Chapter 3: The Ex

The trouble arrived on a Thursday, three weeks after I did. It arrived in a black Fortuner with Maharashtra plates and tinted windows and the specific, aggressive parking style of a man who believed that double-parking was a right rather than a violation. Rohit Deshmukh. My ex. The man I had left Mumbai to escape, though I had told everyone — Kamini, Amma, Vikrant who asked casually over his seven-fifteen chai — that I had left Mumbai because the acting wasn't working out.

The acting wasn't working out. That was true. But the acting not working out was survivable. Rohit not working out was the thing that had put me on the bus to Hogwada with a single suitcase and a phone full of blocked numbers and the specific, bone-deep exhaustion of a woman who had spent eighteen months with a man who controlled everything — what she wore, who she spoke to, whether she was allowed to audition for roles that required her to be touched by another actor, which was all roles, which meant Rohit had effectively ended her career while claiming to support it.

He was standing outside the chai shop when I came down from the flat above. The flat that Kamini and I shared — two rooms, a kitchen, a balcony that overlooked Main Road, the domestic arrangement that Hogwada considered either charming or pitiable depending on whether you believed two unmarried sisters sharing a flat was a lifestyle choice or a failure of the marriage market.

"Tara."

"How did you find me?"

"Instagram. Your sister posted a photo. Kulkarni's Kadak Chai. Main Road. I Google-mapped it. Three hours from Pune."

"You drove three hours."

"I drove three hours because you won't answer my calls. You blocked me on everything. WhatsApp. Instagram. Your mother's landline — I called your mother's landline, Tara. I spoke to your mother."

"What did she say?"

"She said you weren't home. She said you were at the shop. She gave me directions."

Of course she did. Amma, who had met Rohit once — once, at a restaurant in Mumbai, where he had been charming and attentive and had ordered for both of us without asking and had touched the small of my back while we walked and had done all the things that controlling men do in public spaces to signal ownership while appearing romantic — Amma had decided that Rohit was "a good boy" and that I was "being dramatic" and that blocking a man's phone number was the behaviour of someone who watched too many crime shows.

"You need to leave."

"I need to talk to you."

"There's nothing to talk about."

"There's eighteen months to talk about. There's the fact that I love you. There's the fact that you left without telling me."

"I left without telling you because telling you would have resulted in you convincing me to stay. That's what you do, Rohit. You convince. You persuade. You make everything sound reasonable until I'm standing in your flat wearing clothes you picked out and eating food you ordered and auditioning for nothing because you decided that the auditions were inappropriate."

"I was protecting you."

"You were controlling me. There's a difference. The difference is that protection asks permission. Control doesn't."

He stepped forward. One step. The step was small but the energy behind it was not — the specific, compressed intensity of a man who was accustomed to closing distance as a negotiation tactic, who understood that physical proximity was power and that a woman who was backing away was a woman who was already losing the argument.

I did not back away. I had backed away for eighteen months. In Mumbai flats and restaurants and autorickshaws and the specific, enclosed spaces where Rohit's proximity became a cage. I did not back away because I was in Hogwada and the chai shop was behind me and Kamini was inside and the steel tumblers were clean and Appa's photo was garlanded and this was not Mumbai and I was not the woman who wore clothes someone else picked.

"Leave. Now."

"Or what?"

"Or I'll call the police. The sub-inspector is a regular. He'll be here in four minutes."

"You're going to call the police on me for standing on a public road?"

"I'm going to call the police on you for harassment. For eighteen months of harassment. For the calls and the messages and the showing up and the three-hour drive from Pune to a town you've never heard of because a woman you dated blocked your number and you couldn't accept it."

Rohit looked at me. The look was the look I knew — the calculation, the assessment, the rapid computation of whether pushing further would yield the result he wanted or whether the variables had changed enough to make retreat the better strategy. The variables had changed. I was in Hogwada. The chai shop was behind me. The sub-inspector was four minutes away.

He got in the Fortuner. He drove away. The double-parked car left a space on Main Road that filled immediately with the noise and movement of a small town that had, for three minutes, gone quiet.

Kamini was at the door. "Was that—"

"Yes."

"The ex."

"Yes."

"The bad one."

"They're all bad, Kamini. But yes. The bad one."

"Should I call Vikrant?"

"Not yet. But soon. Probably soon."