The Price of Time. A Novel By Dipjyoti Sharma Chapter 2

 

The Price of Time

ACT ONE

Chapter 2: What Begins in Small Spaces

 

Bandra — Juhu Beach — August 2019

 

They began talking because of a book.

He saw it first — she had left it on the counter at the showroom on her third visit, a worn copy of a collection of essays by a Marathi writer, and it was the kind of book that people who loved books recognized immediately as belonging to someone who loved books seriously, not casually. He had picked it up before he could stop himself.

Arjun: "You've read this three times at least. Look at the spine."

She turned around. He held up the book, showing her the cracked spine.

Meera: "Four times. I mark it differently each time. Different colour pen. You can track what I cared about at different ages."

Arjun: "What colour is this time?"

Meera: "Green. This time I'm reading for the sentences. Not the ideas. The sentences themselves."

He opened it. The green marks were precise, single lines under phrases he could not immediately decode but wanted to.

Arjun: "Can I borrow it?"

She looked at him the way she had looked at him in the lift: one quick assessment, complete.

Meera: "You read Marathi?"

Arjun: "Enough."

Meera: "Read it slowly. Don't rush the last section. Most people rush the last section."

He read it slowly. He did not rush the last section. He came back with it two weeks later and she was in the showroom for a fitting check and he put it on the counter and said: 'The last section is the only part that's actually about grief. The rest of it is about the performance of grief. He knew the difference and he built a wall between them.'

She stopped what she was doing and looked at him.

Meera: "How old are you?"

Arjun: "Twenty."

She was quiet. Then she said something he would think about for weeks.

Meera: "That's either very old for twenty or very young for what that observation requires. I can't tell which yet."

 

~ ~ ~

 

He found out she was a widow when Zara told him. Zara knew everything about everyone through the architecture of Mumbai's interconnected social networks — she had grown up in Dharavi and now moved through Bandra and Juhu and Colaba for work and had maps of every person's life that most people didn't know existed.

Zara: "Iyer Madam? Yes, yaar, she's Meera Iyer. Big name in architecture. Husband died — what, six or seven years ago. Heart attack in the office. She had a daughter, now in Pune. She lives alone in that building near Shivaji Park. Very private. Very respected. Why are you asking?"

Arjun: "Just curious. She's a client."

Zara looked at him with the specific expression she wore when she knew he was lying.

Zara: "Arjun. She's fifty."

Arjun: "I said she's a client."

Zara: "You're using your 'nothing is happening' voice. Which you use when something is happening."

Arjun: "Can you please just—"

Zara: "Arjun Malhotra. She is FIFTY. Your mother is forty-eight. Do the math of what your father will do to you."

Arjun: "Nothing is happening, Zara."

Something was beginning to happen. He knew it and Zara knew it and neither of them could stop it, which is generally the condition of all things that are beginning to happen.

 

~ ~ ~

 

Juhu Beach — Sunday Morning

 

He saw her at Juhu Beach by accident, a Sunday morning in September, when he had gone to run because his father had been particularly difficult the night before and running was the only thing that cleared his head without requiring another person.

She was sitting on a low wall near the chaiwala stalls, alone, with a cup of tea, watching the sea. She wore a simple cotton salwar and no jewelry and her hair was loose and she looked entirely different from the version he knew — not the architect, not the client, not the woman in the linen kurta. Just a woman sitting by the sea.

He almost walked past. He nearly chose to walk past. Then she looked up, and their eyes met, and the choice was made.

Arjun: "Meera-ji. Sorry — I'm not—I just came to run."

Meera: "Don't apologize. Sit down if you want. The chai here is very good."

He sat. The chaiwala brought him a cup without being asked. The sea was grey and wide and the early morning fishermen were moving in the middle distance.

They sat for twenty minutes and talked about nothing urgent — the sea, the city, the way Mumbai looked different before eight in the morning, before it had assembled its performance of itself. She was easier here. Less architected. He noticed this.

Arjun: "Do you come here often?"

Meera: "Every Sunday since Krishnan died. He used to love this beach. I keep coming and I'm never sure if it's for him or for me. I've stopped trying to separate it."

Krishnan. He filed the name away.

Arjun: "How long ago?"

Meera: "Seven years."

Arjun: "Does it get easier?"

She considered this with the seriousness she brought to all real questions.

Meera: "It gets different. Easier is the wrong word. It becomes something you can carry without it spilling. But it never becomes light."

He nodded. He thought about his father's weight, which was not grief but was equally unspillable, and understood what she meant.

He went home that Sunday and wrote four pages in his notebook. They were the best four pages he had ever written.