I sit on the cold airport floor, knees pulled to my chest, cheek resting on them. This is real. As real as me sitting down on this cold airport floor. This has happened. This is my life now. The thing that happens to people that defines their whole life has happened. This is the before and after. Before, when I knew happiness and hope and love and joy. And after, which is a countdown to death that started from death.

  My phone is on the bench behind me. I’m still waiting for his call. Not just me, everyone is. Everyone’s on their phones calling the number that won’t ever be picked up again. A number that will become invalid after a few months. A number that will be given to another person. A number that will carry the story of that new person, not mine. Like he didn’t exist. Like he didn’t tell me he loved me all those hundreds of times by calling from that phone.

  I feel nothing. My palms are cold. The tears stream down, but they mean nothing. My lips are cracked. I haven’t spoken in a while. But what will I say? What’s left to say? What’s left to do?

  Someone handed me a water bottle ten minutes ago. I think it was Raghav. He’s been moving around. I keep seeing him pace from the corner of my eyes. How ugly is that. Wasn’t he nervous? Paralysed? And look at him. Finding purpose in death. How cruel. Sometimes, he’s talking to airline staff, arguing quietly with someone, hugging a sobbing man, offering tissues, calling someone’s family. How many people has that sobbing man lost today? Does he feel it like I do? I doubt it.

  I close my eyes. I try to remember Aman’s voice. The last thing he said to me? What did we say to each other this morning? When was the last time I saw him? On the video call, yes. His crooked smile. What else do I remember about him? His stupid teasing. His obsession with the World Cup stats and IPL teams. Yes, I should keep going. What is a person if not a sum total of what he feels, likes, dislikes, hates? I can stack all these memories up, make a person out of it. But . . . but . . . nothing comes through clearly. Like I’m trying to tune into a radio station that’s suddenly gone off-air. Static. Just static. I’m starting to forget him already. Panicked, I open his chat. It’s too painful. It’s too painful.

  Last seen.

  I have seen him the last time.

  Then my phone buzzes. Again. A third time.

  Tejal.

  My hand moves on its own.

  I answer.

  ‘Hello?’ My voice is sandpaper.

  There’s silence. Then her voice, clipped and frantic. ‘Aditi. Where are you?’

  I don’t answer.

  ‘I saw the list,’ she says.

  I don’t answer.

  She continues, ‘Aman was on it.’

  I want to say he missed the flight. Changed his mind. But my lips part and nothing comes out.

  ‘I’m coming,’ she says before I can say anything. The line cuts.

  ‘It’s too late,’ I say after it cuts.

  Thirty minutes later, I see her through the glass. She’s running. Eyes scanning until they find mine. She’s arguing with the guard. A little later, he lets her go. As I look at her, it’s hard to fathom I was angry with her. Did any emotion mean anything in front of what I’m feeling right now?

  She drops beside me on the floor and pulls me into a hug so tight I feel something crack deep inside. I sob like a child. I shake and she holds me closer and it only makes it worse.

  ‘I should’ve called you,’ I whisper.

  ‘Stop,’ she says. ‘Just stop.’

  Her hand finds mine.

  Raghav is nearby. Hovering. Why is he not broken? I feel anger prick at my skin. I see him hand tissues to a mother holding a photocopy of her son’s passport. I see him place a gentle hand on an old man’s shoulder. I see him crouch to pick up a crying kid’s fallen toy and hand it back with a nod.

  ‘No survivors confirmed yet,’ I say. ‘Maybe.’

  She nods, but we both know what yet really means.

  ‘I keep thinking . . .’

  ‘Don’t do this,’ she says. ‘Please don’t go there. It’s not because of you.’

  ‘It’s not,’ I say. ‘It’s because of them . . . Maa . . .’ I say between sobs. ‘Papa . . . Bhaiya . . . his family . . . it’s because of them.’

  Raghav appears. His jacket in hand. He drapes it around me. Places juice, biscuits, a charger near me. His jacket . . . that brought me bad luck. He should have never placed it on me in the night.

  ‘I have called Aman’s brother,’ he says. ‘He will be here soon.’

  ‘Don’t be oversmart!’ I scream at him. ‘They don’t deserve to be here!’

  Raghav gives me a long look and walks off. I watch his back disappear into the crowd. Carrying grief like it’s his job? Does he even feel it? He doesn’t.

  I lean into Tejal. My body into her. I feel if I don’t clutch her, I will float away into nothingness. Her thumb strokes mine, absentmindedly, like she’s rewinding the months we didn’t talk. Erasing away everything.

  The ambulances outside haven’t moved. Their lights still flash. Red, then blue, then red again. We stay there. Together. And that’s when I see two people carry a stretcher out. On it, a charred body. Hard. Falling over. Lifeless. A person. Now nothing.

  14

  Raghav

  We’re asked to move.

  Not gently. Not cruelly either. Just . . . officially.

  In a country like ours—so many people that people wish there were less people sometimes—that everything keeps moving; it has to. So many people, but fewer now. Who wished there were fewer people? We have to move, they keep telling us. Like our grief has timed out in this corridor. Enough, like they are saying. Please, it’s an airport, we need to keep this running. People have places to go, lives to live. You need to take this grief somewhere private now. It’s too ugly. A lot of people are watching. You can’t cry here any more. The world needs to work, the wheels are turning, there’s no pause.

  Someone from the airline says they’ll be shifting families to a lounge area that’s being emptied as we speak. I can’t be in that lounge. I’m not family.

  Megha’s brother told me they will be in Delhi in a few hours, and her parents don’t need to see me. I tried to make him understand, but I think I was being stupid. Why would they understand? I was the one who caused this. Megha’s brother reminded me of that.

  ‘We need to leave,’ I tell Aditi and her friend.

  ‘I’m Tejal,’ the girl says.

  ‘Aman’s brother’s coming. He’s driving down from Dehradun. He will be here in an hour,’ I tell them both.

  Aditi looks at me. ‘I can’t see him. I won’t see him.’

  I nod at her like I know what to do now. We walk slowly through the terminal, through a world still fucking pretending to be normal. Same announcements go on. Flights are landing now. I overheard there are alternate runways. Seems cruel. An alternate path for the rest of the world to keep churning, keep moving, while ours is incinerated in a fireball.

  ‘Aman’s birthday is in three days.’

  The first time, I think I misheard it.

  ‘Aman’s birthday is in three days.’

  But then, I hear it again and again and again. I turn to look at her and Tejal shakes her head to tell me that I shouldn’t. Aditi whispers it like a prayer she can’t let go of, as if willing to move time three days ahead, and he will be born again.

  We don’t enter the lounge. The guard outside asks if we are family. Show us the proof, they ask. I wish I could rip my heart open and show it to them.

  ‘The passenger’s name is Megha Barua,’ I tell the guard. ‘The family is coming.’

  ‘And who are you?’ the guard asks kindly—who would have spent the rest of the morning shoving and shouting at people. But kindness? What place does kindness have in my life now?

  ‘Boyfriend,’ I say, the word grating. Not boyfriend, soon-to-be husband if all went right for a few years, because it would have.

  ‘You can wait outside,’ he tells me.

  There’s a TV on in the distance. Blackened, charred bodies. Bodies. Bodies. I can’t wrap my head around the word body. She’s not a body.

  I don’t want to enter the lounge. It seems awash with grief. I hear someone say that identification will take days. I could pick Megha out from a crowd from a whiff of her perfume. Escada. So distinct. So cheap too, she used to say. But the healthcare workers on the television are wearing masks. How will they identify her? Every word is jagged. Identify? Why will they have to identify? She will talk. She will say, I’m Megha Barua.

  But bodies don’t identify.

  My Megha is now a body.

  We sit in the new holding area. Aditi leans forward, elbows on her knees, staring at nothing. Every few minutes, she unlocks her phone. Refreshes. Again. And again. I want to do the same. Tejal has her arms around Aditi and holds her like she’s trying to stitch her back together. Tejal glances at me briefly.

  ‘You just met her?’ Tejal asks.

  I nod. ‘They were together on the flight,’ I explain. ‘Megha Barua. She . . . was leaving her family for me.’

  Tejal processes that. Quickly. There’s a certain anger in her eyes, like she distrusts me. Fair. No reason to trust me. Or anything. The world’s a fucked-up place with no rules, no certainties, no hope, nothing. Then her eyes flick to Aditi, who’s curled into herself, looking small. Breakable. Broken?

  ‘And they’re coming here?’ she asks, her voice stern and staccato, already knowing the answer. ‘Then both of you can’t be here when they arrive.’

  Aditi looks up, eyes red and wide, like she’s hearing this for the first time.

  Tejal softens, but not too much. ‘Aditi . . . I know this sounds harsh. But you need to go home. You can’t be here. You have to be anywhere but here.’ She gestures vaguely around. ‘You need space to breathe.’

  Aditi doesn’t answer. Just stares.

  Tejal sighs and presses on. ‘I’d have taken you in, you know that. But your brother came to see my parents. And he was totally . . . he created quite a scene. My parents have asked me not to talk to you.’

  Aditi nods.

  ‘I don’t want you to,’ says Tejal. ‘. . . but you have to go home.’

  Aditi’s lips part. ‘I’m not going back to my parents. They caused this.’

  Tejal nods, like she saw that coming. ‘I know, baby. I know that. They were awful, I know it. But still, if you can, maybe just stay there for a bit. Use the roof over your head. Wait it out. Move out when you’re ready.’

  ‘No,’ Aditi whispers. ‘Not even for a day.’

  Tejal looks helpless for a second. Then she straightens, already trying to fix it. ‘Okay. Then . . . I’ll see what I can do. I have a little money. I’ll talk to someone—’

  ‘She can stay with me,’ I say.

  Tejal turns sharply. ‘What?’

  ‘Just for now,’ I say. ‘A few days. A week. Till she figures out the next step.’

  There’s a silence. Tejal studies me. She doesn’t say yes, but she doesn’t say no either.

  Finally, she nods, quietly. ‘Okay. But I’ll help. With money, finding a PG, getting her a place. It won’t be permanent.’

  ‘I can’t,’ Aditi murmurs.

  ‘You can,’ I say, gently. ‘It’s just for now. We’ll figure it out.’

  I pick up Aditi’s bag. Tejal stands and helps Aditi up. None of us speak as we walk to the cab I book. It’s a slow, heavy shuffle through corridors too bright, too active, too alive, for grief.

  We reach my building. The one Megha and I picked together. We had a Pinterest board of curtain ideas. She had a Pinterest board. Fought over lampshades and bed sheets. She rejected everything I picked. This was supposed to be a beginning.

  I unlock the door.

  Half-unpacked boxes.

  Aditi steps inside and stands there. Not quite walking in. Not quite staying out. Just . . . leaning into the wall. No one says anything. There’s nothing left to say. What will anyone say? What’s there left to say?

  The world’s a quiet place suddenly.

  PART 2

  TWELVE MONTHS LATER

  15

  Raghav

  The milk boils over before I can switch off the gas.

  Bad luck they say. Fuck bad luck! I don’t care. How much worse can things get? The hissing milk on the stove doesn’t scare me. I don’t care, I don’t care. I lower the flame, add two spoons of sugar, a bit of ginger and finally, the tea leaves. The smell of ginger slowly overtakes the sour, burnt milk. It needs time. Everything needs time now. I catch my reflection in the mirror. It irritably asks me the same question again. Tell me what happens next? How long are you going to drag this thing out? Nothing happens next. That’s my answer. I will make this tea, drink it. It’s Sunday. I will binge on something I’ve already watched. That’s it.

  Aditi’s still in bed. Pretending to be. There’s always that quiet shuffle from the other room. And then, quietude again. She sleeps in fits and starts. By the time she walks in, the tea is ready in two steel cups. We broke the mugs two months ago during a stupid fight about detergent. Never replaced them. We had a long-drawn-out argument about whose fault it was—the one who kept it close to the edge? Or the one who turned without looking and knocked it over? Since the jury is still out on that one, new mugs haven’t come in. Or I haven’t brought in new mugs. Aditi doesn’t have any money. She’s a freeloader.

  That explains the Aeropostale T-shirt she’s wearing. It’s eight years old and I’d put it aside to be used as a mop. She told me that it was a near crime to throw away that T-shirt. When I showed her the gaping hole, she put it across herself and demonstrated that if she wore it, the hole would be around her thigh and thus inconsequential. It was the fourth T-shirt she had made me keep. Now I have to see it every time it’s my turn to do the laundry.

  We are both holding on to things.

  ‘I would have made the chai,’ she says, her voice still rough with sleep.

  ‘I like making it,’ I reply. ‘I like mine better.’

  She peeks over my shoulder, grumbles. ‘But then you make the stove dirty. And I don’t like the burning smell.’

  ‘There are perks I get because I pay the rent,’ I say.

  She rolls her eyes. ‘Keep showing off your money,’ she says. ‘I will move out next month.’

  ‘That’s what you said last month. And the month before that. I don’t need a two-bedroom. The only reason—’

  She’s not listening to me any more. She picks up her cup and takes a sip. ‘It’s not good. You got the order wrong again. Yaar, why do you keep doing—’

  ‘I don’t like overboiled tea,’ I argue.

  ‘And yet you drink cup after cup at that gully shop,’ she says. ‘I think you do this on purpose. To annoy me.’

  ‘To drive you out of the house?’ I ask. ‘Could be one of the motives.’

  She takes a sip and catches my gaze. ‘If you really wanted me out of the house,’ she says, her voice dropping low, ‘you would have gotten rid of me.’

  I take a sip too.

  ‘You’ll do the laundry today?’ I ask. ‘If not, tell me now and I’ll do it. I don’t mind.’

  ‘No,’ she says, hands clasped around the cup. ‘I said I will, that means I will. This is the third time you have asked. I will do it, for sure.’

  ‘You say that about a lot of things, then I end up doing them. I don’t mind, but then you promise and don’t follow through. That’s what bothers me.’

  ‘The more you ask me, the more I don’t want to do it.’

  Her phone lights up. She doesn’t check it. Mine buzzes too. It’s the group we had made once: Tejal, Sumrit, Aditi and me. ‘Live for Us’, Sumrit had named it cheekily. Humour is his go-to to deal with what happened. I have lost count of the number of times he has finished meeting me by slapping my back and saying, ‘Don’t kill yourself, bhai.’ Lately, Tejal has been doing that too. Soon there will be more messages in that group. It’s been twelve months since that day.

  I’ll reply to everyone with a simple: Same old, same old.

  What else can they do? What’s happened, has happened. They will send the text and forget about it. Everyone has their own lives. Your grief has no place in anyone else’s life. If there’s anything to learn from all this, it’s that life goes on.

  I get a message. It’s Shilpi asking, ‘You okay?’

  And I reply, ‘Of course I am.’ I don’t drag her into this. How can I? How will she even get it? She can’t.

  We sip our tea in a silence that isn’t peaceful.

  ‘You think it was painless?’ she asks suddenly, not looking at me.

  She’s fixated on this—whether their end was quick, happy, painless. I truly believe—and want to believe—that they were vaporized. A strange word. But everything gone in a second: memories, consciousness, body. Vaporized. Along with several others. Like a light switched off without a warning.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘But I tell myself she died with the excitement of seeing me in her heart.’

  ‘Or sleepy,’ she says.

  ‘Maybe they were sleeping,’ I say.

  ‘Aren’t we both in an optimistic mood?’ she asks and shakes her head. ‘Vulgar to be optimistic on a day like today.’ She turns, opens the refrigerator. ‘I’m making toast. You want?’

  ‘Only if you’re using the toaster.’

  ‘No,’ she replies. ‘Tawa.’

  ‘I don’t want ghee.’

  ‘I’ll use butter.’

  ‘What’s the point? You’ll put ghee anyway. Why add more?’ I tell her.

  ‘How much more weight will you lose?’ she scoffs.

  ‘Don’t be my mom.’

  ‘I can’t,’ she says. ‘I’d have to be an asshole to be that.’ She then meets my eyes. ‘Look at you flinch. Right time to remind you she caused this too.’

  She says that kind of thing often. Were they responsible? Of course they were fucking responsible. But was I too? I can’t keep palming off all the blame on them in the hope that it would make it easy. She’s been doing that for the past year and it doesn’t seem to be working for her. Despite eating strictly junk, she has lost weight. She’s a far cry from when I met her—soft, baby-faced. Now, I see the hard lines on her face. And it’s because despite blaming it on the world—the airline, Aman’s parents, her own parents, the pilots—she thinks she’s responsible too and spends some days without eating anything at all.