Chapter 46: Pyaas
The suite door clicked shut, and for a moment neither of them moved, the quiet of the room settling over the day's noise like a lid going back on a pot.
Mihir set the folders down on the console table. When he turned back, Tulsi was already reaching down to undo the straps of her sandals.
"Aao," he said leading her, and crossed to the sofa first, dragging the low coffee table an inch closer with two fingers. "Yahan baitho. Pair upar karo."
"Main theek—"
"Tulsi."
She sat. He guided her feet up onto the table himself before she could argue further, then straightened, pulled off his tie and shrugged out of his blazer, draping both over the back of a chair, and untucked his shirt before removing his shoes and socks. Then he went to the washroom to splash some water on his face.
In the meantime, Tulsi removed some of her heavier jewelry and set it down carefully at the other end of the table, an old, unthinking reflex, never to leave jewelry too close to feet.
Mihir emerged from the washroom and moved to the small refrigerator tucked into the cabinetry near the window, crouching to survey its contents.
"Kya kya hai wahan?" she called after him.
"Bahut kuch. Fresh juices, coconut water, kuch sparkling waters bhi hain." He pulled out two bottles, turned them over to read the labels, and picked one for each of them. "Yeh lo. Watermelon-mint hai."
"Nahi chahiye, Mihir. Bas paani theek hai.” She continued after a pause, “meri aadat hai poora din factory me rehne ki, pata nahi aaj itni thakaan kyun lag rahi hai.”
"Yahan ki dry climate mein dehydration ki wajah se thakaan lag rahi hogi tumhe," he said, already pouring it into two glasses. "Pee lo. Better feel karogi."
He came back and sat beside her, close enough that his shoulder brushed hers, and put his own feet up on the table next to hers without even thinking consciously about it.
She took the glass, if only to stop arguing about it, and drank.
"Accha hai," she admitted, a little surprised.
"Bola tha na."
They sat like that for a while, the glasses sweating faint rings onto their palms, the hum of the city very distant through the glass.
"Tumhe pata hai," he said after a moment, "Maine jab pehli baar Virani Industries ka introduction diya tha, ek chhote si gathering mein, Papa ke saamne, main sirf apna naam theek se bol paaya tha. Baaki sab bhool gaya tha. Itna paseena aaya tha ki shirt peeth se chipak gayi thi."
She turned her head, genuinely delighted. "Sach mein?"
"Bilkul sach. Ek buyers' meeting thi, Ahmedabad mein. Papa peeche khade the, dekh rahe the, aur main—" He shook his head. "Bhool hi gaya tha ki hum kya bechte hain."
"Toh tum kitne saal ke the?" She asked after a short laugh.
He considered. "Pachees, chabbis."
"Toh natural tha," she said. "Itni chhoti umar mein, apne pita ke saamne. Nervous hona toh chahiye tha."
"Tum toh aaj bilkul nervous nahi lagi. Jis poise se tumne aaj Bandhej ko introduce kiya.”
"Andar se thi nervous." She turned the glass slowly in her hands. "Bas dikhaya nahi."
He watched her for a moment, something turning over behind his eyes, and then asked, easily, "Pehli baar aayi ho aise conference mein. Kaisa lag raha hai ye sab? Comfortably manage ho raha hai?"
"Bahut kuch seekhne ko hai," she said, looking at the window rather than him, her mind already somewhere past the question. "Itne saare log, itni badi companies. Lekin main soch rahi thi—"
She stopped there, and something crossed her face that had nothing to do with conferences at all.
"Soch rahi thi ki mujhe yahan aana bhi chahiye tha ya nahi."
The glass in Mihir's hand went very still.
For a second, maybe two, something in his chest dropped the way it used to drop in the middle of the night when he woke reaching for a side of the bed that wasn't occupied. *Yahan aana. Room. Saath rehna*. His mind went to the most obvious place, the only place it had ever fully trusted going, even now, even after everything.
"Tulsi—" he started, and his voice had already changed, gone careful, bracing.
She was still looking at the window, still frowning faintly at whatever was in her own head, and didn't notice the shift in him at all.
"Bandhej itna chhota hai," she went on. "Yahan Milan ke log hain, Manchester ke, Seoul ke — chaar sau saal purani companies. Aur main... ek workshop se shuru hui hoon. Kal jab meri baari aayegi bolne ki, panel mein, log sawaal poochhenge, alag alag jagah se, alag accents mein, aur main—" She exhaled. "Kabhi kabhi lagta hai main yahan sirf... khaali jagah bhar rahi hoon. Ki mera yahan hona zaroori nahi tha."
It was only then that she turned, expecting nothing in particular, and found his face.
He was looking at her the way a man looks when he's just stepped off a ledge he thought was still there.
She stopped mid-thought. "Kya hua?”
"Kuch nahi," he said, too quickly, and something in the quickness gave him away entirely.
She replayed her own words, and his question from a minute ago, and understood all at once what he must have heard in it. Something in her softened, and she set the glass down.
"Mihir." She reached over and put her hand flat against his chest, not a big gesture, just enough. "Main woh nahi keh rahi thi."
"Pata hai," he said, though it was clear a second ago he hadn't known anything of the sort.
"Jab pata hai toh tumne uss taraf kyun soch liya? Itne saalon me, poori zindagi lagbhag - iss mein tum itna bhi nahi samajh paaye mujhe - ki agar main Kuch karti hoon toh uske baare mein sure hoti hoon isiliye karti hoon.”
Then she took a breath before continuing, “main iss room ki baat nahi kar rahi. Humare beech ki dooriyaan mitaana —ye baat nahi kar rahi." She held his gaze until she was sure it had landed. "Main apne kaam ki baat kar rahi thi. Bandhej ki. Yeh sab log, yeh sab paisa, yeh sab history — aur main."
He let out a breath that had clearly been held longer than either of them realized, and some of the color came back into his face, sheepish now more than frightened.
"Sorry," he said. "Galat samajh liya."
"Wohi toh poochha. Kyun?" She tilted her head slightly, though she already knew.
He didn't answer that directly. He only looked down at his own glass for a second, turning it once in his hand, before he said, quieter, "Kabhi kabhi... abhi bhi... darr lagta hai."
She was quiet for a moment, and when she spoke again her voice had lost its edge entirely.
"Mujhe bhi pata nahi kyun," she said, "lekin main bhi... hamare kamre mein, upar wale, bahut pehle shift hona chahti thi. Sochti bhi thi kai baar. Phir bhi nahi ho paayi. Kya rok raha tha mujhe, main khud nahi jaanti."
He looked up at that, something quiet and careful moving across his face.
"Main samajhta hoon, Tulsi," he said.
Nothing more than that. No question, no push for a reason.
She let out a small breath, something in her chest loosening slightly at not having to explain a thing she couldn't yet explain to herself.
Then he reached for her hand before saying, “Chhodo yeh. Tumhari baat pe aate hain."
"Maine tumse pehle bhi kaha hai," he said, "aur main phir kahunga. Unhone khud tumhe invite kiya, Tulsi. Kisi ne force nahi kiya. Mujhe nahi pata unke parameters kya hain, kaise decide karte hain kisko bulaana hai — lekin jo bhi hai, unhone Bandhej ko iss laayak samjha. Unhe laga ki tum genuinely contribute kar sakti ho yahan. Warna itni badi companies ke beech mein aise hi kisi ko jagah nahi milti."
"Woh sab toh theek hai," she said, "lekin—" She stopped, gathered the rest of it, and let it come out in one breath, the way things do when they've been sitting too long. "Mihir, mujhe bahut saare accents samajh hi nahi aa rahe. Aur ek do din baad jab panel discussions honge, tab agar mujhe kuch samajh hi nahi aaya, toh main respond kaise karungi? Sabke saamne? Mujhe sochke hi ghabrahat ho rahi hai."
There it was, finally, out loud, the thing she'd been carrying silently since Iain had opened his mouth that morning.
He was quiet for a second, turning her hand over once in his, and then said, "Ek baat bataoon? Yeh sirf tumhara problem nahi hai. Bade bade log, jinhone saari zindagi English mein hi kaam kiya hai, unhe bhi kabhi kabhi doosre accent samajhne mein waqt lagta hai. Yeh koi kami nahi hai tumhari."
"Tumhe toh koi problem hi nahi hoti."
"Mujhe chalis saal ho gaye hain international clients ke saath. Tumhe abhi inke saath interaction shuru kiye ek din hua hai." He squeezed her hand once.
"Aur waise bhi — agar kabhi kisi ka accent samajh na aaye, toh usse dobara bolne ko kaho. Ya moderator se poochho. Moderators ka yeh bhi ek kaam hota hai. Koi bura nahi maanega. Main bhi kabhi kabhi kehta hoon, 'sorry, could you say that again' — log samajhte hain."
She looked at him, unconvinced but listening.
"Ek tareeka aur hai," he said. "Jawab dene se pehle, unka sawaal apne shabdon mein dohra do. Jaise — 'agar main sahi samjhi, toh aap yeh poochh rahe hain ki...' Isse do cheezein hoti hain. Ek, tumhe sochne ka waqt mil jaata hai. Do, agar tumne galat samjha ho, toh woh khud correct kar denge, tumhe sawaal dobara sunna nahi padega."
Something in her shoulders eased, just slightly. "Yeh... yeh accha idea hai."
"Woh kya hai na Tulsi, main bhi kaam ka hoon kabhi kabhi." He allowed himself a small smile, then let it fade into something more thoughtful. "Waise toh main soch raha tha ki aaj dinner ke liye kisi paas ke Indian restaurant chalte hain. Inke conference ke khaane mein hum jaise pure vegetarians ke liye zyaada kuch milta nahi, aur tumhe thoda break bhi mil jaata, itne logon se door."
She waited.
"Lekin ab sochta hoon," he went on, "ki conference wale dinner mein hi chalte hain. Alag alag accents ke beech baithenge, thoda dhang se, bina panel ke pressure ke. Aaram se suno, samjho, poochho jo poochna hai. Main saath hi rahunga, poora waqt."
Tulsi turned this over, and for the first time since the topic had come up, something in her expression shifted from dread to something more like resolve. "Tum sach mein saath rahoge? Beech mein kahin chale nahi jaaoge baat karne? Main awkward position mein aa jaaoongi agar koi baat kar raha ho aur mujhe samajh na aaye aur tum bhi wahan na hue toh.”
"Kahin nahi jaaunga," he said, and there was no joke in it this time. "Aaj ki shaam totally tumhare liye hai."
The conference dinner was held in a smaller room off the main hall, round tables instead of the long buffet lines of breakfast, low lighting, a string quartet somewhere playing something inoffensive under the noise of two hundred conversations.
Mihir steered her, without appearing to steer her, toward a table near the window where a familiar broad shape in a green tie was already seated, laughing at something with his neighbor.
"Iain," Mihir said, catching his eye, and Iain's face split into recognition at once.
"Virani! The Asian Century fella." Iain's grip was firm, delighted, as he shook Mihir's offered hand. "Good speech, that. Ye actually said something, which is more than most o' these folk manage."
"Thank you." Mihir turned slightly. "This is my wife, Tulsi. From Bandhej."
Tulsi brought her palms together in a small namaste, inclining her head, and smiled. "Nice to meet you."
Iain, being exposed to various cultures, returned the gesture without missing a beat, easy and unbothered. "Likewise. Ah caught yer bit this mornin'. Bandhej, is it?"
She caught most of it this time, slower and steadier than his morning introduction had been, one-on-one instead of thrown across a hall. "Yes. We work with handloom. And now also some machine weaving."
"Handloom." Iain shook his head, wondering. "Ye ken how rare that's got? Ah've got mills switched over fully forty year back, never looked back. Ye're tellin' me ye've still got folk sittin' at the frame, day in, day out?"
Something in the pace of it slipped away from her near the end, and she felt the old blank space start to open.
"He's asking," Mihir said easily, picking it up without breaking the rhythm of the conversation, as if he were simply adding his own thought rather than translating anyone's, "whether you've really still got people hand-weaving full time. Not just for show."
"Aye, that's it," Iain said, nodding, entirely unbothered by the repetition.
"Yes," Tulsi said, recovering her footing. "Seventy-six women. Some of them sixty, seventy years old, still at the frame."
"Seventy year old on a frame." Iain looked genuinely delighted. "Good on them. Good on ye."
He said something else after that, quicker, and the blank space opened again for a moment.
"He wants to know how the skill gets passed on," Mihir offered, still light, still just another voice at the table. "Training. Generation to generation."
"Ah, yes," Tulsi said. "Mothers teach daughters. And we also run a small training unit now, for girls who don't have mothers doing this work."
Iain nodded along, and this time she'd caught enough on her own, something about his own mill losing its trained hands to retirement with no one behind them, that she answered him directly, without waiting for Mihir at all.
By the time the next course arrived, Mihir had eased back, contributing less, letting the two of them find their own rhythm, stepping in only when the pace picked up or the words turned unexpectedly technical.
The rest of the evening blurred pleasantly. A Dutch textile engineer wanted her opinion on natural dye fastness and spoke slowly enough that she managed on her own entirely. The Portuguese importer from breakfast reappeared and remembered her name without checking her badge. Somewhere around dessert, a South African delegate made a joke she caught only the second half of, and laughed anyway, on instinct, and found that it had, in fact, been the right moment to laugh.
She still didn't understand everything. But something had shifted since the morning — the terror of the blank space had dulled into something more like an old, familiar puzzle, one she could work at instead of drowning in.
Walking back to the suite afterward, her arm loosely through his, she said, "Abhi iss dinner pe utna bura nahi tha."
"Bataya tha na," he said. "Dheere dheere hum used to ho jaate hain."
"Dheere dheere,” she agreed, and let it go at that.
As they neared the suite, Tulsi said, “ghar pe baat karte hain.”
“Haan,” he agreed.
The suite door had barely shut behind them when Mihir propped his phone against a water bottle on the coffee table and dialed home, putting it on video and speaker.
It rang twice before the screen dissolved into chaos — several voices at once, a scramble for the camera, Shobha's laugh cutting through it all.
"Maa Papa!" Angad's face swam into view first, then Vrinda's shoulder behind him. "Sab theek? Jet lag toh nahi hai zyada?"
"Bilkul theek hai," Tulsi said. "Tum log batao. Sab theek hai wahan?"
“Sab chal raha hai na achhe se?” Mihir added.
Gautam's voice came from somewhere off-camera. "Sab set hai, Papa. Aap dono tension mat lo. Main sambhaal raha hoon yahan."
"Conference kaisi chal rahi hai?" That was Ritik, leaning into frame briefly, and Tulsi caught the small, careful brightness in his voice, the sound of a man trying very hard to sound fine about missing something he'd once been meant to attend himself.
"Accha chal raha hai," Tulsi said warmly. "Tumhari yaad aa rahi hai, Ritik. Kaisi hai Munni?"
"Bilkul theek. Aaj uske saath dinner tha."
Daksha Chachi's voice rose over the general noise. "Tulsi, khaana toh sahi mil raha hai na? Pure vegetarian?"
"Mil raha hai, Chachi. Thoda dhoondhna padta hai, bas."
Gayatri Chachi had settled somewhere behind the children, half in frame, and said little, watching the screen with the particular stillness of someone content simply to look.
Then the children found the phone.
"Nani!" Garima's face filled half the screen, far too close, one eye enormous. "Baa, New York mein abhi night hai na? Mumma ne bataya tha — jab yahan day hota hai wahan night hoti hai”
"Haan, beta, tumhari mumma ne sahi kaha. Abhi night hai yahan."
"Wahan bhi moon dikhta hai?"
"Bilkul dikhta hai."
Timsy shoved in from the side. "Dadu, aapne Statue of Liberty dekha?"
"Abhi nahi, beta. Sunday ko shayad."
"Woh sach mein itna bada hai jitna photo mein hai?"
"Usse bhi bada," Mihir said, and Timsy's mouth fell open in wordless satisfaction.
Akshay and Madhvi arrived together, as they usually did, talking over each other. "Baa, wahan Diwali manate hain kya?"
"Baa, hum bhi aa sakte the na saath mein?"
"Agli baar," Tulsi said, laughing, "sabko saath me ghumne leke aayenge. Theek hai?”
Then Mihir lifted the phone and turned it toward the window behind them, giving the children a glimpse of the skyline, a smear of lights against the dark. A round of small delighted noises went up, and for a minute the phone traveled slowly across the room at their instruction — "aur dikhao," "woh kya hai," "bed kahan hai" — Timsy's question landing and passing by before anyone quite registered it, answered with an easy sweep of the camera and Mihir's "yeh raha."
Damini's face appeared as the children's excitement settled. "Maa," she said, quieter, "ek baat batani thi. Main roz subah aapke room mein jaake Badi Baa ki pooja wali jagah par dhoop kar deti hoon. Aap kisi baat ki chinta mat kijiyega, sab sambhla hua hai."
Something in Tulsi's chest eased at that, small and warm. "Thank you, beta."
They talked a while longer, Pari and Mitali both sharing something, Shobha updating them on some minor household matter, Vrinda asking after the food again on Daksha Chachi's behalf. The children continued asking questions in between until Gautam finally called an end to it — "Chalo bachcho, Baa Dadu ko sone do, unka kal bhi lamba din hai" — and the screen dissolved back into overlapping goodbyes before going dark.
Mihir set the phone down, smiling faintly at the sudden quiet.
At Shantiniketan, the call ended a beat later on their side. Gayatri Chachi sat very still for a moment, then turned toward Daksha Chachi with the particular look of a woman holding something delicious behind her teeth.
"Kisi ne kuch dekha?"
Daksha Chachi glanced up from folding a shawl. "Kya, Gayatri?"
"Woh dono ek hi kamre mein reh rahe hain." Gayatri's voice dropped, delighted, conspiratorial. "Jab bachchon ke liye phone ghuma rahe the na, kamra dikha — Tulsi ka saaman, uska bag, suitcase, sab ek hi taraf rakha tha. Mihir ka saaman bhi wahin tha. Alag kamra nahi hai unka."
Daksha Chachi's smile spread slowly, and settled, contented, into something that had clearly been waiting a long time to arrive.
Shobha, catching the tail end of it from across the room, sat up at once. "Sach mein, Baa?"
Nobody answered her directly, but nobody needed to. The quiet that followed said it plainly enough — satisfaction passing from face to face around the room, unhurried, the kind that didn't need to be spoken to be shared. The family finally exhaled a breath they didn’t know they had been holding for a few months now.
Meanwhile, in the New York hotel suite, Mihir and Tulsi had changed into their night wear.
Mihir stretched once, the exhaustion of the day finally catching up to him now that the room was quiet again.
"Chamomile peena hai, ya sona hai?" He asked.
Tulsi tried, and failed, to hold back a yawn. "Tumhe peena hai toh pee sakte hain."
He looked at her for a moment, something quiet and full in his eyes. "Mujhe toh ab chamomile ki koi zaroorat hi nahi."
She caught the weight under the ordinary words, and something in her chest answered it without needing to be told what it meant.
"Chalo," she said, smiling, "so jaate hain."
The lights went off not long after, the city's glow filtering faint and orange through the curtains, and within minutes both of them had gone still under it.
She woke sometime past midnight, the kind of waking that came from nowhere, no dream, no sound, just a slow surfacing into the dark. It took her a moment to place why.
Her hand was in his.
Not held deliberately, not in the way of a man awake and choosing it, but simply there, his fingers loosely curled over hers on the narrow space of mattress between them, the way a hand settles when a body's still half-braced for someone to have left in the night.
She lay still for a while, looking at their joined hands in the half-dark, and thought of the evening, of the half-second his face had gone white over a sentence she hadn't meant the way he'd heard it. *Itne mahinon baad bhi*, she thought. *Kitna darre hue hain abhi tak*.
Carefully, so as not to wake him, she slid her hand free, reached for the glass of water on the nightstand, and drank. Then she turned back, and instead of simply returning her hand to his, she laid her other palm flat over the back of it, covering it entirely, and let her eyes close again.
The next day went much as the one before it — Mihir on a panel in the morning, fielding questions in that same easy, oblivious rhythm; Tulsi in the audience, listening harder than she let show, catching a little more of each accent than she had the day before, the blank spaces shrinking by degrees rather than vanishing outright.
By the time they turned in that night, neither of them commented on any of it. There was nothing to comment on yet.
She woke the next morning to find their hands loosely joined again, without either of them having decided it, and her foot resting lightly against his under the duvet, the two small points of contact the only proof that anything in the room had moved at all while they slept.
The room was still half-dark when Tulsi came out of the bathroom, the curtains letting in only a thin seam of early light.
Mihir was already up, standing by the window in his night suit, scrolling through something on his phone with the particular stillness of a man pretending to read more carefully than he was.
She crossed the room, putting her hair up into a loose bun. "Uth gaye tum? Jai Shree Krishna.”
"Jai Shree Krishna.” He flipped the automatic switch that opened the curtains.
He then set the phone down and came to stand facing her. "Kaisa feel ho raha hai?"
"Theek hoon."
He studied her for a second, the way he did when he suspected the answer had been shorter than the truth. "Pakka? Aaj tumhara panel hai."
"Pata hai, Mihir." A small, dry smile. "Main bhooli nahi."
"Main bas... poochh raha hoon." He reached over and tucked a stray strand of hair, that had missed the bun, behind her ear, unhurried. "Nervous ho?"
She considered the question honestly, the way she always did. "Thoda. Lekin jo bolna hai, woh pata hai mujhe. Baaki..."
She shrugged lightly. "Baaki jo hoga, dekha jaayega."
"Mujhe pata hai tum achha karogi."
"Tumhe hamesha pata hota hai."
"Kyunki hamesha sach hota hai." He smiled, then grew quieter. "Main audience mein hi rahunga. Agar kuch bhi lagay zaroorat— ek nazar bhar daal dena mujh par."
"Kis cheez ki zaroorat padegi, Mihir?"
"Pata nahi," he admitted. "Bas... keh raha hoon."
She looked at him a moment longer, something gentle passing between them, and then moved to the tea/coffee machine. "Chai banati hoon. Phir taiyaar hona hai."
The conference hall had been rearranged for the panel sessions — a long table at the front with microphones and name placards, rows of chairs facing it, a screen behind displaying the session title: Scaling Tradition: Growth, Authenticity, and the Future of Handmade Textiles.
Tulsi found her seat at the panel table, besides a Scandinavian wool cooperative's representative and noticed an empty chair two places down that would, she already knew from the programme, belong to Véronique Lefèvre.
As she settled her folder and adjusted her microphone, she caught a familiar face in the third row. Richard Hendricks, comfortable in his seat with a notepad on his knee, met her eye and gave her a warm, encouraging smile.
She returned it, a small nod and the corner of her mouth lifting with it, before composing her expression for the room.
Mihir was seated further back, near the aisle, several rows behind Richard and on the opposite side entirely — not a deliberate distance so much as where the morning crowd had happened to leave a free chair, though she was quietly grateful for it all the same. Easier to hold her focus without his face directly in her eyeline.
The moderator, a brisk Canadian woman with silver-rimmed glasses, opened the session with introductions, then moved briskly into questions.
The first few went smoothly. A question about regional sourcing, one about pricing against mass-market competition, one about export logistics — all territory Tulsi had rehearsed inside out with Vaishnavi and Vandana, and she answered each with the same even, grounded delivery that had carried her through the first day's introduction.
Only once did she falter — a Belgian delegate's question, rapid and softly accented, slipping past her before she'd caught its shape.
"I'm sorry," she said, without any visible embarrassment, "would you mind repeating that?"
The delegate did, slower, and she answered it cleanly the second time. The moderator moved on without comment. It was, Tulsi thought, exactly the small, unremarkable moment Mihir had told her it would be. No one had blinked.
Then the moderator turned down the table. "Véronique, you've built Lefèvre into one of the most recognizable heritage-luxury houses in Europe. I'd love your perspective on scale."
Véronique Lefèvre answered at length, polished and articulate, her French accent rounding her vowels into something almost musical. She spoke of heritage as a brand asset, of scaling craftsmanship through careful licensing and selective industrialization, of protecting a story while growing a company around it.
"By the way," she added, as if it had only just occurred to her, turning her head toward Tulsi with a small, warm smile, "I did enjoy your husband's keynote, the first day. 'The Asian Century' — quite compelling." A light pause, unhurried. "I only mention it because I find myself curious — genuinely curious — how a workshop barely out of its infancy found its way onto a stage like this so quickly."
A ripple of attention moved through the room, subtle but real, heads turning slightly down the table.
For a moment, Tulsi said nothing.
In the third row, Richard's pen had stopped moving.
Several rows back, Mihir's hand had gone very still on his own knee, his jaw tightening by a fraction nobody but Tulsi would ever have noticed.
*Kitni tameez se keh diya*, he thought, the anger rising in him slow and controlled, with nowhere to go. A room full of people, and she'd managed to make an accusation sound like idle curiosity, something almost flattering in its phrasing. He wanted, with a sudden, startling force, to stand up and say exactly how Tulsi had come to be in this room — the organizers' own email, the years of dedicated work by Tulsi and the Bandhej women that this arrogant woman knew nothing about. He wanted to say it loudly enough that no one in this hall would mistake politeness for truth ever again.
He did neither. He sat very still, hands folded now over the knee that had betrayed him a moment ago, and made himself watch Tulsi instead of the woman who'd just tried to cut her down in front of two hundred strangers.
*Yeh uski ladai hai*, he reminded himself. *Meri nahi*.
It did not make the waiting any easier.
Tulsi set her pen down, unhurried, giving herself the half-second she needed.
"I don't have the authority, or really the knowledge, to say how these invitations are decided," she said, her voice even, carrying without effort. "That's not really a question for me to answer." A small pause. "What I do know is that we didn't apply. The organizers wrote to us directly — they mentioned a coffee table book on Indian textile heritage as the reason. I'm happy to forward the email, if anyone would like to see it."
A faint, appreciative murmur passed through a few rows. The moderator nodded, already moving to redirect.
But Véronique was not quite finished. "How lovely," she said, smiling, entirely unbothered. "Press does wonders, doesn't it." A small, almost affectionate laugh. "Though I suppose it must be gratifying — all that wonderful marketing about women artisans, and so few actual hands behind it."
The room's attention sharpened again, waiting.
Tulsi felt the words land somewhere lower and sharper than the first ones had. This was not about the invitation anymore. This was about the women themselves, reduced in a single sentence to a branding asset, a nice story rather than seventy-six lives.
She let the silence hold a moment longer than was comfortable — not for effect, but because she wanted to be sure of what she said next.
"Seventy-six women work with us," she said finally, quietly, and something in her tone had changed, gone from careful to simply certain. "I know all of them by name. Hiraben, who's trained eleven girls herself over the years and still corrects my knots when I get them wrong. Meethi Maasi as she’s called fondly, who's seventy-one and still the fastest on the frame in her cluster — we've tried twice to convince her to slow down, she won't hear of it. A nineteen-year-old named Jasoda, who joined us last year because her mother worked with us for a decade before her." She paused, and her voice stayed level, not raised, not performing anything. "I don't think of them as marketing. I think of them as the reason Bandhej exists at all. If that makes us small, I'm comfortable being small."
For a moment, nobody in the hall said anything.
Then, from the third row, a hand went up.
"If I may," Richard Hendricks said, rising slightly in his seat as the moderator nodded toward him. "Richard Hendricks, Hendricks Textile Group. Mrs. Virani, I understand part of your production has scaled through a shared arrangement with an established manufacturing facility in Mumbai — infrastructure support, while the weaving itself stays entirely handloom. I'd be curious how you've managed to protect the integrity of the technique while using industrial capacity for the rest of the chain."
It was, Tulsi recognized at once, exactly the right question — substantive, informed, nothing in it that required her to defend herself against anything at all.
She glanced, briefly, toward Mihir, three rows and an aisle away from Richard, and found him watching with the same carefully composed stillness as before, giving nothing away. Mihir kept his relief to himself, as he had kept his anger, a few moments ago.
"That's a fair question," she said, and felt her footing return fully under her for the first time since Véronique had spoken. "The Mumbai arrangement is strictly infrastructure — storage, finishing, logistics. And yes, we've introduced some machine weaving in recent months, for certain lines. But it's a supporting mechanism, nothing more. It doesn't touch the resist-dye work, the tying, the hand-finishing — the parts that actually define what Bandhej is. We use machines where they don't compromise the quality or the authenticity of the weaving, and nowhere else."
Richard nodded, making a note, and the moderator moved the panel on to its next question.
At the far end of the table, Véronique had already returned her attention to her own notes, her expression composed into polite, distant interest.
*Not bad*, she allowed herself privately, with the particular irritation of a woman who had expected an easy win and not gotten one. *For someone just six years into this*.
She smiled at the room, warm and untroubled, as if nothing at all had passed between them.
The panel discussion ended a few minutes later, and Tulsi had barely gathered her folder before Mihir was there, having crossed the distance between them faster than the thinning crowd should have allowed.
"Tulsi." His voice came out rougher than he meant it to. "Tum theek ho?"
"Bilkul theek hoon." She looked at him properly, and whatever she saw in his face made her soften at once. "Mihir—"
"Mujhe uss aurat ko—" He stopped himself, visibly, jaw working, and pressed the heel of his hand briefly against his own forehead as if to physically hold something in. "Poore panel mein baithe rehna pada mujhe, kuch bole bina. Pata hai mujhe tumhe bachaane ki zaroorat nahi thi. Pata hai. Lekin Tulsi, main tumhe bata nahi sakta kitna mushkil tha woh. Mann kar raha tha uss ghamandi aurat ko —“
"Mujhe pata hai," she said quietly.
"Jo tumne un auraton ke baare mein kaha—" His voice caught slightly, and he had to stop and start again. "Hiraben ka naam, Meethi Maasi ka, uss ladki ka, Jasoda — tumne un sabka naam yaad rakha hai - woh tumhare liye sirf workers nahi hain, aur woh... woh sirf baithi thi wahan, muskura rahi thi, jaise tumhari mehnat sirf ek... ek marketing line ho." He shook his head hard, like he could physically throw the memory off. "Mann kiya khada ho jaaun, sabke saamne bata doon—"
"Lekin nahi khade hue," Tulsi said gently, and there was real warmth in it, not a rebuke.
"Nahi hua." He exhaled, some of the heat finally draining out of him. "Kyunki yeh meri ladai nahi thi. Tumne khud sambhaal liya. Behtar sambhaal liya jitna main kabhi kar paata."
She reached up without thinking and straightened his collar, a small, automatic gesture, more for herself than for him.
"Tumhe gussa aana... mujhe accha laga, Mihir. Sach mein."
"Accha laga?" He looked honestly confused for a second.
"Haan." She let her hand rest flat against his chest a moment. "Iska matlab hai tum sun rahe the. Dekh rahe the. Aur phir bhi beech mein nahi aaye. Mujhe khud saamna karne diya uss challenge ka." A small smile. "Yeh zyada maayne rakhta hai us se, agar tum khade ho kar bol dete."
Something in his shoulders finally let go completely at that, and for a moment he simply looked at her, something unguarded and a little overwhelmed in his face.
Richard arrived before either of them could say anything more, notepad still in hand, beaming. "Mrs. Virani. That was, without question, the best five minutes of this entire conference." He glanced at Mihir, a flicker of something knowing in his eyes, though he said nothing about it. "Virani, your wife just made Véronique Lefèvre look like she'd wandered into the wrong century."
"She has a habit of doing that," Mihir said, and the pride was back in his voice, plain and unguarded, nothing held back this time.
"I should hope so," Richard said. "I'm attending every session you're on for the rest of this confluence, you know. Already told you that." He tipped his notepad toward her in something like a salute and moved off toward the refreshment table, leaving the two of them standing there, close, in the thinning crowd.
The rest of the day had passed without incident — lunch, a quiet afternoon session, an early dinner neither of them had the energy to make an event of. By the time they'd changed for bed, the morning's panel already felt like something that had happened a week ago rather than hours.
Mihir woke sometime past two, thirsty, throat dry from the hotel's relentless air conditioning, and went still before he'd even fully surfaced.
His hand was trapped beneath her cheek, her face turned into his palm, her breath warm and even against his skin.
He lay there a moment, weighing it. The water was right there, an arm's length away on the nightstand. It would take nothing at all to slide his hand free, drink, and settle back.
He didn't move.
Instead he watched her, barely visible in the dark, her face slack and peaceful in a way it rarely managed even in sleep these days, and let the thirst sit there, entirely unimportant now that he'd noticed what his hand had found.
*Thodi der aur*, he thought. *Paani baad mein pee lunga*.
He didn’t realize when his eyes closed again, his hand exactly where it was, and let himself drift back under, half-aware the whole time of the small, steady warmth of her breath against his skin.
The next afternoon brought a roundtable discussion on sustainable supply chains, Mihir among the invited voices this time, while Tulsi spent the hours wandering between smaller breakout sessions and quiet one-on-one conversations, determined to wring every bit of use out of the opportunity in front of her — a panel on natural dye innovation here, a conversation with a Peruvian alpaca cooperative there, a card exchanged with a Kenyan cotton exporter whose supply model struck her as worth studying further. By the time the day wound down, her folder had grown thick with notes and new contacts, and the accents, she noticed almost without meaning to, had stopped announcing themselves quite so loudly in her ears.
That night, they ordered Indian food from a nearby restaurant, skipping the conference dinner. They decided they needed both — a break from the constant company of people from all over the world and a good Indian meal to wind down some.
She'd barely finished the last bite of her dal when she set her spoon down and said, "Kal mera presentation hai. Tumhara laptop free hoga? Preparation karni hai."
"Bilkul," he said, and then hesitated, turning his water glass once in his hand before continuing. "Tulsi, agle ek do ghante tum busy ho toh — kuch delegates keh rahe the meeting ke liye. Unhe Virani Industries ke saath collaboration mein interest hai."
She looked at him properly. "Tum apna kaam compromise toh nahi kar rahe, kyunki main yahan hoon? Aisa mat karo, please Mihir. Agar main busy na bhi hoti, tab bhi tumhe jaana chahiye tha."
"Nahi, nahi, itna serious nahi hai," he said quickly. "Unhe interest hai collaboration mein, main itna keen nahi hoon sach kahun toh. Lekin abhi soch raha hoon, sun hi leta hoon unki baat."
"Toh jaao," she said simply. "Main yahin kaam karungi."
He nodded, already rising, and went to change out of his dinner clothes into something more presentable for a late business meeting. Tulsi pulled her chair up to the desk, opened his laptop, slid her pen drive inside and began sorting through her notes.
A few minutes later she heard him moving around near the closet, a low, muttered search going on behind her.
"Kuch dhoondh rahe ho?" she asked, without turning around.
"Haan, BP ki dawai ki strip dhoondh raha hoon." He crouched, checking a lower shelf. "Jo strip chal rahi thi woh carry-on mein rakh li thi, wohi toh abhi tak chal rahi thi. Lekin baaki wali suitcase mein rakhi thi — ab yaad nahi aa raha closet mein kahan rakh di."
She was up before he'd finished the sentence, alarm sharpening her voice. "Tumhari BP ki dawai kho gayi? Mihir, hadd karte ho tum. Hato, main dekhti hoon."
"Tulsi, koi baat nahi, main—"
"Hato." She was already crossing the room.
She reached the closet and put her hand toward the shelf where his folded shirts sat.
"Tulsi!"
The shout came out before he'd decided to make it, too loud, too sharp, and she turned, startled.
"Kya hua?"
For a second he only looked at her, caught entirely off guard by his own voice, his mind scrambling. "Shayad... shayad maine suitcase se nikaali hi nahi thi," he said, the words arriving smoother than they had any right to, given that some part of him knew perfectly well he'd taken the strip out himself, two days ago. “Suitcase ke inner flap mein hogi."
She frowned slightly, something about his tone not quite matching the words, but let it go, already turning toward the suitcase instead. "Theek hai, main dekhti hoon wahan."
The moment her back was fully turned, his hand moved fast and silent into the shirts, closing around the small box, and it disappeared into the inner pocket of the blazer he’d left on the bed, before she'd so much as unzipped the inner flap.
Only once it was safely away did the rest of his memory catch up to him — the drawer, below the shirts, where he'd actually left the strip two nights ago, half-asleep and not thinking about it since.
"Arre," he said, and crossed to it himself now, no danger left in the closet at all now. He pulled the drawer open and found the strip sitting exactly where he'd left it. "Yeh rahi."
Tulsi straightened from the suitcase, empty-handed, and looked at him with faint, baffled irritation. "Toh pehle hi bata dete na ki drawer mein hai."
"Bhool gaya tha," he said, which was, for once, entirely true.
She crossed back, the panic leaving her slowly, and held out a hand. He gave her the strip. She popped one tablet from the foil onto her palm and held it out to him.
"Lo. Aur ab se main rakhungi tumhari medicines. Tum par bharosa nahi kiya jaa sakta dawai ko leke."
"Tulsi, main—"
"Koi bahas nahi. Jo maine keh diya bas keh diya." She pressed the tablet into his hand, final. "Ab lo aur jao apni meeting ke liye."
He took it, swallowed it with water and reached for his blazer, shrugging it on. His hand went briefly, almost carelessly, to the inner pocket — a single press of fingers against the outside of the fabric, confirming the small hard edge of the box was still there, safe, before he let his hand drop again.
Then he placed a hand on her shoulder, checked he had his phone with him, and went toward the door.
"Aata hoon," he said, straightening his blazer out of reflex, "ek-ded ghante mein."
Then he was gone, the door clicking shut behind him.
The meeting ran long, and by the time the Singaporean delegates' financial projections had filled a third whiteboard, Mihir had lost all track of anything beyond the numbers in front of him.
"Drinks are here," someone said at some point, and a waiter circled the table.
"Non-alcoholic," Mihir said, without looking up from the figures, "please," and returned to the chart being pulled up on the screen.
The glass that arrived in front of him a few minutes later was clear, lightly citrus-scented, garnished with mint. He drank it without a second thought, still deep in conversation, and didn't notice when it was refilled sometime later, nor that the taste was sharper than it had been the first time.
By the third glass his sentences had started arriving a half-beat slower than his thoughts, though he didn't register that either, still following the thread of projected volumes and margins with the same steady attention.
It was only when the meeting finally wound down that one of the two younger delegates, rising to shake hands, caught the other's eye in a brief, private exchange.
"Mr. Virani," the taller one said carefully, "we should walk you back to your room."
Mihir blinked up at him. "I'm fine," he said, and found, attempting to stand, that the floor had developed an opinion of its own.
"Still," the other said, already moving to his side. "Better we take you."
They flanked him down the corridor, close enough to catch his shoulder when it drifted, and at the suite door, one of them knocked.
Tulsi opened it with a pen in one hand, and her expression shifted from mild surprise to something closer to alarm the instant she saw him.
"Mihir?" Her eyes moved rapidly over him, over the two unfamiliar men flanking him. "Kya hua? Mihir, tum theek ho?"
"He'll be alright," the taller delegate said quickly, already helping guide Mihir through the doorway. "There was a mix-up with the drinks tonight — the waiter brought the wrong round by mistake, it wasn't meant to be alcoholic at all. He mentioned he doesn't normally drink, so it hit him harder than it would most."
Tulsi's hands had already gone to Mihir's other arm, bracing him, her alarm sharpening rather than easing. *He doesn’t drink at all. The last time he had drank in his anger —* she abruptly stopped her train of thoughts. She didn’t want to go there.
“Kitna—" she started, then stopped, redirecting. "Thank you. Thank you so much for bringing him.”
"Of course. Goodnight, Mrs. Virani."
They left with visible relief, the door clicking shut behind them, and Tulsi turned immediately back to him.
Mihir stood swaying faintly in the middle of the room, his tie loosened, his eyes struggling to settle on any one point. Then they found her.
"Tulsi." His hands rose, unsteady, and found her face, cupping it with a kind of desperate gentleness, as though checking it was solid. "Tulsi... sach mein tum ho na?"
Her chest tightened at the sheer need in his voice. "Haan," she said, as steady as she could make it, though her heart was racing. "Main yahan hoon. Tumhare paas hoon. Aao, so jao."
He looked at her for a long moment, swaying slightly under his own hands, and then his face broke into a slow, unguarded, utterly goofy smile.
"Tulsi," he said. "I love you."
Author's Note:
Hi everyone,
This one took the story somewhere I wasn't entirely expecting when I sat down to write it — from Tulsi's accent anxiety finally boiling over in that panel room, to Mihir sitting on his hands through the whole thing because he knows better now than to rescue her, to that quiet, maddening little ring thread refusing to stay buried just yet.
And then, well. You saw how it ended.
I'd love to know what you thought of this one, especially the panel scene with Véronique — did it land the way I hoped? And that ending — are you as nervous as I am about where this goes next?
As always, thank you for reading, and for every comment you leave. They genuinely mean the world to me and keep me coming back to write more.
More very soon.
— ElitePerfumer 💛
Bollywood
Geet - Hui Sabse Parayee
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