Chapter 4: Deshpande Sahab Ki Party (Mr. Deshpande's Party)

Mahesh Deshpande's Diwali party was the annual performance of corporate Pune's social hierarchy, held on the Saturday before Diwali at his Koregaon Park bungalow — the bungalow that his wife Sheela maintained with the ferocity of a woman whose entire identity had been compressed into the role of corporate hostess. The rangoli at the entrance was professional-grade (Sheela hired the Rangoli Rani from Shivajinagar market, the woman who did wedding mandaps and whose hand did not tremble even when working with colour powder in Pune's November wind). The diyas were brass, not clay — the brass being the statement, the statement being: we have taste and we have money and the money enables the taste. The catering was from The Flour Works on North Main Road, the establishment that had achieved the particular Pune distinction of being simultaneously excellent and overpriced, the combination being the marker of legitimacy in Koregaon Park's dining economy.

Ananya went. Not because she wanted to — the wanting had died with the redundancy, the redundancy having killed the social appetite along with the professional identity. She went because the alternative was the flat in Kothrud on the Saturday before Diwali, and the flat in Kothrud on the Saturday before Diwali was the particular loneliness that divorced women experienced during festivals: the festival designed for family, experienced without one. Diwali without family was not Diwali. It was October with extra lights.

She wore the green silk saree — bought at Nalli's on Laxmi Road three years ago for a client dinner that had been cancelled. The silk had hung in the cupboard since then, wrapped in the muslin that Nalli's provided, the muslin smelling faintly of the shop's particular fragrance (sandalwood and commerce, the combination that every Nalli's customer recognised). The wearing of the saree was a decision: to go not as Ananya-the-redundant but as Ananya-who-still-owns-silk. The saree required forty-five minutes to drape (the Maharashtrian style, the nauvari adapted to the six-yard — Ananya's particular compromise between tradition and practicality) and the draping was its own ritual, the pleats folded against her thigh, the pallu pinned at the shoulder, the fabric carrying the body the way silk does: with authority.

The party was what it always was. LED strings instead of oil diyas (brighter, cheaper, less beautiful — modernity's deal with tradition). The garden full of people in festival silk and starched kurtas. Sula sparkling wine circulating on trays (the Indian corporate party's patriotic compromise: we drink wine, but we drink Indian wine). Paneer tikka skewers leaving grease marks on paper napkins. The particular hum of thirty conversations happening simultaneously, the hum being Pune's corporate frequency: networking disguised as celebration.

She circulated with the precision of twenty-two years' practice. Three minutes per conversation. Enough to be polite, not enough to be trapped. Smile, nod, "Happy Diwali," move. The corporate choreography that the body performed even when the mind had checked out, the checking-out being the redundant person's condition: present at the party, absent from the belonging.

And then she saw Karan.

Of course she saw Karan. Karan who was still Karan Grover — the Grover of Grover & Mehta, Mahesh's brother-in-law, the family connection that had given Ananya her job twenty-two years ago and that could not, through the particular irony of Indian family-business dynamics, save her from the restructuring because saving her would be nepotism and nepotism was the thing that boards audited now. Karan in his navy sherwani — the sherwani that he wore to every Diwali event and that looked, every year, more expensive and more deliberately casual, the deliberately-casual being the particular sartorial strategy of Indian men who wanted to appear rich without appearing to try.

With him: Areesha. The girlfriend. Thirty-four. Yoga instructor. The profession that occupied a specific slot in the post-divorce Indian dating ecosystem — yoga instructor, nutritionist, wellness coach. Professions that said "I am spiritually evolved" while the spiritual evolution covered: young, attractive, flexible in every sense. Areesha wore a lehenga that was too heavy for a Diwali party and too light for a wedding, the in-between being the girlfriend's sartorial dilemma: dress up enough to stake the claim, dress down enough to not threaten the ex-wife.

Karan's face did the thing. The brief flicker — guilt? satisfaction? — the expression of a man who had controlled a woman for twenty years and was still running the numbers on whether the control had been profitable. The flicker lasted one second. Replaced by the smile. The Karan-smile. The smile that had charmed Ananya for two decades and that the charming had been identified — by the therapist, by the reading, by the particular education that divorce forced — as manipulation. The smile was a tool. The smile said: I am harmless. The harmlessness was the lie.

"Ananya! Happy Diwali!" The public voice. Warm, inclusive, projected. The voice that told the room: I am the good ex-husband. I am civilised. The private voice — the one that had said, nightly, for twenty years, tum kuch nahi ho mere bina (you are nothing without me) — was stored elsewhere. The private voice was the one only Ananya and the therapist knew about.

"Happy Diwali, Karan." Her own voice. Steady. The steadiness was two years of therapy, one year of antidepressants, and the particular pharmaceutical-and-psychological infrastructure that middle-class Indian women assembled when the marriage ended and the ending revealed the damage.

The pleasantries. Children? Fine. Work? Fine. Health? Fine. Three fines — the divorced couple's conversation at parties, the performance of okayness, the social contract that said: we are fine, the fine being the most functional lie in the Indian social vocabulary.

Areesha squeezed Karan's arm. The squeeze being the territorial gesture — the gesture that said, to Ananya: he is mine now, the mine-now being the claim that the girlfriend made publicly because the claiming was the girlfriend's only power in the ex-wife's presence. Ananya noted the squeeze and felt — nothing. The nothing being the achievement. Two years ago, the squeeze would have produced pain. Now it produced: nothing. Nothing was the upgrade. Nothing was the medication and the therapy and the time doing their work.

She moved on. Three-minute rule. Smiled at Payal from marketing (who was wearing too much perfume, the perfume being the Koregaon Park party's olfactory assault — every woman wearing something different, the cumulative effect being a chemical event rather than a fragrance). Said hello to Ashish from legal (who was already drunk, the drunk being the Diwali party's tradition — there was always one, and Ashish had claimed the role years ago with the dedication that other people brought to their careers).

And then: Sahil.

Sahil Thapar. Mahesh's college friend from COEP — the College of Engineering Pune, the institution that produced Pune's particular species of successful man. Sahil was forty-six and his face was not handsome but interesting. The distinction mattered. Handsome was symmetry. Interesting was the lines around the eyes (smile-lines, the lines of a person who had smiled a lot and whose smiling had been genuine), the grey at the temples (accepted, not dyed — the confidence of a man comfortable with aging), the beard (full, maintained, the beard of a man with opinions about beard oil and whose opinions, you suspected, were correct).

He joined her group — Ananya, Payal, Ashish — with the ease of someone who was comfortable at parties without needing parties. The particular social skill that manifested as: the body relaxed, the conversation light but not shallow, the lightness being confidence rather than indifference.

"Sahil Thapar. Mahesh ka college friend. COEP, '97."

"Ananya Grover. Grover & Mehta. Regulatory compliance." The corporate introduction, delivered on autopilot. Twenty-two years of practice, not yet uninstalled.

He smiled. And the smile was — the smile was different. Different from Karan's smile (the weapon) and different from Mahesh's smile (the guilt) and different from the smiles of the thirty men at this party who were smiling the party-smile (the networking-smile, the smile that said: how can we be useful to each other). Sahil's smile reached his eyes. The eye-mouth synchronisation that was the marker of sincerity — a thing Ananya had not seen in a man's face in years. Years since she had encountered a smile that was not performing something.

"Regulatory compliance," he repeated. "That sounds like the kind of job where you know where all the bodies are buried."

Ananya laughed. The laugh surprised her — the surprise being: she had not laughed at a party in two years and the not-laughing had been the condition and the condition had, for one second, broken. The breaking was small. The breaking was a crack in the wall that the redundancy and the divorce had built. But cracks, once started, did not stop.

"Something like that," she said. And this time, "something like that" was not a door marked PRIVATE. It was an invitation.