeh bataiye — Suchitra ji ne apna sab kuch legally transfer kiya tha Noina ko? Registered, documented, sab kuch proper?”
“Haan.”
“Then her case is going to be the harder one to win, Dad. She’ll have to prove the transfer itself was wrongful — undue influence, misrepresentation, something along those lines. It’s doable, but it’s slow, and Noina’s lawyers will fight every inch of it.”
He went quiet for a moment, long enough that someone might have thought the line had dropped.
“Wait,” he said slowly, almost to himself. “Yeh property — originally toh Suchitra ji ke husband ki thi, na? Unki estate ka hissa?”
“Haan.”
*“Toh ek minute.” Another pause, the sound of him working something out in real time. “Jab Suchitra ji ne yeh sab transfer kiya — uss waqt Mitali kitni badi thi? Was she even an adult yet?”
The table went still.
Mitali leaned toward the phone. “Bhaiya, Mitali here.” A small breath. “Haan, main uss waqt minor thi.”
“Okay.” Something had shifted in Gautam’s voice now — less thinking aloud, more certainty arriving. “Then this changes everything. If the property was part of your father’s estate, you were a legal heir to it the moment he passed — regardless of what your mother chose to do with her own share later. Suchitra ji giving away her portion, fine, that was hers to give. But your portion — if no one ever asked you, if you were a minor and couldn’t have consented even if they had — that was never legally Suchitra’s to hand over. That’s not her case to make. That’s yours.
“Matlab?” Mihir asked.
“Matlab Mitali ko prove karne ki zaroorat hi nahi padegi ki Noina ne fraud kiya, manipulate kiya, kuch bhi. She can make a direct, clean claim — this was my inheritance, no one asked me, I never received it. No need to prove intent. Much stronger case than Suchitra’s, and much faster.”
One by one, they looked at Mitali.
She held all of their eyes for a moment, then straightened slightly. “I am ready to do whatever needs to be done, bhaiya,” she said. “Bataiye kya karna hai mujhe.”
“Theek hai,” Gautam said. “Main pehle papers banwata hoon. You just read them properly and sign — baaki hum dekh lenge.”
“Okay, bhaiya.”
The call with Gautam ended a few minutes later, the practicalities settled — papers, signatures, a date by which things would be ready. Mitali went off to find Timsy, still visibly adjusting to the shape of what had just been handed to her.
Tulsi waited until the table had mostly cleared before she called Suchitra back.
The conversation was brief and practical — what Gautam had said, what would happen next, what Suchitra needed to have ready. Suchitra’s relief came through even in the short replies, the particular relief of someone who had spent years being the only adult managing her own uncertainty and had just been told she wouldn’t have to anymore.
Tulsi let the call wind down naturally, and then, instead of ending it, she got up from the table and walked toward the far corner of the room, lowering her voice slightly — not for secrecy, exactly, just for room.
“Suchitra, ek baat poochni thi tumse. Kuch din pehle maine Mitali se poocha tha ki usse kis field mein interest hai, career ke liye. Usne mujhe abhi tak jawab nahi diya.” A small pause. “Mujhe lag raha hai shayad woh kisi reason se hesitate kar rahi hai. Tum bata sakti ho kya, use kya pasand hai?”
There was a silence on the other end, longer than the question seemed to need.
“Tulsiji—” Suchitra’s voice, when it came, had something heavier in it than the rest of the call had carried. “Mujhe sharam aa rahi hai yeh kehte hue. Hum dono — main aur Mitali — Di pe itna dependent the, iss hadd tak unke itne mohre ban gaye the, ki kabhi humne socha hi nahi uske career ke baare mein. Woh bas… aimless thi. Use sirf dress up karna pasand tha. Aur ek-do baar modeling ki thi, time pass ke liye.”
Tulsi went quiet for a moment.
“Time pass?” she repeated, gently, but not letting it pass.
“Haan — bas yunhi. Kabhi seriously nahi liya humne.”
“Lekin usne enjoy kiya karte hue?”
A pause. “Haan, enjoy toh kiya.” Suchitra still wasn’t taking the question anywhere near as far as Tulsi already had. “Lekin Tulsiji, woh Virani family ki bahu hai ab. Modeling — woh sab toh—” She didn’t finish the sentence, as if the impossibility of it was too obvious to need stating.
Tulsi looked out across the room — at Mitali’s empty chair, the table still scattered with the morning’s plates, the whole ordinary Sunday continuing around her — and something settled in her with the particular quiet certainty she reserved for decisions she didn’t intend to revisit once made.
“Mujhe nahi lagta,” she said, “ki yeh kisi cheez ko rokne ki wajah honi chahiye.”
The driver, Vijay appeared at the edge of the dining room, a small card held between two fingers, his manner the particular carefulness of staff returning something they suspect might matter more than they can tell.
“Sir, car saaf kar raha tha toh yeh mila.”
Mihir took it. “Thank you, Vijay.”
He didn’t recognize it at first — turned it over once, then looked again, and felt something in his chest tighten with recognition before his mind had even finished placing the name.
The historian’s card. It must have slipped from her purse last night, sometime in those few unbearable minutes between Noina’s parting words and the silence that swallowed the rest of the drive — neither of them in any state to notice something as small as a card sliding loose onto the floor of the car.
The one person he’d been meaning to track down himself, ever since the conclave — and through entirely the wrong channels, most likely, an institute’s general line, an assistant who’d take a message and forget it by lunch. This was the man’s personal number, sitting here in his hand because of nothing more than an accident of where it had fallen.
4th April wasn’t far now. He needed to call this morning, not next week, not after some office finally returned a message.
He took out his phone and photographed the card quickly, both sides, before the thought could get away from him.
Tulsi was still in the corner, the phone at her ear, her voice low and steady with whatever she was telling Suchitra. He crossed to her and simply held the card out where she could see it, not interrupting, waiting for her eyes to find it.
She glanced down mid-sentence, and something flickered across her face — recognition arriving a beat behind the surprise of seeing it at all.
He mouthed silently, *car me gir gaya tha.* She took it with a small nod of thanks, and he stepped away, leaving her to finish her call.
Mihir stepped out onto the verandah before dialing.
Dr. Joshi answered on the third ring, and his apology arrived before Mihir had even finished introducing himself properly and expressed a desire to meet him.
“Mr. Virani, I’m so sorry — main abhi thoda tied up hoon, aur aaj raat ko ek paanch din ki trip pe nikal raha hoon. Agle hafte tak—”
“Main samajh sakta hoon,” Mihir said. “Lekin yeh thoda urgent hai meri taraf se. Abhi aap kahan hain?”
A small pause, as if the directness of the question had caught Dr. Joshi slightly off guard. “Abhi Juhu ke ek cafe mein meri meeting hai. Wahin ja raha hoon.”
“Aap mujhe iss cafe address forward kar dijiye,” Mihir said. “Main wahin aa jaata hoon. Aapki meeting khatam hone ke baad hum baat kar lenge — aapke paas jitna bhi time ho.”
He went upstairs at something close to a run, changed quickly into formals, and pulled the briefcase down from the top of the cupboard — the one that had been quietly filling for weeks now, papers from Anjaar, the notes Vaishnavi had sent, photographs he hadn’t shown anyone. He quickly put in his tablet, the folder beside it, and shut the case.
Tulsi was still near the dining table when he came back down, the historian’s card sitting forgotten beside her plate.
“Main nikal raha hoon,” he said. “Kuch important kaam hai. Lunch tak aa jaunga.”
She looked up, faintly surprised at the formals, the briefcase, the speed of it — but whatever questions she might have asked, she didn’t. “Theek hai. Dhyan se jaana.”
He was out the door before she’d finished saying it.
Tulsi looked at the closed door for a moment longer than the moment warranted, the card still sitting beside her plate, half-forgotten now under this newer, smaller mystery. Mihir rushing anywhere on a Sunday morning, in formals, with a briefcase, was unusual enough to register — but not unusual enough, today of all days, to chase. She filed it away the way she filed most things she intended to ask about later, and went back to clearing the table.
-----
The golf course was nearly empty at this hour, the morning still cool enough to be comfortable, dew not yet burned off the fairway. Angad found Vikram Mehta already at the first tee, club in hand, exactly as friendly and unguarded as a man who didn’t yet know he was being worked.
“Angad! Aap time pe aa gaye.” Vikram extended a hand, easy and warm. “Mujhe laga Sunday subah koi nahi aana chahega.”
“Golf ke liye toh hamesha time hai,” Angad said, matching the ease, and they fell into step toward the first hole.
They played the first few holes the way two men do when they’re still working out whether they actually like each other or are simply being polite — small talk about handicaps, a mutual acquaintance at the club, Vikram’s complaints about a slow Monday ahead. Angad let it run its course, kept his own swing loose, didn’t force anything.
They played the next hole without either of them talking, Vikram’s drive a little wide of where he usually placed it, though he didn’t seem to notice the slip himself.
It was Vikram who picked the conversation thread back up, somewhere around the sixth tee, his tone careful in the way of someone choosing to ask something he wasn’t sure he should.
“Angad, ek baat poochun? Maine suna tha — Virani Industries mein kuch problems chal rahe the, kuch mahine pehle. Sab theek ho gaya?”
“Bilkul theek,” Angad said, and meant the easiness of it. “Ek baar humne infected limb ko identify kar liya aur amputate kar diya, uske baad se recovery bahut achhi rahi hai.”
Vikram raised an eyebrow, half-amused. “Amputated infected limb? Itna serious tha?”
Angad laughed a little at himself. “Sorry, galat analogy thi. Termite kehna chahiye tha shayad — jo dheere dheere foundation ke andar ghus jaata hai, aur upar se dikhta bhi nahi, jab tak bahut der nahi ho jaati.”
“Termite,” Vikram repeated, lining up his shot now, only half-listening in the way you do when you’re concentrating on something else. “Kaisa termite?”
Angad waited until the swing was done, the ball already in the air, before he answered — letting the timing do some of the work for him.
“Noina Sarabhai,” he said. “Aapne naam suna hoga shayad.”
Vikram turned fully now, the club resting against his shoulder. “Suna hi nahi — kal hi suna tha. Mera ek friend hai, doosre bank mein hai. Usne mention kiya — koi loan consider kar rahe the unke liye. Unhone bola tha ki unke peechhe Virani Industries ka strong backing hai.”
Something shifted in Angad’s face — not performed, or not only performed, since the audacity of it was genuinely irritating regardless of how useful it was turning out to be in this exact moment. “Itne mahine ho gaye, aur woh abhi bhi yeh kehti phir rahi hai?” He shook his head. “Hadd hai.”
“Toh sach mein koi connection nahi hai?” Vikram asked, and there was something more attentive in it now, the easy golf-course tone thinning slightly underneath. He was now seriously concerned about the timely repayment of his own bank’s loan to Noina which was a considerable amount.
“Bilkul nahi. Humne formally clarify bhi kiya tha kuch logon ko, jab humein pata chala ki woh humara naam use kar rahi hai.” Angad picked up his own club, unhurried. “Waise bhi — uski financial situation thodi shaky lag rahi hai aajkal. Suna hai kuch loans default kiye hain usne, recently.”
He said it the way he’d say anything mildly interesting and not especially his concern, and bent to set up his next shot before Vikram could ask him to say more.
-----
The cafe was the kind Juhu specialized in — glass-fronted, determinedly minimal, the sort of place that served filter coffee in cups too small for the price. Mihir found a table within sight of Dr. Joshi’s, ordered something he had no real intention of finishing, and waited.
He didn’t try to catch the man’s eye. Dr. Joshi was deep in conversation with two younger people, papers spread between them, the unmistakable posture of someone three sentences from politely ending a meeting that had already gone on slightly too long. Mihir let him finish properly — no hovering, no impatience visible on his face, though he checked the time more than once without quite meaning to.
It was nearly twenty minutes before Dr. Joshi rose, shook both their hands, and turned toward Mihir’s table with an expression caught somewhere between apology and faint curiosity.
“Mr. Virani.” He extended his hand. “I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting.”
“Please, no need to apologize.” Mihir shook it, and gestured to the chair opposite. “Aapne time diya, uske liye thank you.”
Dr. Joshi sat, glancing briefly at the briefcase already open on the table between them — the folder, the tablet, photographs fanned slightly at one edge. “You came prepared.”
“Main chahta tha aap khud dekh len,” Mihir said. “Sunne se zyaada.”
He talked him through it without rushing — Anjaar, the workshop, the photographs, the notes Vaishnavi had compiled, his own in-depth research notes and the figures on his tablet, the scope of what he had in mind. Dr. Joshi listened the way Mihir imagined he listened to everything, without interrupting, occasionally turning a photograph slightly toward the light.
When he’d finished, Mihir sat back.
“Kya aap kar sakte hain yeh?”
Dr. Joshi didn’t answer immediately. He set the photograph down, aligned it carefully with the others, and looked up.
“You already have everything you need here,” he said. “The material, the access, clearly research already done. Why do you need me at all?”
“Main nahi chahta ki mera naam iske saath jud ke Tulsi ki achievements ko overshadow kare,” Mihir said. “Agar yeh mere through aaye, log usse hamesha — Mihir Virani ki wife ka project — kehkar dekhenge. Aapke through aaye, toh yeh sirf uska kaam hoga.”
“Again — why me, specifically.” Dr. Joshi’s tone wasn’t unkind, only precise. “You’re a resourceful man, Mr. Virani. I’m sure there are people who’d be more than happy to go out of their way to oblige you.”
“Unke paas aapki credentials nahi hongi. Aapki credibility nahi hogi.”
Something flickered in Dr. Joshi’s expression — not quite offense, but close enough to its edge that he let it show. “In that case, you should also know — I built whatever credibility I have by not pandering to industrialists, Mr. Virani. Not by doing their bidding.”
Mihir took a moment before answering, turning the thought over rather than rushing past it.
“Aur main aapse yeh expect bhi nahi kar raha,” he said finally. “Main professionally aapki itni izzat karta hoon ki main kabhi nahi chahunga aap kisi ke kehne pe kuch karen. Meri wife ki achievements bhi itni badi hain ki unhe kisi ke favour se justify karne ki zaroorat nahi honi chahiye.” He paused. “Yeh ek request hai. Aur mera maanna hai — agar aap iska independent assessment karenge — toh aapko khud lagega yeh ek worthy subject hai. Kal raat aapki baaton se mujhe yehi laga tha.”
Dr. Joshi didn’t answer right away. He sat back slightly, one hand resting on the table near the photographs without touching them, weighing something out before he let it become words.
“Agar main karta hoon,” he said finally, “agar — main abhi kuch promise nahi kar raha. Lekin agar main yeh karta hoon, toh yeh poori tarah mere terms par hoga. Aapke nahi.”
“Matlab?” Mihir asked.
“Matlab — main dekh sakta hoon aapne saari relevant information collect kar li hai. Saara research kar liya hai.” He gestured slightly toward the folder. “Lekin agar main yeh karta hoon, mujhe apna independent research karna hoga. Tulsiji ka interview bhi lena hoga.”
“Haan, main aapse isse kam kuch expect bhi nahi kar raha hoon.” A small pause, and then Mihir said the rest of it more carefully than anything he’d said so far. “Lekin main aapse request karunga ki unka interview na len. Aur agar ho sake — please — unhe yeh mat bataiye ki hum mile the, ya main iske peeche hoon. Bilkul bhi. Agar possible ho.”
Dr. Joshi looked at him for a moment the way you look at someone who has just said something that doesn’t follow from anything before it.
Mihir felt the awkwardness of his own request before the other man had even said anything. “Ek toh — main nahi chahta unhe yeh pata chale ki main iske peeche hoon. Isse unki apni nazron mein bhi unki achievement kam ho jayegi.” He paused, choosing the next part more deliberately. “Aur mujhe pata hai yeh recognition unhe yun bhi mil jaata, mere kuch bhi kiye bina. Main presumptuous nahi banna chahta, lekin mujhe lagta hai aap khud bhi kabhi na kabhi yeh karte.”
Another pause, longer this time. “Lekin ek wajah hai ki main yeh abhi karna chahta hoon. Unka birthday hai 4th April ko. Aur main aise kisi se kuch personal share nahi karta, normally. Lekin hamari private life pichle kuch dino se ek media circus ban chuki hai, toh aapko shayad pata hi hoga — maine unke saath chhe birthdays miss kiye hain. Toh main koshish kar raha hoon ki yeh wala unke liye extra special ho.”
For a moment, Dr. Joshi said nothing.
Then he smiled — small, unhurried. “Aap presumptuous nahi the, Mr. Virani. Bilkul nahi.” He leaned back. “Maine aapko bataya tha na — main paanch din ki trip pe ja raha hoon. Asal mein, main Kutch jaa raha hoon. Aur main Tulsiji ko call karne ka soch hi raha tha — unke Anjaar workshop dekhne ke liye. Shayad mere dimaag mein bhi yehi tha, kahin na kahin. Lekin main shayad ek-do mahine baad hi actively kaam shuru karta iss par.” He paused. “Toh main yeh karna chahta hoon — aapke liye nahi, balki kyunki Bandhej mujhe khud genuinely interest karta hai. Sirf ek problem hai — time bahut kam hai. Aur itni jaldi publish karwana — yeh apne aap mein ek bada challenge hoga.”
“Main aapki credibility ko undermine nahi karna chahta, naa hi apna influence flaunt karna chahta hoon,” Mihir said, “lekin main pehle se hi Trade & Industry Gazette se baat kar raha hoon, usi date ke liye.”
Something passed behind Dr. Joshi’s eyes that didn’t reach his face — the quiet, almost reluctant recognition of a man realizing the opportunity in front of him was larger than anything he was likely to be offered through his own usual channels. The Gazette wasn’t a publication he could simply walk into. He was, after all, only human, and a byline like that did things for a career that twenty years of careful, principled work sometimes couldn’t.
He didn’t say any of that aloud.
“Itne kam time mein main research kaise karunga,” he said instead, “aur Tulsiji se toh kuch poochh bhi nahi sakta. Aapke research pe main apna kaam kaise karoon?”
There was the smallest hesitation behind the question — not about the timeline, but about the shape of it. Building his name on top of someone else’s groundwork sat awkwardly against everything he’d said earlier about not pandering, not riding anyone’s coattails.
“Mere research ko aap base le lijiye,” Mihir said. “Aur aap bataiye kab workshop dekhna chahenge — wahan Aarti hai incharge. Uske saath main coordinate kar deta hoon, aur use keh doonga saare logon ko taiyaar rakhe, taaki aap usi visit mein sabse baat kar saken. Aarti ka number main aapko forward kar deta hoon. Aur Mumbai mein Vaishnavi hai — usse evening mein baat kar sakte hain. Din mein uske Tulsi ke saath hone ki possibility zyaada hai.”
Dr. Joshi held the hesitation a moment longer — turning over, perhaps, whether three days of someone else’s fieldwork could still leave room for the assessment to genuinely be his own — and then let it go.
“Theek hai,” he said. “Main karunga.”
Mihir quickly took his email address and promised to send each and every information, detail and photograph he had gathered during his Anjaar trip promptly to him, along with Aarti and Vaishnavi’s contact numbers.
Dr. Joshi began gathering his things, the conversation visibly closing in his manner, the brisk efficiency of a man with a lot of work to wrap up before catching a flight or a train at night.
Mihir stood with him. “Dr. Joshi.” He extended his hand, and held it a beat longer than a usual handshake. “Aapka shukriya ada karne ke liye mere paas alfaaz kam hain. Aap nahi jaante yeh mere liye kitna matter karta hai.”
Dr. Joshi shook his hand properly, taking the thanks the way he seemed to take most things — without excess, but without dismissing it either.
Then, just as he turned to go, something in his face eased into something less guarded than anything he’d shown all morning.
“Waise,” he said, almost to himself, a small smile returning. “Main bhi ek husband hoon, Mr. Virani.”
He didn’t explain it further. He didn’t need to.
And then he was gone, briefcase in hand, out into the Juhu morning, leaving Mihir alone at the table with the photographs still spread in front of him and a feeling he hadn’t let himself have in longer than he could say.
One part of it, then, was more or less settled. The person who decided which dates the Gazette filled with what content had already promised to call him Tuesday to finalize it — a formality at this point, nothing left that could meaningfully go wrong.
The second part of the birthday surprise still waited on tomorrow. The senior officials at the Institute for Enterprise & Heritage Studies were meeting him in the morning, and whatever they decided would shape the rest of it. He gathered the photographs back into the folder, careful with the corners, and allowed himself, for the length of that small task, to simply hope it would go well.
-----
Lunch was loud in the way Sunday lunches always were once all four kids converged on the same table — Akshay and Timsy arguing over a piece of paneer that neither of them had wanted five minutes earlier, Garima narrating her own meal to no one in particular, and Madhvi, perched on her knees on the chair so she could reach properly, deep in some elaborate story about a friend at school who, in her telling, owned an actual elephant.
“Sach mein, Dadu! Usne bola tha!”
“Sach mein?” Mihir said, with the particular gravity of a man giving a five-year-old’s claim the full weight it deserved. “Elephant ko school le ke aati hai woh?”
“Nahi, ghar pe rakhti hai.” Madhvi considered this correction necessary and important. “Lekin usne dikhaya photo.”
“Toh phir sach hi hoga,” Mihir said, and Madhvi, satisfied, returned to her food with the air of someone whose case had been properly heard.
Tulsi, sitting next to him, watched this without quite meaning to make a study of it. There was something different in him today, something that had crept in sometime between the briefcase and now — not the careful steadiness she’d seen at the conclave last night, the desperation during the return car ride and the balcony this morning or the rawness from this morning’s room upstairs, but something lighter than either. He laughed at something Akshay said that wasn’t even particularly funny. He let Madhvi correct him twice about elephant ownership without minding it at all.
She hadn’t seen him this unguarded over a meal in longer than she could easily place.
It was only once the table had cleared, the kids scattered off toward their afternoon, that she found a quiet moment to ask.
“Aaj subah kahan gaye the tum?”
Something in him shifted instantly — not panic, but the visible scramble of a man who has been enjoying himself enough to forget, briefly, that a question like this was coming.
“Bas — kuch kaam tha,” he said. “Office se related.”*
“Sunday ko? Formals pehen ke?”
“Haan, woh — thoda important tha.” He reached for his water glass with more purpose than the moment required. “Kuch khaas nahi.”
*Important* and *Khaas nahi* in the same breath didn’t make sense to her.
She watched him drink half of it in one go, his eyes finding the window, the door, anything that wasn’t her face. It was, she thought, almost endearing — this man who could face down a boardroom of shareholders without blinking, completely unable to hold a simple lie in front of her for more than ten seconds.
“Theek hai,” she said finally, letting him have it, though the smallest curve at the corner of her mouth gave away that she’d noticed exactly how much he was hiding and had simply chosen, for now, not to chase it.
He exhaled — visibly, gratefully — and didn’t risk saying anything else on the subject at all.
-----
By evening, the house had settled into its usual quiet, the kind that came after a full Sunday had finally run its course. Mihir was in the sitting room when his phone rang, Karan’s name on the screen, and he picked up before the second ring.
“Karan.”
“Papa.”
Something in his voice told Mihir he was calling for something specific. He moved to the corner of the room and waited.
“Socha aapko update de doon,” Karan said at length.
“Haan beta, bol.”
“Kuch kaam shuru kar diya hai maine. Logon se baat ki hai — discreetly — Noina ke business ki financial health ke baare mein doubt plant karna shuru kiya hai. Bas casual conversations, koi direct allegation nahi. Aur—” a small pause, the sound of someone double-checking before saying the rest, “—uske kuch angel investors se bhi baat ki hai. Unhe encourage kiya hai apna funding thoda reconsider karne ke liye. Ya kam se kam terms tighten karne ke liye.”
Mihir was quiet for a moment, looking out at the garden, the same view that had held his anger the night before and his fear that morning, now simply holding this — the slow, careful sound of something finally beginning to close in on her from every direction at once.
“Achha kiya,” he said.
“Abhi sirf shuruaat hai,” Karan said. “Lekin agar sab plan ke mutabik chala — toh agle kuch hafton mein woh khud apne loans manage karne mein struggle karegi. Bina kisi ne ek bhi jhoot bole.”
Mihir thought, briefly, of Angad on a golf course that morning, of the same quiet, deniable pressure being applied from a different direction entirely, and felt something settle in him that hadn’t fully settled since last night.
“Theek hai,” he said. “Tum apna kaam karte raho. Hum yahan apna karte rahenge.”
-----
The balcony was already lit by the time he came out, two cups of chamomile balanced carefully in his hands, and Tulsi was already there — settled into her usual chair, her face turned toward the garden the way it always was at this hour.
No greeting or nod this time. He simply crossed to her and held one of the cups out, and she took it without looking up right away, the gesture passing between them as easily as breathing.
He sat.
“Shaam ko Karan ka call aaya tha,” he said, after a moment. “Usne logon se baat karni shuru kar di hai — discreetly. Doubt plant kar raha hai Noina ke business ki health ke baare mein. Aur uske kuch angel investors se bhi baat ki hai — unhe encourage kiya apna funding reconsider karne ke liye.”
Tulsi turned the cup slightly in her hands, watching the steam rise off it. “Toh sab plan ke mutabik chal raha hai.”
“Abhi sirf shuruaat hai. Lekin haan.”
She nodded, and let the subject settle, the way both of them had learned to let things settle without needing to chase them further than was useful for one evening.
They drank in a quiet that had become, over these last weeks, its own kind of company — neither of them needing to fill it, the garden doing what it did at this hour, the day finally loosening its hold on both of them.
It was a while before she spoke again.
“Kal raat,” she said, careful, almost idle, “tum baar baar indigo vat ka zikr kar rahe the. Conclave mein.”
He didn’t answer immediately, and she went on, watching him now rather than the garden.
“Mujhe achha laga, sach kahun toh. Lekin hairaani bhi hui — woh process toh sirf Anjaar workshop mein hota hai, bahut specific tarike se. Tumhe kaise pata?”
“Yaad nahi,” he said, a beat too quickly, reaching for his cup though he’d just set it down. “Shayad kisi se suna tha. Ya — Ritik ne suna hoga factory mein, kisi se, aur usne mujhe bataya hoga.”
The casualness of it sat slightly wrong, like a shirt buttoned one hole off. She didn’t say anything right away — just held the thought, turning it the way she turned most things, without rushing toward where it might lead.
She was still turning it over when he spoke again, his tone shifting entirely.
“Waise,” he said, “tumhare andar ka ACP Pradyuman aajkal kuch zyaada hi active nahi ho gaya?”
“Inactive hua hi kab tha,” she said, without thinking, the words out before she’d decided to let them be funny.
And then she laughed — properly, the kind that arrived before she could manage it into something smaller, her head tipping back slightly, her eyes catching the balcony light in a way that made the whole evening feel suddenly less heavy than it had been a minute ago.
He didn’t look away.
Not the way he had in Bangalore when she had smiled, in that restaurant, his eyes finding the floor the moment hers found his. He held it now — her laugh, her face, the whole unguarded shape of her — like a man who had just been handed exactly what he’d spent the entire day quietly working toward, without her ever knowing she was the one giving it to him.
A few more days, he thought. That was all this needed to hold.
But each one of those days would ask something of him that no part of him found easy — to keep something this large folded out of her sight, without ever letting her feel the fold itself. Without letting her mistake his secrecy for distance, or worse, for something he simply couldn’t bring himself to face, the way he’d once kept so many things from her by saying nothing at all and calling it protection.
This was not that. He needed her to never, even for a moment, think it was.
Here’s a draft — feel free to tell me to dial the tone up or down, or trim it:
-----
**Author’s Note:**
This was a long one, and an emotional one to write — Chapter 33 took TuHir through a real reckoning, and I hope it landed the way I intended it to. From the jewellery box to the balcony, from Suchitra and Mitali finally claiming something for themselves, to a certain historian’s involvement in something Mihir’s been planning quietly since Anjaar — there’s a lot here, and a lot more coming.
If you’ve been reading along, please do drop a comment letting me know what stayed with you. I know the read counts on this story have been generous, and I’m endlessly grateful for that — but comments are what actually tell me whether something worked, what you’re hoping for next, what broke your heart a little. Even a line or two means a lot more than you’d think.
Thank you for sticking with Tulsi and Mihir this far. Chapter 34 is already taking shape — see you all soon.
— ElitePerfumer
Pushpa Impossible
21