By four in the afternoon, the rain had stopped, though no one inside the hotel seemed to have noticed.
The wedding had occupied the place since morning. Doors stood open along the corridor, and people entered the wrong rooms without knocking, carrying safety pins, flower baskets, phone chargers, cups of tea, things borrowed from somewhere and destined never to find their way back. The carpet outside the bridal suite was scattered with a few crushed marigold petals. A small boy in a cream kurta ran past holding one shoe in his hand and was pursued, without much urgency, by a woman calling his name.
Downstairs, someone was testing the sound system. The opening bars of an old Hindi song rose through the building, stopped abruptly, returned louder, and stopped again. A dhol joined it for half a minute from somewhere near the lawn. Then there was silence, followed by the squeal of a microphone.
Shalu, her sister, was looking for the second set of bangles.
"They were here only," she said, lifting a folded shawl from the bed.
"They will turn up."
"You said that about the kaleere also."
"And they did."
"After twenty minutes."
Shalu gave her the look she had been giving her since they were girls, one that suggested that technically correct answers were often the most irritating kind.
On the other side of the room, Naina, the bride-to-be, sat before the mirror while a young woman pinned small white flowers into her hair. Half her face was visible in the glass. Someone had told her not to smile because her lipstick was being done, and she was trying not to, unsuccessfully.
"Stop making her laugh," the makeup artist said.
"I did not say anything."
"You do not have to," Naina said, carefully, without moving her lips.
Her sister turned immediately.
"Do not talk."
The girl raised both hands in surrender.
For a moment she watched Naina in the mirror. Beneath the lamps around it, the young face seemed even younger than it had that morning. There was something touching, and faintly absurd, in the seriousness with which an entire family prepared one person for happiness. Four women had spent twenty minutes discussing a dupatta; downstairs, someone was arguing about the size of the varmala.
She looked towards the window.
Beyond the glass, the deodars disappeared into mist.
"I am going for a walk," she said.
Her sister stopped searching.
"Kya Bina didi, now?"
"I will be back."
"The photographer is coming at five."
"I know."
"At least take your cardigan."
She smiled. Some things in a family survived geography, marriage, children and decades of evidence that one could look after oneself.
The cardigan lay across the back of a chair beneath two dupattas and somebody's handbag. She pulled it free.
"Before five," she said.
"Quarter to five."
Shalu had already returned to the bangles.
She left before somebody found another reason for her to stay.
Outside, the world had been washed clean of the wedding.
The hotel stood behind her, its pale walls damp from the rain, strings of marigold and white cloth bright against the old stone. Near the entrance, two men were stretching a sheet of plastic over the sound equipment. A florist squatted beside buckets of roses, separating bruised petals. Someone called to her from the veranda, but she pretended not to hear.
The road curved sharply beyond the hotel gates.
After the first bend the music weakened.
After the second it disappeared.
Mist lay among the deodars, moving slowly between trunks darkened by rain. Water clung to the needles and fell at irregular intervals onto the road. The rain itself had stopped perhaps an hour earlier, but the trees had not finished with it.
She walked without deciding where she was going. The air smelled of wet bark, damp needles and the dark earth exposed where the hillside had been cut for the road. Moss thickened the old retaining walls.
Somewhere below, hidden by the trees, a vehicle began climbing. She heard the engine labour around one bend, disappear, then return from somewhere unexpectedly far to the left. She slowed, waiting for it to emerge.
It never did.
She had forgotten how sound travelled in the hills.
Forgotten.
The word made her pause.
She continued uphill. Through a thinning in the mist, she briefly saw the opposite slope, houses scattered across it, before the cloud moved and they disappeared again.
Her phone vibrated. Four messages in the family group and one from her husband.
Where are you?
She typed: Out for a walk. Back soon.
She put the phone away before the reply came.
The smell reached her before she saw the smoke.
Roasted corn.
It came faintly at first, mixed with damp wood and pine, then grew stronger around the next bend.
A yellow plastic sheet had been stretched between two poles at the side of the road. Beneath it sat a woman on a low wooden stool beside a small charcoal brazier. Six or seven corn cobs lay in a basket at her feet with their husks pulled back. On a steel plate were two lemons, a small mound of salt reddened with chilli, and a knife whose plastic handle had once been bright red.
The woman looked up.
"Bhutta madam?"
She had not been hungry.
"Chalo, ek de do."
The woman selected a cob, examined it briefly and put it over the coals.
She stood beneath the edge of the plastic sheet while the woman turned it with her fingers. The charcoal glowed beneath a thin layer of ash. Every so often a kernel blackened and cracked softly.
"Shaadi mein aaye ho?" the woman asked.
She looked back down the road.
The hotel was no longer visible.
"Kaise pata?"
The woman smiled without looking up.
"Subah se gaadiyan jaa rahi hain udhar. Phool-waali, photo-waali, DJ-waali. Shaadi hi hogi."
"Meri niece ki shaadi hai."
"Achha."
The woman rotated the cob.
"Today?"
"Tomorrow. Functions started yesterday."
The woman smiled. "Then nobody is sleeping."
She laughed. "Apparently not."
The woman lifted the corn cob from the fire and inspected it.
"Masala?"
"A little."
"Nimbu?"
"Yes."
She picked up half a lemon, pressed it into the salt and chilli and rubbed it firmly over the corn. The smell sharpened immediately. Steam rose where the juice touched the hot kernels.
She handed it over by the folded husk.
"Garam hai."
The first bite was hotter than she expected. One side of the corn was sweet, the other almost burnt. The chilli caught at the back of her throat.
The woman noticed.
"Zyada ho gayi?"
"No, no. It is fine."
She took another bite, smaller this time.
Across the road, beyond a low stone wall, the slope fell steeply into mist. The nearest deodars were clear; those beyond them were only shadows.
"Pehli baar aaye ho Chail?"
The woman was watching the fire.
She lowered the bhutta.
"No."
The answer came before she had considered it.
The woman glanced up.
"Pehle bhi aaye ho?"
She looked across the road.
There was nothing remarkable there.
A moss-covered retaining wall. A narrow path disappearing between two trees. An iron railing farther down the slope, its green paint eaten through by rust.
"Bahut saal pehle," she said.
"Achha."
The woman fanned the coals.
"Phir toh sab badla hua lagega."
She did not answer.
A vehicle passed somewhere below them, unseen. She took another bite.
For a moment there was only lemon and salt.
Then came charred corn. Wet wool. Damp earth. The faint trace of cigarette smoke.
And suddenly there was a hand holding a bhutta by its folded husk. Broad fingers. A pale, shiny mark where hot oil had splashed years earlier when her father had tried to make pakoras and refused to admit he did not know what he was doing.
Her father's hand.
He had always eaten the burnt kernels first.
A road rose ahead through the mist. Not this one. Another afternoon. Her father half a step ahead in his brown sweater because he never learned to match anyone else's pace.
Her own hand was younger, a thin silver watch at the wrist.
And somewhere behind them, at the hotel, her mother was resting.
"Madam?"
She blinked.
The woman was looking at her.
"Ji?"
"I asked if you wanted some more lemon."
"No."
She looked at the corn in her hand.
"No, this is fine."
The woman returned to fanning the fire.
She walked a few steps away from the stall.
The mist had thickened over the road.
Her father had been fifty-two that year. She knew this because he had made a great fuss about it two years earlier and had spent the years since telling everyone he was still fifty.
Her mother had laughed at him. For a moment she could almost hear it.
She took another bite of the bhutta.
And the road opened.
They had come to Chail for three days. Shalu, nineteen then, had complained that the hotel television showed only two channels. Their mother had brought three books and barely opened them. After lunch, when their father suggested a walk, she had drawn her shawl around herself and declined.
"You two go. I am going to enjoy some peace before these clouds burst."
Shalu stayed behind. Bina followed her father.
Somewhere along the road, he bought two bhuttas.
The man at the roadside brazier had held up one cob after another before finding a pair that satisfied him, as though some question of consequence depended upon the size of the kernels.
"Two," her father had said.
"I do not want one."
"You always want one after I buy mine."
"I do not."
He had looked at the vendor.
"Two."
She had taken hers without further argument.
It had rained earlier that afternoon too. Not heavily, but enough to leave the road dark and the deodar trunks almost black. Her father walked with his free hand behind his back, the way he did when inspecting something. Even on holiday he carried himself like a government officer who suspected that somebody, somewhere, had failed to follow instructions.
She bit into the corn.
For several minutes he talked about nothing important. The road to Shimla. The hotel bill. The driver who had charged him for waiting time despite arriving twenty minutes late himself. A file that had followed him from the office even though he had explicitly told his staff he was on leave.
She listened without listening.
The Cambridge offer had come three weeks earlier, with a scholarship. Everyone at home had behaved as though the matter were settled. Her mother made lists of sweaters, medicines and things apparently unavailable anywhere in England. Her father converted the scholarship into rupees. Shalu had claimed the cupboard before she had even left.
Only Bina had stopped making plans.
Her father was telling her something about the Finance Ministry when she said:
"Papa."
"Hmm?"
"I am not going."
He took another bite.
"Where?"
"Cambridge."
He stopped walking.
She thought he had not heard properly.
"What do you mean?"
"I am not going."
His face changed very little. That was one of the things he was good at.
"The scholarship?"
"I still have it."
"Then?"
"I have decided."
"Decided what?"
"Not to take it."
He looked at her for a few seconds, then began walking again.
She followed.
"Have you told your mother?"
"No."
"Good."
The answer irritated her.
"Why good?"
"Because first you can explain it to me."
"There is nothing to explain."
"There usually is when somebody throws away an opportunity like this in one sentence."
"I am not throwing away anything."
"No?"
"No."
He wiped a little chilli from the corner of his mouth with his thumb.
"All right. Then tell me."
She had rehearsed this conversation before they left the hotel. In the room. In the bathroom while Shalu complained that she was taking too long. Once again while walking behind him.
Now the words sounded weaker than they had in her head.
"Mummy is not well."
Her father kept walking.
"That is your reason?"
"Is that not enough?"
"For what?"
"For me not to go four thousand miles away."
"Four thousand?"
"I do not know how many."
"Then do not invent figures."
"Papa."
He took another bite of the bhutta.
She waited.
Finally he said, "Your mother has arthritis. Her blood pressure fluctuates. Neither of these conditions has suddenly appeared because Cambridge sent you an offer."
"It is not just arthritis."
"What else is it?"
"You know what else."
"No. Tell me."
"She gets tired all the time."
"She has been teaching for twenty-eight years. I also get tired all the time. Nobody has offered me Cambridge because of it."
"This is not funny."
"I am not being funny."
"She hardly came out yesterday."
"It was raining."
"She slept the whole afternoon."
"She likes sleeping in the afternoon."
"Papa, she's been missing school."
"A few days."
"Mummy doesn't miss school."
Her father looked at her then.
Not impatiently. Not yet.
"She is seeing the doctor."
"I know."
"She is taking her medicines."
"I know."
"And I am there."
She looked away.
Below the road, the hillside disappeared sharply between the trees. Somewhere deep in the valley a bird called twice and stopped.
"That is exactly what you always say."
"Because it happens to be true."
She stopped.
He went two steps farther before noticing.
"Why did you bring me here if you are only going to make fun of me?"
"I brought you here because I wanted a walk."
"You know what I mean."
He looked at the half-eaten bhutta in his hand.
For a moment neither spoke.
A young couple came down the road towards them beneath a single umbrella. They moved aside to let them pass. The girl was laughing at something the boy had said. Her father waited until they were out of hearing.
Then he said, more quietly, "Your mother knows you are worried."
She looked at him.
"She told you?"
"She does not have to tell me everything."
"Then she knows I am thinking of staying."
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because she will think it is her fault."
"It is nobody's fault."
"Try telling her that."
They began walking again.
The road had started climbing more steeply.
Her father slowed now, although he would have denied doing so.
"I can apply again," she said.
"For the same scholarship?"
"I do not know."
"Exactly."
"It is not the end of the world."
"No."
He nodded.
"It is only Cambridge."
She stared at him.
He smiled slightly.
She hated when he did that.
"You think everything is simple."
"No. I think you are trying very hard to make this complicated."
"Mummy needs us."
"She has us."
"You know what I mean."
"No, beta. I do not think you know what you mean."
His voice had changed. Not louder, but firmer.
She looked down at the corn in her hand. A blackened kernel had stuck between two of her teeth. She worked at it with her tongue.
"We did not send you away to study all these years so that you could stop now."
"I am not stopping."
"Then go."
"I cannot leave her."
"You are not leaving her."
"It feels like I am."
"That is different."
She shook her head.
"You will not understand."
His expression changed. Hurt perhaps, or irritation.
"No," he said. "Maybe I will not."
He came back towards her.
The corn in his hand had gone cold. He looked at it, then tossed the cob towards a roadside bin. It missed.
He bent, picked it up and put it inside.
When he straightened, he said, "Do you know what your mother asked me last week?"
She said nothing.
"Whether you will be able to visit every holiday."
Her fingers tightened around the bhutta.
"I told her probably not. Research, work, whatever comes. She said we will manage."
He paused.
"She wants you to go."
"That does not mean she does not need me."
"Of course she needs you. It does not mean you stop your life here."
She looked away.
"Beta."
His voice had softened.
She knew that tone. It belonged to childhood fevers, examination results, the first time she had travelled alone by train.
"Tumhe pankh mile hain."
She almost smiled.
"Jao. Udo."
She looked at him.
Behind his glasses, his eyes had begun watering slightly in the cold. Or perhaps from the smoke. She would remember that later and never be certain which.
"And Mummy?"
"Your mother has me."
He said it without hesitation.
After a few steps he called back without turning:
"And do not tell your mother you were planning to stay."
"Why?"
"Because then she will spend four years feeling guilty."
"You have decided that too?"
He stopped.
For a moment she thought he might be angry.
Instead, he turned and looked at her with something close to amusement.
"Yes."
Then he walked on.
She stood beneath the deodars with the unfinished bhutta growing cold in her hand.
When she returned to the hotel that evening, her mother was sitting by the window correcting a notebook.
Even on holiday she had brought work.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
"Class Eight essays."
"Mummy."
"What?"
"You brought school notebooks to Chail?"
Her mother held up one page.
"Read this sentence and tell me how I am supposed to leave it until Monday."
She took the notebook.
The handwriting leaned badly towards the right.
India is a country where many historical things have happened from ancient times till nowadays.
She laughed.
Her mother smiled.
"See?"
There were two tablets beside her teacup.
She noticed them.
Then looked away.
"How was your walk?"
"Fine."
"Your father bored you?"
"As usual."
From the bathroom came her sister's voice.
"Did you bring anything?"
"No."
"What was the point of going out?"
Her mother shook her head and returned to the notebook.
After a moment she asked, without looking up, "When do you have to reply to Cambridge?"
She looked at her father.
He was standing near the cupboard, taking off his sweater.
He did not look back.
"Monday," she said.
Her mother made a small mark in red ink.
"Do not leave it till the last day."
That evening, after dinner, she sent the acceptance.
Years later, she would sometimes try to remember whether her father had asked if she was certain.
She could never recall him doing so.
A horn sounded somewhere below the road and the mist shifted. The woman beneath the yellow plastic sheet was bent over the brazier, fanning the coals with a piece of cardboard. The bhutta in her hand had cooled, and when she looked at it she realised more than half was gone.
Her phone vibrated inside the cardigan pocket.
Where exactly are you?
Her husband.
She typed:
Coming back. Found bhutta.
His reply came almost immediately.
Of course you did.
Bina paid the woman and looked once more at the retaining wall, the rusted railing and the path between the trees. Nothing seemed familiar now. Perhaps it had not been this road at all. Thirty years was long enough for two roads to begin resembling each other.
Music reached her before the hotel did. Shalu was waiting near the entrance.
"You said before five."
Bina glanced at the clock. Twelve minutes past.
"Close enough."
Shalu looked at the half-eaten corn still in her hand.
"You are still carrying that?"
Bina looked down.
"I forgot."
Shalu gave her a curious look.
"Come. The photographer has already asked twice."
Her husband was waiting inside the bridal suite.
"Good walk?"
"Yes."
"Good bhutta?"
"Was."
He moved his jacket from the chair beside him.
"Sit. You look cold."
"I am fine."
He looked at her.
"Of course."
She sat.
By evening the mist had thickened, pressing against the hotel windows while music filled the ballroom. Her sister was dancing with the bride. Someone had pulled her brother-in-law into the circle and, after the required show of resistance, he had joined.
At the edge of the dance floor, one of the cousins caught the bride by the wrist and leaned close.
"Three weeks?"
Her niece nodded.
"So soon?"
"I know."
Someone pulled her back into the circle before she heard more. For a moment the girl looked across at her mother. Then the music changed and she was laughing again.
Her husband leaned towards her.
"You are quiet."
"The music is loud."
"That has never stopped you."
She smiled.
Across the room, her niece threw her head back at something her mother said. It was not her face that caught her, but the way she laughed.
Her mother had laughed like that.
And suddenly she was back in another room, watching her father weigh a suitcase on a scale borrowed from a neighbour.
"Again," he had said.
"Papa, it was twenty-two kilos five minutes ago."
"And airlines are known for respecting what happened five minutes ago?"
Her mother sat on the edge of the bed folding a sweater.
"You have packed too many books."
"I need them."
"Cambridge has books."
"Mummy."
"What? They do."
For the first few months she called every Sunday, when international rates were cheaper. Her father usually answered.
"How is Mummy?"
"Fine."
"Give her the phone."
Her mother's voice would come on slightly breathless from crossing the room.
Once Bina asked why she was cooking.
"Because people still eat in this house."
At the end of her first year, she came home. Her mother met her at the door looking thinner than she remembered. Not enough, perhaps, for anyone else to remark upon it, but enough for her to notice before the hug was over.
"You have lost weight."
"So have you."
"I have not."
"You look terrible."
"Mummy."
"What do they feed you there?"
Her father picked up the suitcase.
"Do not start at the door."
They talked late into the night. Once or twice her mother stopped to catch her breath, then carried on as though nothing had happened.
The next morning her father was reading the newspaper when she asked, "You said she was fine."
He turned a page.
"She is fine."
"Papa."
He lowered the paper.
"What?"
"Nothing."
She looked towards the stairs.
She stayed three weeks. There was butter chicken one afternoon, tea every day at five and old Hindi films in the evenings. By the second week, the thinness she had noticed at the door had begun to feel less urgent.
When she was leaving, her mother did not come to the airport.
"Mummy isn't coming?"
"She doesn't do well with crowds these days."
"Since when?"
"All that traffic, walking, waiting. Why make her go through it?"
He lifted her suitcase from the boot.
"Come. You'll be late."
"I could stay another week."
"For what?"
"I don't know."
He handed her the passport.
"Go."
The word irritated her. Perhaps because she remembered Chail. Perhaps because he did too.
"Call when you reach."
"I will."
"And stop worrying about us."
"I am not."
He looked at her.
She looked away first.
The music stopped and someone in the ballroom cheered. She blinked and found her husband looking at her.
"What?"
"You disappeared."
"I am standing here."
"You know what I mean."
Across the room, her niece was trying to pull her father back onto the dance floor. He resisted for a few seconds, then surrendered.
She watched them.
"We had come here with Papa once," she said.
Her husband turned towards her.
"To Chail?"
She nodded.
"He told me to go to Cambridge."
"I know."
"No. Here. On one of these roads."
He waited.
"I had decided not to go."
"Because of your mother?"
"Yes."
"And he changed your mind."
She looked towards the windows. Beyond the glass there was only her own reflection and the room moving behind it.
"I suppose."
"You never told me that."
"I had forgotten."
He looked at her.
"Had you?"
"I said I had."
He nodded.
"All right."
She regretted the sharpness immediately.
"Sorry."
"It is fine."
She looked at him.
He had already turned back towards the dance floor.
For a moment she heard her father's voice instead.
It is fine.
Everything had always been fine.
In her final year at Cambridge, an application she had made near the end of her research became an interview, and the interview became a job offer. She waited three days before calling home.
The telephone was in the common room at the end of the corridor. She chose an hour when most people were at dinner and sat beside it with the offer letter folded on her lap.
Her father answered.
"I got the job."
"How much?"
She laughed and told him.
Paper moved at his end.
"You are converting it into rupees."
"No."
"Papa."
The paper stopped when she asked, "How is Mummy?"
"Fine."
Her smile faded.
"Fine how?"
There was a pause.
"She has taken leave from school."
"Again?"
"Not a few days this time. Doctor has asked her to rest."
"For how long?"
"A few weeks."
"And you were going to tell me when?"
"I am telling you now."
"Because I asked."
He said nothing.
"I don't have to take the job."
"Bina."
She knew the tone.
"Take the job. Your mother is being looked after."
"By you."
"Yes."
She rested her head briefly against the wall.
"You make everything sound smaller than it is."
For once, he did not answer immediately. Then she heard her mother's voice behind him.
"Kaun hai?"
"Tumhari beti.”
There was a rustle as the receiver changed hands.
"You got the job?"
"Papa told you already?"
"He has probably told the neighbours also by now."
She smiled.
"How are you, Mummy?"
"Some days good. Some days not."
The answer was so simple that she believed it.
"I can come back."
"For what?"
"You sound exactly like Papa."
"That is because occasionally your father is right."
Her mother laughed, then coughed. Neither mentioned it.
"Take the job."
She looked at the letter in her lap.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes."
The following morning, she accepted.
The job was supposed to last two years. Then came another position, marriage, children, school terms and a mortgage. Britain stopped feeling temporary without anyone deciding when. She visited India when she could. Her mother eventually stopped teaching, and her father learnt medicines and appointment dates, recording tablet timings in the same neat hand he had once used for office notes.
Whenever she asked how things were, his vocabulary remained limited: stable, better than last month, doctor is satisfied, nothing to worry about. Most often, simply fine.
By then her mother's memory had begun to slip. One Sunday she asked after a neighbour who had died the previous year.
"She seems confused," Bina told her father.
"She was tired today."
After some pressing, Bina learnt that a doctor had already been seeing her for five or six months.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"There was nothing definite to tell you."
Bina said nothing.
Her father's own health entered the conversation almost by accident. Shalu mentioned that he had been to a cardiologist.
She called him that evening.
"Papa, why did you see a cardiologist?"
"Routine."
"Papa."
He sighed.
"Blood pressure. Some chest discomfort. Doctor gave tablets."
"For how long?"
"Few months."
She stood in the kitchen with one hand resting on the counter.
"And you didn't think of mentioning it?"
"I am mentioning it now."
It was so exactly him that for a moment she could not decide whether to laugh or shout.
"I am coming."
"No."
"I wasn't asking."
"Your daughter's exams are next month."
"She has a father."
"So do you."
They both went quiet.
Then his voice softened.
"Come in the summer. Bring the children. Your mother will be happy."
She went that summer and found him older than she remembered. Not ill, she told herself. Older. He had lost weight, tired after lunch and once pressed his fingers briefly against the centre of his chest.
During the four-week visit Bina took her mother to appointments, sorted medicines and persuaded her father to keep someone in the house for longer during the day. Whenever she asked about his own follow-up, he said the cardiologist had seen him recently and there was nothing to do until the next review.
A week after Bina returned to Britain, she learnt that her father had already reduced the additional help.
"That is not what we agreed."
"You agreed. I listened."
He said their mother disliked strangers in the house and refused to discuss it further.
Before they hung up Bina asked, "Are you all right?"
"Fine."
She let it pass.
Three months later, Shalu called just before dawn.
Her father's heart attack had happened at home. By the time the ambulance reached the hospital, there was very little anyone could do.
She flew to India that evening.
The house was full when she arrived. Shoes crowded the entrance, men she recognised only vaguely sat in the drawing room speaking softly, and someone took her suitcase before she could ask who. Shalu held her for a long time without saying anything.
Their mother was in the bedroom. For several minutes she seemed not to understand why so many people were there. Then she looked at her elder daughter.
"Bina, Papa kahan hain?"
No one answered.
Three days later, after most of the relatives and visitors had gone, she went into her father's room. His glasses lay on the desk beside a folded newspaper. A pen had been left uncapped near the diary in which he recorded her mother's medicines.
She opened the drawer.
There were cardiology appointments going back more than a year, blood reports, prescriptions she had never seen. Beneath them was a hospital discharge summary from six months earlier.
She read the date twice.
Shalu was standing in the doorway.
She held up the paper.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"He said not to."
"And you listened?"
Shalu stopped.
"You were here four weeks that summer."
She said nothing.
"You saw him."
The papers remained in her hand.
Shalu's voice softened.
"We all listened to Papa."
From the other room, their mother called his name.
Neither sister moved.
In the days that followed, the house slowly emptied. Relatives left, neighbours stopped arriving, and the borrowed plastic chairs were stacked outside and taken away. His slippers remained beneath the bed. His glasses stayed on the desk until Shalu put them in the drawer.
There were certificates, bank papers, signatures and accounts to deal with. Her father had kept everything carefully and explained almost nothing.
"Papa was like that," Shalu said, looking at the labelled files.
"Yes."
Neither mentioned the papers from the drawer.
The question of their mother remained.
Shalu lived in another city, close enough to come when needed but not close enough to be there every day. They discussed keeping someone permanently in the house. Their mother dismissed the idea immediately.
"I don't need anyone."
"Mummy, just for company."
"Do not discuss me as if I am not sitting here."
She pushed the tea away.
"This is my house."
That evening Bina and Shalu sat in the balcony while their mother slept in front of the television.
"She cannot stay here alone," Shalu said.
"I know."
"I can take her for some time."
"For some time."
Shalu looked at her.
Bina rubbed her thumb along the edge of the cup.
"I can take her."
"To England?"
Bina nodded.
The next morning, she raised it with her mother, who was folding one of Papa's white handkerchiefs.
"Come with me for a few months."
"Where?"
"England."
"I am not going anywhere."
She folded the handkerchief again, though it was already folded.
"Shalu wants to send me there. You want to take me there. Everyone has plans."
"No one is making plans."
Their mother looked towards the bed, where Shalu had begun separating winter clothes.
"At least lie properly."
It was the first time either sister had laughed since their father died.
In the end, the decision happened through paperwork rather than agreement. Forms were filled, medical letters obtained, and Shalu arrived the following weekend with a new suitcase.
On the morning they left, their mother picked up Papa's sweater from the back of a chair and folded it into the new suitcase.
"Mummy, you don't need that."
"It is cold there."
Bina said nothing.
On the aircraft, after the city had disappeared beneath cloud, her mother asked:
"How long are we going for?"
Bina adjusted the blanket over her knees.
"A few months."
Her mother nodded.
Bina had no idea if that was true.
Britain did not suit her mother at first. The house was too quiet, the vegetables had no taste, coriander came in packets too small, and everyone seemed to live behind closed doors.
"Where are all the people?"
"Which people?"
"People."
For months she treated the stay as temporary. Her passport remained in the handbag beside her bed, and whenever something new was bought she asked whether it would fit in the suitcase.
The grandchildren helped. They came home from school leaving shoes, bags and unfinished conversations around the house. Their grandmother complained about the mess and then began waiting for it. She corrected their grammar and informed Bina that the pressure cooker whistle was wrong.
"A whistle can be wrong?"
Her mother looked at her.
"You have lived here too long."
Some days were almost ordinary. On others she misplaced things, lost the thread of conversations or stood in a room without remembering why she had entered it.
Bina reduced her hours at work. Meetings moved around medical appointments; her laptop migrated from the study to the dining table so she could hear movement upstairs. She stopped travelling for work and let a promotion pass.
Shalu called every few days.
"How is she?"
Bina learnt to answer with facts.
"She slept well."
"She asked for Papa twice."
It was easier that way.
Nearly a year after her mother's arrival, she came to the dining table while Bina was working.
"When are we going back?"
"Back where?"
"Home."
Bina looked at her.
"Soon."
Her mother nodded and went upstairs.
Soon became difficult to define.
A rail appeared beside the bath, then another by the stairs. The passport disappeared behind folded clothes. Her mother's good days became less predictable.
One evening she asked whether Papa had come back from office.
Bina waited for recognition.
It did not come.
"He'll be late," she said.
By the following year, their mother's sense of time had loosened further. She began waking at night and sometimes dressing for school. Twice Bina found her downstairs before dawn with her handbag over one arm.
The second time, her mother was standing near the front door.
"You'll make me late."
"Mummy, you don't teach anymore."
Her mother stared at her.
"What nonsense."
"You retired."
"When?"
Bina stopped.
There was no point.
"Come," she said. "Have tea first."
Her mother allowed herself to be led into the kitchen.
They sat at the table while the kettle boiled. Outside, the houses across the road were still dark. Her mother held the cup in both hands.
After a while she asked, "When are you going back?"
Bina looked at her.
"Back where?"
"Cambridge."
The room became very still.
"You'll miss your classes."
"Mummy, that was years ago."
Her mother frowned.
"You came for holidays."
Bina opened her mouth, then stopped.
"Your father said you should go," her mother said. "He was very proud."
Bina watched her face.
"And you?"
"What?"
"What did you think?"
Her mother seemed puzzled by the question.
"About you going?"
Bina nodded.
Her mother took a sip of tea.
"You wanted to go."
Her mother looked towards the clock.
"You should get ready."
Bina said nothing.
"Go," her mother said.
Outside, the first lights were coming on in the houses across the road.
After that, time became less reliable for her mother and more regimented for everyone around her. There were medicines, appointments, doors checked before bed. Eventually Bina stopped working altogether.
Shalu came whenever she could. On her visits their mother sometimes seemed better, which pleased Shalu and irritated Bina in ways she disliked admitting.
Once Shalu said, "She knew everyone today."
"Today."
"I know."
"No, you don't."
Bina regretted it immediately.
Shalu folded a tea towel on the counter.
"I know I don't," she said.
That was all.
Her mother died in early spring.
There was no final conversation.
For several days beforehand she slept more than she was awake. The grandchildren moved quietly through the house without being asked. Bina's husband kept making tea that nobody finished.
One afternoon her mother opened her eyes and looked at Bina for a long time.
Bina leaned closer.
"Mummy?"
Her mother moved her lips.
Bina could not hear.
"What?"
She bent until her ear was almost against her mother's mouth.
"Window."
Bina looked around. The curtains were half closed.
She opened them.
Weak sunlight came into the room.
Her mother looked towards it.
That was the last thing she asked for.
Afterwards, the house remained full for several days in a different way from the house after her father's death. People telephoned from India. Flowers arrived from colleagues Bina had not spoken to in years. Her children made tea for visitors. Shalu, who had arrived from India, moved from room to room collecting medicines that were no longer needed.
On the third evening, Bina and Shalu sat at the dining table. Between them lay the contents of their mother's handbag: a comb, a few coins, an expired passport and a photograph of their father.
Shalu turned the passport over.
"She kept asking when she was going home."
"I know."
After a while Shalu said, "You did a lot."
"She was my mother."
"You would have done the same."
"Maybe."
Bina looked at her.
Shalu gave a tired smile.
"See? We don't know."
Shalu pushed Papa's photograph towards her.
"You keep this."
Bina picked up the photograph.
Her father's expression had not changed in thirty years of memory. Certain. Slightly impatient. As though whoever held the camera was taking too long.
For a long time after her mother's death, Bina stopped thinking about Chail.
Or thought she had.
Work returned. The children grew up and began leaving home. Naina became the young woman who telephoned one evening to say she was getting married.
Years accumulated quietly.
Until a burst of applause pulled Bina into the ballroom.
Someone had finished a dance. Her niece stood in the middle of the floor laughing while Shalu tried to fix something that had come loose at the edge of her dupatta.
Bina realised her hands were cold.
Her husband leaned towards her.
"Where did you go this time?"
She looked at him.
"Far."
He smiled, assuming she was joking.
Across the room, someone called the bride's name.
Her niece turned.
For a second she looked directly at Bina.
Then someone else reached for her hand, and she was gone again into the crowd.
The next morning the mist had lifted enough for the mountains to appear beyond the hotel, blue-grey and layered one behind another. By eight, the corridors were crowded again.
The wedding passed in the way weddings often did for those not getting married: slowly for hours and then all at once. There were garlands, photographs, people being summoned and then made to wait, priests asking for things nobody could immediately find. Bina spent most of the ceremony beside Shalu, who kept checking whether Naina had eaten anything.
"She is getting married, not going to war," Bina said.
"That is why you have no daughters getting married."
"I have daughters."
"Not today."
Bina let that pass.
During the pheras, Shalu became very still. She had spent two days giving instructions, finding missing jewellery, correcting timings and telling everyone not to make a fuss. Now she sat with her hands folded in her lap.
Across the fire, Naina looked at her once.
Shalu smiled immediately.
Naina smiled back.
Bina looked away.
When the ceremony was over, people moved towards Naina almost at once. There were photographs to be taken, elders to greet, someone insisting she eat something before the next round of rituals began.
For a few minutes Shalu stood slightly apart.
Then Naina saw her.
She came across without being called and put her arms around her mother. Shalu held her daughter without saying anything.
Bina looked away towards the lawn.
When she looked back, Naina was wiping beneath one eye with the tip of her finger.
"Mascara," she said when she caught Bina looking.
"Of course."
Naina smiled and was pulled away again by somebody asking for another photograph.
Shalu watched her go.
Bina came to stand beside her.
"She's still here," she said.
"I know."
Shalu straightened the edge of her dupatta.
By afternoon, the hotel had begun giving itself back.
The flower arrangements were being dismantled. Staff carried folded chairs through the lobby. Half-open room doors revealed suitcases on beds and clothes that no longer needed to remain carefully pressed. Someone had left a box of sweets at reception. The small boy in the cream kurta was now wearing both shoes and refusing to leave.
Bina found Shalu in the corridor with a velvet jewellery pouch in one hand and her phone in the other.
"Take this to Naina, na."
"Where is she?"
"In her room. Supposedly packing."
Shalu's phone rang before Bina could say anything. She looked at the screen and sighed.
"Your jijaji."
She answered and walked away.
Bina went upstairs.
Naina's door was open.
She was sitting on the floor beside an open suitcase, surrounded by clothes that seemed to have multiplied since the wedding. Her bridal bangles had been pushed halfway up her forearms, and her hair, freed from pins and flowers, fell untidily around her shoulders.
"Mumma sent this."
Bina held up the pouch.
Naina looked at it.
"I told her I didn't need it right now."
"That information apparently did not travel with the pouch."
Naina laughed and took it from her.
"Thanks, Masi."
Bina turned to leave.
"Masi?"
She looked back.
Naina was folding a shawl and unfolding it again.
"What?"
"Nothing."
Bina waited.
Naina put the shawl into the suitcase.
Then took it out.
Bina sat on the edge of the bed.
"What?"
After a while Naina said, "You know we're leaving in three weeks?"
"Yes, America."
She nodded.
"He has to go back. I could join him later."
"Why?"
Naina folded a shawl carefully.
"Mumma. Papa."
Bina waited.
"They're getting older."
She looked down at the suitcase.
"What if something happens after I leave?"
Bina picked up a kurta from the bed and began folding it.
"Something can happen while you're here."
"Very helpful."
"I know."
"I could stay a few months. Let him go ahead. Join later."
"You could."
"Or I could just go."
"You could."
Naina frowned.
"Masi."
Bina placed the folded kurta beside the suitcase.
"What?"
"You're doing that thing."
"What thing?"
"Where you repeat what I say so you don't have to answer."
Bina smiled.
"You noticed."
For a moment neither spoke.
Naina picked up another kurta and handed it to her.
"What would you do?"
The answer came immediately.
Go.
A wet road. Her father's brown sweater. Smoke from a brazier.
Tumhe pankh mile hain.
Bina's hands stopped.
"I think you should..."
She did not finish.
"Should what?"
Bina folded the kurta and put it back in Naina's lap.
"You were going to say something."
"I know."
"Then say it."
Bina did not.
"Masi, you went. You stayed. You built your life there."
Bina looked at her.
"Was it the right decision?"
Bina did not answer.
Naina's expression changed.
"Do you regret it?"
"I don't know," she said.
Naina looked surprised.
"Still?"
"Yes."
The room was quiet except for a suitcase wheel being dragged along the corridor outside.
"That's terrible."
Bina smiled faintly.
"It can be inconvenient."
"I'm serious."
"So am I."
Naina pulled at a loose thread on the shawl.
"What if I go and regret it?"
"You might."
"And if I stay?"
"You might regret that too."
Naina leaned back against the bed.
"You're really not helping."
"I know."
After a while Naina said, "Mumma told me Nana wanted you to go to Cambridge."
"He did."
"And Nani?"
"She did too."
Bina looked at the open suitcase.
"There were things they didn't tell me. Things I should have known."
"Would you have stayed if you knew?"
Bina drew in a breath.
"I don't know. I used to think I did."
"And now?"
Bina shook her head.
"I know he shouldn't have decided what I could handle. But I still don't know what I would have done with the truth."
Naina was quiet.
Then, after a moment:
"So, what am I supposed to do?"
Bina could hear her father as clearly as if he were standing at the end of the room.
Jao. Udo.
The words came with all the tenderness they had carried then. And all the certainty.
Bina looked at the open suitcase between them.
"I don't know."
Naina stared at her.
"That's it?"
"That's it."
Naina shook her head.
"That is so useless."
"Your mother has said worse."
That made her laugh.
Naina’s eyes returned to the suitcase.
Bina stood.
"I'll let you pack."
Naina nodded.
Bina had reached the door when she heard her behind her.
"Masi?"
"Hmm?"
"Did Nana ever regret telling you to go?"
Bina thought of the papers in the drawer. Her father's glasses beside the newspaper. The neat columns of medicines. His voice saying your mother has me.
"I never asked him."
Naina looked down at the clothes spread around her.
After a moment, Bina stepped into the corridor and pulled the door closed behind her.
She left Naina beside the open suitcase.
Downstairs, luggage had begun collecting near reception. Shalu stood beside the entrance checking names against a list on her phone.
Bina stood beside her.
Shalu put the phone away.
"Did you talk to Naina?"
"A little."
"About America?"
Bina turned towards her.
"You knew?"
"I am her mother."
"What did she say?"
"She doesn't know yet."
"And you?"
"What about me?"
"What did you tell her?"
Bina looked through the glass doors towards the road.
"Nothing useful."
Shalu laughed softly.
Outside, the road was still wet from the rain. Mist moved between the deodars, thinner now than it had been the previous afternoon.
Bina could see the first bend clearly.
Beyond it, nothing.
Then the mist thinned, revealing another stretch of road farther along the hillside.
Shalu touched her arm.
"Come. They are waiting."
Bina turned back towards the hotel.
Thoughts on this story?
Loading responses…