Chapter 31 - Continued
8 December 2025 – Monday
The traffic had already thickened by the time I left the basement. The chocolate bar was still in my shirt pocket. I had not taken it out on the lift or on the bike. The weight of it sat against my chest the whole ride, the same way the image of the open white shirt and the bare thigh had sat behind my eyes. The Western Expressway moved in short bursts. At every signal I checked the time. 7:40. 7:52. 8:05. By the time I turned into our lane it was past eight-fifteen.
The first thing I saw was the truck.
It was parked half on the road and half on the broken edge of the compound, a medium-sized packers-and-movers vehicle with a faded blue tarp over the back. Two men were carrying a rolled mattress down the first-floor stairs. A third man stood on the truck bed, guiding the mattress into place. Cardboard boxes were stacked on the landing above them.
I slowed the bike and parked in the usual strip near the wall. The watchman was sitting on his plastic stool, a steel glass of tea in his hand. He looked up when he heard the engine die.
He said. “Late today?”
“Office work.” I took the helmet off and locked the bike. The chocolate bar shifted in the pocket. “Who is moving?”
He glanced at the truck and then back at me. “First floor. The one-BHK opposite Sunita ji's flat. They are moving out. They have been talking for two weeks. Today the truck came.”
The building had always been simple. Ground floor was Azad Sahab’s large four-BHK. The windows on that floor were wider, the balcony deeper, the main door heavier. First and second floors each had two decent-sized one-BHK flats, one on each side of the stairwell. Third, fourth and fifth floors had the smaller units like ours—one room and a kitchen, four of them per floor, the kind of space where a folding table and a bed already filled most of the room. The paint on the stairwell walls had started to fade in the same places on every floor. The rail was cool under the hand.
“Where are they going?” I asked.
“Somewhere near Borivali, I heard. Wife’s parents are there.” The watchman took a sip of tea.
I nodded once. The men on the stairs were arguing about which box should go up next. One of them looked down at me and then looked away. I started up.
On the first-floor landing the door of the moving flat was still open. I could see a bare floor inside, the marks where a sofa had stood, a single tube light still burning. I kept climbing.
Our door was locked from inside. I rang the bell once.
The latch moved. The door opened.
Ma stood in the gap. She was wearing a yellow sleeveless kurti and black leggings. The kurti was not tight, but it was not the old loose ones either. The neck was round and sat lower than the nighties she wore at home. A thin black bra strap showed on her left shoulder where the kurti had slipped a little. Her hair was open, still damp at the ends from a recent wash. She looked fresh. The skin on her face had the clean shine that comes after a bath and lotion. The gold chain was in the hollow of her throat. The silver bracelet was on her wrist. The payal were on her feet.
Cool air came out of the room and touched my face.
“You’re late,” she said. She stepped back so I could enter. “I was about to call.”
I closed the door behind me. The tube light was on. The two AC boxes were gone. In their place the indoor unit was already mounted high on the wall above the bed. The outdoor unit must have been fixed on the side of the building. The remote was on the folding table. The air was cooler than it had been any evening this month.
“Fitter came after you left,” she said. She was already turning toward the kitchen corner. “Around eleven. He finished by one.”
I put the bag down near the wall. “It is already cool.”
“I switched it on just an hour ago. The room was getting warm.” She looked at me properly for the first time. “Why so late today? Meeting?”
“Farewell for Menon sir. It finished at five. Then Nair ma’am called me again at six-thirty. Some work that used to sit with Amit. She wanted to talk about shifting a few things.”
Ma nodded. She had taken two steel glasses from the rack. “Amit is the one who is on leave?”
“Yes.”
“She trusts you already.” She poured water into one glass and held it out. “Drink. You must be thirsty.”
I took the glass. The water was cold from the fridge. I drank half of it standing. She watched me for a second, then turned back to the stove. A vessel was already on the flame. The smell of dal was in the air.
“What did she say about the farewell?” she asked. Her back was to me. The yellow kurti moved when she stirred. The black strap on her shoulder stayed visible.
“She said the room was ready, the cake was on time, the card had the names that mattered. She noticed.”
“That is good.” She did not look around. “You should eat something. I will heat the sabzi. Dinner will be ready by nine.”
I sat on the edge of the bed and finished the water. The cool air from the AC touched the back of my neck. The room felt smaller with the new unit on the wall, and also larger because the heat was no longer sitting in the corners. Ma moved between the stove and the counter. The leggings were plain black. When she bent to open the lower shelf the kurti rose a little at the back. I looked at the remote on the table instead.
At nine the plates were on the folding table. Dal, sabzi, two rotis each, a small bowl of pickle. She had already served my plate. She sat opposite me and tore her roti. The tube light made the yellow of the kurti look brighter. The bra strap had slipped further on the left shoulder. She did not fix it.
“I saw the comments on the post,” she said after a minute. She said it the way she said ordinary things. “Some people wrote very nicely. Some wrote rubbish.”
I kept my eyes on the plate. “You should ignore the rubbish ones.”
“That is what Kunal also said.” She took a small bite. “He messaged in the afternoon. He said the first post has already got so much traction. The profile has also crossed five hundred followers. He wants photos for the second one.”
Five hundred. This morning it had been four hundred. I chewed slowly.
“What kind of photos?” I asked.
A small smile touched her mouth, the kind that did not stay long. “He said photos that show a little skin and cleavage get more attention.”
The smile stayed for one second longer than it needed to. She looked at me over the rim of her glass.
I put the roti down.
“What is wrong with you, Ma?”
The words came out before I had decided to say them. She stopped chewing.
“Everyone can see those photos. The building. The office. Anyone who opens the account. You are posting them like it is normal. How much have you changed?”
She set her glass down. The movement was careful. “I have not changed. I have only stopped hiding.”
“Hiding what?”
“That I go out. That I wear clothes that fit. That I am with someone.” She looked at me directly. “Ever since that post went up, and ever since people in the building understood about Azad Sahab, the way they speak to me has changed. The watchman opens the car door without being asked. People say namaste properly. Earlier, when I used to come back from the parlour or the hotel, half of them would look through me. A widow in this building is easy to ignore. Now they are a little careful.”
I did not answer.
She continued. Her voice was even. “I worked as a receptionist for years. The uniform was a saree with a blouse that was cut lower than this kurti. Customers looked. Managers looked. I still did the work. If I do not have bad intentions, why should I care what a photograph shows? This body is what it is. I am lucky it is still like this at my age. That is all.”
The dal had gone cold on my plate. I pushed the spoon once and then left it.
“You lied this morning,” I said.
She looked at me. The smile was gone.
“About yesterday. You said you were back within an hour. I was awake until two. The bed was empty.”
For a moment she did not speak. Then she nodded once, small.
“All right. We went to his building in Jogeshwari after the ice cream. It was my idea. I will say that clearly.” She folded her hands on the table. “Beta, you need to understand this part. Physical intimacy is part of a relationship. He wanted it. Men are like that. You will know when you get married. And I love him.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Because it is true.” Her voice rose a little. Not loud. Only tighter. “I love him. And I know he loves me. Sex is common between two people who are together. Why do you have to make an issue out of every time we are alone? You ask again and again. You want to know where we went, what time we came back, what we did. It is our life. You are not supposed to stand in the middle of it.”
I stayed quiet.
She leaned forward. The black strap moved on her shoulder. “Azad Sahab has taken care of this house. The rent is seven thousand. The bike is in your name. The AC is on the wall. He does not ask for accounts. He does not make me feel like a widow who should sit inside and count the years. You do not have to worry about money the way we used to. That is because of him. I am not committing any crime by loving him or by sleeping with him. You do not need a marriage certificate for that.”
The room was quiet except for the low sound of the AC. I looked at the plate. Then I looked at her hands. The gold bangles. The silver bracelet. The skin on her arms was smooth from the lotion she had used after the bath.
I thought of the things I had heard. The gossip in Mrs. Desai’s flat. The separated wife in Bandra. The previous woman who had left after money was given. The way he had looked at my erection on friday night. None of it was a clear proof that he was a bad man. What I had seen myself was that he had reduced the rent, paid for the bike, sent the AC, and that Ma came back from being with him looking lighter than she had in years. She was forty-seven. She was still beautiful. Any man who looked at her the way he looked at her would want her. Sex would follow. She was not cheating on anyone. Papa had been gone for five years.
The thought settled slowly. It did not feel clean. It also did not feel wrong in the way it had felt on Saturday morning.
“I was wrong to keep asking,” I said. The words were slower than the ones before. “You have been managing this house alone for a long time. If he makes you happy and if he is taking care of the practical things, then I should not keep turning every evening into a question. I will try to understand it better.”
She looked at me for a long second. Then the tightness left her face. She reached across the table and put her hand on my wrist, the same way she had done on Saturday morning.
“You have already understood more than most sons would.” Her voice was softer. “Do not listen to what the building says. They will talk anyway. Azad Sahab is a good man. You can think of him the way you would think of a father in this house. I am good at knowing people. You can trust that.”
She stood, came around the table, and bent. Her lips touched my forehead. The yellow kurti brushed my shoulder. The black strap was close enough that I could see the small mark the elastic had left on her skin. She stayed there for a moment, one hand on the back of my head, then straightened.
“Finish your food,” she said. “I will clear the plates.”
We ate the rest in ordinary silence. She washed the plates at the sink. I dried them and put them back on the rack. The AC kept the air cool. At ten-thirty she switched the tube light off and left only the night bulb near the bathroom. I lay down on my side of the bed with the phone in my hand. The module for Monday was still open in the shared folder. I scrolled without reading.
She moved around the room. I heard the almirah open. Then the soft sound of cloth. I kept my eyes on the screen.
When I looked up she was standing near the chair. The yellow kurti was already off. It lay folded once on the seat. She was in the black bra and the black leggings. The bra was full-cup, the straps thin. The upper curves of her breasts were clear above the edge. She did not look at me. She walked to the almirah as if the room were empty. Her back was to me. She reached behind and unhooked the bra. The straps slid off her shoulders. She held the cups against her chest with one hand while she opened the almirah door with the other. I could see the full line of her back, the place where the hooks had sat, the smooth skin under the shoulder blades. She took the old peach nighty from the shelf.
“When is your office tomorrow?” she asked. Her voice was ordinary. She was already pulling the nighty over her head. The bra dropped onto the chair with the kurti. The nighty settled. She turned, adjusting the neckline with one hand. The thin cloth showed the shape of her breasts underneath. No strap. No line.
“Nine-thirty,” I said. My voice was steady. “Same as usual.”
“All right.” She came to the bed and lay down on her side, facing the wall. The payal were still not on her feet. The silver bracelet caught the night-bulb light once when she moved her arm. “Sleep. You were late today.”
I locked the phone and set it face down. The hardness had started when the kurti came off. It had stayed while she stood with her back to me and the bra came open. It was still there under the sheet. I did not move my hips. The AC hummed. Her breathing evened out within a few minutes. I lay on my back and looked at the ceiling until the numbers on the clock reached eleven-forty. Then I closed my eyes.
The chocolate bar was still in the shirt I had hung on the chair. The room was cool. The bed was the same bed. She was asleep two feet away in the thin nighty. I stayed still and waited for sleep.
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