Tag Archives: Mumbai

The Small Rituals That Hold a Life Together

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There are things in life so small that they barely announce themselves. The morning coffee was made in the same mug. The walk is taken at roughly the same time each day. The book opened before sleep, even if only for a few pages, before the eyes began to close. The evening habit of putting things back in their place. The quick glance at the sky from the kitchen window. The quiet insistence on bathing before bed after a long day outside.

None of these would usually qualify as major events. They do not look impressive from the outside. They do not lend themselves to dramatic storytelling. Yet remove enough of them, and something in life begins to loosen.

We tend to think that what shapes a life are the large things. Marriage, illness, loss, children, money, ambition, migration, career turns. And of course, those matter. It would be absurd to pretend otherwise. But most of life is not lived at the level of milestones. Most of it is lived in repetition. The turn of the key, the rinsing of the cup, the folding of the clothes, the checking of the door, the pause before the first sip.

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If the milestones are the chapters, then these smaller acts are the punctuation. They shape pace. They create rhythm. They stop life from becoming one long unbroken paragraph.

This is why small rituals matter more than we often admit. Not because they are glamorous, and certainly not because they are some hidden route to becoming more efficient or successful. In fact, modern culture has a way of distorting even the simplest acts by turning them into systems. Every cup of coffee becomes a productivity hack. Every walk becomes a step count, cardio goal, or something to document. Even rest is now explained as recovery.

In that atmosphere, the ordinary ritual becomes easy to misunderstand.

But many of the rituals that hold a life together do so for a simpler reason. They make life feel inhabited. They return us to ourselves.

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That may sound gentle, but there is a harder truth beneath it. Human beings need structure more than we like to admit. We enjoy telling ourselves stories about freedom, spontaneity, and keeping our options open. We praise variety and novelty. Yet most people, if they are honest, do not thrive in formlessness. They drift in it. They become frayed in it.

A life with no rhythm begins to feel curiously unreal, as if one were living slightly outside oneself.

The right rituals do not trap us. They give shape to the day so that we can move through it with less internal noise.

This is not about efficiency. In many cases, it is the opposite. Small rituals slow us down just enough to prevent us from becoming careless with our own lives. They remind us that a day is not only something to be got through. It is something to be lived inside.

A woman who waters her plants each morning is not simply tending to leaves. She is rejoining the world before the day begins. A man who irons his clothes the night before is not just preparing for work. He is telling himself, quietly, that tomorrow deserves to be met properly. Someone who cuts fruit after dinner for the family is not arranging food. They are creating a familiar landing place at the edge of the day.

This is perhaps why small rituals feel like a form of self-respect. Not the loud version that demands to be seen, but something steadier. To make your coffee properly, instead of rushing through it. To go for your walk even when the day has been crowded. To read before sleeping instead of handing your last conscious minutes to a screen.

These are small decisions. But they carry a certain message: my life is not disposable. My day is not a blur to be endured.

In Singapore, these rituals often hide in plain sight. The kopi was ordered without fuss at the same stall. The evening walk beneath HDB blocks before heading upstairs. Shoes placed outside the door, as if public life must end before private life begins. The auntie who buys flowers not for an occasion but because the flat looks incomplete without them.

Mumbai carries its own versions with a different rhythm. The cutting chai at the corner stall. The train commute was marked not only by stations but also by familiar gestures. The lamp lit at dusk while traffic pressed on outside. The small errand becomes a few minutes of conversation before returning home.

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In both cities, routine is not just convenience. It is often the smallest available form of order against noise, speed, and constant movement.

Some rituals are chosen. Others are inherited. Often, they begin as irritation. A child rolls their eyes at the way a parent insists on doing things. Years pass. And one day, without ceremony, they begin doing some version of it themselves.

We inherit not just recipes or beliefs, but sequences. Ways of entering the day. Ways of ending it. Ways of preparing for guests, for festivals, for grief, and for ordinary weekdays. Much of this inheritance lives in the body long before it becomes language.

Still, we should resist making rituals sound holier than they are.

Not every repeated act is wise, and not every routine is nourishing. A woman who cannot begin her day without ten exact steps may no longer be supported by ritual but ruled by it. A family that prides itself on eating together every night may be preserving connection, or it may be preserving a pattern where one person carries the invisible weight of making it happen.

The surface can look identical. The meaning underneath may not be.

Some rituals calm us. Others harden into rigidity. Some create breathing room. Others become ways of avoiding what is wrong.

It is one thing to take a daily walk because it clears the mind. It is another thing to build such a fragile internal order around it that any interruption feels like collapse. It is one thing to light a lamp at dusk because the act centres the day. It is another thing to begin fearing the consequences of missing it.

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Rituals are not automatically meaningful simply because they are repeated. They have to be examined by the life around them.

The same is true of the modern language around routines. Not everything that looks disciplined is healthy. One person’s morning structure may be an act of self-respect. Another’s may be an attempt to control a life that feels unmanageable in deeper ways.

Sometimes what a person needs is not a better routine, but a different job. Or rest. Or medical care. Or an honest conversation they have been avoiding.

Rituals can support a life. They cannot repair what we refuse to face.

And yet, even with all these complications, something remains true.

Human beings seem to need repeated acts that gather the self.

We are not built only for output. Nor are we designed to live indefinitely in disruption, novelty, and fractured attention without consequence. The current age has made rituals both more necessary and more fragile. It takes very little now to lose the texture of a morning. One glance at a phone can scatter the mind before the day has even begun. One endless evening online can flatten the transition into rest.

In such a world, a small ritual becomes a quiet line of defence.

To read before bed is to say the day will not end in noise. To take a daily walk is to insist that the body is not merely functional. To make coffee slowly is to resist the idea that speed is always a virtue. To clear the kitchen before sleeping is to give the next morning a small kindness.

These things do not transform a life dramatically. But they keep us in a relationship with it.

A life is rarely held together by insight alone. It is held together by practice. By recurring acts that seem almost too minor to matter until the season comes when we cannot manage them.

Illness, grief, overwork, caregiving, heartbreak, relocation. These things reveal how much ordinary functioning depends on the smallest scaffolding. The cup of tea is not made. The walk not taken. The book was left unopened. The meal was eaten without pause.

These absences tell their own story.

And sometimes, after such a season, returning to a small ritual can feel unexpectedly significant. Not because the act has changed, but because we have.

To make your coffee again. To take the same walk under the same trees. To hear the familiar sounds of evening, whether from a Singapore block or a Mumbai street, and feel that something in life has regained its shape.

That is no small thing.

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Perhaps that is the quiet work of small rituals. They do not rescue us from being human. They do not solve the larger difficulties of living. What they do is more modest, and for that reason, more dependable.

They place small markers in the day that say the following: Begin here, pause here, and return here.

When life is going well, we barely notice them. When life begins to fray, we discover how much they were holding on to.

So perhaps the point is not to romanticise rituals, nor to dismiss them as habits for people afraid of disorder. The point is to notice which ones make a life more attentive, more decent, more inhabitable.

The cup of coffee. The walk. The lamp at dusk. The book before bed. The familiar commute. The fruit was cut after dinner.

A life does not always fall apart dramatically. Sometimes it comes undone by becoming too hurried, too shapeless, or too thin.

And sometimes it is held together again in the same way.

Not all at once, but cup by cup, walk by walk, evening by evening.

Mumbai Memories: Music Lessons, Missed Classes, and What Stayed

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Growing up in Mumbai, it almost felt like an unspoken rule that every child had to learn a classical art form. Music or dance, sometimes both. It was simply what one did. No one questioned it, and no one really explained it either. It sat somewhere between discipline, culture, and expectation.

My sister took to dancing naturally. As soon as she could, she signed up with a teacher in the neighbourhood and seemed entirely at ease with movement in a way I never was.

I, on the other hand, have always been, and remain, spectacularly uncoordinated.

Dance was never going to be my thing.

So music it was.

Carnatic classical music, to be precise.

There was a well-known fine arts academy in Matunga that conducted classes in a school building not far from ours. It offered lessons in both vocal music and instruments, and for many children in the area, it was a familiar part of growing up. When I was about six years old, I joined the vocal class.

Another girl joined at the same time. She was a classmate of my neighbour and lived in a building directly opposite mine. From her building, you could clearly see the approach road that led to the school where our classes were held.

That small detail became important.

Before each class, we would meet downstairs, lingering just a little longer than necessary. There was no urgency in our waiting. We would talk, watch the street, stretch out those few extra minutes of freedom.

And then, at some point, one of us would spot her.

The teacher.

Walking up the road, unhurried, entirely unaware of the small drama unfolding at a distance.

That was our cue.

We would immediately spring into action, running as fast as our legs could carry us, trying to reach the classroom before she did, as though arriving before the teacher somehow counted as being more prepared, or perhaps less guilty of our delay.

It was a small ritual, repeated week after week. Looking back, I suspect we enjoyed that moment more than the class itself.

I continued for about two years.

My friend stopped after the first year, and not long after, I followed. The decision was not dramatic. There was no particular incident, no sudden loss of interest. It was simply that I was not willing to give up my playtime two or three times a week to sit in a classroom learning something that required patience I did not yet have.

At that age, play always wins.

For a few years after that, music drifted in and out of my life. I would sing occasionally, mostly at home, without structure or discipline. It was there, but lightly held.

And then, when I was about ten or eleven years old, something shifted again.

A lady in my building came home one day to invite us to a concert she was organising with her friend. This friend lived nearby and was known to my parents. She had been learning music for many years and was now beginning to teach. The concert, as it turned out, was not just a performance. It was also a way of introducing herself to potential students.

I still remember sitting there, listening.

Something about that evening stayed with me. It was not just the music, though that was certainly part of it. It was the atmosphere. The stillness. The way everyone seemed to be listening with intention.

I came home and told my mother I wanted to start learning music again.

And so, I did.

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This time, it was different.

The classes were more structured, the expectations clearer. There were other students too, including a girl from my school who lived about fifteen minutes away. The group was small enough to feel personal, but large enough to create a sense of shared effort.

We sat cross-legged on the floor, notebooks open, repeating after the teacher. The steady drone of the shruti box filled the room, constant and unwavering, like a line we were expected to stay within. There was no rushing ahead. Each note had to be held, corrected, and repeated.

“Again,” she would say.

Not sharply. Not impatiently. Just firmly enough to let you know that almost right was not enough.

There is a particular kind of discipline that comes with learning classical music. It is not dramatic or visible. It lies in repetition. In practising the same notes and the same patterns over and over again until they begin to settle somewhere deeper than memory.

I stayed with it for about four years.

Long enough to understand that this was not something one mastered quickly. Long enough to feel both the frustration and the quiet satisfaction that comes with incremental progress.

And then, as it often happens, something else began to take precedence.

Studies.

By the time I reached class eight, the balance between schoolwork and everything else began to shift. Time became more structured, expectations more defined. Something had to give.

And once again, music classes were the thing that fell away.

But this time, it did not leave entirely.

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Even without formal lessons, music stayed.

It found its way into everyday life. Into quiet moments, into routines, into the spaces between tasks. I was always singing something, humming something, or listening to music. It did not require effort anymore. It had simply become part of how I existed.

And without realising it, I carried it forward.

When I was pregnant with GG and BB, I found myself singing to them. Not in any deliberate or planned way, but naturally. Carnatic music, yes, but also small ditties, rhymes, and the occasional Bollywood song that had made its way into memory.

And then, when they were born, that continued.

Music became part of their early world, too.

It was not something I consciously decided to pass on. It was simply there, as it had been for me.

And when they turned seven, they both began formal music training.

What followed, however, reminded me that no two journeys are the same.

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BB stopped when he reached puberty, and his voice broke. It was a practical decision, and perhaps an inevitable one. But music did not leave him either. It stayed, just in a different form. He sings informally, listens to music constantly, and engages with it in his own way.

GG, on the other hand, continued.

And continues still.

Through PSLE, through O levels, through polytechnic, and now university, music has remained her constant. There have been pauses, of course. Moments where studies took over, where classes were missed. But she always returns.

It is, quite clearly, her happy place.

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Looking back, what strikes me is not how long or how well any of us learned music in a formal sense.

It is how it stayed.

In different forms, at different intensities, across different phases of life. Sometimes structured, sometimes casual. Sometimes central, sometimes in the background.

It never really left.

And perhaps that is the point of these early lessons.

Not mastery.

Not performance.

But familiarity.

The knowledge that something exists, that it can be returned to, that it can sit quietly within you without demanding constant attention.

I never became a trained classical singer.

But I became someone for whom music is always within reach.

And somewhere along the way, that feels like enough.

Mumbai Memories: Amma and the Quiet Art of Making

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One of my earliest memories from when I began school is of my mother waiting for me at the corner of the road just outside our building, a cloth bag looped over her arm, filled with stitching implements I did not yet understand but instinctively respected. Our building was a simple three-floor Mumbai walk-up, the kind where everyone knew who lived on which floor, and as soon as I got off the school bus, there she was.

We never lingered.

I would spot her, she would take the bag more firmly into her grasp, and we would quickly walk back and climb the three flights of stairs to our home. It was a small, repeated moment, but it carried a quiet certainty. She would be there.

Let me backtrack a little.

My sister is about a year and a half younger than I am, and after she was born, my father hired a mother’s helper. It was a practical decision. An infant and a toddler can turn any day into a small storm. But what it also did, quietly and without announcement, was create a small pocket of time for my mother. A rare thing, especially in those years.

My father, in his own way, wanted her to continue her education. There was a path he could see clearly: college, a degree, something formal and recognised. But my mother did not want that life. Not out of inability, but out of instinct. She chose differently.

The compromise they arrived at now feels telling. Not resistance, not submission, but something more thoughtful. She decided to learn stitching.

I still remember the name of the class she went to. Zarapkars. The word itself carried a certain solidity, as though it belonged to a world of skill, repetition, and quiet mastery. The classes were about a ten to twelve-minute walk from our home. Close enough to fit into a day. Far enough to feel like a destination.

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Her routine settled into a rhythm. I would be sent off to school in the morning. My sister would be fed and put down for a nap. And in that window, my mother would step out, her time briefly belonging to her.

I do not remember the inside of those classes. I never saw Zarapkars. But I remember their afterlife.

In the evenings, our home would shift. Patterns would be spread out, measurements taken, fabric folded and refolded. Much of this happened in the enclosed balcony of my parents’ bedroom, a space that had quietly been repurposed into her sewing corner. It was small, but it was hers.

And then there was the machine.

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She began with a hand-cranking machine, the kind that required both coordination and patience, before eventually moving to a foot-pedal one. The machine sat steady, almost dignified, as though aware of its role in the household. During the hotter months or the monsoon, she would sometimes bring it inside, adjusting the space to the weather, but never the work.

The sound it made was constant and reassuring. Not loud, not intrusive. Just there. A rhythm that stitched itself into the background of our growing up.

After she finished her course, this did not remain a hobby. It became part of the structure of our lives.

For many years, in fact, all the way until we finished school, my mother sewed our uniforms on that trusted sewing machine. There is something quietly extraordinary about that, though I did not think so at the time. Our uniforms were simple: the kind you would not look at twice, but to us, they were the best.

From kindergarten to class ten, everyone wore the same uniform. The only difference lay in the collar. The younger children had rounded collars, soft and almost decorative, while the older students graduated to proper shirt collars. It was a small shift, but it carried meaning. You could tell where someone stood just by that detail.

Our uniforms were not bought off racks or altered by tailors we barely knew. They were measured, cut, and assembled at home. Every pleat, every hem, every slightly uneven stitch carried the imprint of her hands.

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Beyond uniforms, her stitching entered our school life in other ways, too.

My school placed a surprising emphasis on extracurricular activities, and stitching was one of them. It never felt unusual to us then, though I suspect it might now. There were projects to be completed, small assignments that required patience more than talent, and this was where my mother stepped in again.

She would sit with us, guiding without taking over. Showing us how to hold the fabric, how to keep the line straight, how not to rush through something that required care. There was no formal teaching in the way she did it. Just a quiet correction, repetition, and the expectation that we would learn by doing.

Because of that, both my sister and I picked up the basics almost without realising it.

Even now, that knowledge stays.

I can do simple mending. Fix a loose hem. Stitch something back into place before it becomes unusable. Small things, easily overlooked, but quietly useful. The kind of skills that do not announce themselves but make life just a little more manageable.

And somewhere along the way, I began to feel that this is something everyone should know. Not as a hobby, not as nostalgia, but as a basic life skill. The ability to repair, to make, and to extend the life of something with your own hands. It is a small form of independence and a quiet act of care.

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Beyond this, she experimented. Skirts, tops, dresses, and nightwear. Sometimes following patterns, sometimes improvising. Occasionally, something would not turn out quite right, but that never seemed to matter. The act of making itself had its own dignity.

Looking back now, I realise that what she created was not just clothing. She created a kind of quiet abundance. Not the abundance of excess, but of self-sufficiency. Of knowing that what you needed could, with patience and effort, be made.

Of course, like most things, this too changed.

There came a point when we wanted more “stylish” clothes. Trends began to matter. What others were wearing began to matter. And slowly, without any formal decision, the home-stitched wardrobe receded. Shops replaced patterns. Ready-made replaced hand-cut.

But the skill did not disappear.

My mother continued to sew her saree blouses, each one fitted not just to her body but to her comfort. She continued with small stitching projects. Repairs, adjustments, quiet fixes that extended the life of things. The sewing machine did not fall silent. It simply spoke less often.

What stays with me, more than the clothes themselves, is the shape of that period. A woman who did not choose the obvious path but still chose to learn. A skill that entered the home and stayed. A rhythm of making that sat alongside the rhythms of everyday life. And a childhood that, without realising it, was surrounded by acts of creation.

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It is easy, in hindsight, to romanticise such things. To turn them into symbols of simplicity or “old ways.” But that would miss something important. This was not nostalgia. This was work. Repetition. Discipline. A willingness to sit with something long enough to become good at it.

And yet, there was also something else. A quiet kind of pride. Not announced, not displayed, but present. In a well-fitted uniform. In a neatly finished hem. In the simple fact that something had been made, and made well.

Even now, when I see a sewing machine, I do not just see a tool. I hear that steady rhythm. I see that small balcony corner. I see my mother, bent slightly forward, focused, patient, building something one line at a time. And I realise that long before I began writing, before I understood the satisfaction of shaping words into something whole, I had already witnessed what it means to make.

Short Story: Incognito Heart

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The scooter had been making that sound for weeks. Not a dramatic sound. Not even a complaint. More like a quiet, sulking wheeze. As if it had opinions about her choices and had decided to express them through the engine.

Nandini Rao patted the handlebars the way her mother used to pat her head when she couldn’t fix a problem but wanted it to behave anyway.

“Bas. Just get me there,” she murmured. “I’m not asking for much.”

The scooter responded by dying right outside the shuttered entrance of the old Bhandarkar Hall, where somebody had recently put up fresh hoardings with glossy visuals: REVIVAL. HERITAGE. A NEW CHAPTER.

Nandini stared at the hoarding and felt an unhelpful urge to laugh. Mumbai loved the idea of revival. It loved new chapters. It also loved forgetting the old ones.

She pushed the scooter to the side, wiped sweat from her forehead with the end of her dupatta, and checked her phone. One bar. Low battery. A bank balance that looked like a scolding.

Of course.

She stood there for a second, between the traffic and the hoarding and her own tiredness, and tried to decide which was worse: the scooter breaking down, or the fact that she’d started expecting breakdowns like they were part of the monthly budget.

A tap on her elbow made her flinch.

“Madam, scooter bandh?” a watchman asked, leaning on a metal railing like he’d been born there.

“It’s… taking a pause,” she said, as if she could negotiate with it using language.

The watchman grinned. “Pause toh theek hai, par yeh road pe pause mat karna.”

Behind him, a man stepped out from the construction site, wiping his hands on a rag. He wore a faded T-shirt and jeans that looked like they’d seen too many monsoons. There was dust in his hair. Not styled dust. Real dust. He had the kind of face that would disappear in a crowd until it didn’t.

“Need help?” he asked, and his voice was calm in a way that made her suspicious. Calm usually came with privilege. Calm usually meant people had options.

“It’s fine,” Nandini said automatically.

The man glanced at the scooter, then at her. Not in a dramatic up-and-down way. More like he was assessing the situation and doing the math quietly.

“You’re not from the It’s fine school,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

He smiled a little. “You said it’s fine, like you were trying to convince yourself. Not me.”

Nandini felt her cheeks heat. She hated being read. She made a living reading people, matching them to books. She did not enjoy the same attention coming back at her.

“I’m Nandini,” she said, mostly because she didn’t know how to end the conversation without being rude, and she was tired of being rude to strangers. It turned life into a long fight.

“Mihir,” he said. “I’m working there.” He tilted his head toward the building.

She followed the gesture. The place smelled of wet cement and old paint. Bhandarkar Hall had once hosted plays, debates, charity shows, and at least three weddings that had spilt onto the road. Now it was being reborn with a name that sounded like a bank.

“You can’t fix it?” she asked, half-hopeful, half-defensive.

“I can try.” He crouched near the scooter, peered under the side panel, and made a small sound of disapproval. “When was the last time you serviced it?”

Nandini made a face.

“That long, huh?”

“I’ve been… busy,” she said.

He looked up. “Everyone’s busy. The scooter doesn’t care.”

He opened the panel and nudged something with his thumb. “Battery connection is loose. Also, your plug cap looks like it wants to retire.”

Nandini blinked. “You… know what you’re doing.”

“Just enough to survive Mumbai,” he said.

The watchman chuckled. “Yeh Mumbai hai, madam. Sabko sab aata hai.”

Mihir tightened the connection, tapped the panel back into place, and gestured. “Try now.”

Nandini started the scooter. It coughed, complained, and then—like a child who didn’t want to be late to school but didn’t want to admit it—came alive.

Relief washed through her so hard she nearly closed her eyes.

“Thank you,” she said, and meant it in the way you mean things when your day was about to fall apart and then didn’t.

Mihir wiped his hands again, then glanced at her scooter basket. There was a cloth bag in it, bulging with what looked suspiciously like books.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“Banyan & Paper,” she said, before she could stop herself.

He frowned. “That second-hand bookstore near the station?”

Nandini’s pride stirred, even though it was a small, exhausted pride. “Yes.”

“I’ve walked past it,” he said. “Always wanted to go in.”

“You haven’t?”

“I keep meaning to. I…” He paused, as if he was choosing words. “I haven’t had the habit in a while.”

Nandini didn’t ask what habit. She knew what he meant. Everyone knew what he meant. Reading had become something people claimed to love the way they claimed to love fitness. A virtue, not a practice.

“Well,” she said, surprising herself, “you should come in.”

“I will,” he said, and she got the sense that he actually meant it.

The watchman called out behind them, “Arre Mihir, kaam pe aa. Boss chillayega.”

Mihir lifted a hand in acknowledgement, then looked at Nandini again. “Don’t ignore the service, haan. Battery connection is a symptom. The scooter is basically you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He smiled. “Overworked. Still functioning. One bad day away from collapsing dramatically on a main road.”

Nandini stared at him, offended and amused at the same time. Before she could come up with a reply, he turned and walked back into the dusty half-reborn building.

She rode off with her scooter, behaving, and her mind mildly unsettled.

Banyan & Paper sat between a photocopy shop and a tiny snack stall that sold vada pav with alarming confidence. The bookstore didn’t have a glossy sign. Just painted letters that had faded unevenly, and a handwritten note taped near the entrance:

Yes, we buy old books. No, we can’t take your college textbooks from 2009. Please don’t argue.

Inside, the air was cooler than outside, not because of AC; she couldn’t afford to run it all day, but because books held a different kind of temperature. The place smelled like paper, dust, and the faint perfume of mothballs that Nandini kept in strategic corners like tiny guards.

Her mother had named the shop when Nandini was eight. Her father had wanted something sensible. Something like Rao Books & Stationery.

Her mother had insisted on a banyan tree.

“A banyan doesn’t look like it’s doing anything,” her mother had said. “But it holds everything together.”

Nandini unlocked the shutter, pulled it up with a grunt, and stepped inside.

Her phone buzzed. A text from her neighbour, Aarti:
Ma ate?

Nandini typed back quickly:
Yes. Dawa de diya. Sleeping.

Chronic but stable, her mother’s condition was a constant hum in the background of their lives: medication, BP checks, occasional dizzy spells, and a general fragility that made Nandini’s choices feel less like choices and more like a line drawn on a map.

She couldn’t move for work. She couldn’t “just try something else.” She couldn’t relocate, restart, reinvent herself in the way LinkedIn loved to suggest. Her life was tethered to this suburb, this shop, and the upstairs bedroom where her mother slept with a fan pointed directly at her face like it was a personal assistant.

Nandini flipped on the lights, dust motes rising like tiny spirits.

At ten thirty, the regulars drifted in.

A retired uncle who came to argue about politics and borrow old Marathi novels.

A teenage girl who pretended she was browsing but actually just wanted to sit in the corner and breathe for twenty minutes away from her tuition schedule.

A man who bought self-help books and looked disappointed every time a book failed to fix him.

The shop didn’t make money the way shops were supposed to. It made meaning. And meaning, unfortunately, didn’t pay rent.

At noon, the bell above the door rang.

Nandini looked up and saw Mihir standing there, freshly washed, wearing a clean shirt that looked surprisingly well-fitted. Not expensive exactly, but… deliberate.

He stepped in slowly, like someone entering a temple without knowing the rules.

“Hi,” he said.

“You came,” Nandini said, and immediately hated the warmth in her own voice.

He glanced around, taking in the shelves, the mismatched chairs, the handwritten category signs: Old Loves, Weird But Good, Marathi Classics, Women Who Don’t Apologise.

“It’s… exactly how I imagined it,” he said.

“What did you imagine?”

“A place where people come to feel less alone,” he said, like it was obvious.

Nandini’s throat tightened, annoyed at herself. She moved behind the counter and busied her hands with a stack of books.

“So,” she said, brisk, “what are you looking for?”

Mihir smiled at her tone. “Something that doesn’t make me feel like I’m doing homework.”

“Welcome to the club,” Nandini muttered.

He wandered into the aisles. He picked up a thin book of poetry, flipped through a few pages, put it back carefully.

“You read poetry?” Nandini asked before she could stop herself.

“I used to,” he said. “When I was younger.”

“And now?”

He shrugged. “Now I scroll.”

Nandini snorted. “You and the rest of the country.”

He looked at her then, properly. “Do you ever feel like everyone is tired but pretending they’re fine?”

Nandini paused. “Yes.”

“And do you ever feel like reading is the only thing that makes the tiredness… manageable?”

She swallowed. “Yes.”

He nodded, like something inside him settled. “Okay. Give me something.”

Nandini came out from behind the counter, walked to the shelves, and started pulling books without overthinking.

A slim novel in English that carried quiet grief like a second skin.

A book of essays by an Indian writer that made you laugh and then feel guilty for laughing.

A Marathi short story collection she’d grown up reading, translated on the facing page because she didn’t know what his Marathi was like and she didn’t want to ask.

She handed the stack to him. “Start here.”

He stared at the books as if she’d handed him a key.

“You’re good at this,” he said.

“I’ve been doing it forever,” she said, and then, because honesty slipped out sometimes when you weren’t watching, she added, “and because I can tell when someone is trying to remember themselves.”

Mihir’s mouth opened, then closed. For a second, he looked like he wanted to say something and didn’t trust it.

He paid in cash.

Nandini noticed because she always noticed. Cash was inconvenient. Cash was usually a habit, or a decision.

He took the bag and hesitated. “I’ll come back and tell you what I think.”

“You better,” she said. “Otherwise I’ll assume you didn’t like it and I’ll take it personally.”

He laughed. It was a full laugh. Not polite.

“Deal,” he said, and left.

Nandini watched the door for a second longer than she needed to, then turned back to the counter, annoyed with her own heart for being so easy to wake up.

Over the next two weeks, Mihir became a pattern in her day.

Not daily. That would have felt like too much too fast. But often enough that she started expecting him in the way you start expecting the train to arrive, even though it never arrives when you want.

He’d come in, buy one book, then talk about it like it mattered. Not like he was showing off. Like he was trying to understand why it hit him.

He brought her cutting chai once, and she nearly cried because nobody brought her chai unless they wanted something from her.

“Don’t make it weird,” she told him.

“You’re making it weird,” he said, grinning.

Sometimes he’d help her shift cartons. Sometimes he’d sit in the corner and read for twenty minutes without speaking. The shop accepted him the way old spaces accepted people who didn’t try to dominate them.

Even her mother, who noticed everything despite pretending she didn’t, asked one evening while Nandini was crushing tablets into curd:

“Who is this boy who keeps coming?”

“He’s not a boy,” Nandini said.

“Men are boys until they prove otherwise,” her mother replied, unbothered.

Nandini rolled her eyes. “He’s… a customer.”

Her mother made a soft sound. “Hmm.”

“Stop doing that.”

“Doing what?”

“That hmm. That I-know-more-than-you hmm.”

Her mother smiled. “I’m only saying, if he’s making you smile, don’t immediately find a reason to punish yourself for it.”

Nandini stared at the curd like it had answers.

One Thursday, after the shop had closed, Aarti stuck her head in with her usual lack of boundaries.

“You’re coming for the open mic, right?” she asked. “Don’t back out.”

Nandini groaned. “Aarti, I said maybe.”

Aarti widened her eyes theatrically. “Maybe is what cowards say when they want to sound brave.”

Behind Aarti, Mihir walked in, carrying a book under his arm.

“What open mic?” he asked.

Nandini shot Aarti a look that could have peeled paint. Aarti smiled innocently and disappeared.

Nandini exhaled. “There’s this small thing. At the community library. People read their writing.”

Mihir’s eyes lit up in a way that made her want to throw something at him. “You write?”

“Not like… professionally,” she said quickly. “Just. Sometimes.”

“I’d like to hear you,” he said.

The way he said it was not flirtatious. It was earnest. That made it worse. Earnestness didn’t give you room to be cynical.

“I don’t do public reading,” she said.

“Why?”

Because in public, people decided who you were and then told you. Because the moment you offered your words, they belonged to everyone.

Nandini shrugged instead. “I’m not that person.”

Mihir studied her for a second, then said quietly, “You already are. You just haven’t admitted it out loud.”

Nandini stared at him. “You’ve known me for two weeks.”

“And in two weeks,” he said, “I’ve seen you tell a teenager that her feelings aren’t a problem to solve. I’ve seen you put a book in an uncle’s hand and make him look less lonely. I’ve seen you run a shop that shouldn’t survive and keep it alive anyway. Don’t tell me you’re not that person.”

Nandini’s eyes stung, and she hated that too.

“You’re saying all this because you want me to read something,” she said, trying for sarcasm.

“I’m saying all this because you deserve to hear it,” he replied. “Reading is just… one way.”

Nandini looked away, pretending to straighten a pile of books.

Finally, she said, “Fine. I’ll go. But if I faint, I’m blaming you.”

Mihir’s grin returned. “Fair. I’ll bring water. And a chair.”

The community library in their suburb wasn’t fancy. It had plastic chairs, yellowing posters, and a librarian who treated overdue books like personal betrayal.

About thirty people showed up for the open mic. Mostly students. A few aunties. One man who read jokes like he was performing at a corporate event.

Nandini sat in the back, holding a sheet of paper so tightly it was beginning to crease.

Mihir sat one row ahead, turned halfway in his chair so he could see her, as if she might bolt.

When her name was called, her body moved before her brain agreed.

She walked up to the front, faced the microphone, and saw the room: not hostile, not kind, just waiting.

She took a breath.

“This is…” Her voice caught. She tried again. “This is called Banyan & Paper.”

And then the words came.

She spoke about the shop. About her mother’s hands pricing books with a pencil. About the way people came in looking for one thing and left with another. About the slow grief of watching reading become unfashionable. About holding a space together when the world told you it didn’t matter.

She didn’t mention her mother’s illness. She didn’t mention her bank balance. She didn’t perform pain.

She just told the truth.

When she finished, there was a beat of silence. Then applause. Real applause, not polite.

Nandini stepped down, slightly dizzy, and returned to her seat.

Mihir looked at her like she’d done something impossible.

“I told you,” he whispered.

“Don’t,” she whispered back. “Don’t make me cry in public.”

He smiled, but his eyes were damp. “Okay.”

Outside, later, under the streetlight near the paan shop, he said, “You were brilliant.”

Nandini exhaled shakily. “I feel like I ran a marathon without training.”

“That’s what it looks like when you do something you’ve been avoiding,” he said.

And then he kissed her.

Not dramatically. Not to prove a point. Just like it was the next honest thing.

Nandini kissed him back, and for a moment, the suburb felt suspended: the local train rumble in the distance, the smell of rain on concrete, the fact of tomorrow waiting.

After that, their closeness grew faster.

It always did once you crossed that line.

Mihir started coming over. Not often, because her mother was home, and Nandini had a complicated relationship with private life being witnessed. But sometimes he’d stand at the door with fruits or masala biscuits and say, “Aunty ke liye.”

Her mother would eye him with suspicious fondness.

“Tumhara kaam kya hai?” her mother asked one evening, not bothering with softness.

Mihir paused. “Consulting,” he said.

Nandini’s mother raised an eyebrow. “That word means nothing.”

Mihir smiled politely. “I help companies… fix problems.”

Her mother gave him the look only Indian mothers could give: the look that said I’m letting you speak, but don’t think I’m believing you.

Nandini watched Mihir carefully. He didn’t seem offended. He didn’t seem defensive. He seemed… careful.

Careful was okay. Careful was better than arrogant.

Still, there were things that didn’t add up.

He knew how to talk to people. Not just in a friendly way. In a practised way.

He was too comfortable in expensive spaces. Not showy, but unbothered.

He paid in cash, always.

And sometimes, when his phone rang, his entire face would change for a second. Like someone had called him by a name he wasn’t using.

Nandini told herself she was being dramatic. She told herself she was looking for problems because peace felt unfamiliar.

Then, one evening, she walked back to the shop after locking up, because she’d forgotten her keys.

She took the side lane behind the building, where the photocopy shop dumped paper scraps, and the snack stall stored gas cylinders.

She heard voices.

Low. Urgent.

A woman’s voice, sharp and controlled. “You can’t keep doing this.”

Mihir’s voice. Different. Cleaner. “I told you, I’m not available.”

“You’re not a college boy playing house in the suburbs,” the woman snapped. “You have responsibilities.”

Nandini froze behind a stack of cardboard, heart climbing into her throat.

“You can handle it,” Mihir said.

“I can handle it for a week,” the woman said. “Not indefinitely. And not when you’re ignoring calls. This is getting noticed.”

A pause.

Then the woman said, “Mihir Mehta, this isn’t romantic. It’s reckless.”

Nandini’s blood went cold.

Mehta.

Not an unusual surname. But the way she said it. Like it carried weight. Like it was a name that opened doors.

Mihir’s voice softened, but there was steel under it. “Don’t use my full name like you’re scolding a child.”

“You’re behaving like one,” she shot back. “The board meeting is tomorrow. The Pune acquisition is hanging. Your father is asking questions.”

Nandini felt dizzy. Father. Board. Acquisition.

This wasn’t just consulting. This was a life she hadn’t been invited into. A life that didn’t include second-hand bookstores and open mic nights.

“You’re going to get attached,” the woman said, and now there was something almost weary in her voice. “And then what? You think she’ll just… fit?”

“She doesn’t need to fit,” Mihir said.

“You’re not listening.” The woman lowered her voice. “She’ll pay the price for this long before you do. That’s how it works.”

Nandini pressed her hand to her mouth because something between a laugh and a sob threatened to come out.

Mihir said, very quietly, “I’m not lying to hurt her.”

“You’re lying to be loved safely,” the woman replied. “That’s still lying.”

Silence.

Then footsteps. The woman’s heels clicked away.

Mihir exhaled like someone who’d been holding his breath for days.

Nandini stumbled backwards, stepped on a plastic bottle, and the sound made Mihir turn.

Their eyes met across the lane.

For half a second, both of them looked like strangers.

“Nandu,” he said, and the nickname landed wrong. Like a stolen intimacy.

Nandini’s voice came out thin. “Who are you?”

Mihir opened his mouth, closed it, then said, “Can we talk inside?”

Nandini shook her head. “No. You don’t get inside. Not right now.”

His face tightened. He took one step toward her.

Nandini held up her hand. “Stop.”

He stopped.

“Tell me,” she said, voice steady now in a way that surprised her. “Don’t perform. Don’t manage my emotions. Just tell me.”

Mihir swallowed. “My name is Mihir Mehta,” he said. “That part is true. I… didn’t lie about my name. I lied by omission.”

Nandini laughed once, sharply. “That’s a fancy way to say you lied.”

He flinched. “Yes.”

“What are you?” she asked. “Consultant? Business heir? What? Because the lane behind my shop is not where ‘board meetings’ happen.”

Mihir looked down for a second, then back up. “My family… has businesses,” he said. “I work in them. I run a part of it.”

“And you thought saying ‘consulting’ was… what? Charming?”

“It was cowardly,” he said, and at least he didn’t deny it.

Nandini felt something inside her go very quiet, the way a room goes quiet when someone says something true and ugly.

“Why?” she asked.

Mihir’s voice broke slightly. “Because when people know, they don’t see me. They see the name. They see what I can offer. They see access. And with you—” He stopped, as if the sentence scared him.

“With me?” Nandini prompted, even though she already knew she’d regret it.

“With you,” he said, “I felt like I could be… a person.”

Nandini stared at him. She wanted to be moved. She wanted to soften. But something harder rose in her chest.

“You didn’t trust me,” she said.

Mihir’s face tightened. “I did—”

“No,” she cut in. “You trusted your own fear. You trusted your own script. You didn’t trust me to choose.”

He went still.

Nandini continued, words coming now like they’d been waiting. “Do you understand what you did? You let me imagine a future. You let me… step into something. And you knew, somewhere in your head, you knew that if this went wrong, it would cost me more than it would ever cost you.”

Mihir’s eyes shone. “I wasn’t trying to…”

“I know you weren’t trying,” Nandini said, and the fact that she believed that made her angrier. “That’s the problem. You didn’t even see the imbalance. Or you saw it and didn’t want to look at it.”

He whispered, “I did see it.”

Nandini held his gaze. “And?”

“And I still wanted to be with you,” he said, voice raw. “I still do.”

For a moment, the lane felt too small for the truth sitting between them.

Nandini looked away because if she looked too long, she’d remember the other version of him: the one who held her hand in the library, the one who listened to her words like they mattered, the one who sat on the shop floor and read quietly like he belonged there.

Her voice came out tired. “I don’t know what to do with this.”

“I’ll tell you everything,” Mihir said quickly, like he’d been waiting for permission. “Not managed. Not filtered. Everything.”

Nandini stared at the broken plastic bottle on the ground. Then she said, softly, “You should have done that before.”

“I know,” he said, and it sounded like it hurt.

Nandini felt tears rise, annoying and hot. She wiped them away with the heel of her hand, angry at her own body for being loyal to feelings.

Mihir took a cautious step closer. “Nandini…”

She stepped back. “Not today.”

He stopped, visibly restraining himself. “Okay.”

Nandini swallowed. “Tell me one thing. And don’t answer like a man in a boardroom.”

He nodded.

She asked, “Was any of it real?”

His voice turned quiet, almost rough. “All of it.”

“The books?” she demanded.

“Yes.”

“The way you looked at me?”

“Yes.”

“The kiss?”

He didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”

Nandini’s chest tightened painfully. “Then why ruin it with a lie?”

Mihir’s laugh was small and bitter. “Because I didn’t know how to be loved without one.”

That sentence landed hard. Not romantic. Not redeeming. Just honest in a way that made the skin on her arms prickle.

Nandini reached into her bag, pulled out her keys, and stared at them as if they were instructions.

Mihir stood there in the lane, not reaching for her, not touching her, as if he’d finally understood that touching was not the same as staying.

He took out his wallet, hesitated, then pulled out a card and held it out to her.

Nandini didn’t take it.

“It’s my number,” he said. “My real number. Not the one I’ve been using.”

“Why are you giving it to me?” she asked.

“Because I’m done hiding,” he said. “And because I’m not going to chase you. I don’t have the right. But I also don’t want to disappear and let you think you did something wrong.”

Nandini’s throat tightened. She hated that he was saying the right thing now. She hated that she still wanted to believe him.

She reached out and took the card, not because she forgave him, but because she wanted the truth to remain available if she chose it later.

Mihir watched her fingers close around it as if it were a fragile thing.

“I’m sorry,” he said again. Not dramatic. Not pleading. Just plain.

Nandini nodded once. She didn’t trust her voice.

She unlocked the shop door, stepped inside, and turned on the light. The shelves stood there, patient and familiar, like they’d seen everything and survived anyway.

Mihir stayed outside. She could feel him, even without looking.

After a minute, she heard his footsteps retreat.

When she finally turned back toward the glass door, the lane was empty.

That night, Nandini sat on the balcony of their flat, listening to the local train rattle past in the distance.

Her mother slept inside, the fan still aimed at her face like a stubborn guardian.

Aarti had texted twice. Kya hua? and then Don’t be stupid, ya. Nandini didn’t reply.

She held Mihir’s card between two fingers, turning it over and over like a coin.

On the other hand, her phone glowed with an unsent message.

I don’t know what to do with you.

She didn’t send it.

Below, someone argued with a delivery boy. Somewhere, a dog barked. The city continued, indifferent and intimate at once.

Nandini thought about the shop. About her mother. About the years she’d spent making peace with staying.

She thought about Mihir’s face when she read at the open mic, like he’d seen her become someone she’d been hiding from.

She thought about the lane behind the shop, about that one sentence that had cut clean:

You’re lying to be loved safely.

Nandini didn’t know what tomorrow would hold. She didn’t know whether love could survive the kind of truth that arrived late and messy.

But she knew this: she was done being treated like an afterthought in someone else’s escape plan.

The phone screen dimmed. She tapped it awake again.

The message still sat there, unsent.

She stared at it a long time, then deleted the text entirely.

And then, because she was not a saint and because she was human, she didn’t delete the number.

Mumbai Memories: Our Household Helpers

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Growing up in India, everyone had a daily helper who came in for a few hours a day to clean the house and maybe do a bit of cooking or help. This was completely normal to us, and pretty much everyone had someone come in and help with chores. The truly rich had live-in helpers, while we middle-class people had the daily helpers.

The first helper I remember was Maria, a mother’s helper who worked with us as a mother’s helper when my sister was born, and if I remember correctly, she worked until I started school. Her main role was playing with me and helping my mother with any chores related to my sister and me. She was a young girl and worked with us until I started kindergarten, and she also moved away after she got married. I don’t have a lot of memories about her; I only vaguely remember her face and remember that she used to play with me.

Our other helper during Maria’s time was a middle-aged Maharashtrian lady whose name I never learned. We called her “Bai,” and that’s all I remember of her name. She was a solid, no-nonsense lady who worked in my house, along with a few more in the area. She would come twice a day to sweep, mop and clean the dishes as well as do some dusting and heavy-duty cleaning. Her husband worked in a mill, but her biggest sorrow was her sons. She had two of them, and both gave her grief. The oldest got into the wrong company and was also arrested by the police once. The younger hated going to school and would skive at any opportunity he got. She worked for us for a long time, maybe 10ish years. Then, she decided to retire and move back to her village in the Konkan district. She did keep in touch with my mother and would drop by when she was in Mumbai, and she also invited my mother to her older son’s wedding, which my parents attended. I wonder how she is doing now.

After Bai, we had a couple of transient helpers who did not stay long, and so I don’t have many memories about them. There was this Telugu family who lived in the area who worked for many families, and so when my mother was looking for a new helper, she asked that family, and they agreed to work in our home. This family is truly an inspiration to everyone. The parents were not educated, maybe even illiterate, but they had high hopes and dreams for their children, two boys and a girl, especially the boys. They did any and every job that came their way and made sure to educate their sons. I don’t think they spent a lot of time thinking about their daughter, who was maybe 5-8 years younger than me. She dropped out of school early and used to come with her mother to work in people’s homes, and as she grew older, she also started working in homes. The sons, on the other hand, spent their time studying, though they did help in washing cars and other chores before school started. After school, they moved to college, and the daughter was married off. Last I heard, both sons had completed their MBAs, and one was working in a bank in Hyderabad, and the other was in the Middle East; both were married and with their own families. Truly, this family was the epitome of what hard work, dedication, and a growth mindset can do for you. The parents moved in with the son in Hyderabad and are enjoying their retirement. The daughter still lives in Mumbai. She is happy with her life, though I wonder if she sometimes resents her family for not giving her the same chances her brothers got.

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After this family, we had two helpers who came as a package deal, probably. The first was someone whom I called Susheela Aunty, who was recommended by my mom’s friend. She started working for my mom in the late nineties. I had already started working by then, so I didn’t interact much with her. She is a lovely person, and her story is also one of struggle. She has three sons, of whom one passed away recently due to cirrhosis of the liver; the middle son is married, and his wife, who comes from a higher social strata, does not want to have anything to do with her in-laws; and the youngest son had a fractured education and is now trying to finish his studies, balancing work while doing it. Susheela aunty stopped working in our home a couple of years after starting because she got a job in a nearby school and got her friend Mary to work in her stead. But she still kept in touch with my parents and was there when they needed help, so much so that she was also authorised to open the flat when my parents travelled, if anyone needed access to our home.

Mary aunty is another person who is close to my parents. She used to call them the equivalent of “mother” and “father” in Tamil, her native language, and her children called them their grandparents. She would spend hours in the house, making sure the house was spick and span, and my mother had to tell her to go to her next job. They could sleep when she was at home, knowing the house was safe and she, along with Susheela Aunty, had full access to the house; they were that trusted. Even today, after almost four years of moving out of Mumbai, both sides call each other, and when I am in Mumbai, they come to see me and call me if there is anything they need to share.

So this was a short tribute to the women who helped us and who, to a large extent, helped shape my personality. I have learned so much from them that I am always grateful to them and the lessons I learned from them.