Chapter 14: Ghar (Home) — The Exhibition

The exhibition opened on a Friday, which was Farhan's choice, because Fridays in Pune are the day when the city exhales — the week's work is done, the weekend is approaching, and people are willing to stand in a gallery and look at paintings with the particular generosity of spirit that comes from knowing that tomorrow is Saturday and Saturdays belong to no one.

The gallery was in Koregaon Park — a converted bungalow with white walls and wooden floors and the particular lighting that galleries use, which is not natural light and not artificial light but something in between, a curated illumination designed to make paintings look the way the painter intended and the viewer look slightly better than usual.

Twelve paintings. "Ghar: Home." Farhan Shaikh.

He'd been up since four. Not nervous — Farhan was not a nervous man, or rather, he was a nervous man who had learned to channel nervousness into productivity, the way rivers channel water into movement. Since four, he'd been at the gallery: checking the lighting, adjusting the placement, having the particular conversations with the gallery owner (a woman named Reshma who wore only black and spoke about art with the reverence that other people reserve for religion) about which painting went where and why and what the viewer's journey should be.

The viewer's journey. This was Reshma's phrase, and Farhan had initially found it pretentious — paintings were not airports; you didn't need a journey, you needed eyes — but as he'd arranged the twelve canvases, he'd understood what she meant. The paintings told a story. Not a narrative story, not a plot, but an emotional story — the story of a man looking at the woman he loves and the house they share and the wall between them and the door that connects them. The journey was from the first painting (a landscape of Sadashiv Peth at dawn, the colours muted, the houses sleeping) to the last (the door, the golden light, the space beyond). The journey was from seeing to understanding. From looking to knowing.

Nandini arrived at six. The opening was at seven, but she'd come early because Farhan had asked — "I need you to see it before anyone else, because you're the reason it exists and if you don't like it the whole thing falls apart" — and she'd said "Farhan, I like everything you paint" and he'd said "that's why I need you to see it before anyone else, because if you don't like it I'll know you're lying."

She walked through the gallery. Slowly. The way she walked through bookshops — with attention, with intention, with the particular care of a person who understands that the thing she's looking at deserves the time she's giving it.

Painting one: Sadashiv Peth at dawn. She recognised the lane — her lane, the narrow street with the old wadas and the chai stall and the temple at the corner. But Farhan had painted it the way Farhan saw it, which was different from the way she saw it. She saw home. He saw light. The painting was about light — the particular Pune dawn light that is grey and gold simultaneously, the light that promises and withholds, the light of a city that is never fully awake and never fully asleep.

Painting two: the garden wall. The wall between their houses. She'd never thought of the wall as beautiful — it was a wall, concrete, painted once in 1997 and not since, with a crack that mirrored the one in Farhan's ceiling and a jasmine plant that had claimed the top and refused to be evicted. But Farhan had painted the wall as if it were the most important structure in the world, because to him it was. The wall was the boundary and the connection. The thing that separated his life from hers and also joined them. The wall was home.

Paintings three through nine: the kitchen. Her kitchen, seen through the window. The table. The chai cups. The books on the shelves. The tulsi in the garden, visible through the glass. Each painting was a variation — different light, different season, different time of day — but the subject was the same: the domestic interior of a life being lived. Not performed. Not curated. Lived. The dirty dishes in the sink. The newspaper on the table. The particular mess of a kitchen that feeds people rather than photographs well.

Painting ten: the woman in the garden. Back turned. Looking at something beyond the frame. This was the painting from November — the one she'd seen in the studio, the one that had made her say "you're painting me again" and he'd said "I'm always painting you." Standing in the gallery, under the curated lighting, with the wooden floors and the white walls, the painting was different. Bigger. Not physically — it was the same size — but emotionally. In the studio, it had been a painting of a woman. In the gallery, it was a painting of love. The particular love that doesn't demand the beloved turn around. The love that is content to see the back. The love that understands that the beloved is looking at something the lover can't see, and that's not betrayal — it's respect.

Painting eleven: two chai cups on a kitchen table. One full, one empty. The metaphor was obvious — Farhan had known it was obvious when he painted it, had almost not included it because obvious is the enemy of art — but obvious, it turned out, was also honest. The full cup and the empty cup. The presence and the absence. The person who stays and the person who goes. The cup that is always refilled and the cup that waits.

Painting twelve: the door.

Nandini stood in front of it for a long time. The door was open. The light coming through was golden — the late-afternoon light, the December light, the light of the hour when everything looks kinder than it is. Beyond the door was — space. Not a room, not a garden, not a landscape. Space. The unpainted canvas. The future that hasn't happened yet.

"That's the one for me," she said.

"They're all for you."

"But that one especially."

"Why?"

"Because it's honest about not knowing. The others — the garden, the kitchen, the wall — they're about what is. That one is about what might be. And 'might be' is braver than 'is.'"

He stood next to her. The gallery was empty — just the two of them, the twelve paintings, and the particular intimacy of a man showing a woman the inside of his head, which is what exhibitions are, really. Not art. Not commerce. The particular vulnerability of saying: this is what I see when I look at the world, and the world I see is mostly you.

"I'm terrified," he said.

"Of the exhibition?"

"Of the exhibition. Of the reviews. Of whether anyone will come. Of whether the paintings will sell. Of whether they'll understand—"

"They'll understand."

"How do you know?"

"Because the paintings are about a feeling that everyone has. Home. The wanting of it. The making of it. The fear of losing it. Everyone knows that feeling. They'll understand."

She took his hand. The painter's hand. The hand that had made twelve paintings about home and was now trembling slightly, the way hands tremble when they've given everything they have and are waiting to find out if it was enough.

"Come on," she said. "People will be here in an hour. You should eat something."

"I'm not hungry."

"You haven't eaten since four AM. You're eating."

She produced, from her jute bag, a dabba. Inside: poha. The Pune default. The food that Nandini made when there wasn't time for anything else and also when there was time for everything else because poha was not a compromise — it was a statement. A statement that said: this is where we're from. This is what we eat. This is home.

He ate. Standing in his own exhibition, surrounded by twelve paintings of the woman who had just handed him a dabba of poha, eating with the focused gratitude of a man who is loved in the most specific and the most mundane way — not with grand gestures but with turmeric-yellow rice flakes and curry leaves and the particular attention of a woman who noticed he hadn't eaten and fixed it.

*

The opening was crowded. More crowded than Farhan had expected, which was a tribute either to his reputation or to Reshma's mailing list or to the particular Pune appetite for free wine at gallery openings, which was real and documented and which Reshma had accounted for with three cases of Sula Dindori Reserve and a strict one-glass policy that no one observed.

The people came: the art crowd from Koregaon Park, the culture editors from the Pune papers, the professors from the art colleges, the general public who came because the paintings were beautiful and beauty is free. Gauri came, with her husband and her opinion, which she delivered within four minutes of arrival: "The door painting is a masterpiece. The chai cups are a cliché. I'll take both." Gauri was the kind of friend who could insult and purchase in the same sentence, and Farhan loved her for it.

Chirag came. This was a surprise — not to Nandini, who had told him about it and expected him to decline, but to Farhan, who had not expected to see his partner's ex-husband standing in front of painting ten (the woman in the garden) with an expression that was not admiration and not jealousy but something between the two, something that looked like recognition.

"You see her," Chirag said, when Farhan approached.

"I try."

"You succeed." Chirag was looking at the painting the way he'd been reading the letters — carefully, with the attention of a man who is learning to look at things he'd previously refused to see. "During the marriage, I never — I never saw her like this. From behind. Looking away from me. I always wanted her facing me. Paying attention to me. I didn't understand that a person looking away isn't a person leaving. It's a person living."

"That's — a good observation."

"Dr. Kulkarni would be proud." A pause. The pause of a man deciding whether to be generous. "The paintings are very good, Farhan. All of them. But especially that one. Because you've painted what I missed. Twenty years of missing it. And you caught it."

"Thank you."

"Don't thank me. Thank her. She's the subject."

"She's the reason."

They stood side by side — the ex-husband and the current partner, the man who'd missed and the man who'd caught — looking at a painting of a woman in a garden who was looking at something neither of them could see. And for a moment, the moment expanded and included both of them in the same frame, two men who loved the same woman in different ways and at different times and who were, in a gallery in Koregaon Park on a Friday evening, closer to understanding each other than they'd ever been.

Diggi came. This was less of a surprise — Diggi had always been an arts person, the kind of man who went to openings and knew the difference between impasto and glaze and could talk about Husain and Souza with the casual authority of a man whose education had included galleries as well as cricket pitches.

He walked through the exhibition. Slowly. With the attention that Diggi gave to things he cared about, which was complete and focused and slightly unnerving, the attention of a man who doesn't look at things so much as into them.

He stopped at painting twelve. The door. The golden light. The space beyond.

"This is the one," he said to Nandini, who had appeared beside him with the particular radar that detected when one of her three men was having an emotion and needed managing.

"Farhan painted it for me."

"I know. It's the most generous painting I've ever seen."

"Generous?"

"He's painted a door. An open door. And the space beyond isn't his studio or his garden or his life with you. It's nothing. It's possibility. He's painted you a future that he hasn't filled in. That's generous, Nandini. Most men would have painted themselves on the other side of the door. Farhan left it empty. For you."

She looked at the painting again. Diggi was right — the space beyond the door was empty. Not Farhan-shaped. Not anyone-shaped. Just light and possibility and the particular courage of a painter who understood that the most generous thing you can give the person you love is not your vision of their future but the space to create their own.

"I should go," Diggi said. "This is his night. Not mine."

"Stay. Have wine."

"One glass. Then I'll go."

He stayed for one glass. Then two. Then he was in a conversation with Reshma about Bhupen Khakhar's portraits and the conversation was animated and specific and the kind of conversation that Diggi was good at — the intellectual sparring, the cultural references, the particular pleasure of a man whose mind is engaged and whose company is valued.

Nandini watched from across the room. Three men. In the same gallery. Looking at paintings of her. Paintings of her kitchen and her garden and her wall and her door. Three men who loved her — differently, imperfectly, with damage and history and conditions — and one painter who had put it all on canvas and was now standing by the door painting with paint on his shirt and poha in his stomach and the particular expression of a man who has done the thing he was made to do and is waiting — not for praise, not for sales, not for reviews — but for the one person whose opinion matters to tell him that it mattered.

She crossed the room. Past Gauri and her purchasing decisions. Past Chirag and his recognition. Past Diggi and his intellectual sparring. Past the crowd and the wine and the curated lighting.

She stood in front of Farhan.

"It's perfect," she said.

"It's not. The lighting on painting four is wrong and the frame on painting nine—"

"It's perfect. All of it. The journey. The wall. The kitchen. The door."

"The door was the hardest."

"Because you left it empty."

"Because leaving it empty meant trusting that empty wasn't the same as nothing."

"It's not nothing. It's everything."

She kissed him. In the gallery. In front of the paintings. In front of the three cases of Sula Dindori Reserve and the art crowd and the culture editors and the professors and Gauri and Chirag and Diggi and Reshma. She kissed him the way the paintings loved her: completely, specifically, with attention to every detail and every shadow and every particular shade of light.

The gallery erupted — not in applause, because Pune is not a city that applauds kissing in public, but in the particular shifting of attention that happens when something real occurs in a room full of performance. The culture editors noted it. Gauri smiled. Chirag looked away. Diggi raised his glass.

"Home," Farhan said, when the kiss was done.

"Home," she said.