TuHir FF:Never Your Wife Again! Ch-39 on p-72: Seen & Invisible - Page 72

Next chapter by around 1 pm today

edited -

Sorry the editing and proofreading is taking longer than expected- may doze off for a bit while doing it - but chapter will definitely be here by 4.30 or so

Chapter 39: Seen & Invisible

She came out to the balcony with the tray balanced in both her hands — two kaadas, two teas, and, wedged between the cups without her quite meaning to hide it there, Gayatri Chachi’s envelope.

They exchanged *Jai Shree Krishna* and Mihir reached to take the tray from her, the way he always did, and stopped. “Yeh?”

“Gayatri Chachi ne birthday pe diya tha.” She said before he could ask again, not quite meeting his eyes. “Kaha tha — aaram se, jab time mile tab kholna. Mujhe time hi nahi mila ab tak.”

It had been sitting in her desk drawer for days. She’d seen it again only that morning, after her shower, looking for something else entirely — and the guilt of it, unopened, tucked away and forgotten, had followed her out here.

“Aaj kitchen mein jaana allowed nahi hai mujhe, breakfast banne tak,” she said. “Toh socha — aaj dekh lete hain, saath mein.”

“Allowed nahi hai?” Mihir’s eyebrows went up. “Kisne roka?”

“Damini aur Shobha ne.” She almost smiled. “Bachche Damini se treat maang rahe the, toh woh cupcakes aur cheese crepes bana rahi hai. Boli hai — hum sabke liye bhi kuch banayegi.”

“Damini bachchon ki favourite chachi-mami ban gayi hai, aate hi.”

“Haan.” Tulsi’s smile came properly now. “Lekin Gautam ab bhi thoda awkward hai bachchon ke saath.”

“Pata hai.” Mihir laughed, reaching for his kaada. “Kai baar toh samajh hi nahi paata bachchon ki baaton ka jawab kaise de. Socho — court mein judges ke kitne pecheeda sawaalon ke jawab deta hoga, aur yahaan bilkul speechless ho jaata hai.”

She was still laughing when he picked up the envelope, turning it once in his hands before tearing it open along the top.

It struck him, briefly, that this had been meant for her alone — Chachi’s words, private between two women — and that she was letting him in anyway, without making anything of it.

Then, instead of reaching inside himself, he held it out to her.

She emptied it into her lap.

Papers slid out in a loose, uneven cascade — some pieces small as postcards, some the full spread of an A4 sheet, every size between. Fifty, sixty of them, she couldn’t tell at a glance, all catching the morning light at once.

Neither of them said anything for a moment.

Then the breeze that had been idling around the balcony all morning picked up properly, and a corner sheet lifted clean off her lap — Mihir’s hand came down over it before it could go further, and between the two of them they gathered the rest, pinning the whole loose stack flat beneath the tray, cups and all.

It was Tulsi who spotted it first — a smaller envelope, tucked flat between two of the larger sheets, easy to miss. She slid it free.

*Ise last mein kholna — Gayatri*, it said, in Chachi’s looping hand.

She turned it over once, then set it aside, under the corner of the tray with the rest, and let it wait.

The first sheet she picked up was in a handwriting she didn’t recognize — small, careful letters, a little unpracticed.

*Tulsi Bhabhi, aapko yaad hai ya nahi pata nahi, lekin jab meri saas mujhe roz taane deti thi khaana banane ko lekar, aap hi thi jisne mujhe apni rasoi mein bithaya tha aur sikhaya tha ki khaana sirf swaad ka kaam nahi, dhairya aur pyaar se bhi banaya jaata hai…

She read it twice before she looked up.

“Yeh kaun—”

“Padho,” Mihir said, quiet, already reaching for the next sheet himself.

She didn’t recognize the second name either, or the third. A man who wrote, in blunt half-sentences, that she was the only person in the whole colony who hadn’t turned him away when his shop burned down and he’d needed a loan no bank would give him. A postcard, the writing skewed and uneven due to age, from someone who only signed themselves *aapki purani padosan* — thanking her for sitting with her through three nights when her husband was in the ICU, years and years ago, when Tulsi herself had her hands full and had barely any time to spare.

A cousin she remembered only vaguely, writing that Tulsi’s one phone call had stopped a wedding from being called off over a dowry dispute — that she still didn’t know what Tulsi had said to the girl’s in-laws, only that it had worked.

Mihir had gone still beside her, a sheet held loosely in his hand, not reading it anymore.

“Tulsi.” His voice had changed. “Yeh sab log—”

“Mujhe yaad bhi nahi hai inme se kai logon ka,” she said, and it came out smaller than she meant it to. “Yeh… itne saalon mein, itne log…”

She picked up another. Then another. The same shape to nearly all of them, however different the trouble — someone stuck, someone frightened, someone with nowhere left to go, and somewhere in the story, without fanfare, without her even remembering it now, Tulsi.

Mihir picked up a sheet with a slight frown, angling it to catch better light.

“Surat se hai.” He read a line, then another, and something shifted in his face. “Parul Bhabhi ka hai yeh — Baapji ki bahu.”

Tulsi went still.

“Us din agar aap apni saree nahi deti,” he read aloud, slower now, “toh meri nanad rooth kar chali jaati, aur mere iklaute bete ki shaadi ki yaadein hamesha ke liye kharab ho jaati. Main aapko kabhi bata nahi paayi yeh, Tulsi Bhabhi, lekin uss ehsaan ko main zindagi bhar nahi bhoolungi.”

He lowered the sheet.

“Yeh kaunsi saree ki baat hai Tulsi.”

Tulsi didn’t answer right away.

She remembered the room they’d been given — remembered bringing a very tearful Parul to that room, the nanad already halfway to her room to pack her bags.

Remembered opening her own suitcase, not thinking, not deciding, already reaching for the saree she’d packed for herself to wear at the wedding itself.

“Woh saree jo main uss shaadi mein pehenne ke liye leke gayi thi,” she said finally. “Woh wali toh maine Parul ko de di thi — uski nanad ke liye. Maine toh bas… doosri kisi saree mein hi function attend kar liya tha.”

Mihir looked at her for a long moment, the sheet still between his fingers.

“Mujhe nahi pata tha yeh. In fact ye saare logon ka - mujhe toh kuch pata hi nahi tha.”

“Koi itni bhi badi baat nahi thi,” she said simply. “Kisi ko batane wali.”

He didn’t say anything to that. He only looked down at the paper again, at Parul’s small, grateful handwriting, and then back at her — the way he’d been looking at her all morning, she realized, every sheet peeling back some fresh corner of her he’d somehow never been shown.

The next hour and a half passed like that — sheet after sheet, name after name, some of them making her laugh suddenly and without warning, most of them making her go quiet in a way that filled the balcony more than any sound could have.

At the end of it, Tulsi sat back, the papers gathered loosely in her lap, and let out a breath she seemed to have been holding for most of the morning.

“Gayatri Chachi ne kitni mehnat ki hogi,” she said softly. “Na jaane kitne logon se contact karke — ye chitthiyan, ye notes maange honge.”

*There couldn’t be another Tulsi*. Mihir sat very still with that thought, turning it over the way he’d turned over every sheet in the last hour — this woman who had chosen him, of all people, to spend her life with, and whom he had failed so many times over that same life. He made the promise again, the one he’d been making silently since Dhuleti, each time a little more certain than the last: *Never again. Whatever it takes — he will never fail her again.*

He didn’t say any of that.

“Mehnat toh unhone ki,” he said instead, quiet, “lekin jo unhone ikattha kiya hai — woh sab tumhara hai, Tulsi. Tumne banaya hai yeh sab, saalon mein. Chachi ne toh bas… samet ke tumhe diya.”

It wasn’t much. But she looked at him for a moment, and it seemed to be enough.

Just as Tulsi’s fingers closed around the small envelope, there was a clatter of feet on the balcony steps.

“Baa, Dadu!” Akshay arrived breathless, hanging half off the doorframe. “Andar aayiye na, table pe! Badi Chachi ne yummy cupcakes banaye hain. Aapko bula rahi hain woh!”

“Tum jaao,” Tulsi said, indulgent, already reaching to smooth his hair back where it had gone wild with running. “Shuru kar do khana. Hum bas paanch minute mein aate hain.”

He was gone as fast as he’d come, feet loud on the steps again, already shouting something to someone inside before he’d even reached the door.

Tulsi opened the envelope and read the letter:

Tulsi beta,

Maine tumse kaha tha ise akhir mein kholna, aur ab tum soch rahi hogi kyun — itne saare logon ke baad, mera kya alag hoga.

Sach kahoon toh, mujhe yakeen hi nahi tha ki mujhe jitna kehna hai woh sab poori gehrai mein likh bhi paaoongi ya nahi. Isliye maine kaha, sabke baad padhna. Taaki jab tak tum yahan tak pahunchо, tumhe khud pata chal chuka ho ki tum kya ho. Chahe mere alfaaz kam hi kyun na pad jaayen.

Main tumhe tumhare bachpan se jaanti hoon, Tulsi. Jab tum bahu banke iss ghar mein aayi, woh din Shantiniketan ke liye sab se shubh din tha. Tumne jitna iss ghar ko sambhala, uska koi hisaab hi nahi hai. Tum jis tarah meri seva ki, mera khayal rakha hamesha, uske badle mere paas tumhe dene ko kuch nahi sivay pyaar aur aashirwaad ke. Mere apne bachche saalon se doosre shehron mein hain — phone par baat ho jaati hai, saal mein ek-do baar aana ho jaata hai, bas. Lekin jab bhi main beemar padi, jab bhi mujhe akele raat mein ghabrahat hoti thi, jab bhi mujhe koi zarurat padi — tum thi. Kabhi maine bulaya bhi nahi, aur tum aa jaati thi. Ek bahu ki tarah nahi — ek beti ki tarah.

Aur isi wajah se, jo maine kiya, uska bojh mujhe aaj bhi utna hi bhaari lagta hai jitna uss din jis din ehsaas hua ki maine ye kya kar diya. Jisne mujhe hamesha itni izzat dee, jisne hamesha mera itna khayal rakha, maine usi ke saath aisa kiya. Lekin main ye bhi jaanti hoon ki tumhe mera baar baar maafi maangna achha nahi lagega.

Isiliye bas itna kahungi ki, mere rehte hue kabhi bhi agar tumhe ek maa ki zaroorat lage, toh bejijhak mere paas aa jaana.

Bhagwan se meri ek hi prarthna hai - tumhara jeewan ab hamesha khushiyon se bhara rahe.

Dher saara pyaar aur aashirwaad,

Tumhari,

Gayatri

Tulsi read it once, and then, without quite meaning to, once more.

Mihir didn’t ask what it said. He only watched her fold it back along its own crease, careful, and slip it back into the smaller envelope than under the tray with the rest.

“Chalein?” he said gently.

She nodded, and didn’t trust her voice with anything more than that.

They came in from the balcony together, the papers left neatly put back into the envelope and the envelope placed carefully on the small side table for later, and made their way toward the dining room where the noise of the children had already reached a happy, chaotic pitch over cupcakes.

Tulsi’s eyes found Gayatri Chachi across the room before they did anything else.

Chachi was already looking back at her — had perhaps been waiting to look back at her — and for a moment neither of them moved, the whole hour and a half on the balcony passing between them without either needing to say a word of it. Tulsi opened her mouth, some beginning of a sentence forming, not yet sure what shape it would take.

“Nani, chalo na, breakfast shuru karein!” Garima had already caught her hand and was tugging, insistent, the whole weight of a five-year-old’s urgency behind it.

Tulsi let herself be pulled toward the table, throwing one last look over her shoulder.

Gayatri Chachi only nodded, small and private, and turned back towards her own chair.

She had seen it — whatever it was that had crossed Tulsi’s face in that one unguarded second — and it was enough. Tulsi had opened it. She knew.

The conversation would keep. It had waited this long already.

Breakfast wound down the way it usually did once the children had been fed — Akshay and Madhvi still arguing over who’d gotten the bigger cupcake, Garima trying to referee, Damini fielding compliments with visible pleasure, Gautam attempting and failing to look like he wasn’t pleased too.

Tulsi waited until the table had mostly cleared before she slipped away, going the stairs up toward Gayatri Chachi’s room.

Chachi didn’t hear her at first — she was folding something at her cupboard, her back to the door — and only turned when Tulsi’s shadow fell across the threshold.

“Arre, Tulsi.” She set the folding aside at once. “Aao na.”

Tulsi came in, but the words she’d carried up the stairs with her seemed to have gone missing somewhere between the last step and the door.

“Chachi.” She stood there, hands loosely knotted in front of her. “Aapka envelope dekha. Kya — kaise kahun…”

“Kuch mat kaho, beta.”

Chachi opened her arms. “Bas mere gale lag jaao.”

Tulsi went to her without another word, and for a moment neither of them said anything at all — Chachi’s hand moving slow and steady over her back, the way it might have for a daughter, the way it perhaps had, in some small unspoken way, for years now without either of them naming it.

-----

It was a little past four when Vandana spread the sample swatches across Tulsi’s desk, Vaishnavi hovering just behind her shoulder with the order sheet.

“Kaaki, yeh jo Kolkata wala buyer hai,” Vandana said, “unhone bola hai wo resist-tie wale pattern mein hi chahiye, lekin colour palette thoda change karna hai — woh indigo aur maroon ke jagah unhe rust aur olive chahiye.”

“Rust-olive resist-tie humne pehle try nahi kiya,” Vaishnavi added, frowning at the sheet. “Sample banwana padega pehle, warna dyeing mein risk hai.”

“Sahi keh rahi ho.” Tulsi picked up one of the swatches, turning it toward the light. “Ek sample batch banwao — chhoti quantity mein — aur usko buyer ko bhejo approval ke liye. Bina dekhe order confirm mat karna, chahe woh kitna bhi jaldi mange.”

“Aur delivery timeline?” Vandana asked. “Unhone six weeks maanga hai.”

“Six weeks tight hai, sample ke baad.” Tulsi was already frowning over the calendar in her head. “Unhe seedha bata do — sample approval ke baad hi timeline confirm hoga, pehle nahi.”

She had just reached for her phone to check the production calendar when it buzzed in her hand.

A photograph. Four shirts, laid out side by side on their bed — a blue check, a crisp white, a soft grey, and something in a deep maroon she was fairly sure she’d bought him herself seven Diwalis ago.

*Date ke liye kaunsi pehnoon?*

Tulsi’s laugh came out before she could stop it — sudden, startled, entirely too loud for a room discussing dye-fastness and delivery windows.

Vandana and Vaishnavi both looked up at once.

“Kaaki?”

“Kuch nahi.” Tulsi cleared her throat, arranging her face back into something resembling composure, and set the phone face-down on the desk with perhaps more precision than the gesture required.

“Haan, toh — timeline. Bata do unhe.”

The girls exchanged a look — the kind that passed a whole conversation without a single word — and returned, admirably straight-faced, to the order sheet.

The phone buzzed again, a few minutes later. Tulsi did not look at it. She kept her eyes fixed on Vaishnavi’s notes, nodding along with slightly more attention than the sentence actually required, while Vandana — sensing, correctly, that the meeting had acquired a new and urgent deadline — began wrapping up the remaining points at something closer to double speed.

“Toh final ho gaya,” Vaishnavi said, closing her notebook. “Sample batch iss week, approval ke baad hi full order.”

“Perfect.” Tulsi stood, gathering the swatches into a neat stack, not quite meeting either of their eyes. “Bas itna hi tha na?”

“Haan, kaaki.” Vandana was already at the door, but she paused there, half-turned back. “Waise aap Mumbai aake khush lagti hain.”

Something in the way she said it made Tulsi look up properly.

“Haan,” she said, simply. “Apne pariwar ke saath kaun khush nahi hoga.”

Vandana nodded, but there was something unfinished in it — something she seemed to want to say and didn’t.

Vaishnavi, hovering by the door with none of Vandana’s hesitation, had no such restraint.

“Vandana, pariwar aur Mumbai ke alawa ek aur bhi ‘M’ factor hai.”

It took Tulsi a full second to catch it.

“Vaishnavi!!”

Vaishnavi was already halfway out the door, laughing, dragging a smiling Vandana with her.

The cabin went quiet behind them.

Tulsi sat there a moment amid the swatches and the closed order file, and then, finally, picked the phone back up.

There was a second message, sent a few minutes before, that she’d missed.

*Inn me koi pasand nahi aayi kya? Thodi aur bhejta hoon.*

Just as she finished reading it, a second photograph landed — three more shirts, laid out with the same careful indecision as the first four.

She didn’t answer the question. Instead:

*Meetings ke beech mein tumhare messages padhna meri image ke liye haanikarak hai.*

The reply came back almost instantly.

*Arre sorry, ab meeting khatam ho gayi?*

*Haan.*

Her phone rang a moment later.

“Sorry Tulsi,” he said, before she’d even finished saying hello. “Client ke saath thi kya meeting?”

“Vaishnavi aur Vandana ke saath thi.”

“Oh.” Something in his voice eased at once. “Woh toh apni hi bachchiyaan hain. Tumne toh mujhe dara hi diya tha.”

“Unke saamne meri koi image nahi hai kya?” Tulsi said, doing her best to sound wounded and failing almost immediately.

“Hai, hai,” Mihir said, entirely unbothered. “Bahut achhi image hai. Isiliye toh main bhi itni himmat jutakar messages bhej raha tha, taaki tumhari image aur badhe.”

“Mihir—”

“Waise,” he cut in, “tumne mere sawaal ka jawab nahi diya.”

“Kaunsa sawaal?”

“Shirt. Kaunsi pehnoon.”

Tulsi glanced down at the phone screen, at the seven shirts now laid out across two photographs like some elaborate multiple-choice exam. “Jo bhi pehen lo. Iss umar mein bhi teenager jaisa kyun behave kar rahe ho — shirt ke liye itni pareshaani?”

“Phir se umar ka taana mat dena.” There was real mock-offense in it now. “Maana thode wrinkles aa gaye hain, lekin ab bhi kaafi handsome hoon.”

Tulsi bit back a smile, glad, for once, that he couldn’t see her face. “Achha?”

“Tumse pooch raha hoon toh bata do na.”

She relented, pulling the photographs back up, looking properly this time — not at the shirts so much as at the small, familiar creases in the bed where he’d laid them all out, probably twice, unable to decide.

“Yeh wali,” she said finally, tapping the grey one on her screen even though he couldn’t see it. “Grey wali. Jiske pockets thode different hain.”

“Achha, woh.” A small pause, satisfied. “Theek hai. Thank you.”

“Bas?” She asked with mock exasperation.

“Bas. Milte hain paune ghante mein.”

Tulsi finished up the last of her paperwork with a good ten minutes to spare, and it was only once she’d cleared her desk that she noticed how few of those minutes were actually left before he arrived.

She opened the camera app on her phone — angled it toward herself the way she’d seen the girls do a hundred times and never once, thought to do herself — and looked.

*This is new*, she thought, faintly bemused at her own reflection on the screen. She reached into her purse for her comb anyway. *His vanity is rubbing off on me now, it seems.*

She undid her bun and let her hair fall, running the comb through it in slow, unhurried strokes, and somewhere in the middle of it she remembered — the way he always looked at her, just slightly longer than necessary, on the rare evenings she left it open.

For a moment she left it that way, loose over her shoulders, and checked the camera again.

*No.* She almost laughed at herself. *Too obvious.*

She gathered it back, twisting it into its usual neat bun — and then paused, comb still in hand, and worked the tail of it gently along her hairline, coaxing one thin strand loose on either side until they fell soft against her ears.

She checked the camera one last time, and this time, she didn’t undo it.

-----

Yesterday morning, while going to her room, Mitali had heard Mihir telling Ritik to leave for his office a little late if he still had a headache. So half an hour later, Mitali came looking for him meaning only to ask about the picnic before it slipped her mind entirely, she found his door not quite shut.

She’d raised her hand to knock. That was when she heard Tulsi’s voice inside, and then his — quieter, unguarded in a way she’d never once heard from him.

“Aaj meri aankhein dekh rahi hain, Maa,” he’d said, “mera dimaag samajh raha hai ki aapke saath reh ke, aapki wajah se woh badal rahi hai. Lekin aaj bhi, jaise hi woh apna muh kholti hai — mere kaan aur mera dil instinctively khud ko prepare karne lagte hain, ‘loser’ sunne ke liye.”

She hadn’t knocked. She hadn’t stayed to hear whatever came after it, either — sliding down against the corridor wall for only a moment before she’d made herself get up and go, unsteady, back to her own room.

She never did ask him about the picnic yesterday.

So this evening, once she was sure he was home and settled downstairs, she picked up her phone instead of going to find him. She texted him on WhatsApp:

*Timsy ki picnic ke baare mein baat karni thi. Aaj payment ka last day hai na?*

He replied within a minute — mildly surprised she was texting rather than just coming down, but it didn’t strike him as anything beyond her being caught up in something upstairs.

Ritik: Haan aaj. Just an hour left. You want her to go?

Even now, some old, worn-in part of him braced a little at the sight of her name on his screen — a reflex he didn’t think would ever fully go. But conversations about Timsy had gotten easier lately, easier than he’d let himself notice until just now. Somewhere in these last few months, without his quiet tracking when, she’d become a good mother — steady, present, actually paying attention — in a way she hadn’t always been. Before that, Timsy had felt like his to hold alone, entirely, as if he were the only one keeping track of her.

Mitali: I was going to say yes but wanted to check with you first. Who’s accompanying them?

Ritik: Mrs. Mehrortra I think, and 1 other teacher. Around 40 kids total.

Mitali: Only 2 teachers for 40 kids? That’s a lot per teacher.

Ritik: Yeah that’s what I thought too. And honestly I don’t fully trust Mrs. Mehrotra. She’s been careless before — remember the sports day thing last year, when she lost track of 3 kids near the parking lot for like 20 minutes?

Mitali: Oh god yes I remember that. Parents were furious.

Ritik: Wohi toh. And this is a full day, out of town. If something happens there’s no one to reach immediately.

Mitali: Timsy’s also been a bit clingy lately, have you noticed? Might not even enjoy it if she’s anxious the whole time without one of us around.

Ritik: True. I think we should just say no this time. There’ll be other picnics.

Mitali: Okay. I’ll tell her once she’s back from school. She’s not going to take it well though.

Ritik: Yeah I know. We’ll manage it somehow.

Mitali read his last message twice, the ordinary shape of it — *we’ll manage it somehow* — sitting strangely against everything she now knew and he didn’t. She typed *Okay* back, and nothing more, and set the phone down on the bed beside her.

-----

She saw him before he saw her — leaning back against the car, arms loosely crossed, watching the factory gate with an expression that had no business belonging to something as ordinary as tea and coffee at a café.

He straightened the moment she stepped out, and the smile that came over his face was, if anything, too large for the occasion — as if she’d kept him waiting for something far grander than this.

He came around and opened the car door for her without a word, waited until she’d settled in before closing it, and then got in on his own side and started the engine.

It was at the first signal, waiting for the light, that he noticed properly — the two loose strands framing her face, the deliberate looseness of them, nothing like her usual neat bun. He opened his mouth, then thought better of it, and let the light change instead.

He tried again a minute later.

“Achhi lag rahi hain.”

“Kya achhi lag rahi hain?”

“Ye jo latten.” He gestured vaguely toward her ear without taking his eyes fully off the road. “Tumhare kaan pe girti hain.”

“Nikal gayi hongi,” she said, touching the strands with an air of mild surprise that fooled absolutely no one, and made a show of trying to tuck them back into the bun.

“Inki ye majaal,” Mihir said, mock-scandalized, “ki ye tumhari ijaazat ke bina nikal jaayen.”

Caught, Tulsi turned toward the window, watching the traffic slide past with sudden and total interest, and tried a different track.

“Mujhe toh din bhar kaam rehta hai. Inn cheezon ka time hi nahi hota.” She looked at him sideways. “Tumhari tarah thodi — bechare mere bete kaam karen, poora business sambhaalen, aur tum workday ke beech mein ghar jaake ladies ko shirts ke photos bhejo.”

“Ladies nahi, madam.” He said it lightly, eyes still on the road. “Sirf apni lady love ko.”

She had nothing ready for that. She turned her gaze again as the window seemed to hold her attention with renewed focus.

“Waise, bolo bolo.” He glanced sideways at her, unable to help himself now. “Ye grey shirt suit kar rahi hai na mujh pe? Lag raha hoon na dashing? Come on, it’s okay. You can compliment me.”

Tulsi turned back to face him properly for the first time since they’d gotten in, and reached over — one hand smoothing an entirely imaginary crease at his collar, adjusting it with the brisk, clinical attention of someone inspecting a garment on a hanger rather than a husband driving a car.

“Color toh theek hi hai,” she said finally, and went back to looking out her own window.

Mihir’s face fell, just slightly, just for a second — already composing, she could tell, some defense of the shirt, or of himself, or possibly a retreat into wounded silence for the rest of the drive.

“Lekin,” she added, before he could get there, quieter now, almost as if the words had slipped free before she’d decided to let them, “tumhare complexion pe kaafi jachta hai.”

His face changed before he could stop it — the mock-offense dissolving into something far more unguarded, far more pleased than the sentence probably deserved.

“Achha?” He was grinning now, openly, eyes flicking to her and back to the road and back to her again. “Suna tumne? Kisi ne mujhe compliment diya. Aaj ki date toh already successful hai.”

“Bas ek baar bola hai,” Tulsi said quickly, “isse baar baar mat dohrao.”

“Nahi, nahi, main toh bas—” He was still grinning, unable to help it, one hand coming off the wheel briefly to gesture, as pleased as she’d seen him in weeks over something this small. “Chalo, ab toh mujhe pata hai. Ab main roz yehi shirt pehnunga.”

“Tum na bahut—”

He didn’t let her finish.

“Charming hoon. Pata hai.”

He’d already pulled the car over as he finished the sentence, and was out and around to her side before she’d even properly registered they’d arrived anywhere at all.

She stepped out, and it took her a second look at the storefront before the complaint arrived. “Ye café? Ye toh roz subah shaam cross karte hain. Tumne toh kaha tha koi naya khula hai.”

“Naya hi toh hai,” Mihir said, entirely reasonable. “Hum toh kabhi aaye nahi na yahaan. Toh humare liye toh naya hua.”

Tulsi rolled her eyes at him, and did not dignify that with a response. *Impossible,* she thought. *This man is absolutely impossible.*

Inside, he pulled out her chair first — she’d stopped being surprised by that weeks ago, though it still did something small and warm each time — and then, instead of taking the seat across from her, went around to the perpendicular side instead, close enough that their knees very nearly touched under the table.

The waiter arrived within a minute with the menu, and Mihir ordered before she could even reach for the menu.

“Madam ke liye ek badiya masala chai — do teaspoon sugar . Aur mere liye ek cappuccino, ek teaspoon sugar.”

As soon as the waiter left, Mihir leaned back slightly. “Waise suna hai yahan ke bakery items bhi ache hote hain. Kuch try karna chahogi?”

“Nahi, abhi kuch khaana nahi hai.” Tulsi considered a moment. “Lekin bachchon ke liye kuch pack kara sakte hain.”

He’d already caught the attention of a passing waiter before she’d finished the sentence, asking for the bakery menu.

“Pastries mein kaafi variety hai,” he said, scanning down the laminated card, tilting it slightly so she could see too.

“Subah bhi cupcakes khaaye hain unhone,” Tulsi said, leaning in to read over his arm. “Shaayad ab tak bhi honge cupcakes ghar mein. Kuch savory dhoondhte hain — bina maide ka.”

Their heads were nearly touching now, both bent over the same small menu, and for a stretch of several minutes they went through it item by item — a fruit tart Mihir vetoed on the grounds of too much sugar, a spinach puff Tulsi eliminated for being made with maida, something with cheese that neither of them could identify with confidence — and found, in the end, nothing that satisfied both conditions at once.

They settled for the date cookies, sugar-free, the only thing on the whole card that passed both their tests.

“Yeh date cookies pack kar dijiye,” Mihir told the waiter, “Bees pieces.”

“Char alag chhote containers mein pack kar dena,” Tulsi added, before the waiter could turn away. “Ek-ek me paanch pieces.”

The date cookies had been carried off to the counter to be packed, and for a moment neither of them said anything, the small ordinary quiet of two people waiting for tea settling between them.

It was Mihir who broke it, watching her with the particular attentiveness she still hadn’t quite gotten used to being on the receiving end of after all these years.

“Kal se dekh raha hoon,” he said, quieter now, the teasing gone out of his voice entirely. “Ya toh kisi chinta mein ho, ya kuch chal raha hai tumhare andar.”

“Nahi, kuch nahi.” It came too quickly, and she knew it the moment it left her mouth.

“Batao na, Tulsi.” No pressure in it, just the asking.

She looked down at the table for a second before she answered. “Ritik ke baare mein soch rahi thi.”

She didn’t say the rest of it — that it wasn’t Ritik’s marriage she was thinking of, not specifically or not just that, but the quiet, deliberate way he’d folded his own happiness shut and put it away, at an age when he should have been reaching for it the way she finally was.

“Arre, uski chinta mat karo.” Mihir’s face eased, relieved to have something so easily fixed to offer. “Aaj office mein kaafi upbeat lag raha tha. Poore enthusiasm se conference ki taiyaari mein laga hua hai.”

Tulsi only nodded, the words settling somewhere short of comfort, and said nothing more — the arrival of their tea and coffee giving her, for the moment, somewhere else to look.

Mihir picked up his cup, and just as he was about to take the first sip, held it out toward her instead. “Ek sip toh le lo.”

“Mujhe cappuccino bilkul nahi pasand.”

“Taste badal bhi sakta hai.” He nudged the cup an inch closer. “Lo, ek chota sip.”

She took the smallest possible sip to satisfy him, and her face folded immediately. “Kitni kadvi hai. Tum kaise enjoy karte ho ise?”

He took his own sip, visibly relishing it, entirely unbothered by her verdict. “Ye toh routine se zyaada hi meethi hai.”

She frowned, not following. “Inhone sugar zyaada daal di hogi.”

“Ye mithaas jiski main baat kar raha hoon,” he said, looking at her directly now, something warm and faintly self-satisfied in it, “sugar ki nahi hai.”

It took her a second — and then it landed, and she looked at him with the particular expression she reserved for exactly these moments. “Tum itna flirt kab se karne lage?”

“Shuru se hi.” He took another sip, entirely pleased with himself. “Tumhe ab realize ho raha hai — tabhi toh mujhe courtship karni thi. Husband ki flirting, wife ko dikhti nahi.”

It took her a second — and then it landed, and something in her face changed.

She looked at him properly. Not the sideways glances she’d been giving him through the whole drive, the whole menu, the sip of coffee — but a full, direct look, the kind she didn’t often let herself hold for more than a moment.

*Husband ki flirting, wife ko dikhti nahi.*

She thought of every ordinary morning of the thirty-eight years before she left — the chai handed to him without a word, the shirts ironed without being asked, the small automatic choreography of a marriage that had, somewhere along the way, stopped needing to say anything to itself at all. Mostly it was only on special occasions that they expressed their feelings towards each other. She thought of how long it had been since anyone had made her feel *seen*, rather than simply *present* — and how he’d apparently understood that gap before she’d even had words for it, and had spent weeks now, deliberately, closing it one shirt-photo and one bad joke at a time.

She had nothing ready to say. For the first time since she’d stepped out of the factory gate that evening, the silence wasn’t hers by choice.

Mihir didn’t fill it either. He only watched her, something quiet and pleased in his eyes, entirely willing to let her sit inside whatever he’d just said for as long as she needed to.

It was several seconds before she moved at all — reaching, finally, for her own cup, still sitting untouched in front of her, more for something to do with her hands than actually wanting to start drinking it.

“Lo.” She held it out to him, her voice a shade softer than she meant it to be. “Ek sip toh le lo tum bhi.”

He shook his head, unhurried. “Nahi.”

“Kyun?”

“Chai toh mujhe sirf—” he paused, just long enough to make her wait for it, “—tumhare hi haath ki pasand hai.”

It wasn’t a large thing to say. It shouldn’t have undone her the way it did, sitting there with a cup of untouched tea between them and a plate of children’s cookies being boxed somewhere behind the counter — and yet it did, quietly, entirely, in a way she suspected he had no idea of.

She was still holding the cup out to him, neither of them quite moving to end the moment, when he reached across instead — not for the tea, but for her, his fingers finding the loose strand by her ear and tucking it back, slow, careful, the same one he’d teased her about not an hour ago.

His hand lingered a second longer than the gesture strictly required.

Neither of them said anything. There didn’t seem to be anything left worth saying that the silence wasn’t already saying better.

It was the waiter who broke it, arriving with a small paper bag held out between them. “Sir, cookies pack ho gaye — char alag containers mein, jaisa madam ne bola tha.”

Mihir cleared his throat and sat back, taking the bag with rather more focus on it than a bag of date cookies required.

Tulsi busied herself with finally sipping her tea, neither of them quite looking at the other for a moment.

They didn’t have much further conversation of any importance, except him asking her if she liked her tea. And when she replied in the affirmative, he simply remarked that they could come here often.

They left soon after — he settled the bill before she could even reach for her purse — and outside, he opened the car door for her again, the same unhurried courtesy as before, and went around to his own side.

The drive home was quiet in a way the drive there hadn’t been. No shirts, no compliments extracted under duress, no teasing about loose hair — only the road going by outside the window, the small paper bag of cookies sitting on her lap for four children who had no idea, back home, that this afternoon had happened at all, or that their evening snack had been chosen for them in the middle of it.

Tulsi didn’t say anything the whole way back. Neither did Mihir.

This, she thought, was what contentment actually felt like — not the absence of anything left to say, but the presence of so much already understood between two people that nothing further needed saying at all. Warmth, and a strange, settled kind of fullness, sitting quietly in the space where words would otherwise have gone.

-----

They’d barely stepped through the front door — the paper bag of cookies still in Tulsi’s hand — when the sound reached them from the hall. Timsy’s voice, high and furious, wound tight into a full tantrum, while the other three children stood off to the side in their school uniforms, uncertain whether to watch or flee toward their rooms.

Mitali and Ritik were already there, both crouched down on either side of her — Mitali reaching for her hands, Ritik hovering close, unsure whether touching her would help or make it worse.

“Sab jaa rahe hain!” Timsy’s voice cracked, tears streaming freely now, her small fists pressed against her eyes. “Sab meri friends jaa rahi hain, aur mera naam hi nahi hai list mein! Mujhe bhi jaana hai!”

The final list. Mitali understood at once — the teacher must have read it out just before the bell, payment deadline closing today, Timsy’s name simply absent, no warning, no chance for either of them to explain it first. She hadn’t even gotten to tell her.

“Timsy, beta, dekho meri taraf.” Mitali cupped her wet face gently, trying to get her to focus. “Rona band karo, pehle. Hum baat karte hain na.”

“Nahi karni baat! Mujhe jaana hai picnic pe!” Timsy tried to twist away, and Ritik’s hand came up automatically to steady her before she overbalanced.

“Timsy.” He tried next, keeping his voice even. “Aur bhi picnics honge. Yeh wali—”

“Nahi chahiye aur koi picnic! Yeh wali chahiye! Parson wali!” The wail climbed again, fresh and furious, and for a moment neither of them could get a word past it.

Mitali tried again — the reasoning, the teacher, the numbers, the safe nahi hoga — and watched it land nowhere at all.

Timsy was five. None of it meant anything to her except that everyone else was going somewhere, and she wasn’t, and that unfairness was the entire world right now.

So Mitali stopped explaining.

She pulled Timsy in instead, against her shoulder, one hand smoothing slow circles over her back, and let her cry it out properly for a minute — not fighting it, not rushing it, just holding on while the sobs came in waves and gradually, gradually, began to space themselves further apart.

“Main jaanti hoon bahut bura lag raha hai,” she murmured, and it was only somewhere in the middle of that sentence that her voice dropped — low, almost a whisper, gentle in a register Ritik didn’t think he’d ever heard from her before, not once, not even before everything had gone wrong between them. “Mujhe bhi bura lagta agar main tumhari jagah hoti. Lekin hum tumhe kal ice cream khaane le jaayenge, sirf tum aur main aur Papa — teeno saath mein. Theek hai? Aur parson tumhare favorite park chalenge. Khoob enjoy karenge.”

Timsy hiccupped against her shoulder, not yet agreeing, not yet not-agreeing either.

Ritik, crouched beside them, found himself watching his wife’s face rather than his daughter’s — something in him quietly recalibrating, the surprise of that voice still settling.

It took another minute or two — the hiccups slowing, the fists unclenching, Timsy finally pulling back enough to wipe her own nose with the back of her hand while Mitali reached, without being asked, for the handkerchief in her pocket — before the worst of it had properly passed.

Tulsi, still standing near the door with Mihir, had watched all of it without moving.

Once Timsy had gone quiet — still sniffling, still faintly mutinous, but no longer wailing — Tulsi crossed the hall and crouched down in front of her too, the paper bag held out.

“Timsy, dekho,” she said. “Dadu tumhare liye kya laaye hain.”

“Hum dono laaye hain,” Mihir said from behind her, mildly wounded.

The other three, who had been hovering at a safe distance through the worst of Timsy’s tantrum, drifted closer at the sight of the bag.

“Mere liye kuch nahi?” Garima asked, already looking faintly wounded at the prospect.

“Humare liye bhi?” Akshay added, Madhvi nodding beside him with the same hopeful, slightly betrayed expression.

“Tum sab ke liye bhi hai na,” Mihir said, glancing sideways at Tulsi with the particular satisfaction of a man about to enjoy himself. “Baa laayi hain.”

Tulsi gave him a look — flat, unimpressed, entirely unsurprised — the kind that needed no words to communicate exactly what she thought of that framing.

“Hum dono laaye hain,” she said, opening the bag properly and holding it out so all four children could see the four separate containers inside. “Ek-ek Timsy, Garima, Akshay aur Madhvi ke liye — sabka apna apna hai, share nahi karna padega.”

The kids took their boxes and opened them excitedly. And let out a collected yell of delight.

Tulsi then added sternly, “Lekin abhi sirf ek-ek hi khaana hai.”

Their excitement died down a little as they nodded.

“Ji Nani,” said Garima.

“Okay Baa,” chorused the other three.

-----

Just before dinner, Tulsi made her way to Mitali’s room, and found her there with Timsy, bent over a homework notebook, her voice back to its usual register — warm, ordinary, nothing like the whisper from the hall a couple of hours earlier.

Mitali looked up at the sound of the door. “Aap kyun aayi, Maa? Mujhe neeche se bula leti, main aa jaati.”

“Main check karna chahti thi,” Tulsi said, coming to sit on the edge of the bed. “Tum theek ho ki nahi.”

“Mujhe kya hua hai?” Mitali’s brow creased, genuinely puzzled, or doing a fair impression of it. “Main bilkul theek hoon, Maa.”

“Toh itni dheemi aawaz mein kyun baat kar rahi thi neeche — Timsy se?”

“Dheemi aawaz mein?” Mitali blinked, all innocence. “Kab? Mujhe toh yaad nahi.”

“Tum jaanti ho kab, Mitali.”

Mitali didn’t answer that. She looked down at the notebook instead, at Timsy’s half-finished sums, and seemed to be finding something urgently important in them.

“Mumma, yeh wala sum galat hai kya?” Timsy held up her notebook, oblivious to everything happening above her head.

“Dikhao.” Mitali took the escape gratefully, bending over the page, walking Timsy through the subtraction with far more attention than four single-digit numbers required.

When she finally straightened and turned back, it was reluctant — the kind of turning that happens because there’s no longer a reasonable way to avoid it.

Tulsi decided not to push further.

“Mitali,” she said instead, gently. “Tum jaanti ho na, ki tum mujhse kuch bhi keh sakti ho. Kabhi bhi aa sakti ho mere paas.”

“Of course, Maa.” It came quickly, automatically — and then Mitali seemed to run out of road just as fast, unsure what was meant to come after it. “Lekin—”

She didn’t finish it. Tulsi watched her search for the rest of the sentence and not find it, and understood, before Mitali had to say so herself, that there was nothing more coming tonight.

“Theek hai.” Tulsi rose from the bed. “Main chalti hoon. Thodi der mein dinner pe aa jaana.”

-----

Dinner that night was quieter than usual on two separate fronts.

Mitali sat mostly silent through it, and on the rare occasions she did speak — passing a dish, answering something Timsy asked her — her voice came out lower than its ordinary pitch, not quite the whisper from the hall, but close enough that Tulsi noticed it again, filed it away again, and said nothing.

*Not tonight*, she thought. *She’s already been cornered once today.*

The other disturbance was harder to ignore, sitting as it did directly to Mihir’s left. Gautam had barely touched his plate, answering in clipped monosyllables whenever anyone tried to draw him into the table’s usual chatter, his jaw set in a way that suggested he’d rather be anywhere else.

Mihir, seated between Tulsi and Gautam, caught her eye across the table at almost the same moment she caught his — both of them arriving, silently, at the same unspoken question.

*Ab isse kya ho gaya?*

Neither of them said it aloud. Mihir gave the faintest shrug, barely a movement at all, and went back to his dinner, clearly deciding it could wait until the table had cleared.

As they rose from the table, Mihir leaned toward her briefly. “Main baat karta hoon Gomzi se.”

Tulsi looked at him, surprised — this wasn’t usually his instinct, stepping directly into someone else’s mood, especially not so soon after dinner — and she was not even sure if he could handle Gautam, especially in one of his volatile moods. She didn’t even know if it would be wise to let him handle this, or that she shouldn’t handle Gautam herself. But there was something settled in his face that made her simply nod.

It was later, on the balcony, that he told her.

“Case haar gaya aaj,” Mihir said, wrapping both hands around his cup.

“Pehla bada case tha uska yahaan wapas aane ke baad. Isliye itna upset tha.”

“Haara kaise? Woh toh itna acha lawyer hai.”

“Haar kabhi bhi ho sakti hai, Tulsi — sabse acha lawyer bhi haarta hai kabhi na kabhi.” He shook his head slightly. “Lekin Gautam abhi bhi haar se deal nahi kar paata. Shuru se aisa hi tha — pehle business mein bhi, ek contract haarta tha toh poore ghar pe gussa nikaalta tha.”

“Aur professional aur personal ko bhi alag nahi rakh paata,” Tulsi said slowly, thinking of the whole silent, brittle dinner. “Ek case haarne se poori shaam kharab ho gayi.”

“Haan.” Mihir sighed. “Maine samjhaya hai. Dekhte hain, kal tak theek ho jaayega shaayad.”

-----

The ten days that followed passed the way the best of her days with him always did now — quickly, and without her quite noticing where they’d gone.

Each morning on the balcony, she found herself thinking some version of the same thought: that she could not possibly fall any deeper in love than she already had, and each evening , by the time the chamomile had gone cold in its cup, she was proven wrong all over again. It struck her sometimes with a small, private disbelief — how a man she’d shared four decades and so many children with could still, at this age, find some new way to surprise her into feeling something she hadn’t fully felt even in their first years together.

*A few months ago*, she thought one such morning, watching him argue cheerfully with Akshay over something silly, *almost everything in me was against giving this — him — another chance*. She remembered the shape of that resistance clearly, how solid it had felt, how justified. And then, underneath all of it, one small voice that hadn’t agreed to stay silent — the night of Noina’s media storm, Shobha and Gayatri Chachi’s voices through a door, recalling what none of them had told Tulsi directly: that Mihir had collapsed within two days of her leaving, that his blood pressure had spiked dangerously, that the insomnia which followed had never fully left him since. She hadn’t gone to him that night. But something in her had cracked open just slightly, just enough, and had never quite closed again.

She thought of that voice often now, without meaning to — usually in exactly these moments, watching him be ordinary and present and hers.

He was different, too, in ways she found herself cataloguing almost without meaning to. The Gautam evening had not been a single event, she realized, watching the pattern repeat itself over the following days — small family frictions quietly absorbed before they reached her, a brewing tiff between Angad and Vrinda smoothed over before it could turn into a full evening’s sulking, Daksha Chachi’s minor health complaints handled with a patience she hadn’t always credited him with, Timsy’s bedtime resistance negotiated away without anyone having to call for her. She remembered, with something close to shame, the words she’d thrown at him in the middle of their worst recent fight — *chahe iske liye tumhe apne bete ko hi kyun na samundar mein fenkna pade, doobne do use*, *sabse bada dukh iss baat ka hai ki maine socha tha ab tum badal gaye ho* — and set them, quietly, against what she was watching him actually do now: not fixing things unilaterally, not disappearing into decisions of his own, but carrying what he could of the weight and bringing the rest to her, the way she had once, bitterly, told him he never did.

He continued to pamper her in small ways through those ten days, the way he seemed to have made a quiet habit of now — one evening a quick trip to her favourite pani puri stall, just because, standing beside her in the lane with his handkerchief ready while she ate more plates than she’d admit to; another night, kulfi again, no occasion attached to it at all. Once he came home from a meeting with a small paper packet, slightly sheepish about it, and out of it came a set of lac bangles in deep reds and greens. “Wahan ek dukaan thi meeting ke paas,” he said, by way of explanation. “Socha tumhe pasand aayenge.”

The only thing that kept her from fully sinking into all of it — the falling, the pampering, the small unasked-for tenderness of it — was the guilt that sat underneath, quiet but constant: that she was allowed to fall in love again at this age, freely, without apology, while her own youngest son had quietly closed that door on himself and did not seem to think he had any right to open it again.

She was so full of it — the falling, the noticing, the guilt she couldn’t quite set down — that it took her the better part of those ten days to notice something else entirely.

Mitali.

It wasn’t anything dramatic. It was smaller than that, and stranger — the way Mitali had begun, almost without seeming to decide it, to take up less space whenever Ritik was in the room. Her voice dropped a register the moment he walked in, the way it had the evening of Timsy’s tantrum, but now it was doing that everywhere, at every meal, in every ordinary exchange that happened to include him. She stopped finishing sentences she’d started before he arrived. She left rooms a beat earlier than she used to, without any real reason to.

Tulsi watched it happen for three days before she was certain it wasn’t her imagination, and another two before she let herself admit what it looked like.

*She’s shrinking herself*, Tulsi thought, watching Mitali fold into a smaller and smaller version of herself at the dinner table one evening, careful never to take up more air than absolutely necessary whenever Ritik happened to be within earshot. *And she’s doing it on purpose.*

-----

Tulsi was just thinking about how to approach Mitali when she herself sought her out, one quiet Sunday afternoon after lunch.

She’d been at the tulsi kyaro (plant) for the better part of an hour already, standing before the raised stone structure with its old brass lamp niche set into the base — the plant itself eased out and set carefully to one side, its roots wrapped in a damp cloth to keep them from drying while she worked. The soil inside had gone hard and packed over the months, and she’d been turning it out in slow handfuls, sifting through it for stones and old dead root, a small mound of fresh soil already set aside on the ledge beside her, waiting to be worked back in once the base was clean.

She hadn’t heard Mitali approach until she was standing right beside her. “Maa, main kuch help karoon?”

Tulsi looked up, faintly surprised — Mitali had never once, in all the years she’d known her, shown the slightest interest in the garden, let alone the tulsi kyaro.

“Tumhe pata hai kya karna hota hai isme?” She asked.

“Bilkul nahi.” Mitali came to stand beside her anyway, uncertain, hands hovering without quite knowing where to land. “Lekin aap bataiye, main kar dungi.”

Tulsi almost smiled. She handed her a small trowel. “Yahaan, purani mitti nikaal do — dheere se. Patthar ya kachra dikhe toh alag kar dena.”

Mitali took it carefully, as if it might go off in her hands, and began working the soil with far more concentration than the task strictly required.

For a while neither of them said anything. Then, without looking up from the mitti —

“Maa.”

“Hmm?” Tulsi glanced over.

“Woh main keh rahi thi—” Mitali stopped. Started again. Turned the trowel over once in her hand without using it. “Main…”

Tulsi waited, saying nothing, letting the silence hold open for as long as it needed to.

“Main apna portfolio banana shuru kar doon?” It came out too fast, almost a question aimed more at herself than at Tulsi. “Thoda weight bhi reduce kar liya hai.”

“Haan.” Tulsi looked at her properly now, taking her in. “Ab toh bilkul perfect lag rahi ho — matlab, modeling ke sense mein. Waise toh tum hamesha se hi achhi lagti ho.”

Mitali smiled at that. It didn’t quite make it all the way to her eyes though.

“Koi problem hai?” Tulsi asked, gently.

Mitali shook her head, quick, a little too quick.

“Koi acha photographer hai, ya dhoondna hai?” Tulsi asked, wondering what was bothering her.

“Hai, Maa.”

“Shoot kahaan hoga?”

“Uske studio mein.”

“Baat ki hai usse? Appointment set kiya hai?” Tulsi went back to loosening the soil, keeping her tone light, ordinary. “Bata dena agar chahti ho ki main saath chalun toh. Waise Pari zyada theek rahegi shaayad — mujhe toh modeling ki samajh hi nahi hai, aur tum dono toh shuru se close friends ho, tumhe uske saath zyada comfortable rahega. Aur haan — apni Maa ko bhi le jaana agar woh chahe. Usko bhi accha lagega. Lekin main bhi aa sakti hoon, agar tum chaho toh.”

Mitali nodded, but the nod sat oddly on her — too small, too automatic, the kind of agreement that didn’t reach whatever was actually sitting underneath it.

Tulsi set down the trowel for a moment, and looked at her properly.

“Sirf yehi baat thi,” she asked, quiet, “ya kuch aur bhi chal raha hai tumhare andar, kuch dino se?”

Mitali didn’t answer right away.

She went back to the soil instead, working the trowel through it in small, unnecessary motions, her eyes fixed somewhere just past the kyaro’s edge.

The silence stretched — long enough that Tulsi almost thought she wasn’t going to answer at all — before it finally broke.

“Maa, aisa kyun hota hai,” Mitali said, so quietly it barely carried over the sound of the trowel, “ki humein pata hai sahi raasta kya hai… lekin use lena itna difficult hota hai… kyunki humein pata hai hum akele ho jaayenge.”

Tulsi didn’t answer immediately either.

This wasn’t a question. Not really. She had watched this exact shrinking happen for ten days now — the dropped voice, the careful smallness Mitali had folded herself into whenever Ritik was in a room — and here it was, finally, dressed up as something abstract enough to be safe to say out loud.

She set the trowel down on the ledge, brushed the soil from her hands, and turned to face Mitali properly.

“Yeh sawaal,” she said slowly, “kisi kitab mein padha tha, ya kisi aur cheez ke baare mein soch rahi ho jab yeh poocha?”

Mitali’s hands went still over the kyaro.

“Mitali.” Tulsi’s voice stayed gentle, but there was no mistaking it now for anything but direct. “Main pichle das dinon se dekh rahi hoon. Tumhari dheemi aawaz, tumhara chup rehna, Ritik ke saamne khud ko chhota kar lena. Mujhe nahi pata poori baat kya hai — lekin itna zaroor jaanti hoon ki yeh koi hypothetical sawaal nahi hai.”

She didn’t ask what it was about. She only waited, letting the offer sit there between them — *tell me, if you’re ready*

— without a single word pushing Mitali any further than she’d already come on her own.

Mitali didn’t look at her directly. Her eyes stayed fixed somewhere on the loose soil between them.

“Bahut time se lag raha ki mujhe ye karna chahiye,” she said, so quiet it was barely more than breath. “Lekin himmat nahi juta paa rahi hoon…”

“Kya karna chahiye?” Tulsi asked.

Mitali’s hands had gone still over the kyaro, the trowel forgotten between her fingers.

“Ritik ko divorce dena chahiye.”

The words sat there in the quiet garden for a moment, plain and unadorned, nothing like the careful, sideways shape of everything Mitali had said before them.

Tulsi went very still.

“Tum log—” She stopped, started again, something sharp rising in her voice that surprised even her. “Aaj ki generation ki baatein mujhe samajh nahi aati, Mitali. Kabhi bhi shaadi, kabhi bhi divorce. Shaadi ko gudde-guddi ka khel samajh rakha hai tum logon ne.”

Mitali didn’t flinch. She kept her eyes on the soil, on her own hands still resting over the kyaro, and when she spoke it was in a voice smaller than anything Tulsi had heard from her yet.

“Auron ka toh mujhe nahi pata, Maa,” she said. “Lekin meri shaadi toh ek khel hi thi. Noina Maasi ka ek ganda khel. Main toh bas… ise khatam karna chahti hoon.”

-----

Author’s Note:

This one took me longer than usual, and honestly, longer than I expected going in.

The hardest part wasn’t any single scene — it was making sure everything sat together the way it needed to. Tulsi and Mihir’s date, the shirt texts, the flirting — I really didn’t want any of it to feel like flirting for flirting’s sake, something dropped in because “the readers want a date chapter.” It needed to still be them — two people who’ve been through six and a half years of silence and everything after — finding their way back to lightness, but never losing the weight underneath it. Every tease had to carry something more than just cuteness. I hope it landed that way for you, because I rewrote several of those small exchanges more than once trying to get that balance right.

And then, of course, there’s Mitali. Writing her getting smaller and smaller across these ten days — even while Tulsi is having one of the fullest, happiest stretches of her life — was its own kind of difficult. I wanted both things to be true and honest at the same time, without one undercutting the other.

Tulsi’s guilt, her distraction, her almost-missing what was happening right in front of her — none of that felt like a flaw to me while writing it. It felt human.

Thank you, as always, for reading, for sitting with this story chapter after chapter, and for trusting me with these characters even when I take my time getting there. This chapter carried a lot — Chachi’s letters, a proper TuHir date, and an ending I know some of you have been bracing for since Chapter 37.

Chapter 40 is next. I’ll see you there.

With love,

- ElitePerfumer