Chapter 41: Uljhan: Part 1:
The dining table was already loud by the time Tulsi came in from the kitchen - Timsy negotiating over a bowl of poha she had decided, this morning, that she hated; Akshay and Madhvi arguing over whose turn it was to go bring the school bags from their room. Shobha was playing peacemaker between them like a woman overseeing a ceasefire in a small war.
Mihir was already at the table, a cup of chai steaming untouched in front of him because he'd gotten distracted mid-sip by something Angad was saying about the Jamshedpur office.
Tulsi took her seat beside him. He didn't look up, but his hand found the back of her chair for a second, adjusted it half an inch closer to the table, before returning to his tea.
It was Garima who broke the morning open.
She had climbed halfway onto her chair, kneeling on it properly the way Shobha kept telling her not to, and she was looking at Mihir with the particular seriousness five-year-olds reserved for questions they had clearly been sitting on for some time.
"Nanu."
"Haan, Garu."
"Aap roz raat ko Nani ke liye green tea kyun banate ho?" she asked. "Nani toh khud bana sakti hain."
The table quieted slightly, amused, waiting to see where this would go. Mihir set his cup down and considered the question with real gravity, the way he always did with Garima's questions.
"Garu, ek baat batao," he said instead of answering directly. "Agar tumhe apni friend se kuch chahiye hota hai - jaise woh tumhe apni cycle de, ya apna tiffin share kare - toh kabhi kabhi tumhe use chocolate deni padti hai na?"
Garima thought about this seriously, as though a wrong answer might have consequences. "Haan, Nanu."
"Waise hi," Mihir said, picking his cup back up, "mujhe green tea banani padti hai."
Garima frowned, the logic not quite landing. "Lekin aapko Nani se kya chahiye hota hai? Woh bhi roz?"
"Unka time."
She looked at him, waiting for more, still confused. Mihir let the silence sit a beat before he gave it to her.
"Tumhari Nani itni busy rehti hain, Garu, ki mere liye time hi nahi bachta. Aur mujhe roz raat unse baatein karni hoti hain - bas, thodi si. Toh main unhe green tea pilaata hoon, aur woh mere saath baithti hain, aur hum baat kar lete hain."
Garima absorbed this with the full seriousness of a much older person receiving difficult news. Tulsi could see her working it through, turning it over, arriving somewhere she didn't like.
"Toh," Garima said slowly, "agar mujhe bhi Nani ke saath khelna ho - ya unse story sunni ho - toh mujhe bhi unhe kuch dena padega? Kyunki woh toh itni busy rehti hain."
Tulsi didn't answer right away. "Aaja," she said instead, holding a hand out across the table toward Garima. "Yahan aa, mere paas."
Garima slid off her chair and came around, and Tulsi pulled her up into her lap, settling her there, the child's back against her chest, before she said anything at all. She rested her chin lightly on top of Garima's head.
"Nahi, mera bachcha," she said. "Tumhe kuch nahi dena. Nani ke pyaar ke liye kabhi kuch nahi dena padta - woh toh bina maange milta hai."
Garima twisted slightly to look up at her, checking.
"Sach mein?"
"Sach mein."
A beat. Then Tulsi glanced sideways at Mihir, the faintest edge of a smile pulling at her mouth.
"Sirf tumhare Nanu ko thodi mehnat karni padti hai," she said. "Kyunki shuru mein unki tea peene layak hi nahi hoti thi."
Mihir's hand went to his chest, wounded, theatrical. "Yeh toh bahut zyaadti hai."
"Sach hai."
"Ek baar. Ek hi baar green tea kharab bani thi-"
"Teen baar."
"Do baar."
Ritik had started laughing properly now, the kind that made him put his spoon down. Shobha was laughing too, and Gayatri Chachi, Damini, Vrinda, Angad, and even Gautam and Mitali laughed a little. Garima - not entirely sure what had become funny, only that it had - laughed because everyone else was laughing, settled back against Tulsi with the whole question closed for her, forgotten already in the way children forgot things once they'd been held through them.
Only Daksha Chachi wasn't laughing.
She sat across the table, the thepla forgotten on her plate, watching Tulsi's face where it was tipped down toward the child in her lap - watching the ease of it, the unthinking automatic warmth of it, the small private smile still sitting at the corner of Tulsi's mouth even after the joke had moved past her.
*She's happy*, Daksha thought, and the thought arrived with a kind of ache she hadn't expected from it. *Really happy. Not the last few months - I mean truly, the way she used to be, before any of this, before Noina, before any of it began.*
She had been noticing it for weeks now, in small pieces - the quicker step on the stairs, the way Tulsi hummed sometimes in the kitchen without seeming to know she was doing it, the laugh that came easier and stayed longer than it used to.
She had noticed and said nothing, turned it over privately the way she was turning it over now, the thepla still lying uneaten on her plate, as she reached instead for the glass of water.
Nobody else at the table saw her not laughing. Nobody was looking for it.
The moment passed the way ordinary mornings passed - Timsy remembering her grievance against the poha, Akshay declaring it was Madhvi's turn with the school bags, Angad checking his watch and standing to leave.
It was into this ordinary noise that Tulsi's phone rang.
She glanced at the screen, and something in her posture changed, very slightly - not enough for the children to notice, but enough that Mihir, beside her, felt it more than saw it.
"Munni ki mama-mami ka phone hai," she said, already rising, already reaching to settle Garima back onto her own chair.
"Le lo," Mihir said. Then, as she stepped toward the hallway, she asked, quieter, just for him: "Aadhe ghante mein niklen toh chalega na?"
"Aaram se," he said, waving a hand without looking up from his tea. "Mujhe aaj koi jaldi nahi hai."
She nodded and went, phone already at her ear, her voice dropping into the particular register she used for calls that needed privacy - warm, unhurried, giving nothing away to the table behind her.
Mihir watched her go for a second longer than the moment required. Then he pushed his chair back and went upstairs to collect his files for the day.
-----
He was in his room, bent slightly over his desk, looking at his files, still faintly warm from the table - from Garima's face working through the logic of chocolates and time, from Tulsi laughing with her chin against the child's head - and he was thinking about none of that, specifically, when he heard the knock.
He looked up, his neck half-turned towards the door.
"Mihir beta."
He went very still.
For a moment he didn't move at all - didn't answer, didn't turn, simply stood there with a folder half-open in his hand and let the two words land in the room and settle. *Beta*. He tried, in the space of that single held breath, to remember the last time she had said anything to him at all, and the memory came immediately, intact, the way such memories do. This same room. A few months ago. Her voice, flat, final: *Maine abhi maaf nahi kiya hai. Lekin interview dekha. Ab sahi raste pe ja raha hai.* Then her back, walking out, and six years of silence closing over it again on the other side.
Only the second time, in almost six and half years now, that she had spoken to him unprompted. The first time with anything that could be called warmth in it.
"Arre, Chachi." He found his voice, set the folder down. "Aaiye na - baithiye."
She came in slowly, the way she did most things now, and her eyes went - before she had even fully crossed the threshold - to the wall.
It was still there. The photographs, about seventy of them, framed and arranged with care. Tulsi at every age he had access to - laughing, unaware, caught mid-sentence, mid-turn, mid-life. He had not taken any of them down. He had never considered taking any of them down.
Daksha Chachi stood in front of the wall a moment, the way she had stood there once before, a few months ago. Then she sat, in the chair he'd pulled forward for her, and looked at it a moment longer before she spoke.
"Jab maine pehli baar yeh deewar dekhi thi," she said, "samajh nahi paayi thi tu kar kya raha hai." A pause, her eyes still on it, not on him. "Aaj subah use haste hue dekha maine. Pichhle kuch dino se use khush dekh rahi hoon." She turned to face him properly now. "Shayad ab thoda samajh aa raha hai."
He didn't say anything. He wasn't sure, yet, what there was to say - and some old instinct, sharpened over these months, told him this was not a moment that wanted filling.
"Woh khil rahi hai, Mihir." She said it plainly, the way she said most things, without ornament. "Hafton se dekh rahi hoon. Uska hasna, uska chalna, uska gungunana - sab kuch pehle jaisa lag raha hai. Nahi." She corrected herself, small, precise. "Pehle se bhi zyaada. Jaise woh khud ko poora wapas paa rahi hai."
"Ji, Chachi," Mihir said very quietly.
"Aur main jaanti hoon," she went on, "yeh sirf uske apni wajah se nahi hua. Maine dekha hai tujhe - in mahino mein. Kaise tu dheeraj se uske zakhmo pe marham laga raha hai. Kitni baar wapas gaya jab woh door kar deti thi. Kitna time liya usne, teri kitni koshishen lagi - aur kitna sabar tune dikhaya use woh time dene mein." Her eyes held his. "Yeh maine dekha hai. Aur bolna zaroori hai - kyunki tu khud kabhi nahi bolega."
He started to speak - the reflex, still there, to deflect it, to say it was nothing, that Tulsi deserved far more than his efforts and patience - and she lifted one hand, very slightly, and he stopped.
"Sun le pehle."
He sat back.
"Woh tujhse itna pyaar karti hai, Mihir, jitna shayad tujhe khud ko bhi poora andaza nahi hai." Her voice hadn't changed register yet, but something underneath it had begun to shift, tightening almost imperceptibly. "Aur iska matlab yeh hai ki uski khushi ki chaabi - poori tarah se - tere haath mein hai. Yeh koi tareef nahi hai jo main kar rahi hoon - ise itraane ki baat mat samajhna. Yeh ek zimmedari hai jo main tujhe yaad dila rahi hoon."
"Ji." He nodded respectfully.
"Tum dono aage bhi ladoge." She said it as fact, not warning yet - every couple did, her tone said, this was not the part that worried her. "Yeh swabhavik hai. Koi bhi rishta bina ladai ke nahi chalta." Then the shift came, the gear turning, and he felt it before she'd said the next word. "Lekin jab bhi ladoge - chahe kitna bhi bada jhagda ho, chahe kitni bhi galat baat kahi jaaye garma garmi mein - use kabhi bhi uske respect aur tum dono ke aapas ke vishwas pe doubt mat karne dena. Kabhi nahi. Yeh do cheezein - agar ek baar bhi use laga yeh chali gayi hain - toh tu sab kuch phir se kho dega. Jo tune mahino mein banaya hai, woh ek raat mein toot sakta hai. Iss baar shayad hamesha ke liye.
She stopped. He watched her hands, folded in her lap, tighten slightly against each other.
"Mihir, main," she said, and her voice caught - the first crack in it, small, quickly reined back in - "main Tulsi ko dobara tootte hue nahi dekh paaungi."
The room held it. Neither of them moved for a moment. Somewhere below, faintly, the ordinary sounds of the house continued - a door, a child's voice, a pan set down - entirely indifferent to what was happening in the room above it.
Mihir looked at her, and did not reach, this time, for anything that resembled reassurance or performance. He simply said, quietly:
"Ji, Chachi. Mujhe bhi inn baaton ka ehsaas ho raha hai."
Nothing more. No promises laid out, no accounting of everything he had already changed, no defense offered for what he hadn't. Just the plain fact of having heard her, sitting in the room the way the photographs sat on the wall in front of her - not explained, not performed, simply there.
She studied him a moment longer, as if checking for something under the words, and seemed to find whatever she was looking for. She rose.
"Achha," she said, brisk again, the softness folding itself back away almost as quickly as it had appeared. "Chal, main apne kamre mein jaa rahi hoon."
She was at the door before he'd fully stood.
"Chachi."
She turned.
He didn't have the words for it - not yet, not in a shape he trusted himself to say out loud - so he only said, "Thank you."
She looked at him a second longer, something almost soft crossing her face before she turned it back into her usual brisk composure, and then she was gone, her footsteps already receding down the hallway.
He stood alone in the room. His eyes went, without his quite deciding to send them there, back to the wall - to one photograph in particular, taken years ago, before any of it, Tulsi laughing at something just out of frame, her whole face given over to it without caution.
*I promised myself that day*, he thought, *that I would see that again. That exact face.*
He thought of breakfast. Of Garima half-swallowed into her lap, chin resting on the child's head, the smile that hadn't fully left her mouth even after the joke had moved on.
*I saw it this morning*, he thought. *I saw it. Now the tougher part begins - keeping it there.*
He finally picked up his files, and went downstairs - carrying Daksha Chachi's words the way he had once carried her silence: entirely, without setting either of them down.
-----
Ritik came back briefly after dropping the kids at school - the way he always did, a short window before he had to leave again for the office, just long enough to grab the file he'd forgotten or finish the tea he hadn't had time for at breakfast.
Tulsi caught him in the front hall, car keys still in his hand.
"Ek minute, Ritik."
He stopped, already half turned toward the door. "Haan, Maa?"
"Munni ke mama-mami ka phone tha aaj subah." She kept her voice light, ordinary, the way she'd tell him about any small piece of family news. "Unhone uske liye ek rishta dekha hai. Business karta hai ladka. Woh chahte hain main Munni se baat karoon - samjhaoon use."
She watched something move across his face before he'd fully processed the sentence.
"Usne haan bol diya?"
It came too fast, too sharp - something underneath it that hadn't quite made it through the filter in time. A beat, and she watched him hear it himself, watched the small scramble to recover.
"Matlab-" He shifted the keys in his hand. "Uski family toh khush hogi na. Agar woh maan jaaye."
"Nahi," Tulsi said, evenly, giving no sign she'd noticed anything. "Abhi kuch decide nahi hua. Woh nahi maan rahi. Isiliye toh mujhse baat ki hai unhone ki main use samjhaaoon - acha rishta haath se jaane na de."
He nodded, too quickly, and looked down at the keys as if they'd suddenly required his attention.
She let a beat pass before she went on, casual, folding what she actually wanted into what looked like an aside.
"Pata nahi kyun," she said, "woh mujhse thodi door bhaag rahi hai in dinon. Phone nahi uthati, milne nahi aati." A small shrug, offered lightly. "Tu bata - sab theek hai na uske saath? Tujhse baat hoti hai uski?"
*I already know why she's avoiding me*, she thought, watching him without seeming to. *Ever since that day I said it to her face - that she still hasn't been able to forget Ritik. She ran from that conversation before I'd even finished the sentence. I told myself I'd give her time. I told myself I wouldn't push.*
*Now I don't have that time to give her anymore*, she rued to herself.
"Mujhse bhi," Ritik said, and there was something careful in how he said it, like he was choosing each word before he let it out. "Call nahi uthati. Text ka reply bhi der se aata hai - ek do line mein. Pata nahi kya hua." A pause. "Maine socha shayad busy hogi. Ya-" He didn't finish that sentence.
"Achha," Tulsi said, as if this were simply information, filed and set aside. "Ek kaam karna. Usko bol dena mujhse milne aa jaaye - jitni jaldi ho sake. Bas itna kehna ki mujhe kaam hai, thoda urgent hai."
"Kis baare mein hai, bata doon usse?"
"Nahi." She said it plainly, no explanation offered, and watched him accept it without asking twice - the way he always did with her. "Bas bol dena aa jaaye."
"Theek hai, Maa."
He left for the office a few minutes later. From the hallway, half-distracted by something on her own phone, she saw him try Munni's number once, standing near the door - heard the silence stretch, heard him lower the phone, type instead. She didn't ask what he'd written, and he didn't offer.
His phone buzzed once, briefly, before he pulled the door shut behind him.
Whatever it was, it was quick - he didn't stop to read it, didn't type anything back. Just closed the door and was gone.
*Whatever she's carrying*, Tulsi thought, *she's decided the safest thing right now is to give away as little as possible. I understand that better than she knows.*
-----
The car pulled out of the gate, and for the first stretch of the road neither of them spoke - not unusual, not on its own, the two of them had long since stopped needing to fill every silence between them. But this one had a different texture. Her phone sat untouched in her lap, screen dark. Her hands, usually finding something to eat and do - a strand of hair, the edge of her saree pallu, scrolling through the morning's messages - simply rested, still, one over the other.
Mihir glanced at her at the signal, then back at the road, then, a beat later, at her again.
"Kya baat hai?" he asked. Then, before she could deflect it with the usual *kuch nahi*, he added, quieter: "Tum kahin aur ho abhi."
She looked at him, faintly surprised he'd caught it - she hadn't thought she was showing anything.
"Munni ke ghar walon ka phone tha," she said. "Rishta dekha hai unhone uske liye. Chahte hain main use samjhaoon - manaoon shaadi ke liye."
He nodded slowly, turning it over, reaching for what he knew of the situation to make sense of what he was hearing.
"Woh log toh reasonable baat hi keh rahe hain," he said, after a moment, mild, practical. "Munni tumhe itna respect karti hai ki tumhari baat toh manegi hi - tumne hi toh use yahan tak pahunchaya hai. Woh tumhe bahut maanti hai."
"Itna simple nahi hai, Mihir."
Something in the way she said it - flat, a little tired - made him glance over again, this time properly, taking his eyes off the road for a second longer than the traffic really allowed.
"Kyun? Kya problem hai?"
She was quiet a moment, and he watched her decide something - watched her choose, deliberately, not to open this now, in a moving car, with half his attention on the road and the rest of the day already pressing in on both of them.
"Raat ko baat karte hain," she said. "Aaram se. Abhi... bahut kuch hai isme, aur main khud abhi tak poori tarah se samajh nahi paayi hoon ki kya karna hai."
He held the thought a second - the old instinct, close beneath the surface still, to press a little, to want to know now rather than wait - and felt it settle instead of rising. Something Daksha Chachi had said that morning moved through him, unbidden, unnamed.
"Theek hai," he said. Simply. No pushing. "Raat ko baat karte hain."
She looked at him for a moment longer than the answer required, something in her face loosening slightly, grateful in a way she didn't put into words.
They drove another minute in silence, the ordinary sounds of the morning traffic filling the space between them, before he reached over - briefly, lightly, just his hand over hers where it sat still in her lap - and said, quiet, almost to himself as much as to her:
"Tumhe akele sab kuch sambhaalne ki, carry karne ki zaroorat nahi hai. Chahe abhi batao, chahe raat ko - main yahin hoon."
She turned her hand under his, just enough to hold it back.
-----
There was a knock at the cabin door - brief, hesitant - and Tulsi, half-buried in a supplier invoice, called out without looking up, "Aa jaao," assuming it was one of the floor supervisors with a query that couldn't wait for the afternoon meeting.
When she looked up, she went still.
"Mitali?"
She was half out of her chair before she'd finished the name, something in her already bracing - Mitali, here, unannounced, in the middle of a workday - before she registered anything else about the moment. "Sab theek hai na? Bachche-"
"Sab theek hai, Maa." Mitali stepped further in, quick to settle her. "Main bas-" She hesitated. "Subah aap Papa ke saath nikal gayi thi mujhe pata hi nahi chala. Blessings lene ka mauka hi nahi mila. Toh socha, yahin aa jaun - Pari ki shift khatam hone wali hai, hum yahin se seedhe nikal jaayenge shoot ke liye."
Tulsi's alarm eased out of her slowly, and it was only now, with the fright gone, that she actually looked at her.
Mitali was in a skirt - not the style she'd worn these past months, the midis and the trousers, but something closer to what she used to wear months ago, before all of it, much before the weeks of shrinking herself smaller and smaller in the house. Her hair was styled, her makeup done with real care, and she stood in the doorway of Tulsi's cabin entirely unaware of any of it - not preening, not checking herself in the reflection of the glass partition the way another girl her age might have. Just Mitali, dressed for the work she was about to do, thinking about everything except how she looked doing it.
"Tum bahut sundar lag rahi ho," Tulsi said, and meant it plainly, the way she meant most things. "Bahut dinon baad tumhe iss style mein dekha."
Mitali's smile flickered - pleased, a little shy about it, the compliment landing somewhere she clearly hadn't expected it to. "Damini Bhabhi ne suggest kiya ye style kabhi try karna. Toh socha, aaj hi kyun nahi."
She glanced around the cabin properly for the first time - the framed photographs of the first workshop, the wall of fabric swatches pinned in careful rows, the ledgers stacked with a precision that told their own story. Something in her expression shifted, quieted.
"Maine kabhi dekha hi nahi tha," she said, half to herself, "aapko yahan kaam karte hue. Kitna-" She didn't finish the sentence, but her eyes moved once more around the room, taking it in the way you take in something you'd heard about but never quite believed the size of until you were standing inside it.
Tulsi came around the desk. "Baitho."
Mitali sat, and for a moment the room held only the ordinary sounds of the factory beyond the door - a machine somewhere, voices, the practical business of the day continuing outside this small enclosed pocket of it.
Tulsi studied her for a moment - the stillness in her that didn't match the occasion, the shoot ahead of her, the styled hair and the careful makeup sitting oddly over something that wasn't quite reaching her eyes.
"Kya hua?" Tulsi asked, gently. "Itna bada din hai aaj tumhare liye - lekin tum utni excited ya khush nahi lag rahi jitna hona chahiye."
Mitali's composure slipped, just slightly, at being seen so exactly.
"Maa," she said, and her voice had changed register, the earlier ease gone out of it. "Mujhe pata hi nahi main koi khushi deserve bhi karti hoon ya nahi."
Tulsi didn't answer right away. "Kyun aisa keh rahi ho?"
"Maine Ritik ki zindagi churayi hai." She said it flatly, like a fact she'd turned over so many times it had lost its sharp edges and worn smooth. "Saalon. Aur ab jab maine finally usse yeh sab bola - usne mujhse time maanga hai, decide karne ke liye. Yeh theek hai, yeh uska haq hai." She paused, and when she spoke again her voice had thinned. "Lekin mujhe dar lagta hai, Maa. Dar lagta hai ki kahin usne apni khushi chahne ki iccha hi na kho dee ho. Itne saal khud ko itna dabaya hai usne ki ab shayad usse pata hi nahi ki woh khud ke liye kuch chahe bhi toh kya chahe."
She looked down at her hands. "Kaash life mein bhi ek 'undo' button hota."
Tulsi reached over and took both her hands in her own, stilling them.
"'Undo' button nahi hota, beta," she said, quiet, certain. "Lekin jo ho chuka hai, uska sudhaar toh hota hai. Aur tum woh kar rahi ho - jitna tum kar sakti ho, utna tum kar rahi ho. Baaki, ab Thakurji ke haath mein hai."
Mitali's eyes had gone bright, and she blinked hard against it, careful of the makeup, careful of the shoot waiting for her in an hour.
Tulsi rose then, and Mitali began to bend toward her feet - a gesture still new enough that she reached for it deliberately, something she'd only started doing these past months, since Noina's shadow had lifted from the house and Tulsi had come back into it. But Tulsi caught her by the shoulders halfway down and pulled her instead into an embrace.
"Ghar pe hoti," Tulsi said into her hair, "toh dahi-cheeni khilaati tumhe, shubh kaam se pehle. Par yahan-"
She let her go, went around to her desk, and opened the second drawer down - the one where she kept, among invoices and spare pens, a small stash of chocolates for exactly the kind of afternoon that needed one. She took one out, unwrapped it herself, and held it up to Mitali's mouth, mindful not to smudge her lipstick.
"Tumhe khoob safalta mile," she said, and fed it to her the way you'd feed a child before an exam, before a journey, before anything that mattered.
Mitali took it, something in her face come loose and soft, and for a moment neither of them said anything at all.
"Ek baat aur," Tulsi said, gentler now, business folding back in at the edges. "Jab tum shoot pe jao - jo bhi tum andar leke ja rahi ho, aaj, abhi, iss waqt - usse yahin, iss kamre mein chhod jaana. Camera ko sirf woh Mitali dikhni chahiye jo poori tarah se full of life hai. Bahar tumhara kaam, andar tumhara dil - dono alag rakhna seekh lo, beta. Iss line mein yeh khaas zaroori hai."
Mitali nodded, absorbing it properly, the way she absorbed most things Tulsi told her now.
The door opened without a knock this time - Pari, changed out of the plain salwar kurta she wore to blend into the factory floor and into trousers and a bright, stylish top, her bag already over her shoulder, breathless with the particular energy of someone whose shift had just ended and who had somewhere better to be.
"Chalein?" she said, then caught the mood in the room, glanced between them. "Sab theek hai na?"
"Sab theek hai," Mitali said, and stood, wiping quickly beneath her eyes, already arranging her face into something steadier. "Chalo. Der ho rahi hai."
At the door she turned back once. "Blessings ke liye thank you, Maa."
"Jaao," Tulsi said. "Aur achha karna."
She watched them go - two girls, her daughters in every way that mattered now, disappearing down the corridor toward the entrance - and sat back down slowly at her desk, the invoice in front of her forgotten, her hand still faintly tasting of chocolate.
-----
Part 2 in next post
Cricket
Book Talk
Travel
2