CHAPTER 3

OJASWINI

I woke at 5:47 AM — thirteen minutes before the alarm — and immediately started packing.

The ingredient prep had taken me until 3 AM. My kitchen was a wreck: containers stacked by temperature requirement, dry ice packed into two insulated boxes I'd borrowed from Riddhi's sister who worked catering. The good knives were rolled in their leather case — German steel, Wüsthof Classic, the one luxury I'd allowed myself when I opened the restaurant. Everything else I could compromise on. Not the knives.

I'd planned the menu in the shower at 2 AM, standing under cold water because the geyser was broken again:

Friday dinner: Dal tadka. Bhindi masala. Jeera rice. Cucumber raita. Comfort food for arrival night — nothing flashy, just clean flavors that say I'm professional and I'm not trying too hard.

Saturday breakfast: Appam with Kerala-style stew. Poha on the side for the husband in case he was North Indian-palate.

Saturday lunch: Sol kadhi with Malvani fish curry. Rava-fried surmai. Bhakri. Showcase the geography — we'd be on the Konkan coast, the food should match.

Saturday dinner — the birthday: Seven courses. My entire career on one table. I'd been designing this menu in my head since midnight. The kind of meal that made people remember your name. The kind that could change a Zomato rating, get you featured in Condé Nast Traveller, make strangers DM you asking are you available for my wedding?

Sunday breakfast: Simple. Poha again, or upma. Departure morning — nothing heavy.

I packed my backpack with three days of clothes. One nice kurta for the birthday dinner. Everything else functional — cotton, dark colors, nothing that would show stains. A chef's wardrobe is a war wardrobe: everything designed to survive.

The car arrived at 8:02 AM.

Black Mercedes. E-Class. The kind of car my father pointed at in Pune traffic and said, "See? That's what you could have had with an MBA." The driver — Kiran — was a thin man in a white shirt who didn't say a word. He loaded my insulated boxes into the trunk with the efficiency of someone who'd been doing this for years. Opened the rear door. Waited.

I climbed in. The leather seats smelled new. The AC was arctic. After my 200-square-foot studio with the broken geyser and the ceiling fan that wobbled, this car felt like a different planet.

We pulled onto SV Road. Bandra to Sindhudurg: seven hours, give or take. I watched Mumbai dissolve into highway, highway into countryside, countryside into the first glimpses of the Western Ghats turning violent green from monsoon rains. The sky was the color of old bruises — purple and yellow and swollen.

My phone buzzed.

Riddhi: Still alive?

Me: On the road. Driver's silent. Feeling very true crime podcast.

Riddhi: If you die I'm selling your knife set

Me: Bitch those are Wüsthof

Riddhi: EXACTLY

I grinned. Put my phone down. Watched the rain start — gentle at first, then heavier as we climbed through the Ghats. The Konkan highway was beautiful in monsoon: waterfalls appearing from nowhere, red laterite earth soaking into orange mud, jackfruit trees heavy with fruit, temple spires emerging from mist like fingers pointing at heaven.

We stopped once — a petrol pump outside Chiplun where I bought a terrible coffee from a stall that also sold batteries and bananas. The coffee was instant Nescafé made with too much sugar and not enough water. I drank it anyway. Bought a packet of Parle-G for the road because some things from childhood never change, and eating Parle-G dunked in bad coffee while watching rain fall on the Western Ghats was one of those things.

Kiran filled the tank. Didn't ask if I wanted anything. Didn't make eye contact. He had the studied blankness of a man who'd been instructed not to engage.

I Googled Devbagh Sindhudurg while I waited.

Devbagh Beach. Tarkarli. Transparent water, white sand, completely dead in monsoon season because the sea turned violent and the tourists stayed home. The islands offshore were mostly uninhabited — old Portuguese forts crumbling into the sea, abandoned smuggler outposts from the 1700s when Kanhoji Angre's Maratha fleet controlled this entire coast. Angre had been a naval commander under the Maratha empire — the British called him a pirate, the Marathas called him a hero. He'd built forts on these islands, stored weapons, intercepted British trade ships.

Island No. 7 didn't show up on Google Maps.

That should have been my first warning.

By the time we reached the coast it was 1 PM and the rain was coming down in solid walls — not individual drops but curtains of water that turned the windshield into abstract art. The road narrowed. Turned to red mud. Coconut palms bent sideways by wind that sounded like a woman keening. Kiran navigated like he'd done this a thousand times — no hesitation at the unmarked turns, no slowing for the potholes that could swallow a scooter.

We pulled into a small marina — just a concrete dock, a wooden shack with a faded Brixton & Sons Marine Services sign in peeling blue paint, three boats tied to the pier with ropes that strained against the swell.

A man stepped out of the shack.

Late twenties. Dark skin slick with rain. Faded blue shirt clinging to his chest in a way that made me notice his chest which was not what I was here for. He had a scar through his left eyebrow — a thin white line like a lightning bolt — and the kind of forearms that came from pulling nets and tying ropes and doing real work, not lifting weights in Cult.Fit.

He saw me. Smiled.

Not the polite smile you give customers. Not the servile smile you give people with money. The smile that says I see you and is genuinely, unreasonably happy about what it sees.

Fuck.

Kiran popped the trunk. The man jogged over, rain streaming down his face, shoes squelching in the mud.

"You're the chef?"

His voice was low. Coastal Marathi accent softened by something else — education, maybe. Or books. The kind of voice that had been shaped by the sea but refined by something quieter.

"Ojaswini," I said. "Ojju."

"Sameer." He picked up both insulated boxes like they weighed nothing — forty kilos of ingredients and dry ice, one in each hand, biceps barely registering the effort. "Boat's this way. Watch your step — the dock's slippery."

I followed him down the pier. My sneakers squelched. Rain soaked through my dupatta in seconds — the cotton clinging to my shoulders, my hair plastered to my neck. He loaded my gear onto a mid-sized motorboat — white hull, blue tarp strung across a metal frame, the name Saavli painted in Devanagari on the side in red.

"Shadow," I said, reading the name.

He turned. Raised an eyebrow. "You read Marathi?"

"I'm from Pune."

His grin widened. "Pune girl on a Konkan island. You're going to love it."

"How far is the island?" I asked.

"Forty minutes in calm water. Sixty in this." He gestured at the grey apocalypse surrounding us — waves crashing against the breakwater, the horizon invisible behind rain. "Maybe seventy."

He offered his hand. I took it.

His palm was rough. Warm despite the rain. Callused in the way that comes from rope and metal and saltwater. He pulled me onto the boat like I weighed nothing — a smooth motion, one arm, no strain.

"You've done this before?" I asked. "Ferried people to islands in monsoons?"

"All the time." He grinned. "Though usually they look less terrified."

"I'm not terrified."

"You're gripping the rail like it owes you money."

I looked down. I was white-knuckling the metal railing. I let go. My palms had imprints.

He laughed. Untied the boat. Started the engine — a deep, guttural sound that vibrated through the hull. We pulled away from the dock.

The rain swallowed the mainland whole. Within minutes, Devbagh was gone. The coast was gone. Everything was grey — grey sea, grey sky, grey rain connecting them like a curtain. We were alone on the Arabian Sea, and the only thing between us and the horizon was forty minutes of bad weather and Sameer's steady hands on the wheel.

"So," he shouted over the engine and the rain. "Private chef for the Shrivastavs. That's a big deal."

"You know them?"

"Everyone on this coast knows Deven Shrivastav. He bought the island eight years ago. Pays well, doesn't talk to anyone, acts like he owns the ocean." He paused. "Which, technically, he thinks he does."

"And his wife?"

"Tapsee madam?" He shrugged. "Nice enough. Tips well. Looks like she wants to be anywhere else."

Something in his tone made me file that away.

"What about the island itself?" I asked. "Any history?"

His eyes lit up. "History? That island IS history. Portuguese colonial mansion from the 1820s. Before that, Kanhoji Angre used it as a naval outpost — there are tunnels under the house, smuggling routes to the eastern shore. During the British Raj, it was a quarantine station for ships coming from the Gulf. In the 1940s, the independence movement used it to hide weapons." He was grinning now. "I could give you a three-hour lecture but we'd be on the island by then."

"You sound like you've read every history book in Sindhudurg."

"I have. There's a library in my marina office. Three hundred books. My mother thinks I'm crazy." He adjusted the throttle as a wave lifted the bow. "But this coast — this is where India's naval history happened. Shivaji's navy. Angre's fleet. The Marathas who fought the Portuguese and the British and the Dutch and won."

He said it with pride. Not the chest-thumping kind — the quiet kind. The kind that comes from knowing exactly where you stand in the world and being okay with it.

The island appeared through the rain like something from a gothic novel.

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