Chapter 12: Christmas Lekin Alag (Christmas But Not As You Know It)

Christmas in Pune was not Christmas the way the West understood Christmas. Christmas in Pune was: the Koregaon Park bakeries putting up tinsel, the malls in Hinjewadi playing Mariah Carey on loop, and the particular Indian phenomenon of a festival borrowed from another religion and repurposed as a commercial event — the commercial event that said: buy cake, buy gifts, say "Merry Christmas" to your Christian colleagues, attend the office party, eat rum balls, go home. The borrowing being the Indian genius for cultural absorption: take the festival, keep the food, discard the theology, add masala.

But at St. Thomas's Church, Christmas was Christmas. Real Christmas. The Christmas of a working church in Hadapsar that served a congregation of sixty-seven families and a community kitchen that served two hundred people on Thursdays and that was, this December, planning a Christmas lunch that would serve everyone who came. Everyone meaning: the Thursday regulars, the congregation, the neighbourhood, and whoever else showed up, the showing-up being the only entry requirement because Nikhil's policy was the policy of the open table: if you came, you ate.

Ananya had not celebrated Christmas since — since ever. Ananya had attended office Christmas parties (the office Christmas party being the Indian corporate event that combined Secret Santa with awkward dancing to "Jingle Bells" remixed with Bollywood beats, the remixing being the DJ's particular Indian contribution to cross-cultural celebration). But actual Christmas — the Christmas of a church, the Christmas of meaning — this was new.

Nikhil was in the kitchen by 5 AM on December 25th. The kitchen that had been transformed: the two gas burners supplemented by three additional portable ones (borrowed from the congregation), the refrigerator's death-hum joined by two cooler boxes packed with ice and chicken (the chicken being the Christmas protein, the protein that distinguished the Christmas lunch from the Thursday dal-rice: Christmas had chicken and the chicken had been marinated overnight in Nikhil's special masala — the masala that was his grandmother's recipe, the recipe that was not written but remembered, the remembered-recipe being the Indian cook's particular inheritance: the recipe lived in the hands, not the notebook).

Ananya arrived at 6 AM. She had walked — the December morning cold enough for a shawl (the shawl that was not Nasreen's but Ananya's own, bought at the Mahatma Phule Mandai market on a November Saturday when the first cold arrived and the arrival sent Pune's population to the market for woolens with the urgency of squirrels storing nuts). The walk from Kothrud to Hadapsar was an hour — an hour that Ananya had walked deliberately, choosing the walk over the bus because the walking was the meditation, the meditation being: one foot, then the other, the rhythm of the body carrying itself through the December dark, the dark that was the 5 AM dark, the pre-dawn dark that Pune shared with every city but that in Pune had the particular quality of being cold at the feet and warm at the face, the temperature-stratification being the Pune December's signature.

Kiara was already there. Kiara who had slept at the church — not on the church pews (the pews being locked) but in the community kitchen, on a bedroll that Nikhil had provided, the bedroll being the particular Indian bedding solution: cotton mattress, thin, rollable, the mattress that Nikhil kept in the storage cupboard "just in case" and the "just in case" being: just in case Kiara needs a place and the needing was now regular, the regular-needing being: Kiara slept at the church two or three nights a week, the two-or-three being the nights when the other options (the friend's couch, the McDonald's) were unavailable and the unavailable-nights were increasing because the network of temporary shelters that homeless teenagers relied on was shrinking, the shrinking being the particular December phenomenon: hosts wanted their couches back for family visiting, the family-visiting displacing the homeless-teenager, the displacement being the cruelty that Christmas performed on the already-displaced.

"Merry Christmas, didi." Kiara, cross-legged on the bedroll, phone in hand (the phone charging from the church's single socket, the socket being the lifeline), her hair tied back with a rubber band (the rubber band being the hairstyle of necessity — no clips, no accessories, the rubber band from a vegetable bunch repurposed as a hair-tie, the repurposing being the homeless aesthetic: everything is multi-use because you carry only what you can carry and what you carry must serve multiple functions).

"Merry Christmas, Kiara." Ananya sat beside her on the floor. The floor being cold — the December cold that came through the stone and the stone being the church's original flooring, laid in the 1960s, the stone retaining the night's cold the way that memory retained grief: slowly releasing, but the releasing took all day.

"Didi, mere liye ek gift hai?" Kiara's voice — mock-casual, the mock-casualness covering the real-casual, the real-casual covering the actual question which was: does someone remember me on Christmas? The remembering being the thing that Christmas promised and that the promise was only kept for the remembered, the remembered being: the people who had families and homes and stockings and trees and the having was the barrier and the barrier excluded Kiara and the excluding was the particular violence of a festival that said "peace on earth, goodwill to all" and that the "all" had exceptions.

"Haan." Ananya reached into her bag. Pulled out: a scarf. Wool. Handknitted. Not by Ananya — Ananya could not knit (the not-knitting being the skill-gap that her generation shared: the generation that could code and present and negotiate but that could not knit or pickle or any of the hand-skills that their mothers' generation had possessed and that the possession had been lost in the generational transition from manual to digital). The scarf had been knitted by Aai — Aai who had, upon hearing about Kiara (the hearing being: Aai had visited the community kitchen on her last Pune trip, had met Kiara, had assessed Kiara with the maternal scan, and had, upon returning to Satara, begun knitting), sent the scarf by ST bus with a note that said: "Tya mulichi garmi sanbhal. Thandila tar sagli mula marnaar." Take care of that girl's warmth. Otherwise these children will freeze. The note being the Aai-language: practical instruction disguised as concern, concern disguised as criticism, criticism disguised as love, love being the thing that Aai communicated through every channel except the direct one.

Kiara took the scarf. Held it. The holding being — the holding was the moment. The moment that Christmas was designed to produce: the giving and the receiving and the space between the giving and the receiving where the gift was just an object and then the object became a meaning and the meaning was: someone thought of you, someone knitted this, someone's hands moved needles for hours to make this thing that will keep you warm and the warm is the love.

"Yeh kisne banaya?" Kiara asked. The voice — different. The street-smart assessment was absent. The teenage indifference was absent. What was present was: the girl. The girl underneath the armour. The girl who was eighteen and who had not received a gift since — since when? The "since when" being the question that Ananya did not ask because asking would have required Kiara to count the giftless Christmases and the counting would have been cruel.

"Meri Aai ne. Satara se." My mother. From Satara.

"Aapki Aai mujhe jaanti bhi nahi." Your mother doesn't even know me.

"Jaanti hai. Tu kitchen mein mili thi na? Tab se teri chinta mein hai." She knows you. She met you at the kitchen, remember? She's been worrying about you since.

Kiara wrapped the scarf around her neck. The wrapping being careful — the careful-wrapping of a person who had learned to be careful with things because the things were few and the few meant precious and the precious meant: treat gently, this might be the last good thing.

The Christmas lunch was chaos. Beautiful chaos — the particular Indian chaos that occurred when you invited "everyone" and everyone came and the everyone-coming was: one hundred and forty-seven people. One hundred and forty-seven people in a church hall that seated eighty and that the eighty-seating was overcome by the Indian seating solution: sit on the floor, sit on the steps, sit on the compound wall, hold the plate on the lap, eat. The Indian body's ability to eat in any position was the architectural workaround that Indian poverty had developed and that the developing was the adaptation: when the building is too small for the people, the people make themselves smaller, the making-smaller being the squatting, the cross-legging, the wall-sitting that allowed one hundred and forty-seven people to eat in a space designed for eighty.

Nikhil's chicken was — Nikhil's chicken was an event. The event being: the chicken that had been marinated overnight in the grandmother's masala (ginger, garlic, Kashmiri chilli, coriander, cumin, a fistful of garam masala that was "approximately this much" — the approximately being the Indian recipe's standard measurement, the standard being: the hand knows) and slow-cooked on the portable burners for four hours and the four-hours being visible in the chicken's texture: falling apart, the meat separating from the bone with the particular surrender of long-cooked protein, the surrender being: I am done resisting, I am ready to be eaten, the readiness being the metaphor that Nikhil would deny was a metaphor because Nikhil did not believe in metaphors in cooking — "it's chicken, not literature," he'd say, the saying being the protest of a man who was, in fact, a poet of protein.

Farhan came. Farhan in his Nasreen-knitted muffler, walking from Kothrud with the particular determination of a seventy-three-year-old man whose knees disagreed with the journey but whose social obligations overrode the disagreement. He sat in a folding chair (the chair being reserved for the elderly — the reserving being the Indian social hierarchy of seating: elderly in chairs, middle-aged on benches, young on the floor, the hierarchy being one of the few that Indian democracy had not disrupted). He ate Nikhil's chicken. He said: "This is the best thing I've eaten since Nasreen's biryani." The sentence that was — the sentence was the highest compliment and the deepest grief in the same breath, the same-breath being: the compliment acknowledged the new while the grief remembered the lost, the lost and the new coexisting in the same sentence the way they coexisted in every widower's life.

Payal came. Payal who had been volunteering every Thursday for five weeks and who had transformed the job club's interview-prep module into something that Ananya privately called "Payal's Marketing Bootcamp" — the bootcamp being: Payal teaching job-seekers how to sell themselves with the ferocity that Payal had once sold consumer products, the ferocity being repurposed from corporate to community and the repurposing being the transformation that the job club performed on everyone who entered it: your old skills became new tools, your old identity became new purpose.

Vivek came. This was the surprise — Vivek, nineteen, who had not visited the Kothrud flat in a month and who had, without telling Karan, taken an auto-rickshaw to Hadapsar to see what his mother was doing. The seeing being: curiosity. The curiosity being: the children had heard, through the family network, that Ananya was doing "something at a church" and the something had been described variously as "charity work" (by Aai, approvingly) and "a waste of time" (by Karan, dismissively) and "some kind of social thing" (by Liza, indifferently) and the variety of descriptions had produced in Vivek the particular nineteen-year-old's response: I'll go see for myself.

He arrived at noon. Stood in the doorway of the church hall. The doorway framing: one hundred and forty-seven people eating Christmas lunch on the floor and on benches and on walls, his mother serving chicken from a steel vessel, a teenage girl with a wool scarf helping distribute plates, a large man with a tattoo (Nikhil's forearm tattoo — a Devanagari script that said "anna" which meant "food" and also "elder brother" and the double-meaning being Nikhil's particular brand of self-description: he was both) stirring something enormous, and an elderly man in a muffler eating with the particular concentration of the deeply satisfied.

"Mummy?" Vivek's voice — the voice of a nineteen-year-old encountering his mother in an unexpected context, the context being: outside the roles he knew (mother, wife, employee) and inside a role he did not know (community leader, dal didi, Netta Wilde). The voice carried confusion and respect in equal measure, the equal-measure being: this is not the mother I know and the not-knowing is interesting.

Ananya looked up. Saw Vivek. The seeing being — the seeing was the mother's seeing, the seeing that registered: he is here, he is standing, he is healthy, he is wearing the jacket I bought him last winter, the jacket still fits, the fitting being the evidence that the mother's choices persisted even when the mother's presence did not. The seeing was: her son was here. At the church. On Christmas. Without being asked.

"Vivek! Aa, khana kha." Come, eat.

He ate. Chicken and rice, served by his mother, on a steel plate, sitting on the church steps next to Kiara (Kiara who assessed him with the one-second scan and determined: not a threat, related to didi, acceptable). He ate and he looked around and the looking-around was the seeing and the seeing was: his mother was not wasting her time. His mother was feeding one hundred and forty-seven people on Christmas Day in a church in Hadapsar and the feeding was not charity and not hobby and not waste-of-time. The feeding was: work. Real work. The work that mattered the way corporate work had never mattered — the mattering being visible, tangible, measured in plates and faces and the particular sound of one hundred and forty-seven people eating together, the sound that was the sound of community, the community being the thing that Vivek's generation talked about on social media and that his mother was performing in real life.

"Mummy," Vivek said, between mouthfuls of Nikhil's chicken. "Yeh bahut achha hai."

Mum. This is really good.

The sentence that was — the sentence was the Christmas gift. The gift that was better than scarves and sweaters and perfume and any object that could be wrapped. The gift that was: your child sees you. Your child sees what you do. Your child says: this is good.

Ananya did not cry. She served more chicken.