Chapter 25: Marine Drive

Chetan takes me to Marine Drive on a Sunday morning.

Not the Marine Drive of tourists — the Marine Drive of photographs and selfies and the Queen's Necklace viewed from: a safe distance. Chetan's Marine Drive is: the Marine Drive of walkers. The Marine Drive that exists between five and seven in the morning, when the joggers and the walkers and the old men doing their morning stretches own the promenade, and the city is: quiet in the specific way that Mumbai is quiet, which is not: silent (Mumbai is never silent; silence in Mumbai would be: a medical emergency) but: reduced. The volume turned down. The bass removed. The treble remaining — the sea, the gulls, the occasional taxi on the road behind us, the sound of shoes on concrete.

"This is where I walk," Chetan says. "Every morning. This is where I talk to Meera."

We're at the southern end, near Nariman Point, where the promenade curves and the sea is: close enough to touch if you lean over the railing, which I don't because Chetan is holding my hand and leaning would mean: letting go, and I don't want to let go.

He's holding my hand. This is: the first time. Five weeks of Saturday walks, one confession at an Irani café ("this is a date"), multiple phone calls, and tonight — Sunday morning at five-thirty — is the first time his hand has found mine. The finding being: not sudden. Gradual. The way his fingers brushed mine while we walked, then rested against mine, then interlocked — the interlocking that two people's hands perform when the hands have decided, independently of the brains, that: this is happening.

His hand is: warm. Larger than mine. The hand of a man who writes — not the soft hand of a man who types (typing produces different hands; Chetan writes longhand first, then types, the longhand being: his practice, the way Sunaina's yoga is her practice). His palm has the callus of a pen held for hours. The callus of: words.

"Tell me about Meera," I say. "Not the Meera you've told me about — the Meera of this place. The Marine Drive Meera."

"Marine Drive Meera was: the morning Meera. The best Meera. She'd wake up at five — she was always a morning person, the kind of person who the alarm wakes and who is immediately: awake, no transition, no grogginess, just: alive. She'd make chai — terrible chai, always terrible — and she'd bring it to the walk. Two cups. In a flask. The flask is still in my kitchen."

"Do you still use it?"

"Every morning. I make chai — better chai than Meera's, but don't tell her — and I pour it into the flask and I carry it here. And I drink from one cup and the other cup is: hers."

"Even now?"

"Even now. Three years. The other cup sits on the railing and the chai gets cold and I pour it into the sea when I leave. The sea takes it. The sea doesn't judge. The sea says: I'll hold this. I'll hold whatever you give me."

The image: a man pouring cold chai into the Arabian Sea every morning for three years. The ritual. The devotion that exists not because someone is watching but because: the practice requires it. The practice of grief that becomes the practice of: love continuing past the border of death.

"Will you still do that?" I ask. "Now that we're —"

"Now that we're: together?" He says it. The word that neither of us has used. Together. The word that makes the not-a-date and the Banganga walks and the Irani café confession into: something with a name.

"Yes."

"Yes. I'll still do that. Because Meera is not: replaced. Meera is: permanent. And you are not: a replacement. You are: what comes next. And what comes next doesn't erase what came before. It: accompanies."

Accompanies. The word that a writer chooses — not replaces, not follows, not supersedes. Accompanies. Walking alongside. Meera on one side, me on the other, and Chetan in the middle, holding: both.

"I can live with that," I say.

"Can you?"

"I can. Because I'm not jealous of Meera. I'm: grateful to Meera. She made you into the man who walks Marine Drive at five in the morning and pours chai into the sea and says things like 'the sea doesn't judge.' She made you into: someone I want to walk with."

He stops walking. The stopping of a man who has heard something that makes his body: pause. He turns to me. The early morning light is: gentle on his face — the light that exists before the sun is fully up, the light that photographers call "golden hour" and that is: kinder than any other light, the light that makes fifty-three-year-old men look: beautiful, the way the pool's blue-green light made fifty-year-old women look: beautiful.

"Madhuri," he says.

"Chetan."

"I would like to kiss you. If that's — if you —"

"Yes."

The kiss happens on Marine Drive at six in the morning, with the Arabian Sea as witness and two cups of chai on the railing (one full, one empty — the empty one being Meera's, poured into the sea twenty minutes ago) and the sound of waves and the light of early morning and the taste of: chai on his lips, because Chetan tastes like chai, because of course he does, because the man who pours chai into the sea every morning would taste like: the thing he loves.

The kiss is: not what I expected. I expected: awkwardness. The awkwardness of two fifty-somethings who haven't kissed new people in decades, who are out of practice, who might bump noses or misjudge the angle. But the kiss is: none of that. The kiss is: simple. His lips on mine. Warm. The warmth of chai and morning and the Arabian Sea and the man who wrote Doosra Kinara and who is standing on the Marine Drive promenade at six in the morning kissing a woman who used to be: someone's wife and who is now: herself.

I pull back. Not because I want to stop but because I want to: see him. To see his face after the kiss. The face that carries Meera and Marine Drive and three years of grief and the particular expression that a man has when a man has kissed someone for the first time since the person he loved: died.

He is: smiling. Not the small smile of our early acquaintance. A full smile. The smile that reaches his eyes and changes his entire face and makes him look: not younger but: alive. More alive than I've seen him. The aliveness that comes from: the new.

"That was —" he starts.

"Don't finish the sentence. Writers ruin moments by finishing sentences."

He laughs. The laugh that is: the best sound on Marine Drive at six in the morning, better than the sea, better than the gulls, better than the entire orchestra of Mumbai waking up.

We continue walking. Hand in hand. Past the art deco buildings of Marine Drive — the buildings that are: Mumbai's most beautiful architecture, the curves and lines and pastel colours of a city that was built to: impress, and that still impresses, eighty years later, the way good design always impresses — not by shouting but by: existing. Beautifully. Consistently.

Past the Taraporevala Aquarium (closed at this hour, the fish inside doing whatever fish do when humans aren't watching). Past the stretch of promenade where the early yoga practitioners are: doing sun salutations facing the sea, the sun salutations that greet the sun that is rising now over the city, orange and enormous and absolutely: certain, the certainty of a sun that has been doing this for: billions of years and that will do it for billions more and that doesn't require: our permission to be magnificent.

"Breakfast?" Chetan asks.

"The Irani café?"

"The Irani café."

We eat bun maska. We drink Irani chai. We sit across from each other in the café that is ours now — the café that was Chetan-and-Meera's and that is now Chetan-and-Madhuri's, and the transition being not: a replacement but an accompaniment, the way Chetan said, the way a new song doesn't erase the old song but plays: after it, in the same concert, on the same stage.

"Chetan," I say.

"Hmm?"

"I want to tell you something. About Harsh. About what happened."

"You don't need to —"

"I want to. Because you told me about Meera. And because what happened with Harsh is: something I've been carrying, and the carrying is: getting lighter, but the lightness would be helped by: sharing."

I tell him. Everything. The affair. The "I forgot how to love you." The twenty-seven years of theek hai. The selling of the flat. The moving to Mumbai. The gym. The friends. The haircut. The job. The whole story — the story that I've been living and that I've been telling in pieces but that I now tell: whole, to a man who listens the way he reads — slowly, carefully, giving each word its: weight.

When I finish, he reaches across the table. His hand on mine. The hand with the pen-callus. The hand that writes novels and holds chai cups and that is now: holding me.

"Thank you," he says. "For trusting me with that."

"Thank you for listening."

"That's what I do. I listen. And then I write. And the writing is: the listening made permanent."

"Don't put me in a novel."

"Too late. You've been in every novel since: Marine Drive."