The Price of Time. A Novel By Dipjyoti Sharma Chapter 9
Chapter 9: Devika Comes to Mumbai Shivaji Park — Mumbai — March 2021 Devika Iyer was twenty-seven and looked like her father — same wide forehead, same quiet eyes — and she arrived at the Shivaji Park flat on a Saturday morning with a small bag and an expression Meera recognised as her own: the face she made when she was feeling something very large and processing it at a speed the face could not keep up with. Arjun was not there. Meera had asked him not to be, for this first meeting. She needed to be her daughter's mother alone, without the complication of his presence. They sat at the kitchen table. Devika drank tea and said nothing for the first ten minutes. Meera let her. Devika: "How long has this been?" Meera: "We met in 2019. The — what we have now — since the lockdown." Devika: "You didn't tell me." Meera: "I told you in November 2019. When it was just beginning." Devika: "You told me you had '...