Chapter 6: Mohit

Three days after the food incident, Tanvi still wasn't right.

Not the dramatic not-right of Saturday night — the bathroom floor, the shaking, the fourteen hours of: war. This was the quieter aftermath, the version that people didn't see because it didn't make for compelling storytelling. The fatigue. The brain fog that made her forget words mid-sentence, reaching for "spatula" and landing on "the — the thing, the flat thing you flip things with." The joint aches that made her grip on coffee cups: tentative. The specific exhaustion of a body that had spent three days rebuilding after a demolition.

She went to work anyway. Because Tanvi Kapoor did not take sick days. Tanvi Kapoor took buscopan and ginger tea and a determination that bordered on: clinical stubbornness. She went to The Chai Loft at 6 AM and stood behind the counter and made espresso and smiled at customers and carried plates to the loft tables up the spiral staircase that creaked under her feet, and if her hands trembled when she poured the steamed oat milk, if her face went grey for three seconds when a cramp passed through her like an electrical current, she: managed. She managed because managing was the only option she had ever been: offered.

I watched. Not from inside the café — I wasn't that obvious. From the pharmacy next door, where Gupta ji was supervising the plumber who was allegedly fixing my flat's pipe (the plumber had arrived, inspected the damage, sucked his teeth in the universal plumber language for "this will cost more than you expect," and was now proceeding at the pace of a man who charged by: the hour). Through the pharmacy window, I could see The Chai Loft's entrance. I could see Tanvi moving behind the counter. I could see her: slowing.

By noon, she'd stopped climbing the spiral staircase. Gauri — her cousin, who worked the afternoon shift, Gauri who was engaged to Nikhil Ahuja, the Kasauli Wildcats' reserve defender — had taken over loft service. Tanvi stayed behind the counter. By 1 PM, she was sitting on the stool behind the register, which I had never seen her do during a shift, because Tanvi's philosophy of work was: vertical. You stood. You moved. You did not: sit. Sitting was for: customers.

She was: sitting.

I walked in at 1:15. The café was in its post-lunch lull — three customers in the loft, one at the bar, Kavita Aunty in the back doing accounts. The espresso machine was hissing its idle hiss, the sound of a machine waiting for someone to: need it.

"You should go home," I said.

"I'm fine."

"You're sitting."

"I'm: resting."

"You don't rest. You've never rested. In eighteen years, I have never once seen Tanvi Kapoor voluntarily: rest. You're not resting. You're: crashing."

"Don't tell me what I'm—"

"I'll cover your shift."

The offer hung in the café air — between the cinnamon and the coffee and the faint smell of the old books on the shelves, the Premchand and the Christie, the pages that had absorbed years of: steam. Tanvi stared at me. Gauri, behind the loft railing, stared at me. Even the customer at the bar, a retired colonel who came every afternoon for a black coffee and the crossword in the Tribune, looked up from his: puzzle.

"You don't work here," Tanvi said.

"I know how to make coffee. You taught me. Summer holidays, 2015. You were training, and I was bored, and you showed me how to use the machine because you said, and I quote, 'If you're going to stand there being useless, at least be useless: productively.' I can pull an espresso. I can steam milk. I can — I can make the: oat milk latte."

"You can't make the masala chai."

"Kavita Aunty makes the masala chai. The big pot. It's already: made. I just have to ladle it. I can: ladle."

Gauri appeared at the top of the staircase. "Let him, Tanvi. You look like you're about to: faint."

"I am not about to faint."

"Your face is the colour of the wall."

The wall was: white. Tanvi's face was: also white. The argument was: lost.

She left at 1:30. I walked her to the flat — two minutes, Cart Road to the post office building, up the stairs, the twenty-three steps that she climbed holding the railing with both hands, which was: wrong, because Tanvi Kapoor took stairs two at a time, always, as if stairs were a personal challenge that she was: winning. Today she took them one at a time, and I stayed behind her, close enough to: catch.

"Bed," I said. "Heating pad. ORS. I'll bring dinner — I will CALL Prakash bhai, personally, on the phone, and I will stand in the kitchen while he prepares it, and I will carry it here myself. No app. No delivery driver. No: assumptions."

"You have the mascot practice tonight."

"I'll skip it."

"You can't skip it. The Solan match is Saturday."

"The tiger can miss one practice. The tiger has been doing backflips for three years. The tiger knows the: routine."

"Mohit. Go to practice. I'm fine."

"You're not fine."

"I will be fine. By tonight. If I: rest." The word cost her. Rest was: surrender. And Tanvi Kapoor did not: surrender. But she said it. She admitted it. Because the body — her body, the body that had been at war with itself since she was fifteen — had: won. Today, the body won, and Tanvi lost, and losing meant: rest.

"I'll be back by 8," I said. "With dinner. From Prakash bhai's hands to: yours."

*

I covered the Chai Loft shift. Three hours. Kavita Aunty watched me from the back room with the expression of a woman who was: impressed against her will. I pulled espressos. I steamed oat milk. I ladled the masala chai into kulhads — the clay cups that Kavita Aunty insisted on because "paper cups are a crime against: beverages." I climbed the spiral staircase with trays, the staircase that creaked its announcement of: competence. I served the retired colonel his black coffee and his Tribune crossword, and he said: "Seven across is 'paradox.' " And I said: "Thank you, sir." And he said: "You're better than you look, son."

From: a retired colonel, this was: high praise.

At 4 PM, Gauri cornered me behind the counter. Gauri — small, fierce, the kind of woman who organized her wedding seating chart with the precision of a military operation and who had once made Nikhil cry during a disagreement about table linens (he'd wanted: blue; she'd wanted: ivory; ivory had won, along with Nikhil's: dignity).

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Making a cappuccino."

"Not what I meant. What are you doing with: Tanvi?"

"I'm her flatmate."

"You're her flatmate who sat on a bathroom floor for six hours. You're her flatmate who is covering her shift at a café where you don't work. You're her flatmate who looked at her today like she was—" Gauri paused. Selected the word with: care. "—breakable."

"She was: crashing. Anyone would—"

"Anyone would not. Tanvi's had flare-ups before. I've seen them. Priti's seen them. We bring her soup and we leave because she doesn't want: witnesses. She let you: stay. Do you understand what that means?"

I understood. The understanding lived in the same drawer as the laugh — the filing cabinet, the drawer marked "Tanvi Kapoor," the drawer that was: overflowing. I understood that Tanvi Kapoor, who managed her disease in private, who had built walls around her vulnerability with the engineering precision of a person who could not afford: weakness, had let me sit on her bathroom floor and mix her ORS and hear her: cry.

"I'm just being a good flatmate," I said.

Gauri looked at me. The look of a woman who had just heard: the most unconvincing sentence in the history of: sentences.

"Sure," she said. "A good: flatmate."