Chapter 2: Mohit

The spare room smelled like lavender and judgement.

Lavender because Tanvi Kapoor kept sachets of dried lavender in every drawer, every closet, every conceivable storage space in the flat — the flat that was, technically, a two-bedroom above the old post office on Cart Road, Kasauli, with views of the Shivalik hills that estate agents described as "panoramic" and that Tanvi described as "the reason I pay rent I can't afford." The judgement was: mine. Self-directed. Because I was twenty-six years old, a former state-level gymnast, a current kabaddi team mascot who performed backflips in a tiger costume at halftime, and I was moving into my childhood rival's spare room because my landlord couldn't fix a pipe.

The room was small. Single bed — the iron-frame kind that every hill station flat came with, the frame painted white and chipped in three places, the mattress thin but honest, the kind of mattress that didn't pretend to be comfortable but also didn't actively hurt you. A desk. A chair. A window that opened to the pine-and-deodar slope behind the building, the slope that smelled like Kasauli's signature — the resin-and-cold scent that tourists called "mountain air" and locals called: Tuesday.

I set the duffel on the bed. Unpacked: three kurtas, four t-shirts, jeans, the tiger mascot costume (folded, not hung — hanging it made it look like a taxidermy project), toiletries, my phone charger, and the photograph. The photograph that traveled with me everywhere — Nani's house, the gymnastics hostel in Patiala, the brief terrible stint at the sports management course in Delhi that I'd abandoned after one semester because Delhi was: Delhi, and I was: Kasauli.

The photograph: me and Diya. Age ten and seven. At the Kasauli Club, the old British-era club where our families had been members since our grandparents' time. Diya was in her school uniform — the blue pinafore of Kasauli Convent, the uniform she wore with the specific pride of a seven-year-old who had just been made class monitor. I was behind her, arms crossed, wearing the expression of a ten-year-old brother who was: proud and pretending not to be.

Diya had died when she was nine. Leukaemia. The kind that starts slow and ends: fast. The diagnosis at PGI Chandigarh — the trip down the mountain, the hospital corridors, the doctors who said "treatable" and meant "we'll try" — had been the event that divided my life into: before and after. Before Diya, I was a kid who did gymnastics because it was fun. After Diya, I was a kid who did gymnastics because the physical pain of training was preferable to the other: pain. The pain that sat in the chest and expanded on quiet nights and made breathing feel like: work.

I placed the photograph on the desk. Diya would have loved this arrangement — me, living with Tanvi Kapoor. Diya had adored Tanvi. Had followed her around at every colony gathering, had declared at age seven that Tanvi was "the coolest didi in Kasauli" and had been, in her brief existence, the only person who could make Tanvi and me stop fighting. Because when Diya was in the room, the fighting seemed: small. Stupid. The kind of thing that adults — which we were not yet, but were practicing to become — did because they had forgotten what mattered.

Diya had not forgotten. Diya had known, with the specific wisdom of a child who was: running out of time, that what mattered was: being near the people you loved. Even if those people were idiots who fought about whose turn it was on the colony swing set.

"The bathroom schedule is on the fridge," Tanvi called from the kitchen. Her voice carried the specific efficiency of a woman who managed her life the way a project manager managed a construction site — with timelines, protocols, and zero tolerance for improvisation. "Morning slot is 6 to 6:30. Mine. 6:30 to 7 is yours. If you need longer, wake up earlier."

"Thirty minutes is plenty."

"Good. Kitchen rules: everything is labelled. If it says 'TK,' it's mine. Don't touch it. The oat milk is TK. The gluten-free bread is TK. The almond butter is TK. The regular stuff — the things that won't kill me if I accidentally ingest them — is on the bottom shelf. You can use the bottom shelf."

"You've given me the bottom shelf."

"The bottom shelf is generous. My last flatmate got a section of the bottom shelf. You're getting the whole thing."

I walked to the kitchen. The kitchen was: Tanvi's command centre. Not because she loved cooking — she cooked out of necessity, the way a soldier maintained a weapon, with precision and without pleasure. The kitchen existed to keep her alive. The labelling system was: military. Every container, every bag, every bottle bore a label in Tanvi's handwriting — the neat, angular handwriting of a woman who had been writing food warnings since she was fifteen. "GF" for gluten-free. "DF" for dairy-free. "SAFE" in green. "DANGER" in red. The red labels were on: the wheat flour, the regular milk, the paneer, the cheese, the butter. The staples of Indian cooking, the foods that every other kitchen in Kasauli contained without thought, were here: weapons. Labelled in red. Because for Tanvi Kapoor, a roti could be: a medical emergency.

"I'll keep my stuff on the bottom shelf," I said. "And I'll wash my hands before touching anything of yours. And I'll use separate utensils. I know the protocol."

Tanvi looked at me. The look: surprised. Not the usual Tanvi-looks-at-Mohit look, which ranged from irritation to exasperation to the specific expression she reserved for occasions when I did something particularly idiotic, an expression that combined eye-roll and sigh into a single devastating gesture. This look was: surprised. Genuinely. As if she had expected me to be: careless. And I was being: careful.

"You remember the protocol?" she asked.

"Tanvi. I've known you since we were eight. I was there when you got diagnosed. I was there when your mum cried in the doctor's office in Chandigarh. I was there when you threw up at my birthday party because someone put regular cream in the cake. I remember: everything."

The surprise shifted. Became: something else. Something she covered immediately — the way she covered all emotions that didn't fit the category of "irritation with Mohit" — by turning to the counter and adjusting a label that didn't need adjusting.

"Good," she said. "Then we won't have problems."

*

I called Vikram sir from the verandah. The verandah that overlooked the Shivalik hills, the hills that were turning October-gold, the deodar and pine giving way to the deciduous oaks and rhododendrons that coloured the lower slopes in shades of amber and rust, the specific autumn palette that Kasauli wore for six weeks before winter arrived and turned everything: grey.

Vikram Rathore picked up on the second ring. The voice: deep, the voice of a man who had coached Himachal Pradesh kabaddi for twenty years and whose voice carried the authority of twenty years of shouting at athletes who weren't: trying hard enough.

"Mohit. Your father told me you'd call."

"Yes, sir. I have a request."

"Your father already made the request. Tanvi Kapoor. The girl who coaches the Kasauli Sports Academy junior team. He says she's good."

"She's — she's excellent, sir. She played state-level during college before the health issues. She's been coaching juniors for three years. Her team won the district championship last year. She knows kabaddi the way — she knows it from the inside. Not textbook. Instinct."

"And she wants the head coaching position."

"She deserves the head coaching position."

Silence. The specific silence of a man evaluating not just the request but the: requester. Vikram sir had known my family for decades — my father, the retired army colonel who had settled in Kasauli and become the Kabaddi Association's honorary secretary, the man whose connections were: Mohit's inheritance and Mohit's: currency. The currency I was now spending on: Tanvi Kapoor.

"I'll meet her," Vikram sir said. "Next week. Tuesday. At the academy. Tell her to bring her training plans and her team's match records."

"Thank you, sir."

"Mohit. Your father says you're still doing the mascot thing."

"Yes, sir."

"You could be coaching. You have the skill."

"I have a bad knee and a good backflip, sir. The mascot job pays and doesn't require: functioning cartilage."

"You're wasting yourself."

"I'm surviving, sir. That's enough for now."