Chapter 14: Jai

Jai is the gym's resident mystery.

He's been at Seaside Fitness longer than anyone — seven years, according to Rohit at the front desk, who keeps track of membership anniversaries the way some people keep track of: birthdays. Seven years of daily attendance: weights in the morning, swimming at lunch (Seaside has a pool — a twenty-five-metre pool that smells of chlorine and ambition and that I've never entered because swimming requires: a swimsuit, and a swimsuit requires: a relationship with my body that I'm still negotiating), and an evening class — usually spinning or Zumba, sometimes Sunaina's yoga.

Nobody knows Jai's full story. This is remarkable because Seaside Fitness is: a gossip ecosystem. Vandana knows everyone's marital status. Jaya knows everyone's emotional temperature. Aditi knows everyone's Instagram handle. Cheryl knows everyone's drink order. I know everyone's name. Between us, we have: a comprehensive database of Seaside's membership.

But Jai is: a gap in the database.

What we know: he's approximately fifty-five, tall, with the kind of lean muscular build that suggests he's been physically active for decades, not months. His hair is salt-and-pepper, worn slightly long — not the long of neglect but the long of: choice. He speaks Hindi and English with equal fluency and occasional Marathi that sounds native. He wears the same thing every day: black shorts, grey t-shirt, white trainers. The uniform of a man who has eliminated decision fatigue from his wardrobe, the way Steve Jobs did with his turtlenecks, except Jai's version costs: significantly less.

What we don't know: everything else. Married? Divorced? Single? Children? Job? Origin story? He arrives, he works out, he leaves. He nods at people. He doesn't join conversations. He exists in the gym the way furniture exists in a room — present, functional, noticed only when you're looking for it.

"Ask him," Jaya says. We're at the juice bar — the parliament is in session. "You're the journalist now."

"I'm not a journalist. I'm a woman who used to write taglines."

"Same skill set. Asking questions. Getting answers. Making people reveal things they didn't plan to reveal."

"That sounds like: interrogation."

"Journalism is: polite interrogation."

I don't ask Jai. I don't need to. Because Jai comes to me.

It happens on a Tuesday — the day I'm at the gym alone because Vandana has a dental appointment, Jaya is at Ananya's school for parent-teacher, Aditi is in a work crisis that involves "a deployment that broke production" (I don't know what this means but her face suggested: catastrophe), and Cheryl is visiting Doug's grave at the Sewri Christian Cemetery, a visit she makes on the third Tuesday of every month.

I'm on the treadmill. The treadmill is: the least interesting piece of gym equipment, the machine that converts: effort into distance that doesn't actually exist, the existential joke of modern fitness — you walk and walk and arrive: nowhere. But the treadmill has a view of the gym floor, and from the treadmill I can see: everyone. Including Jai, who is at the free weights, doing bicep curls with the focused concentration of a man who is: somewhere else.

The treadmill next to mine activates. Jai.

"You're Mar," he says. Not a question.

"How do you know my name?"

"Everyone knows your name. You're the woman who showed up in salwar kameez." The slightest smile. Not a full smile — a muscle movement. The movement that suggests: humour exists in this man, buried under whatever it is that keeps him: silent.

"That was four months ago. Does nobody forget anything in this gym?"

"Gyms are: villages. In a village, one event defines you for a generation."

We walk — side by side on our respective treadmills, walking toward nowhere at the same speed, the synchronisation being: accidental but pleasant. The pleasant that comes from two bodies moving in rhythm without intention.

"I'm Jai," he says.

"I know. You're the gym's mystery man."

"Mystery suggests: something interesting to discover. I'm not interesting."

"That's exactly what interesting people say."

He's quiet for a moment. The treadmill hums. The gym's background music — a playlist that Rohit curates and that oscillates between Bollywood hits and forgettable EDM — fills the silence with: noise that isn't conversation but that makes conversation: possible, because pure silence between strangers on treadmills would be: uncomfortable.

"I'm a photographer," he says. "Commercial. Corporate headshots, product catalogues, events. The kind of photography that pays the bills but that isn't —" He searches for the word. "— isn't the photography I trained for."

"What did you train for?"

"Documentary. I spent fifteen years shooting for magazines. National Geographic India, Outlook, The Hindu's Sunday supplement. I went everywhere — the Sundarbans, Ladakh, the Northeast, Kashmir before it became: a story that only one kind of photographer could tell. I photographed people. Their faces. Their hands. The things that faces and hands reveal when faces and hands are: unguarded."

"Why did you stop?"

The treadmill hums. Jai increases his speed — not dramatically, just a notch, the notch being: the physical manifestation of a question he doesn't want to answer at walking speed.

"My wife. She was tired of me being: gone. Gone for weeks, months. She said — she said something I still think about. She said: 'Jai, tum doosron ki zindagi photograph karte ho. Humari zindagi kaun photograph karega?'"

You photograph other people's lives. Who will photograph ours?

"So I stopped. I came back to Mumbai. I started shooting corporate headshots. Steady money. Regular hours. Home every evening for dinner."

"And?"

"And she left anyway. Two years after I came back. She said — she said she didn't recognise the man who came back. The man she married was: the one who went to Ladakh and didn't call for ten days. The man who came back was: safe. And safe was: not who she'd married."

The irony — the specific, surgical irony of a man who sacrificed his passion for his marriage and lost both. The irony that Jaya would call: "the universe's quality control department at work." The irony that I recognise because my own irony is: similar. I sacrificed my career for my marriage and lost both. The geometry is: different (he gave up going; I gave up doing) but the architecture is: the same.

"When was this?" I ask.

"Eight years ago. I've been: here since. At this gym. Doing corporate headshots. Existing in the way that people exist when they've decided that the extraordinary part of their life is: over."

"Is it?"

He looks at me. Not from the treadmill — he's stopped walking, his machine slowing to a halt while mine continues. The asymmetry of two treadmills: one stopped, one still going. The asymmetry of two lives: one that has decided to stop, one that is: still going.

"I don't know," he says. "That's the honest answer."

"Honest answers are: valuable. I met someone recently who told me that."

"The writer? Chetan Deshpande?"

"How —"

"Village. I told you. Gyms are villages."

I laugh. He almost laughs. The almost-laugh that is: his version of a full laugh, the way his almost-smile is: his version of a smile. Jai operates at: lower volume. Not because he has less to say but because what he has to say is: compressed, the compression of a man who spent fifteen years communicating through images and who therefore treats words as: expensive.

After the treadmill session — after I've walked three kilometres to nowhere and he's walked two — we sit in the lobby. Not the juice bar (Jai doesn't do the juice bar; the juice bar is: social, and Jai's relationship with social is: cautious). The lobby, where the chairs are hard and the conversation is: optional.

"Can I show you something?" he asks.

He takes out his phone. Not the latest model — a phone that's been used, the screen slightly scratched, the case: absent, because Jai is not a man who cases his phone the way he is not a man who cushions his: anything.

The photograph. It's of: a woman's hands. Old hands — wrinkled, sun-darkened, the hands of a woman who has worked with earth for decades. The hands are holding: a clay pot. A diya. Unfired, still wet, the clay catching light. The photograph is: beautiful. Not the beauty of composition or technique (though both are present) but the beauty of: attention. The attention that a photographer gives to a subject when the photographer has decided that this subject is: worth seeing.

"Varanasi," he says. "Twelve years ago. Before I stopped."

"It's incredible."

"I have: thousands. On hard drives. In boxes. Twelve years of: work that nobody has seen because I stopped and the stopping meant: the work stopped being shared."

"Why are you showing me?"

He puts the phone away. The putting-away that is: deliberate, as if the phone is: a confession he's decided to close.

"Because you're going back to advertising. I heard. Village." The slightest smile. "And I thought: if you can go back, maybe I can go back. Maybe going-back is: not regression but — the other thing."

"Reclamation."

"Reclamation. Yes. That's the word."

We sit in the lobby of Seaside Fitness — two people who gave up the things that made them: alive, and who are sitting on hard chairs contemplating whether reclamation is: possible.

"Show your photographs," I say. "Not to me — to the world. Exhibit them. Twelve years of work. People should see."

"Maybe." The maybe of a man who has been saying maybe for eight years and for whom maybe is: a fortress against the vulnerability of: yes.

"Not maybe," I say. Channelling Jaya. "Yes."

He looks at the gym floor. The weights, the treadmills, the people walking to nowhere. "I'll think about it."

"You've been thinking for eight years. Try: doing."

The slightest smile. The almost-laugh. And then: a nod. Not agreement — acknowledgement. The acknowledgement that someone has said the thing he's been waiting for someone to say.