Chapter 11: Ek Ehsaas (An Epiphany of Sorts)

The epiphany came on a Tuesday — not the dramatic, road-to-Damascus epiphany that novels gave their characters, the epiphany that arrived with orchestral swelling and a shift in the light. This epiphany arrived on the 154 bus, between Swargate and Deccan Gymkhana, at approximately 4:17 PM, and it arrived in the form of a thought so simple that Ananya almost dismissed it for being obvious: she did not want another corporate job.

The simplicity was the revolution. For twenty-two years, the corporate job had been the identity — the identity that answered the question "what do you do?" which was, in Indian social vocabulary, the question that actually meant "what are you worth?" The corporate job answered both questions simultaneously: I do regulatory compliance, I am worth my salary. The salary being the metric. The metric being the measure. The measure being the worth. The worth being the identity. The identity being: Ananya Grover, Head of Regulatory Compliance, Grover & Mehta Consultants, Senapati Bapat Road.

Without the job, the question "what do you do?" became a trapdoor. Ananya had been falling through it for three months — every party, every school reunion WhatsApp group, every chance meeting at Dorabjee's supermarket with an acquaintance who asked the question with the particular Indian casualness that disguised the interrogation: "Toh Ananya, aajkal kya kar rahi ho?" The question that was the social audit, the audit that the unemployed woman failed every time because the failing was built into the question: if you were not doing something that produced income, you were not doing.

But on the 154, between Swargate's chaos and Deccan's relative calm, Ananya looked out the window and saw — she saw Pune. Not the corporate Pune of glass buildings and conference rooms. The actual Pune. The Pune of street vendors and auto-rickshaws and the man selling roasted corn on the cart outside Nal Stop (the corn-seller who had been there for fifteen years, whose corn was famous, whose fame was the word-of-mouth fame that Pune's street vendors earned through consistency rather than marketing and the consistency was: same cart, same location, same quality, every day, for fifteen years, the fifteen-years being a career by any measure). She saw the woman selling jasmine garlands at the traffic signal — the garlands strung that morning, the fingers that had strung them already moving to the next bunch while the current bunch was being sold, the multitasking being the street vendor's survival skill and the survival skill being more sophisticated than any corporate competency that Ananya had listed on her LinkedIn.

And the thought: I don't want to go back to an office. I want to be here. I want to be in the Pune that these people inhabit. I want the job club and the community kitchen and the Thursday queue and Kiara's library card and Nikhil's dal and Farhan's bench.

The thought was terrifying. The terrifying being: the thought contradicted everything that Ananya's education and upbringing and career had constructed. The construction being: success is corporate, success is salaried, success is the answer to "what do you do?" that does not require explanation. What Ananya wanted — the community kitchen, the job club — required explanation. Required justification. Required the sentence: "I run a volunteer job club from a church in Hadapsar" and the sentence, spoken at a dinner party in Koregaon Park, would produce the particular silence that followed the socially-unacceptable answer, the silence that said: that is not a job, that is a hobby, hobbies are for weekends, you are a fifty-year-old woman with a regulatory compliance degree and you are wasting yourself on dal and resumes.

The bus stopped at Deccan. Ananya did not get off. She stayed on, past her stop, the past-her-stop being deliberate — the deliberate riding-past being the physical manifestation of the epiphany: she was going past the planned stop. She was going further than the plan. The plan had been: get another corporate job. The going-past was: don't.

She rode to the terminus. The terminus being Katraj — the Katraj that was the 154's final destination, the final-destination being the place you reached when you stopped getting off at your planned stop and instead let the bus take you where the bus went. At Katraj, she got off. Stood in the bus depot. The bus depot that smelled of diesel and dust and the particular institutional neglect that Indian public infrastructure embodied — the neglect that was: the building was functional, the building was ugly, the ugly being the aesthetic of the useful-but-unvalued, the unvalued being: nobody valued bus depots because bus depots were for people who could not afford cars and the not-affording was the invisibility.

She stood in the bus depot and she called Farhan.

"Farhan sahab, mujhe aapki advice chahiye."

Mr. Farhan, I need your advice.

"Bol." The single word. The Farhan-response that was: I am listening, I am not performing listening, I am actually listening, the actually-listening being the rare thing and the rare thing being Farhan's gift.

"Main naukri nahi dhundhna chahti." The sentence spoken aloud. The speaking-aloud being the commitment — the commitment that thoughts became when they were spoken, the spoken-thought being the irrevocable thought, the irrevocable-thought being: once you say it, you can't un-say it, and the can't-un-saying was the point.

I don't want to look for a job.

Silence. Five seconds. Farhan's silences were calibrated — the calibration being: short silence (he agreed), medium silence (he was thinking), long silence (he was about to say something important). Five seconds was medium-to-long.

"Toh kya karna chahti hai?" So what do you want to do?

"Job club. Community kitchen. Jo kar rahi hoon." The job club. The community kitchen. What I'm already doing.

"Toh kar." Then do it.

"Lekin —" But —

"Lekin kya? Income? Status? Log kya kahenge?" The three objections listed with the precision of a literature professor who had read enough novels to know that every protagonist's epiphany was followed by the same three obstacles. "Ananya, main Premchand padhata raha hoon chaalees saal. Ek cheez seekhi: jo log apna kaam dhundhte hain — genuinely dhundhte hain — unhe duniya adjust kar leti hai. Tum apna kaam dhundh chuki ho. Duniya ko adjust hone do."

But what? Income? Status? What will people say? And then: Ananya, I've been teaching Premchand for forty years. I've learned one thing: the people who find their work — genuinely find it — the world adjusts around them. You've already found your work. Let the world adjust.

The sentence that was — the sentence was the second gift. The first gift had been "fifty ke baad Premchand alag lagta hai." This gift was larger. This gift was permission. The permission that Ananya had not known she needed until she received it, the receiving being: someone whose opinion she trusted had said "do it" and the "do it" was the validation and the validation was the scaffold and the scaffold was the structure that the new life needed because the new life was being built without blueprints and without-blueprints needed scaffolding and the scaffolding was: Farhan's voice on the phone at the Katraj bus depot saying "toh kar."

She took the bus home. The 154 back to Kothrud — the reverse journey, the reverse being: the same route, different woman. The woman who had ridden to Katraj on the bus of epiphany and who was riding back on the bus of decision. The decision being: Netta Wilde was not a mirror-game. Netta Wilde was the name of the woman who ran a job club and a community kitchen initiative and who did not have a corporate job and who did not want one and whose not-wanting was not failure but choice and the choice was — the choice was terrifying and correct. Terrifying and correct being the particular combination that all good decisions shared: if it wasn't terrifying, it wasn't big enough; if it wasn't correct, it wouldn't survive the terror.

At home, she opened the school notebook. Crossed out "Netta Wilde's Job Club." Wrote above it: "Naya Aarambh — A New Beginning. Community Employment Initiative. Founded by Netta Wilde."

The founded-by. The founding that was: a woman on a bus who decided to stop looking for what she'd lost and start building what she'd found. The building being: a school notebook, a borrowed church room, a folding-chair classroom, a tech team of one homeless teenager, a marketing department of one furious ex-colleague, a dal-serving operation run by an ex-Infosys cook, and the advice of a seventy-three-year-old Premchand scholar sitting on a park bench in Kothrud.

The building materials were: people. The people being: enough.