Chapter 1: Naya Ghar (New Home)

Kiran rang the doorbell. She had a key but hadn't used it since her father had moved Chhaya in. That was what — three years ago? Something along those lines. Kiran had already moved out by then because she'd seen how things were going, and because this house in Kothrud had stopped being home well before Chhaya arrived with her matching curtains and her obsession with keeping the gas stove spotless.

A head appeared at the window. She thought it was Dev, but she couldn't be sure. The net curtain — Chhaya's addition, naturally — made it hard to tell which of her two younger brothers it was, although they weren't that young anymore. At thirteen and fifteen, they were bigger than her. Which wasn't difficult. Kiran was five foot two and built like a sparrow with opinions.

A minute later Dev opened the front door. "We're not supposed to answer, but as it's you."

She followed him into the living room. Someone had gone overboard with the Diwali decorations. That woman, probably. Paper lanterns in every corner. Rangoli stencils on the floor — the lazy kind, not the hand-drawn kind that Aai used to do. Dev flopped down onto the sofa next to Chinmay, her youngest brother, and picked up a phone. Straight away, his head was back in BGMI. These boys and their shooting games. The world could be ending and Dev would ask the apocalypse to wait until the match finished.

Kiran glanced around. No sign of any adults. "You two on your own?"

Dev kept his eye on the screen. "Mum and Dad have gone shopping."

"Chhaya and Baba," she corrected him. No way was that woman their mother.

"Yeah, whatever."

She looked around the room. There was a new TV — sixty-five inches, Samsung, mounted on the wall like a trophy. Baba's money, Chhaya's taste. The sofa was new too. Leather, cream-coloured, the kind that looks sophisticated for exactly three weeks before it starts showing every chai stain and every crease from every arse that has sat on it. Kiran sat on it anyway, because it was her father's house and she'd sit wherever she bloody well pleased.

"Where's Baba taken her?" she asked.

Chinmay answered without looking up. "Phoenix. Chhaya wanted something for Christmas."

"Christmas? Since when do we do Christmas?"

"Since Chhaya decided we do Christmas. She bought a tree and everything. It's in the corner."

Kiran looked. There it was — a plastic Christmas tree, about four feet tall, decorated with baubles that had probably been purchased at a D-Mart sale. In a Hindu-Marathi household. In Kothrud. Next to the mandir shelf where Baba's brass Ganpati still sat, looking mildly confused by his new neighbours.

She wanted to say something. She wanted to say a lot of somethings. But Dev and Chinmay were thirteen and fifteen, and they'd had enough upheaval in their lives without their older sister starting a war over festive decorations. So she swallowed the somethings and asked: "Either of you want chai?"

"There's no milk," Dev said. "Chhaya forgot to order it."

Of course she did.

Kiran went to the kitchen anyway. The kitchen was the room that hurt most. Not because it had changed — it had, obviously, Chhaya had replaced everything from the curtains to the spice rack — but because it was the room where the absence was loudest. Aai's kitchen had been chaos. Spices in unmarked steel dabbas that only she could identify by smell. A pressure cooker that whistled three times for dal and five for mutton. A radio on top of the fridge, permanently tuned to some Marathi station that played Asha Bhosle and Lata Mangeshkar back to back while Aai sang along, always half a beat behind, always slightly off-key, always happy.

This kitchen was quiet. Clean. Organised. Dead.

Kiran found a packet of Parle-G in the cupboard — the one constant across all Indian kitchens, the biscuit that survives regime change — and ate three standing at the counter, staring at the window where Aai used to grow tulsi and pudina in small clay pots. The pots were gone. Replaced by a succulent arrangement that Chhaya had probably seen on Pinterest.

The front door opened. Voices. Baba's low rumble, Chhaya's higher pitch, the rustle of shopping bags. Phoenix Mall bags, by the sound of it. Lots of them.

"Kiran!" Baba appeared in the kitchen doorway. Suresh Patil — fifty-four years old, Bajaj Auto middle management, a man who expressed love through silence and money and the occasional awkward shoulder pat. He was carrying four bags and looking at his eldest daughter as if she were a pleasant surprise and a potential problem simultaneously. "Tu kab aayi?"

"Half hour ago. Thought I'd see the boys."

"Good, good." He put the bags down. Chhaya appeared behind him — slim, well-dressed, the kind of woman who looked like she'd been assembled from a Myntra wishlist. She smiled at Kiran. The smile was perfectly calibrated: warm enough to be polite, cool enough to establish that this was her house now.

"Kiran! So nice to see you. Kitne din ho gaye?"

"Three months," Kiran said. The Parle-G turned to cement in her mouth.

"Three months! You should come more often. The boys miss you."

The boys, currently shooting virtual enemies in the living room, gave no indication of missing anyone. But Kiran nodded because nodding was easier than the alternative.

"Stay for dinner?" Chhaya asked. "I'm making paneer butter masala."

Aai never made paneer butter masala. Aai made zunka-bhakri and bharli vangi and aamti that tasted like Pune itself — earthy, sour, honest. Paneer butter masala was a North Indian concession, a peace offering from a woman who'd married a Maharashtrian man and was still learning the territory.

"Can't. Got work early tomorrow."

"On Sunday?"

"Market doesn't care what day it is."

Baba walked her to the door. On the step, away from Chhaya's hearing, he did the thing he always did — reached into his back pocket and pulled out a fold of notes. Five hundreds. Two thousands. He pressed them into her hand with the particular Indian father gesture that means: I don't know how to talk to you, so here's money.

"Baba, I don't need —"

"Rakh le." Keep it. His voice was firm in the way that meant the discussion was over. "Khaana kha liya kar. Tu patli ho gayi hai." Eat properly. You've gotten thin.

She was not thin. She was the same size she'd been since she was seventeen. But Indian fathers measure their children's wellbeing through perceived weight, and Kiran being anything less than pleasantly round was, in Baba's view, a failure of his parenting.

"Thanks, Baba."

He nodded. The nod that contained everything he couldn't say: I'm sorry about your mother. I'm sorry about Chhaya. I'm sorry the house feels different. I'm sorry I don't know how to be the father you need. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry — but I can't say any of that because I'm a Maharashtrian man of a certain generation and we were not given the software for emotional expression.

Kiran walked to the bus stop. The 102 to Deccan, then a shared auto to her rented room in a paying guest accommodation in Sadashiv Peth — a narrow room with a single bed, a small desk, and a window that looked out onto a wall. The room cost four thousand a month, which was most of what she made at the market, and it was hers, and it was quiet, and nobody in it had replaced her mother.

On the bus, she put in her earphones and played the playlist she'd made — old Hindi songs, the kind Aai used to sing. "Lag Ja Gale" came on. Lata's voice, pure and aching, filling the space between Kiran's ears and the world outside.

She looked out the window. Pune at dusk was beautiful in the way that all Indian cities are beautiful at dusk — the chaos softened by fading light, the autorickshaws becoming yellow fireflies, the temples lit up, the street food vendors' stalls glowing like small warm planets in the gathering dark.

She thought about the Christmas tree in her father's living room. About the rangoli stencils. About the succulent where the tulsi used to be.

She thought about her mother — Beena Patil, née Deshpande — who had left this family four years ago without explanation, without forwarding address, without the courtesy of a proper goodbye. Who had simply packed a bag one Tuesday morning while Baba was at work and the kids were at school and Kiran was at the market, and disappeared. Like a character written out of a serial. Like a woman who had decided that this particular story was no longer hers.

Kiran didn't cry. She hadn't cried about Beena in two years. Crying required belief that the person who left was worth the tears, and Kiran had used up that belief the way you use up mobile data — gradually, then all at once.

The bus stopped at Deccan. She got off. Bought a vada pav from the stall near Garware bridge — the one that was open until midnight, run by a man who never smiled but whose vada pav was the best in the western hemisphere. She ate it standing on the bridge, looking at the Mutha river below, which was mostly concrete and garbage but occasionally, in certain light, from certain angles, if you squinted, could pass for romantic.

The vada pav was perfect. Hot, spicy, the potato filling seasoned with green chilli and garlic, the pav soft and warm from the press. Some things, Kiran thought, were reliable. Some things showed up every day, the same every time, and never left you standing in a kitchen wondering where the tulsi pots went.

She finished the vada pav. Wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Started walking toward Sadashiv Peth.

Tomorrow was market day. Neeta Aunty expected her at 5 AM. The van would be loaded by 6. They'd be set up at Mandai by 7, selling the knockoff handbags and scarves and costume jewellery that constituted their business, their livelihood, their small claim on the economy of a city that had room for everyone and patience for no one.

Tomorrow was work. Tonight was Lata Mangeshkar and a vada pav and a room with a view of a wall.

It was enough. It had to be enough.