Chapter 13: Banganga

Chetan calls on a Thursday.

Not texts — calls. The calling being: a generational marker, because people over forty-five call and people under forty-five text and the boundary between the two is: fixed, immovable, the great communicative divide of our time. Chetan calls because Chetan is fifty-three and because Chetan believes that the human voice carries information that text cannot — tone, pause, breath, the micro-hesitations that reveal what words conceal.

"Are you free Saturday?" His voice through the phone is: slightly different from his bookstore voice. Closer. More personal. The voice of a man speaking to one person instead of forty-three.

"Saturday. Let me check." I don't need to check. My Saturday is: empty, the way my Saturdays have been empty since I moved to Mumbai, the emptiness being not the painful kind (that was month one) but the spacious kind (this is month five), the kind that allows for: possibility. "I'm free."

"Banganga. I promised you a walk. The tank is beautiful in the morning — before the tour groups arrive. Shall we say seven?"

"Seven is perfect."

Seven o'clock Saturday morning, I'm standing at Banganga Tank in Malabar Hill, and the city is: different here. Mumbai at seven in the morning in May is already warm — the warmth that arrives not gradually but fully formed, as if the sun has been rehearsing all night and is now performing at full intensity. But Banganga is: cooled by history. The ancient water tank, surrounded by temples that are older than the British occupation, older than the Mughals, older than most things that Mumbai contains — the tank produces a micro-climate that is: sacred and humid simultaneously.

Chetan arrives at seven-oh-three. He's wearing: a white linen kurta and dark trousers, the outfit of a man who has dressed for a walk the way other men dress for dinner — deliberately, with respect for the companion. His grey hair is slightly damp. He's come from his Marine Drive walk.

"You walk Marine Drive and then come here?" I ask. "That's — how many kilometres?"

"Six. Give or take. The giving and taking depending on whether I stop for chai at Girgaon, which I always do, so: seven."

"Every morning?"

"Every morning. Rain, heat, whatever Mumbai decides to throw. The walk is: non-negotiable."

He says this without the self-congratulation that fitness people attach to their routines. Not "I walk seven kilometres every morning" as a boast, but as: a fact. The way Sunaina says "I do yoga." The way Jaya says "I write." A practice. A non-negotiable. The thing that keeps you: upright.

We walk around the tank. The steps descend to the water — green, still, ancient water that has been sitting in this tank since the eleventh century, the water reflecting the temples and the sky and the pigeons that treat Banganga as: a resort, the pigeons bathing and strutting along the stone edges with the entitlement of creatures who have been coming here longer than any human.

"Meera loved this place," Chetan says. He says her name the way he says it in his books — with familiarity, the way you say the name of a city you've lived in. Not with pain (the pain has been processed) but with: presence. Meera is present when Chetan speaks her name. Not as a ghost but as: a fact.

"She was an art historian. She used to bring her students here — from the university — and she'd sit on those steps and lecture about temple architecture and the Silhara dynasty and the student would take notes and she would forget to stop and they'd miss their next class and she'd say, 'History doesn't respect timetables.' She was — "

He pauses. Not the grief-pause. The selection-pause. Choosing which detail to share from the archive of a marriage that lasted twenty-four years.

"She was the smartest person I knew. Smarter than me, which she reminded me of: regularly. And she was right." He smiles. The smile of a man remembering not a tragedy but a person. The person behind the tragedy.

"What was she like? As a person, not as a — not as someone who died."

He looks at me. The look of a man who has been asked this question rarely, because people who know about Meera's death ask about: the death, the dying, the after. Not about: the before. Not about: the living.

"She was impatient. She read three books at a time. She argued with taxi drivers about routes — not because she knew better but because arguing was: sport. She made terrible chai — the worst chai in Maharashtra, possibly in India. She put too much sugar and no cardamom and she'd serve it to guests and they'd drink it and smile and she'd know they were lying and she'd laugh."

"She sounds wonderful."

"She was wonderful. And she was difficult. And she was: mine, for twenty-four years, and then she was: gone, and the gone-ness is not something you recover from. You recover around. Like a tree growing around a rock. The rock stays. The tree keeps growing."

I sit on the stone steps. The stone is warm — the warmth of centuries of sun stored in Basalt, the warmth that rises through your clothes into your skin, the warmth that says: this place has been here longer than your problems and will be here after your problems have become: history.

Chetan sits beside me. Not close — the distance of propriety that Indian men of his generation maintain, the distance that says: I respect your space, I respect the fact that we've known each other for eleven days, I respect that whatever this is, it is: new and fragile and must be handled with the care that new and fragile things require.

"Tell me about you," he says. "Not the gym-you or the divorced-you. The you-before."

"The me-before was a copywriter. At Lintas. In 1997."

"Lintas. That's a name from another era. What was it like?"

And I tell him. I tell him about the creative department — the chaos of it, the brilliance of it, the twenty-three-year-old version of myself who'd stood in conference rooms and pitched ideas and believed that words could: change things. I tell him about the Surf tagline (his eyes widen — "That was you? That tagline is legendary"). I tell him about the award I won at twenty-four — a silver at the Abby Awards — that is currently in a cardboard box in my Bandra apartment because I don't know where to hang it.

"Hang it," he says. "Hang it where you can see it every day."

"It feels like: showing off."

"It feels like: remembering. There's a difference. Showing off is: performance. Remembering is: evidence. Evidence that you existed before you were someone's wife. Evidence that you were: electric."

Electric. The word that Nikhil used. The word that Chetan uses now, independently, without knowing Nikhil used it. The word that two separate men, from two separate parts of my life, have used to describe the woman I was before Harsh — the convergence suggesting that "electric" is not: flattery but: fact.

"Who told you I was electric?"

"Nobody. I'm reading you. You're — the way you talk about the tagline, your face changes. The lines relax. Your eyes do something. You become: younger. Not in years — in energy. That's what I mean by electric. The version of you that loved what she did. That version is still here. I can see her."

I look at the water. The ancient green water of Banganga, reflecting the sky, reflecting the temples, reflecting: me. The woman on the steps. Fifty years old. Short hair. New city. Old talent. The woman who was electric and who is: finding her way back to the current.

"I'm thinking about going back to advertising," I say. The sentence arrives without my permission — I hadn't planned to say it, hadn't even known I was thinking it until the words were: out. The words that my body produced before my brain could: filter.

"You should."

"I'm fifty."

"And?"

"And the industry has changed. It's all digital now. Social media. Reels. Things I don't understand."

"You understand: words. Words don't become obsolete. The medium changes but the need for someone who can: say something true in a way that makes people feel — that need doesn't change. That need is: permanent."

We sit on the steps of Banganga, two people whose lives have been interrupted — his by death, mine by divorce — and who are finding, in the ancient warmth of stone and the ancient stillness of water, the possibility that interruption is not: ending. That the interrupted life can be: resumed. Not the same life — a different life. A life built on the rubble of the old one, the way temples are built on the ruins of older temples, the new structure containing: traces of what came before.

"Chai?" he asks. "There's a stall near the temple. Not Meera-level terrible. Actually drinkable."

"Chai," I say.

We drink chai on the steps of Banganga. The chai is: strong, ginger-heavy, served in small clay cups that you break after drinking — the kulhad, the cup that is used once and returned to the earth, the cup that reminds you: everything is temporary, even the vessel that holds your comfort.

The kulhad breaks in my hand — the satisfying crack of fired clay, the shards falling to the stone steps, the breaking that is: not destruction but completion. The cup has served its purpose. The chai has been: drunk. The morning has been: lived.

"Next Saturday?" Chetan asks.

"Next Saturday."

He walks me to the main road. A taxi — not Uber, not Ola, a proper Mumbai kaali-peeli taxi with a cranky meter and a driver who knows the city by: smell rather than GPS. Chetan opens the door. The door-opening that is: not chivalry but courtesy, the courtesy of a man who has been raised to open doors and who does so without: performance.

"Madhuri," he says. Not Mar. Not the gym-name. My full name. Said the way my parents said it when my parents were: proud. The name that Harsh had shortened to a possessive — "Madhuri, dinner?" "Madhuri, my shirt?" — and that Chetan says as if the name is: a sentence in itself. Complete.

"Chetan."

He smiles. I get in the taxi. The taxi drives me to Bandra through Saturday-morning traffic, and I sit in the back seat holding the fragments of a broken kulhad and thinking: this is what beginning feels like. Not fireworks. Not certainty. But: chai, and stone steps, and a man who says your name like it means something.