19-09-2026, 12:43 AM
(This post was last modified: 19-09-2026, 09:51 AM by Authorsunny. Edited 1 time in total. Edited 1 time in total.)
Chapter 28 – Friday
5 December 2025 – Friday
White marble under her feet. Cold. Shining. The kind of floor that does not belong to Andheri, or to our building, or to any corridor I have walked in my life. It went on and on, a wide hall with light coming from somewhere high, and she was walking across it as if the floor had been laid only for her.
The blouse was the first thing that held the eye.
Black. Thin straps. The back was open the way Mukesh ji had spoken of it in the shop — two hooks, a small strip of cloth between them, and then nothing. Her back was fair against that black. Wide. Smooth. In the middle of that fairness there was a mark that was not a mark of cloth. A darker hand had been there. A large hand. The print sat in the skin as if the palm had pressed and stayed long enough to leave itself behind.
The arm that belonged to that hand came into view a moment later.
Azad Sahab.
He walked half a step behind her and a little to the side, not holding her, not needing to. The black pathani he wore looked as if it had always known this kind of floor. His beard was neat. His mouth was easy. He looked at her open back the way a man looks at a thing he has already paid for and is still pleased with.
They walked.
On the left, near a pillar, Sunita Aunty was standing with a trolley bag. The bag was upright. Her hand was on the handle. Her face had the same pinched heat it had carried on our stairs the night she used that word. She saw them and her mouth opened as if the hall itself had given her permission.
“Shameless woman,” she said, loud enough for the marble to carry it. “Kalank. That is what she is. A stain on the whole building.”
A man beside her — her husband, the same tired man who never came out when she spoke — put a hand on her arm.
“Enough. Not here. Keep your voice down.”
She shook the hand off and said it again, shorter.
“Kalank.”
Ma did not turn. Azad Sahab did not turn. Their steps did not change. They walked as if the pillar and the trolley bag and the word had been placed there for someone else.
A man came from the front. No face at first. Only a suit and a smile and the manner of a person who is used to being received. When he came closer the face still would not settle, but the voice did. It was the kind of voice that belongs to hoardings and township ads.
“Azad. You came. Good.”
Then he looked at Ma.
“Bhabhi, you are looking very beautiful tonight.”
Azad Sahab laughed. Not a small laugh. A full one. It went up into the high light.
“Not bhabhi,” he said. “She is the woman I keep. That is the correct word. My Rakhail.”
He said it as if he were correcting a name on a card.
Ma laughed with him. Soft. Unbothered. The two hooks on her back rose and fell with the laugh. She did not cover herself. She stood on that white floor in the blouse he had chosen and let the word sit on her like perfume.
The hall jumped.
Mukesh ji was suddenly in front of her. Same vest. Same tape still hanging from his neck, as if the shop had come with him. I was behind her. I could see the open back and the two hooks and the fair skin. I could not see her face.
Mukesh ji put his hand on the front of the blouse.
From where I stood I only saw the movement of his arm and the way her shoulder tightened.
“It has come out nicely, madam,” he said. “Azad Sahab, you must be happy, no?”
Azad Sahab’s laugh again.
“Well done, Mukesh bhai. Well done.”
He stepped in. His fingers went to the same place Mukesh had touched. He pressed. Not a tailor’s press. A man’s press. The sequin cups shifted under his hand.
“This V has come out just right,” he said. “Nine inches, yes? Very well done. Next time, make it even deeper. Haha.”
He laughed again, pleased with the number, pleased with the cloth, pleased with the body inside the cloth.
The hall jumped.
Rohan was standing in front of me. Sameer beside him. Office shirts. Pantry light on their faces. They were looking past me, at her.
“That is your mother?” Rohan said. He did not bother to lower it. “My God. What a hot slut she is.”
Sameer laughed once, short.
“And that man is not your father, right? Pathetic, bro. How do you even tolerate this?”
I opened my mouth. No sound came. The marble was still under my feet. Their faces were too close. Behind them the black blouse kept walking.
The hall jumped.
Azad Sahab’s hands were at her back. The two hooks. He opened them without hurry. The small strip of cloth gave way. The blouse loosened and fell off her shoulders and hung at her elbows for a second before it dropped.
The black satin bra was there.
Wired. The band sat tight. The straps were thin. From behind I could see the way the wire held her. I moved. I wanted the front. I had not seen the front since the hall had begun. I stepped to the side.
He stepped with her.
I stepped the other way.
He turned her with him. The front stayed hidden. Always his shoulder, always her hair, always the angle that refused me.
He put one finger under the band at her back and pulled the wire away from her skin.
She cried out.
“Ah — it hurts, Azad Sahab. Please.”
He laughed. The laugh had no kindness in it.
“That is your punishment, you bitch..”
The last word was ugly. It landed in the high hall and stayed there.
“Please don’t do this, Azad Sahab.”
He let the band snap back. Then his open hand hit the middle of her back.
The sound was sharp on that fair skin.
She screamed.
Around them, people smiled. Sunita Aunty smiled. The faceless man in the suit smiled. Mukesh ji smiled with one side of his mouth. The smiles were the worst part. Nobody moved to stop it. The marble took the scream and made it clean.
The hall jumped.
He was holding her. Both arms. Her face was tipped up. The open back was against his chest. The hall had filled without my noticing — a crowd in good clothes, glasses in their hands, the same high light.
They began to call.
“Kiss. Kiss. Kiss.”
In one corner I saw Nair ma’am. Black saree. Closed throat. A wine glass. Mike sir stood next to her in a white shirt, sleeves rolled once. They were looking at Ma and Azad Sahab the way the rest of the hall was looking. Nair ma’am’s mouth moved with the others.
“Kiss. Kiss.”
Azad Sahab did not kiss her.
He put a hand on her shoulder and pushed her down.
Her knees met the marble.
The sound was small and hard. She looked awkward in that position — a woman who had spent years on her feet in a hotel reception, now on her knees in a hall that was not hers, the black bra still on, the blouse gone, the crowd still calling for a kiss that was not coming.
His hands went to his belt.
She lifted hers to the buckle. Fingers that had packed my tiffin. Fingers that had painted black polish yesterday. They opened the buckle. They drew the zip down.
He was already hard.
The same thickness I had seen on a phone screen in our flat, in a deleted video, in a hotel room I had never entered. Dark. Veined. Heavy. It came out into the white light of the hall as if it belonged there.
She looked down at it.
Then she turned her head.
She looked behind her.
She saw me.
The awkwardness left her face and something else came in — shock, clean and complete, as if the hall and the crowd and the man in front of her had been bearable until the moment her son was standing in it.
“Sunny?” she said. “You? You are here?”
Then suddenly, I heard the steel vessel hit the sink.
I opened my eyes, then I sat up.
The room was our room. Tube light off. Grill holding the first grey of morning. Fan turning the same tired air it had turned all night. My heart was going too fast for the bed. Sweat on the forehead, on the neck, in the hollow of the throat. The sheet was twisted at my waist.
It was again a dream, a wild and scarry one
I was hard.
Fully. Painfully. The kind of hardness that has nothing useful in it. It sat in the shorts like an accusation.
From the kitchen corner came the ordinary morning sounds. The stove. Water. A second vessel placed down more quietly than the first. She was already up.
I turned my head.
She was in the same nighty. The old peach one. Thin. The morning line from the grill cut across the small kitchen and caught the cloth. It showed too much and still pretended to be only light. The weight of her chest. The dark suggestion of the nipples against the peach. The round of her hip where the nighty had caught at the side. Hair open, flattened on one side from the pillow. Gold chain in the hollow of her throat. Silver bracelet. Bare feet on the tile.
I looked away.
The hall was already breaking into pieces. The marble going. Sunita Aunty going. Mukesh ji’s hand going. Rohan’s mouth going. Nair ma’am’s wine glass going. The slap on the back going. What would not go was the last frame — her on her knees, the zip open, her face turning, and that one sentence.
Sunny? You? You are here?
I sat on the edge of the bed and waited for the breath to come down. It did not come down. I stood, took the towel from the chair, and went straight to the bathroom. I did not look at the kitchen again. I did not say good morning. I closed the door as far as the weak latch allowed.
The space was the same small rectangle. I put my forehead against the wall for a second. The tile was cool. I was still hard. I turned the tap on and let the water run over my head and neck and shoulders without waiting for it to settle. Cold. Then less cold. I soaped quickly. I did not give the body time to do anything with what the night had left. I washed as if washing could take the marble out of the head.
It did not.
By the time I wrapped the towel and opened the door, most of the hall had already thinned. I could not have said, if someone had asked me then, whether Sunita Aunty had been holding a trolley bag or a steel plate. I could not have said the exact words Rohan had used. I could not have said whether Mike sir had been holding the glass or only standing. The mind was already dropping pieces the way a hand drops water.
What stayed was the knees on the floor.
What stayed was her face turning.
What stayed was, Sunny? You? You are here?
She had poured the tea.
Two steel glasses on the folding table. The iron was standing on its rest near the chair, still warm. My cream shirt was hanging on the back of the chair, done, collar turned the way she always turned it. She had not waited for me to ask.
“You’re late already,” she said. She looked at the wall clock, then at me. “Sit. Drink beta.”
I sat. The towel was still around my waist. I should have put the pants on first. I had not thought that far.
I drank. The tea was strong. The same tea as every morning. It should have brought the house back into its proper size. It only sat in the mouth.
She sat opposite me and folded one leg under the other. The nighty climbed a little on that thigh and she pulled it down without thinking, the way she still did sometimes, as if a part of her had not fully left the old house.
“Today I may not be here when you come back,” she said.
She said it looking at the glass, not at me.
“I know.”
“Azad sahab said five-fifteen. I will start getting ready by four. You have your set of keys right?”
“Yes Ma. I will try to come by seven. Same as always. If a meeting stretches I will message.”
“Message even if it does not stretch,” she said. “Just so I know you have left.”
There was a small excitement under the words. Not the private smile she wore for the phone. Something more restless. The kind of restlessness that comes when a person has thought about a room all night and still cannot see the room. Anxiety sat next to it. They did not cancel each other. They shared the same mouth.
“You will be fine,” I said, because a son is supposed to say something, and because the other things I could have said had no clean place at a tea table.
She gave a short breath that was almost a laugh.
“I don’t know about fine. I have never walked into a place like that. I keep thinking I will stand wrong, or sit wrong, or say the wrong thing. Azad Sahab says the clothes will do the talking. I hope he is right. I don’t have that kind of English, Sunny. You know that.”
“You don’t have to give speeches Ma. You only have to be there.”
“That is what Azad sahab said also.” She turned the glass. The bracelet made its small sound. “Still. A hundred people. All couples. All used to that kind of room. I will be the one counting the glasses so I don’t pick up the wrong one.”
She smiled at herself, then let the smile go.
“Anyway. You focus on office. You have your own work.”
I should have left it there. The next sentence came anyway, because the dead phone was on the table between the two glasses, black and silent, and because the morning needed one ordinary problem that belonged to us and not to a hotel.
“Your phone?” I asked.
“Off again. I didn’t even hear the alarm. I woke because the light came on the wall. This battery is finished, Sunny. I told you yesterday. Did you get any time to look for a new model?”
“Not properly Ma. Yesterday went in meetings.”
“Look today if you can. Nothing expensive. Something that serves the purpose. I don’t want to break an FD for a phone. But I also cannot keep living like this — charging it every two hours, missing calls, not knowing if a message has gone or not. Today of all days I need it to stay on.”
“Yes, I understand. Today, I will definitely look.”
“Don’t look at the ones with three cameras and all that nonsense. A clear screen. A battery that does not die. That is enough.” She paused. “And don’t tell Azad sahab that I asked you. I don’t want this to become another thing Azad sahab has to handle.”
“I won’t.”
She nodded, satisfied with that much, and got up to rinse her glass. The morning line found her again at the sink. I kept my eyes on the remaining tea.
I dressed in the bathroom this time. Formal pants. Undershirt. The ironed shirt. Belt. I shaved faster than I should have. In the small mirror my face looked like a face that had not slept, even though the body had been on the bed the whole night. When I came out she had packed the tiffin — one box, yesterday’s sabzi stretched with fresh roti. She held the bag out and then, as she always did, reached up and checked the collar.
“Eat at lunch. Don’t skip.”
“I won’t.”
At the door I looked back once. She was already turning toward the almirah. The nighty. The open hair. The dead phone on the table. The Belleza bag still on the upper shelf from last night, though I did not let my eyes stay there. Friday had started. The hall in my head had no business in this room, and it was in this room anyway.
“Go,” she said, without turning. “You will get late.”
I went down the stairs. The compound was ordinary. Watchman with tea. I put the helmet on and started the bike. At the first signal, when the engine settled under me, the sentence came back without being invited.
Sunny? You? You are here?
I opened the throttle more than I needed to.
The fourth floor was already awake when I swiped my card. Bags on desks. Laptops opening. Someone asking if the coffee machine had been filled. Rohan looked up and lifted his chin.
“Standup is at ten-thirty today. Mail came. Don’t vanish.”
“I won’t.”
I sat. I opened the laptop. The new module was already in the shared folder — Sinha sir had dropped it late last evening with a one-line note. Look at this over the weekend. First pass by Monday. Not urgent. Not light either. The kind of work that rewards a person who starts immediately and punishes a person who tells himself he has time.
I told myself I had time.
I opened the file. I read the first page. I read it again. The words stayed words. They did not become work. My hand went to the phone in the drawer before the third paragraph was over.
I took it out.
Last seen, 8:41 a.m.
She had switched the phone on after I left. Or the phone had taken charge for a few minutes and then she had used it. 8:41. I had been on the bike then, near the flyover.
I locked the screen. I put the phone face down. I opened the module.
Ten minutes later I turned the phone over again.
Last seen, 8:41 a.m.
No change.
The standup was short. Sinha sir assigned the weekend module again in the room so that nobody could later say they had not heard. Rohan got a review. Vikram got a client note. I got a reminder that Monday meant Monday and not Monday afternoon. Nair ma’am did not come to our cluster. The upper floor stayed the upper floor. I went back to the desk with a page of notes I had written without reading.
By eleven I had produced nothing that would survive a second look.
The head would not stay on the screen.
It went to the kitchen and the peach nighty in the grill light.
It went to the dead phone on the folding table.
It went to four o’clock in that same room, when she would take the Belleza box down from the shelf and put on the thing I had paid for.
It went to five-fifteen and the sedan in the compound.
It went, without permission, to white marble and two hooks and a laugh that had used a word I did not want to hear in any language.
And then it went back to the same sentence.
Sunny? You? You are here?
I got up and filled the bottle from the pantry. Rohan asked if I wanted tea. I said no. I came back. I opened the module at the data tab and stared at a column until the numbers blurred.
At eleven, I checked again.
Last seen, 10:52 a.m.
She had come online. Time of her morning that I would not see. Getting ready, or talking to him, or standing in front of the small mirror with the old black blouse in one hand and the new one in the other. The mind made all three pictures and then made a fourth that did not belong in an office.
At eleven-twenty the mail notification slid across the corner of the screen.
Salary processed.
I opened the banking app because the mail never showed the actual number cleanly.
The credit was there.
The usual amount first. Then a second line. Variable pay. Performance. The wording on the slip was the kind of wording companies use when they do not want to call it a bonus and do not want to call it a gift. Quarterly variable. One-time. Subject to tax.
A little more than twenty thousand extra.
I sat back.
For a few seconds the fourth floor became only a fourth floor. The extra money sat on the screen like a clean object. Not rent. Not Belleza Glow. Not pav bhaji. Not the seven or eight thousand I had been counting since Thursday. A buffer. A small one. Still a buffer.
I looked at the running total.
Then I thought of the dead phone on our folding table.
Then I thought of her saying she would break a small FD.
Then I thought of her saying, Don’t tell him I asked you.
The iPhone 13 was in my pocket, face down under the notebook. I took it out and turned it over in my hand. The edges were no longer sharp. The back had a thin line of wear where the cover never quite sat. I had bought it — no. She had bought it. June. Joining. The first full week. She had gone to the shop near the station with money she had put aside from the parlour years, counted twice at the counter, and come home with a box that did not look like it belonged in our almirah. Fifty thousand after the offer. She had said, You cannot go to an office like that with a phone that hangs when a mail opens. Take it. It's your gift.
I had made a face anyway, and then I had taken it.
Today, she was still using a handset that died before noon.
I opened the shopping app.
The filter was the only thing my mind was willing to do properly. Price. Twenty thousand to thirty. Battery. Screen. Brand. I pushed away the ones with a camera list longer than the battery line. I pushed away the ones that cost as much as a month of our old rent. I read reviews the way I read requirement sheets when I am actually present — slowly, then again.
Samsung. OnePlus.
The Samsungs in that band looked like phones that would last a year and then begin to bargain with the charger. A few models sat higher. The A36 5G was inside the number if a bank offer was applied. Eight gigabytes. A battery that the reviews did not laugh at. A screen she would be able to read without bringing the glass to her nose. Nothing she would need a lecture to use.
The OnePlus Nord in the same band was cleaner at the edges and a little sharper in the photos. It also asked for a little more money once the warranty add-on was ticked.
I went back and forth.
I thought of her fingers. The way she typed with one thumb. The way she lost a phone in the bedsheet. The way she would not take a handset that looked like a statement. Samsung would sit in our house without looking like I had tried to impress anyone. She already knew the gallery and the calling screen on that kind of phone. She would not have to learn a new language of buttons on the evening of a day like this.
I selected the Samsung.
Blue. Not the brightest blue. The quieter one. 128 gigabytes. The seller who had the better rating. Delivery — I checked twice.
Sunday.
Sunday would put the box in our room after the Friday she was already carrying. After whatever the Taj did to the air in the house. A new phone on a Sunday morning is an ordinary object. Ordinary objects are what our house understands.
The price, after the card offer, came to a little under twenty-nine thousand.
I sat with that number.
Thursday I had told her I had seven or eight thousand and could not touch it. Thursday I had still transferred 2,870 because she had asked. Today the slip had given me twenty thousand I had not planned for. If I used a part of the extra and a part of what would remain after tax, the month would be tight until the next cycle. Tight was not empty. Empty was the word she had used for her own account.
I added the phone to the cart.
The next screen asked for the address. I put ours. Third floor. The building name the delivery boys already knew from other parcels. I put my number as the primary and hers as the alternate, then took hers off again. I wanted it to be surprise gift for her.
Payment.
The card screen opened. I looked at the iPhone in my other hand. Fifty thousand of her parlour savings, once. A joining gift so that her son would not look small in an office lift. She had not called it a sacrifice. She had called it necessary.
This was smaller.
This was also mine to do without asking the ground floor.
I put the card details in. The bank page loaded. I entered the password. For a second the screen only said processing.
I did not touch the module. I did not touch the last-seen. I did not let the marble hall come back in. I watched the little circle turn.
The confirmation came.
Order placed.
A number. A Sunday window. A line that said the item had been confirmed by the seller.
I locked the phone.
I put it in the drawer.
On the laptop the module was still open at the same column.
I had a new module until Monday.
I had a salary slip with an extra line.
I had an order number that would arrive after the party.
And somewhere under all of that, thinner now than it had been at eight in the morning and still not gone, her face on a white floor, turning, saying my name as if I was the one thing in that hall that did not belong.
5 December 2025 – Friday
White marble under her feet. Cold. Shining. The kind of floor that does not belong to Andheri, or to our building, or to any corridor I have walked in my life. It went on and on, a wide hall with light coming from somewhere high, and she was walking across it as if the floor had been laid only for her.
The blouse was the first thing that held the eye.
Black. Thin straps. The back was open the way Mukesh ji had spoken of it in the shop — two hooks, a small strip of cloth between them, and then nothing. Her back was fair against that black. Wide. Smooth. In the middle of that fairness there was a mark that was not a mark of cloth. A darker hand had been there. A large hand. The print sat in the skin as if the palm had pressed and stayed long enough to leave itself behind.
The arm that belonged to that hand came into view a moment later.
Azad Sahab.
He walked half a step behind her and a little to the side, not holding her, not needing to. The black pathani he wore looked as if it had always known this kind of floor. His beard was neat. His mouth was easy. He looked at her open back the way a man looks at a thing he has already paid for and is still pleased with.
They walked.
On the left, near a pillar, Sunita Aunty was standing with a trolley bag. The bag was upright. Her hand was on the handle. Her face had the same pinched heat it had carried on our stairs the night she used that word. She saw them and her mouth opened as if the hall itself had given her permission.
“Shameless woman,” she said, loud enough for the marble to carry it. “Kalank. That is what she is. A stain on the whole building.”
A man beside her — her husband, the same tired man who never came out when she spoke — put a hand on her arm.
“Enough. Not here. Keep your voice down.”
She shook the hand off and said it again, shorter.
“Kalank.”
Ma did not turn. Azad Sahab did not turn. Their steps did not change. They walked as if the pillar and the trolley bag and the word had been placed there for someone else.
A man came from the front. No face at first. Only a suit and a smile and the manner of a person who is used to being received. When he came closer the face still would not settle, but the voice did. It was the kind of voice that belongs to hoardings and township ads.
“Azad. You came. Good.”
Then he looked at Ma.
“Bhabhi, you are looking very beautiful tonight.”
Azad Sahab laughed. Not a small laugh. A full one. It went up into the high light.
“Not bhabhi,” he said. “She is the woman I keep. That is the correct word. My Rakhail.”
He said it as if he were correcting a name on a card.
Ma laughed with him. Soft. Unbothered. The two hooks on her back rose and fell with the laugh. She did not cover herself. She stood on that white floor in the blouse he had chosen and let the word sit on her like perfume.
The hall jumped.
Mukesh ji was suddenly in front of her. Same vest. Same tape still hanging from his neck, as if the shop had come with him. I was behind her. I could see the open back and the two hooks and the fair skin. I could not see her face.
Mukesh ji put his hand on the front of the blouse.
From where I stood I only saw the movement of his arm and the way her shoulder tightened.
“It has come out nicely, madam,” he said. “Azad Sahab, you must be happy, no?”
Azad Sahab’s laugh again.
“Well done, Mukesh bhai. Well done.”
He stepped in. His fingers went to the same place Mukesh had touched. He pressed. Not a tailor’s press. A man’s press. The sequin cups shifted under his hand.
“This V has come out just right,” he said. “Nine inches, yes? Very well done. Next time, make it even deeper. Haha.”
He laughed again, pleased with the number, pleased with the cloth, pleased with the body inside the cloth.
The hall jumped.
Rohan was standing in front of me. Sameer beside him. Office shirts. Pantry light on their faces. They were looking past me, at her.
“That is your mother?” Rohan said. He did not bother to lower it. “My God. What a hot slut she is.”
Sameer laughed once, short.
“And that man is not your father, right? Pathetic, bro. How do you even tolerate this?”
I opened my mouth. No sound came. The marble was still under my feet. Their faces were too close. Behind them the black blouse kept walking.
The hall jumped.
Azad Sahab’s hands were at her back. The two hooks. He opened them without hurry. The small strip of cloth gave way. The blouse loosened and fell off her shoulders and hung at her elbows for a second before it dropped.
The black satin bra was there.
Wired. The band sat tight. The straps were thin. From behind I could see the way the wire held her. I moved. I wanted the front. I had not seen the front since the hall had begun. I stepped to the side.
He stepped with her.
I stepped the other way.
He turned her with him. The front stayed hidden. Always his shoulder, always her hair, always the angle that refused me.
He put one finger under the band at her back and pulled the wire away from her skin.
She cried out.
“Ah — it hurts, Azad Sahab. Please.”
He laughed. The laugh had no kindness in it.
“That is your punishment, you bitch..”
The last word was ugly. It landed in the high hall and stayed there.
“Please don’t do this, Azad Sahab.”
He let the band snap back. Then his open hand hit the middle of her back.
The sound was sharp on that fair skin.
She screamed.
Around them, people smiled. Sunita Aunty smiled. The faceless man in the suit smiled. Mukesh ji smiled with one side of his mouth. The smiles were the worst part. Nobody moved to stop it. The marble took the scream and made it clean.
The hall jumped.
He was holding her. Both arms. Her face was tipped up. The open back was against his chest. The hall had filled without my noticing — a crowd in good clothes, glasses in their hands, the same high light.
They began to call.
“Kiss. Kiss. Kiss.”
In one corner I saw Nair ma’am. Black saree. Closed throat. A wine glass. Mike sir stood next to her in a white shirt, sleeves rolled once. They were looking at Ma and Azad Sahab the way the rest of the hall was looking. Nair ma’am’s mouth moved with the others.
“Kiss. Kiss.”
Azad Sahab did not kiss her.
He put a hand on her shoulder and pushed her down.
Her knees met the marble.
The sound was small and hard. She looked awkward in that position — a woman who had spent years on her feet in a hotel reception, now on her knees in a hall that was not hers, the black bra still on, the blouse gone, the crowd still calling for a kiss that was not coming.
His hands went to his belt.
She lifted hers to the buckle. Fingers that had packed my tiffin. Fingers that had painted black polish yesterday. They opened the buckle. They drew the zip down.
He was already hard.
The same thickness I had seen on a phone screen in our flat, in a deleted video, in a hotel room I had never entered. Dark. Veined. Heavy. It came out into the white light of the hall as if it belonged there.
She looked down at it.
Then she turned her head.
She looked behind her.
She saw me.
The awkwardness left her face and something else came in — shock, clean and complete, as if the hall and the crowd and the man in front of her had been bearable until the moment her son was standing in it.
“Sunny?” she said. “You? You are here?”
Then suddenly, I heard the steel vessel hit the sink.
I opened my eyes, then I sat up.
The room was our room. Tube light off. Grill holding the first grey of morning. Fan turning the same tired air it had turned all night. My heart was going too fast for the bed. Sweat on the forehead, on the neck, in the hollow of the throat. The sheet was twisted at my waist.
It was again a dream, a wild and scarry one
I was hard.
Fully. Painfully. The kind of hardness that has nothing useful in it. It sat in the shorts like an accusation.
From the kitchen corner came the ordinary morning sounds. The stove. Water. A second vessel placed down more quietly than the first. She was already up.
I turned my head.
She was in the same nighty. The old peach one. Thin. The morning line from the grill cut across the small kitchen and caught the cloth. It showed too much and still pretended to be only light. The weight of her chest. The dark suggestion of the nipples against the peach. The round of her hip where the nighty had caught at the side. Hair open, flattened on one side from the pillow. Gold chain in the hollow of her throat. Silver bracelet. Bare feet on the tile.
I looked away.
The hall was already breaking into pieces. The marble going. Sunita Aunty going. Mukesh ji’s hand going. Rohan’s mouth going. Nair ma’am’s wine glass going. The slap on the back going. What would not go was the last frame — her on her knees, the zip open, her face turning, and that one sentence.
Sunny? You? You are here?
I sat on the edge of the bed and waited for the breath to come down. It did not come down. I stood, took the towel from the chair, and went straight to the bathroom. I did not look at the kitchen again. I did not say good morning. I closed the door as far as the weak latch allowed.
The space was the same small rectangle. I put my forehead against the wall for a second. The tile was cool. I was still hard. I turned the tap on and let the water run over my head and neck and shoulders without waiting for it to settle. Cold. Then less cold. I soaped quickly. I did not give the body time to do anything with what the night had left. I washed as if washing could take the marble out of the head.
It did not.
By the time I wrapped the towel and opened the door, most of the hall had already thinned. I could not have said, if someone had asked me then, whether Sunita Aunty had been holding a trolley bag or a steel plate. I could not have said the exact words Rohan had used. I could not have said whether Mike sir had been holding the glass or only standing. The mind was already dropping pieces the way a hand drops water.
What stayed was the knees on the floor.
What stayed was her face turning.
What stayed was, Sunny? You? You are here?
She had poured the tea.
Two steel glasses on the folding table. The iron was standing on its rest near the chair, still warm. My cream shirt was hanging on the back of the chair, done, collar turned the way she always turned it. She had not waited for me to ask.
“You’re late already,” she said. She looked at the wall clock, then at me. “Sit. Drink beta.”
I sat. The towel was still around my waist. I should have put the pants on first. I had not thought that far.
I drank. The tea was strong. The same tea as every morning. It should have brought the house back into its proper size. It only sat in the mouth.
She sat opposite me and folded one leg under the other. The nighty climbed a little on that thigh and she pulled it down without thinking, the way she still did sometimes, as if a part of her had not fully left the old house.
“Today I may not be here when you come back,” she said.
She said it looking at the glass, not at me.
“I know.”
“Azad sahab said five-fifteen. I will start getting ready by four. You have your set of keys right?”
“Yes Ma. I will try to come by seven. Same as always. If a meeting stretches I will message.”
“Message even if it does not stretch,” she said. “Just so I know you have left.”
There was a small excitement under the words. Not the private smile she wore for the phone. Something more restless. The kind of restlessness that comes when a person has thought about a room all night and still cannot see the room. Anxiety sat next to it. They did not cancel each other. They shared the same mouth.
“You will be fine,” I said, because a son is supposed to say something, and because the other things I could have said had no clean place at a tea table.
She gave a short breath that was almost a laugh.
“I don’t know about fine. I have never walked into a place like that. I keep thinking I will stand wrong, or sit wrong, or say the wrong thing. Azad Sahab says the clothes will do the talking. I hope he is right. I don’t have that kind of English, Sunny. You know that.”
“You don’t have to give speeches Ma. You only have to be there.”
“That is what Azad sahab said also.” She turned the glass. The bracelet made its small sound. “Still. A hundred people. All couples. All used to that kind of room. I will be the one counting the glasses so I don’t pick up the wrong one.”
She smiled at herself, then let the smile go.
“Anyway. You focus on office. You have your own work.”
I should have left it there. The next sentence came anyway, because the dead phone was on the table between the two glasses, black and silent, and because the morning needed one ordinary problem that belonged to us and not to a hotel.
“Your phone?” I asked.
“Off again. I didn’t even hear the alarm. I woke because the light came on the wall. This battery is finished, Sunny. I told you yesterday. Did you get any time to look for a new model?”
“Not properly Ma. Yesterday went in meetings.”
“Look today if you can. Nothing expensive. Something that serves the purpose. I don’t want to break an FD for a phone. But I also cannot keep living like this — charging it every two hours, missing calls, not knowing if a message has gone or not. Today of all days I need it to stay on.”
“Yes, I understand. Today, I will definitely look.”
“Don’t look at the ones with three cameras and all that nonsense. A clear screen. A battery that does not die. That is enough.” She paused. “And don’t tell Azad sahab that I asked you. I don’t want this to become another thing Azad sahab has to handle.”
“I won’t.”
She nodded, satisfied with that much, and got up to rinse her glass. The morning line found her again at the sink. I kept my eyes on the remaining tea.
I dressed in the bathroom this time. Formal pants. Undershirt. The ironed shirt. Belt. I shaved faster than I should have. In the small mirror my face looked like a face that had not slept, even though the body had been on the bed the whole night. When I came out she had packed the tiffin — one box, yesterday’s sabzi stretched with fresh roti. She held the bag out and then, as she always did, reached up and checked the collar.
“Eat at lunch. Don’t skip.”
“I won’t.”
At the door I looked back once. She was already turning toward the almirah. The nighty. The open hair. The dead phone on the table. The Belleza bag still on the upper shelf from last night, though I did not let my eyes stay there. Friday had started. The hall in my head had no business in this room, and it was in this room anyway.
“Go,” she said, without turning. “You will get late.”
I went down the stairs. The compound was ordinary. Watchman with tea. I put the helmet on and started the bike. At the first signal, when the engine settled under me, the sentence came back without being invited.
Sunny? You? You are here?
I opened the throttle more than I needed to.
The fourth floor was already awake when I swiped my card. Bags on desks. Laptops opening. Someone asking if the coffee machine had been filled. Rohan looked up and lifted his chin.
“Standup is at ten-thirty today. Mail came. Don’t vanish.”
“I won’t.”
I sat. I opened the laptop. The new module was already in the shared folder — Sinha sir had dropped it late last evening with a one-line note. Look at this over the weekend. First pass by Monday. Not urgent. Not light either. The kind of work that rewards a person who starts immediately and punishes a person who tells himself he has time.
I told myself I had time.
I opened the file. I read the first page. I read it again. The words stayed words. They did not become work. My hand went to the phone in the drawer before the third paragraph was over.
I took it out.
Last seen, 8:41 a.m.
She had switched the phone on after I left. Or the phone had taken charge for a few minutes and then she had used it. 8:41. I had been on the bike then, near the flyover.
I locked the screen. I put the phone face down. I opened the module.
Ten minutes later I turned the phone over again.
Last seen, 8:41 a.m.
No change.
The standup was short. Sinha sir assigned the weekend module again in the room so that nobody could later say they had not heard. Rohan got a review. Vikram got a client note. I got a reminder that Monday meant Monday and not Monday afternoon. Nair ma’am did not come to our cluster. The upper floor stayed the upper floor. I went back to the desk with a page of notes I had written without reading.
By eleven I had produced nothing that would survive a second look.
The head would not stay on the screen.
It went to the kitchen and the peach nighty in the grill light.
It went to the dead phone on the folding table.
It went to four o’clock in that same room, when she would take the Belleza box down from the shelf and put on the thing I had paid for.
It went to five-fifteen and the sedan in the compound.
It went, without permission, to white marble and two hooks and a laugh that had used a word I did not want to hear in any language.
And then it went back to the same sentence.
Sunny? You? You are here?
I got up and filled the bottle from the pantry. Rohan asked if I wanted tea. I said no. I came back. I opened the module at the data tab and stared at a column until the numbers blurred.
At eleven, I checked again.
Last seen, 10:52 a.m.
She had come online. Time of her morning that I would not see. Getting ready, or talking to him, or standing in front of the small mirror with the old black blouse in one hand and the new one in the other. The mind made all three pictures and then made a fourth that did not belong in an office.
At eleven-twenty the mail notification slid across the corner of the screen.
Salary processed.
I opened the banking app because the mail never showed the actual number cleanly.
The credit was there.
The usual amount first. Then a second line. Variable pay. Performance. The wording on the slip was the kind of wording companies use when they do not want to call it a bonus and do not want to call it a gift. Quarterly variable. One-time. Subject to tax.
A little more than twenty thousand extra.
I sat back.
For a few seconds the fourth floor became only a fourth floor. The extra money sat on the screen like a clean object. Not rent. Not Belleza Glow. Not pav bhaji. Not the seven or eight thousand I had been counting since Thursday. A buffer. A small one. Still a buffer.
I looked at the running total.
Then I thought of the dead phone on our folding table.
Then I thought of her saying she would break a small FD.
Then I thought of her saying, Don’t tell him I asked you.
The iPhone 13 was in my pocket, face down under the notebook. I took it out and turned it over in my hand. The edges were no longer sharp. The back had a thin line of wear where the cover never quite sat. I had bought it — no. She had bought it. June. Joining. The first full week. She had gone to the shop near the station with money she had put aside from the parlour years, counted twice at the counter, and come home with a box that did not look like it belonged in our almirah. Fifty thousand after the offer. She had said, You cannot go to an office like that with a phone that hangs when a mail opens. Take it. It's your gift.
I had made a face anyway, and then I had taken it.
Today, she was still using a handset that died before noon.
I opened the shopping app.
The filter was the only thing my mind was willing to do properly. Price. Twenty thousand to thirty. Battery. Screen. Brand. I pushed away the ones with a camera list longer than the battery line. I pushed away the ones that cost as much as a month of our old rent. I read reviews the way I read requirement sheets when I am actually present — slowly, then again.
Samsung. OnePlus.
The Samsungs in that band looked like phones that would last a year and then begin to bargain with the charger. A few models sat higher. The A36 5G was inside the number if a bank offer was applied. Eight gigabytes. A battery that the reviews did not laugh at. A screen she would be able to read without bringing the glass to her nose. Nothing she would need a lecture to use.
The OnePlus Nord in the same band was cleaner at the edges and a little sharper in the photos. It also asked for a little more money once the warranty add-on was ticked.
I went back and forth.
I thought of her fingers. The way she typed with one thumb. The way she lost a phone in the bedsheet. The way she would not take a handset that looked like a statement. Samsung would sit in our house without looking like I had tried to impress anyone. She already knew the gallery and the calling screen on that kind of phone. She would not have to learn a new language of buttons on the evening of a day like this.
I selected the Samsung.
Blue. Not the brightest blue. The quieter one. 128 gigabytes. The seller who had the better rating. Delivery — I checked twice.
Sunday.
Sunday would put the box in our room after the Friday she was already carrying. After whatever the Taj did to the air in the house. A new phone on a Sunday morning is an ordinary object. Ordinary objects are what our house understands.
The price, after the card offer, came to a little under twenty-nine thousand.
I sat with that number.
Thursday I had told her I had seven or eight thousand and could not touch it. Thursday I had still transferred 2,870 because she had asked. Today the slip had given me twenty thousand I had not planned for. If I used a part of the extra and a part of what would remain after tax, the month would be tight until the next cycle. Tight was not empty. Empty was the word she had used for her own account.
I added the phone to the cart.
The next screen asked for the address. I put ours. Third floor. The building name the delivery boys already knew from other parcels. I put my number as the primary and hers as the alternate, then took hers off again. I wanted it to be surprise gift for her.
Payment.
The card screen opened. I looked at the iPhone in my other hand. Fifty thousand of her parlour savings, once. A joining gift so that her son would not look small in an office lift. She had not called it a sacrifice. She had called it necessary.
This was smaller.
This was also mine to do without asking the ground floor.
I put the card details in. The bank page loaded. I entered the password. For a second the screen only said processing.
I did not touch the module. I did not touch the last-seen. I did not let the marble hall come back in. I watched the little circle turn.
The confirmation came.
Order placed.
A number. A Sunday window. A line that said the item had been confirmed by the seller.
I locked the phone.
I put it in the drawer.
On the laptop the module was still open at the same column.
I had a new module until Monday.
I had a salary slip with an extra line.
I had an order number that would arrive after the party.
And somewhere under all of that, thinner now than it had been at eight in the morning and still not gone, her face on a white floor, turning, saying my name as if I was the one thing in that hall that did not belong.
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