Chapter 10: Cheryl

Cheryl is not Indian.

This matters because in the ecosystem of Seaside Fitness — where the membership is ninety percent Indian, eight percent NRI, and two percent confused foreigners who wandered in looking for the beach — Cheryl stands out. She is: American, sixty-two, from somewhere in Connecticut that she describes as "the kind of place where people mow their lawns on Saturday and judge you on Sunday." She moved to Mumbai four years ago because her husband, a pharma executive named Doug, was posted here by his company, and then Doug died of a heart attack fourteen months later, and Cheryl stayed because going back to Connecticut felt like: admitting defeat.

"Defeat to whom?" I asked, the first time she told me this story. We were in the changing room — the confession booth of Seaside Fitness — and she was applying moisturiser with the methodical precision of a woman who has decided that skincare is: the one thing she can control.

"To the lawn-mowing, Sunday-judging people who told me I was crazy for moving here. 'India, Cheryl? At your age?' As if India was: a dare. As if living in Mumbai at sixty was: a stunt."

"What is it, then?"

"It's living. It's just: living. Somewhere loud and messy and alive. Connecticut was quiet and neat and dead. I prefer alive."

Cheryl has: no children, no remaining family in Mumbai (Doug's company offered to repatriate her; she declined), and a daily routine that consists of: 7 AM yoga with Sunaina, 9 AM walk on Carter Road, 11 AM Hindi lesson with a tutor named Priya who comes to her apartment, 2 PM reading, 5 PM gym class (whatever's on the schedule — she's tried everything, including the goat yoga workshop that Seaside hosted once and that produced chaos of a specifically caprine nature), and 8 PM dinner at one of Bandra's restaurants because cooking for one in a kitchen designed for Doug is: more loneliness than she can handle.

"You could learn to cook Indian food," Vandana had suggested.

"I tried. I made dal. It tasted like: yellow water with existential dread."

"That's actually how most people's first dal tastes," Jaya said.

I like Cheryl. I like her because she is: honest in the way that people who've lost everything become honest — not brutally, not performatively, but casually, the casual honesty of someone who has nothing left to protect. She says what she thinks. She wears what she wants (today: a kurta she bought at Colaba Causeway with leggings from Marks & Spencer, the combination being: cultural fusion at its most practical). She drinks Old Monk rum at restaurants because "when in India" and because Doug used to drink Old Monk and drinking what he drank is: the way she keeps him present without: falling apart.

"How do you do it?" I ask. We're at the juice bar — my third month of juice bar conversations, the juice bar having become: the parliament of Seaside Fitness, the place where the real governance of our little community happens, over mosambi juice and overpriced smoothies.

"Do what?"

"Live here. Alone. In a country that's not yours. Without —" I stop. Without sounds like: a deficit. And Cheryl's life is not a deficit. Cheryl's life is: full. But it's full of things she chose after losing the thing she didn't choose to lose, and the distinction is: what I'm trying to understand.

"Without Doug?" She says his name the way people say the names of the dead — carefully, as if the name itself is: fragile, and speaking it too loudly might break: something. "I do it badly. Some days. Most days I do it: adequately. The adequate days outnumber the bad days now, which is: progress."

"My therapist says something similar."

"Your therapist is smart. Keep the therapist. Lose the guilt."

"What guilt?"

"The guilt you carry for being happy. I can see it on you — every time you laugh, every time you enjoy something, there's a flicker. A flicker that says: should I be enjoying this? Am I allowed to enjoy this? My marriage failed, my son was angry, I sold the flat — do I have the right to sit here drinking juice and laughing?"

She's looking at me with the eyes of a woman who recognises the flicker because she's carried it herself. The survivor's guilt that doesn't require a plane crash or a war — just the ordinary catastrophe of a life that ended and a new one that began, and the transition between them producing: a guilt that says: the old life should still be happening.

"Yes," I say. "That flicker."

"The flicker is: a liar. Happiness after loss is not: betrayal. Happiness after loss is: evidence that you survived. And survival is not something to feel guilty about. Survival is: the whole point."

I want to write this down. I want to write it on my wrist, the way I'd written "the choosing is the point" after Jaya's advice. But my wrist is already crowded with blue-ink wisdom, and I'm running out of: skin.

"Tell me about Doug," I say.

Cheryl tells me. Not the Doug-who-died (she doesn't linger there; she's done her lingering). The Doug-who-lived. The Doug who wore Hawaiian shirts to corporate dinners because "life's too short for solid colours." The Doug who learned to eat with his hands in three days because "if a billion people can do it, so can a Connecticut accountant." The Doug who cried during Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge because "that train scene, Cheryl, that train scene" and who then watched it four more times and cried each time.

"He loved India," she says. "Not the India that expats love — the fancy restaurants, the five-star hotels, the curated experience. He loved the mess. The noise. The traffic. He loved that Mumbai was: alive in a way that Connecticut wasn't. He used to say, 'This city doesn't care if you're ready. It happens whether you're ready or not.'"

"That's true," I say. "Mumbai doesn't wait."

"Mumbai doesn't wait. And grief doesn't wait. And life doesn't wait. So you either keep up or you get: left. And getting left is: what Connecticut looks like. Neat lawns. Quiet streets. Everything in its place. Including: you. In your place. In your lane. In your grief. In your widow's uniform."

She drinks her mosambi juice. The juice that the juice bar makes fresh — the sound of the machine pressing the fruit, the citrus-bright smell that cuts through the gym's background aroma of sweat and disinfectant.

"So I stayed," she says. "In the mess. In the noise. In the city where my husband died and where I decided to: live."

The following week, Cheryl invites me to dinner. Not at a restaurant — at her apartment. A fourth-floor flat in a Bandra building that was built in the 1960s and that has the particular charm of old Bombay construction: high ceilings, wooden window frames, a balcony with wrought-iron railings overlooking a street that sells everything from flowers to phone cases.

The apartment is: Doug. His Hawaiian shirts hang in the hallway — not in a closet but on display, like art. His books fill the shelves — crime fiction, mostly, the kind of thick paperbacks that you buy at airports and read on beaches. A photograph of Doug and Cheryl on Marine Drive, his arm around her, both of them squinting against the sunset, both of them: happy. The photograph's happiness is: not the curated happiness of Instagram but the accidental happiness of two people who forgot someone was taking a picture.

"I'm making khichdi," Cheryl announces. "Priya taught me. She says it's the easiest Indian dish, which means if I can't manage it, I should give up and order Swiggy permanently."

"Khichdi is a great start."

"Khichdi is: survival food. Like your dal-chawal. The food you make when you need comfort, not cuisine."

She makes khichdi. It's: surprisingly good. The rice and dal cooked together until they lose their individual identities and become: something new, something combined, the combination that produces: comfort, the particular comfort that Indians have known for centuries and that a sixty-two-year-old woman from Connecticut has learned to produce in a Bandra kitchen while wearing her dead husband's Hawaiian shirt.

We eat on the balcony. The wrought-iron railing is cool under my forearms. The street below produces: the sounds of Bandra at night — a scooter, a dog, someone's television playing a cricket commentary, the call to prayer from the mosque two streets over that arrives on the warm air like: music, like the city singing to itself.

"Mar," Cheryl says. "Can I tell you something?"

"Of course."

"You're going to be okay. I know this because I was: you. Different details — husband died instead of divorced, American instead of Indian, no children to complicate things. But the same: the starting over. The gym as a lifeline. The acquaintances who become: something more. The discovery that you are: more than the role you played."

"How long does it take?"

"The being-okay?"

"The feeling-okay."

She considers this. The considering of a woman who has been doing the math for three years and has arrived at: an answer.

"It's not a destination. It's not like: one day you wake up and you're okay. It's more like: one day you realise you've been okay for a while and you didn't notice. And the not-noticing is: the proof. Because when you're really okay, you stop checking."

The khichdi is warm. The balcony air is warm. The city below is: alive, messy, loud, ungovernable, exactly the way I need it to be.

I stop checking.