07-09-2026, 09:06 PM
Chapter 25 – Monday (Continued)
1 December 2025 – Monday
The grill. The real morning light, a little stronger than the dream light. The tube light still off. Ma sitting beside me in the same old peach nighty from last night. The nighty was on her body. It had not been on the floor. Her hair was tied loosely, not spread on the pillow under a man. The mark on her throat was only the faint shadow from before. She was looking at my face with the worried look she used when I had fever in college.
I was dripping with sweat. The sheet under me was damp. My heart was going too fast. And I was hard — painfully hard, pressed against the grey house pants, the kind of hardness that has no respect for the fact that your mother is sitting one foot away calling your name.
The pictures from the dream were still in front of my eyes. Her knees apart. The vein on him. The payal. The way she had said inside. The way he had looked at the door and used my name.
Guilt came in the same second as the heat. It sat in my throat. I had seen my mother like that. I had made her like that in my own head. I had stood in a bathroom that I had not even walked into yet and watched a thing that had not happened.
“What happened?” she asked. Her voice was normal. Soft. Mother. “You were breathing so fast. Did you see some scary dream?”
I could not answer properly. My mouth was dry. I looked at her because I did not know where else to look, and the first thing that landed was not her eyes.
It was the neckline.
The peach nighty sat low in the morning sun that had finally come through the grill. No bra. The cloth was thin from years of washing. The heavy round shape of her breasts was clear under it, the dark suggestion of the nipples, the soft line between them. When she leaned forward to check my face the neckline fell more and the upper curve came into the light, warm and real and nothing like the dream only because this time she was only waking her son.
I sat up too fast. I bent forward so the pants would not speak. Sweat ran down my back.
“I… I don’t know. Some dream. It’s nothing.”
“You are burning.” She put the back of her hand on my forehead, then on my neck. Her palm was warm from the kitchen. I could already smell jeera and onion from the corner. “No fever. Only heat. Wash your face. Tea is almost ready.”
She stood. The nighty settled. The payal — made one small sound. The sound went through me like the dream had put it there on purpose.
The real morning was already in progress without me.
She had woken before me, the way she always did. The pressure cooker had been used. The kadhai was on the flame. The whole flat smelled of tadka — jeera, hing, red chilli, something sharp and masaledar that made the small room feel awake. She moved between the stove and the rolling board in the same peach nighty. There was flour on her right wrist and a thin streak of it on the cloth near her waist. Her forehead had a shine of sweat even though the day had only started. The kitchen corner held the heat of the gas the way it always did in December if someone cooked early and closed the door.
My formal shirt was already on the back of the chair. Light blue. Ironed. The collar stood properly. On the bathroom hook she had hung my inner wear and a clean towel. The shoes from Friday were near the door, the same pair she had polished before the first day back.
None of it was a favour she announced. It was just done.
I went into the bathroom and closed the door as far as it would close. The latch still did not catch. The gap was still there. Through it I could hear the rolling pin and the soft hiss of the tadka when she lifted the lid.
There was no bra on the hook.
Of course there was not. She had not bathed yet. She never bathed first. Morning chores, tea, tiffin, then bath. I knew this. I had known this for years. After last night I had still looked, as if the black lace might be waiting to finish what the doorbell had cut.
I stood in front of the small tap and washed my face with cold water. The dream did not wash off. The kitchen from last night did not wash off. The bra in my hand did not wash off. They sat together in my body and refused to become three separate things.
I was still hard.
I told myself I would not do anything. I told myself it was Monday, office, Mr. Sinha, the corrected module. I told myself she was ten feet away rolling rotis.
Then I opened the tap a little more so the water would cover sound, put my back to the wall where I could still see the gap, and took myself out.
I did not think in order. The images came the way they wanted. Her nighty at her knees on the bed. The dream version with no nighty at all. The real version from last night, standing in the kitchen, blouse hooks opening, breasts spilling, the second black bra falling on the stool. His mouth on hers against the fridge.
I kept my eyes on the door.
If the gap went dark, if her feet came, I could stop. The payal would warn me. That was the thought.
It did not take long. Sunday night had not finished. The body had only been waiting for a locked minute that was not even locked. I came into my fist with my teeth closed, breathing through my nose, the water still running. For two or three seconds there was only relief. Then the same guilt sat down again, heavier because this time I was awake.
I washed. I washed again. I put on the inners she had hung for me. I looked at my face in the mirror. It looked like a person who had slept badly and then made it worse on purpose.
When I came out she was packing boxes.
She was not making non-veg.
That was the first thing I noticed after my own head cleared enough to see the counter.
On the stove there was a dry aloo sabzi, the kind she made with extra jeera, and a second kadhai with a yellow dal that had tadka sitting on top, red and fragrant. Rotis were in a covered steel plate, stacked, a clean cloth on them to keep the steam. There was no chicken. No mutton. No smell of that kind. There never was, almost.
She had cooked non-veg in this house so rarely that I could name the last time. Chicken, about two years ago, when a guest had come and she felt she should put something on the table that looked like a feast. Even then she had eaten little. I had eaten none. I did not like it. The smell stayed in the curtains. She knew that. She did not bring that smell into our room without a reason.
Azad Sahab ate mutton. He had carried it up three floors last night. Ammi would eat whatever was sent. Their kitchen on the ground floor had no maid till tomorrow. And still, on this counter, there was only the food we ate.
I watched her pack.
Two tiffins.
Not one.
My usual carrier was open on the folding table. She put two thick rotis in the first box, a full portion of the dry sabzi, a small box of dal, pickle in the tiny steel katori she always used for me, and a spoon. She closed it firmly, the way she had closed it on Friday.
The second carrier was larger. Two boxes inside it. She filled both with the same sabzi and dal and rotis, only the portions were different — one a little less spicy, I saw her take out some of the tadka before she put the dal in that one. For Ammi. The other box she packed the way she packed for a man who ate more. She wiped the rims. She checked the lids. She put a separate small box of kheer from last night, the same kheer he had asked her to send.
Flour on her nighty. Flour on her fingers. Sweat at her temples and in the hollow of her throat. The peach cloth stuck a little under her arms. She looked tired in a way that had nothing to do with rolling dough. The kind of tired that comes when a person has not really slept and has still stood at the stove before the building woke.
She worked as if the packing itself was a duty she had taken on with both hands. Not show. Not ehsan. Dedication. The same face she used to wear when she counted notes for my fees.
“You made for downstairs also,” I said.
She did not look up from the lid.
“Yess, beta. Ammi cannot stand. The maid is not back yet.”
She said it lightly, but I heard the other thing under it. She would feed his house.
We sat at the folding table with tea and two plates.
For a while there was only the sound of the cups.
Then she spoke, looking at her tea, not at me.
“What time will you come today?”
The question was ordinary. It did not feel ordinary.
“Same as usual. Six-thirty, seven. Depends on traffic after the flyover.”
“Ohh, alright beta. Drive carefully.”
The stress on the return time sat on the table between the two glasses. She did not explain it. She did not need to. I had heard last night through an open kitchen window. Afternoon. Before he comes from office. Keep the door ready.
I looked at my plate.
“Did anyone say anything?” she asked after a moment. “Yesterday, or Friday, in the compound. Anyone stopped you?”
“No Ma, nothing as such.”
“Good.” She turned the glass slowly. “If someone says something, don’t answer. Especially that woman on the first floor. Silence is better. I told you.”
“I know.”
She drank. The tiredness was on her face in a way she was not performing. Darker under the eyes. The mouth softer from lack of sleep, not from a man, not this morning, only from a night spent turning.
“You got up very early,” I said.
“Sleep did not come last night.”
She said it as a fact. Not as a thing I should thank. Not as a thing I should pity. Just the night, placed on the table.
“You should lie down after I go.”
She shook her head and pointed at herself with the same hand that had flour on the side.
“In this? Sweat and atta and oil smell. Who sleeps like this. And once I bathe, sleep will not come. You know how I am. Bath means the day has started. After that the eyes stay open.”
It was true. It had always been true. The picture of her trying to nap in a flour-stained nighty was suddenly funny in a small, ordinary way. I felt a breath of laugh come out of me. She looked at me, surprised, then she laughed too, short and real, the first easy sound of the morning.
“See,” she said. “Even you know. Don’t give advice that I cannot use.”
“All right. Don’t sleep. Just don’t stand on the stove till afternoon.”
“I will finish and sit. That much I can do.”
She reached across and touched the back of my hand once, the same light contact as Friday morning. Then she stood and packed my carrier into the bag.
“Eat the sabzi at lunch. It has come out good today. Extra jeera, the way you like. Don’t drink only tea in that office.”
“I won’t.”
“And message when you reach.”
“I will.”
I dressed. The ironed shirt sat on my shoulders with the smell of the iron and her detergent. She adjusted the collar even though it did not need it. For a second her eyes checked my face the way they had after Thursday night, asking without words whether the acceptance was still there after Sunday dinner.
I did not know what she saw.
I picked up the backpack and the tiffin. At the door I looked back once. She was already closing the larger carrier for downstairs. The peach nighty, the payal, the sweat, the two lives in one kitchen. She did not look like the woman from the dream. She looked like my mother who had not slept and had still made tadka before seven.
“Go,” she said. “Otherwise you will face traffic.”
The corridor was empty.
I locked the door from outside. The sound was loud in my own ears. I went down slowly. Second floor, no one. First floor, Sunita’s door was shut. I did not look at it longer than I needed to. Ground floor, his heavy door was shut. I walked past it with my eyes on the compound.
The bike was in the usual strip. I strapped the tiffin on the hook, put the helmet on, and sat. That was when I saw her.
Sunita Kulkarni was coming in from the lane. A cloth bag in one hand. The same tight hair. The same small black bindi. She saw the bike. She saw me. She did not stop walking, but her eyes did the work. They went over my face the way a person looks at something they have already named. There was no greeting. There was no smirk big enough to point at. Only that look — flat, sure, and full of the landing from Thursday.
Kalank.
The boy who looks the other way.
The look made me feel exactly as useful as a person who locks a door and then pretends the afternoon on the other side of it is not already decided. I kicked the engine. I did not look at her again. I rolled out of the compound and into the lane.
The morning air was cool. Milkmen. College buses. The first office scooters. I kept the speed moderate. The flyover came and went. The signals near the station road held me longer than I wanted.
The office complex near the metro came up on the right, glass and concrete, already filling. I took the ramp into the parking basement, found the usual slot, and stopped.
I killed the engine.
For a second I sat on the bike with my helmet still on and both feet on the ground, the tiffin bag hanging behind me, Monday waiting in the lift.
The rest of the day was upstairs.
And the rest of the day, I already knew, was also three floors up in a different building, behind a door I had locked from the outside.
1 December 2025 – Monday
The grill. The real morning light, a little stronger than the dream light. The tube light still off. Ma sitting beside me in the same old peach nighty from last night. The nighty was on her body. It had not been on the floor. Her hair was tied loosely, not spread on the pillow under a man. The mark on her throat was only the faint shadow from before. She was looking at my face with the worried look she used when I had fever in college.
I was dripping with sweat. The sheet under me was damp. My heart was going too fast. And I was hard — painfully hard, pressed against the grey house pants, the kind of hardness that has no respect for the fact that your mother is sitting one foot away calling your name.
The pictures from the dream were still in front of my eyes. Her knees apart. The vein on him. The payal. The way she had said inside. The way he had looked at the door and used my name.
Guilt came in the same second as the heat. It sat in my throat. I had seen my mother like that. I had made her like that in my own head. I had stood in a bathroom that I had not even walked into yet and watched a thing that had not happened.
“What happened?” she asked. Her voice was normal. Soft. Mother. “You were breathing so fast. Did you see some scary dream?”
I could not answer properly. My mouth was dry. I looked at her because I did not know where else to look, and the first thing that landed was not her eyes.
It was the neckline.
The peach nighty sat low in the morning sun that had finally come through the grill. No bra. The cloth was thin from years of washing. The heavy round shape of her breasts was clear under it, the dark suggestion of the nipples, the soft line between them. When she leaned forward to check my face the neckline fell more and the upper curve came into the light, warm and real and nothing like the dream only because this time she was only waking her son.
I sat up too fast. I bent forward so the pants would not speak. Sweat ran down my back.
“I… I don’t know. Some dream. It’s nothing.”
“You are burning.” She put the back of her hand on my forehead, then on my neck. Her palm was warm from the kitchen. I could already smell jeera and onion from the corner. “No fever. Only heat. Wash your face. Tea is almost ready.”
She stood. The nighty settled. The payal — made one small sound. The sound went through me like the dream had put it there on purpose.
The real morning was already in progress without me.
She had woken before me, the way she always did. The pressure cooker had been used. The kadhai was on the flame. The whole flat smelled of tadka — jeera, hing, red chilli, something sharp and masaledar that made the small room feel awake. She moved between the stove and the rolling board in the same peach nighty. There was flour on her right wrist and a thin streak of it on the cloth near her waist. Her forehead had a shine of sweat even though the day had only started. The kitchen corner held the heat of the gas the way it always did in December if someone cooked early and closed the door.
My formal shirt was already on the back of the chair. Light blue. Ironed. The collar stood properly. On the bathroom hook she had hung my inner wear and a clean towel. The shoes from Friday were near the door, the same pair she had polished before the first day back.
None of it was a favour she announced. It was just done.
I went into the bathroom and closed the door as far as it would close. The latch still did not catch. The gap was still there. Through it I could hear the rolling pin and the soft hiss of the tadka when she lifted the lid.
There was no bra on the hook.
Of course there was not. She had not bathed yet. She never bathed first. Morning chores, tea, tiffin, then bath. I knew this. I had known this for years. After last night I had still looked, as if the black lace might be waiting to finish what the doorbell had cut.
I stood in front of the small tap and washed my face with cold water. The dream did not wash off. The kitchen from last night did not wash off. The bra in my hand did not wash off. They sat together in my body and refused to become three separate things.
I was still hard.
I told myself I would not do anything. I told myself it was Monday, office, Mr. Sinha, the corrected module. I told myself she was ten feet away rolling rotis.
Then I opened the tap a little more so the water would cover sound, put my back to the wall where I could still see the gap, and took myself out.
I did not think in order. The images came the way they wanted. Her nighty at her knees on the bed. The dream version with no nighty at all. The real version from last night, standing in the kitchen, blouse hooks opening, breasts spilling, the second black bra falling on the stool. His mouth on hers against the fridge.
I kept my eyes on the door.
If the gap went dark, if her feet came, I could stop. The payal would warn me. That was the thought.
It did not take long. Sunday night had not finished. The body had only been waiting for a locked minute that was not even locked. I came into my fist with my teeth closed, breathing through my nose, the water still running. For two or three seconds there was only relief. Then the same guilt sat down again, heavier because this time I was awake.
I washed. I washed again. I put on the inners she had hung for me. I looked at my face in the mirror. It looked like a person who had slept badly and then made it worse on purpose.
When I came out she was packing boxes.
She was not making non-veg.
That was the first thing I noticed after my own head cleared enough to see the counter.
On the stove there was a dry aloo sabzi, the kind she made with extra jeera, and a second kadhai with a yellow dal that had tadka sitting on top, red and fragrant. Rotis were in a covered steel plate, stacked, a clean cloth on them to keep the steam. There was no chicken. No mutton. No smell of that kind. There never was, almost.
She had cooked non-veg in this house so rarely that I could name the last time. Chicken, about two years ago, when a guest had come and she felt she should put something on the table that looked like a feast. Even then she had eaten little. I had eaten none. I did not like it. The smell stayed in the curtains. She knew that. She did not bring that smell into our room without a reason.
Azad Sahab ate mutton. He had carried it up three floors last night. Ammi would eat whatever was sent. Their kitchen on the ground floor had no maid till tomorrow. And still, on this counter, there was only the food we ate.
I watched her pack.
Two tiffins.
Not one.
My usual carrier was open on the folding table. She put two thick rotis in the first box, a full portion of the dry sabzi, a small box of dal, pickle in the tiny steel katori she always used for me, and a spoon. She closed it firmly, the way she had closed it on Friday.
The second carrier was larger. Two boxes inside it. She filled both with the same sabzi and dal and rotis, only the portions were different — one a little less spicy, I saw her take out some of the tadka before she put the dal in that one. For Ammi. The other box she packed the way she packed for a man who ate more. She wiped the rims. She checked the lids. She put a separate small box of kheer from last night, the same kheer he had asked her to send.
Flour on her nighty. Flour on her fingers. Sweat at her temples and in the hollow of her throat. The peach cloth stuck a little under her arms. She looked tired in a way that had nothing to do with rolling dough. The kind of tired that comes when a person has not really slept and has still stood at the stove before the building woke.
She worked as if the packing itself was a duty she had taken on with both hands. Not show. Not ehsan. Dedication. The same face she used to wear when she counted notes for my fees.
“You made for downstairs also,” I said.
She did not look up from the lid.
“Yess, beta. Ammi cannot stand. The maid is not back yet.”
She said it lightly, but I heard the other thing under it. She would feed his house.
We sat at the folding table with tea and two plates.
For a while there was only the sound of the cups.
Then she spoke, looking at her tea, not at me.
“What time will you come today?”
The question was ordinary. It did not feel ordinary.
“Same as usual. Six-thirty, seven. Depends on traffic after the flyover.”
“Ohh, alright beta. Drive carefully.”
The stress on the return time sat on the table between the two glasses. She did not explain it. She did not need to. I had heard last night through an open kitchen window. Afternoon. Before he comes from office. Keep the door ready.
I looked at my plate.
“Did anyone say anything?” she asked after a moment. “Yesterday, or Friday, in the compound. Anyone stopped you?”
“No Ma, nothing as such.”
“Good.” She turned the glass slowly. “If someone says something, don’t answer. Especially that woman on the first floor. Silence is better. I told you.”
“I know.”
She drank. The tiredness was on her face in a way she was not performing. Darker under the eyes. The mouth softer from lack of sleep, not from a man, not this morning, only from a night spent turning.
“You got up very early,” I said.
“Sleep did not come last night.”
She said it as a fact. Not as a thing I should thank. Not as a thing I should pity. Just the night, placed on the table.
“You should lie down after I go.”
She shook her head and pointed at herself with the same hand that had flour on the side.
“In this? Sweat and atta and oil smell. Who sleeps like this. And once I bathe, sleep will not come. You know how I am. Bath means the day has started. After that the eyes stay open.”
It was true. It had always been true. The picture of her trying to nap in a flour-stained nighty was suddenly funny in a small, ordinary way. I felt a breath of laugh come out of me. She looked at me, surprised, then she laughed too, short and real, the first easy sound of the morning.
“See,” she said. “Even you know. Don’t give advice that I cannot use.”
“All right. Don’t sleep. Just don’t stand on the stove till afternoon.”
“I will finish and sit. That much I can do.”
She reached across and touched the back of my hand once, the same light contact as Friday morning. Then she stood and packed my carrier into the bag.
“Eat the sabzi at lunch. It has come out good today. Extra jeera, the way you like. Don’t drink only tea in that office.”
“I won’t.”
“And message when you reach.”
“I will.”
I dressed. The ironed shirt sat on my shoulders with the smell of the iron and her detergent. She adjusted the collar even though it did not need it. For a second her eyes checked my face the way they had after Thursday night, asking without words whether the acceptance was still there after Sunday dinner.
I did not know what she saw.
I picked up the backpack and the tiffin. At the door I looked back once. She was already closing the larger carrier for downstairs. The peach nighty, the payal, the sweat, the two lives in one kitchen. She did not look like the woman from the dream. She looked like my mother who had not slept and had still made tadka before seven.
“Go,” she said. “Otherwise you will face traffic.”
The corridor was empty.
I locked the door from outside. The sound was loud in my own ears. I went down slowly. Second floor, no one. First floor, Sunita’s door was shut. I did not look at it longer than I needed to. Ground floor, his heavy door was shut. I walked past it with my eyes on the compound.
The bike was in the usual strip. I strapped the tiffin on the hook, put the helmet on, and sat. That was when I saw her.
Sunita Kulkarni was coming in from the lane. A cloth bag in one hand. The same tight hair. The same small black bindi. She saw the bike. She saw me. She did not stop walking, but her eyes did the work. They went over my face the way a person looks at something they have already named. There was no greeting. There was no smirk big enough to point at. Only that look — flat, sure, and full of the landing from Thursday.
Kalank.
The boy who looks the other way.
The look made me feel exactly as useful as a person who locks a door and then pretends the afternoon on the other side of it is not already decided. I kicked the engine. I did not look at her again. I rolled out of the compound and into the lane.
The morning air was cool. Milkmen. College buses. The first office scooters. I kept the speed moderate. The flyover came and went. The signals near the station road held me longer than I wanted.
The office complex near the metro came up on the right, glass and concrete, already filling. I took the ramp into the parking basement, found the usual slot, and stopped.
I killed the engine.
For a second I sat on the bike with my helmet still on and both feet on the ground, the tiffin bag hanging behind me, Monday waiting in the lift.
The rest of the day was upstairs.
And the rest of the day, I already knew, was also three floors up in a different building, behind a door I had locked from the outside.
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