She takes the bread out. Checks the packet. ‘It’s expired.’

  ‘Throw it away, then.’

  ‘A couple of days don’t matter,’ she says, taking out two slices. ‘Anyway, all the germs will die in the heat.’

  Just then, her phone rings. She checks the number and then takes the call. ‘Hey . . . yes . . . no . . . not today . . . can we do this tomorrow . . . or wait, day after . . . does that work . . . I understand, ma’am . . . but I’m sure it can wait . . . fine . . . bye.’

  When she sees me looking at her, she shrugs and says, ‘What . . . I wasn’t going to join them.’

  ‘You will sit at home, instead?’ I say, trying my best not to raise my voice.

  She gets these calls every few days. Always turns them down. Says it’s about the money. I think it’s about something else. If she starts working, it will mean she’s moved on. And if she moves on, it means Aman is really gone. Who will tell her drowning yourself in work is a sure shot way to shut up the voices in your head, even if it’s for a little while. Her degree came last month. Couriered in a thick white envelope. She slid it under a pile of books. Never opened it. There’s a grey pouch in the bathroom cabinet. She uses the toothbrush, the cream, and then puts them back inside like she’s always half-packed. Like she needs to be ready, in case Aman comes back to take her away.

  ‘I’m not going to work for peanuts. Get up every day, dress up and go to their office every day? No way,’ she says. ‘And don’t look at me like that. You have work from home all week.’

  ‘Because I’m deathly productive at home.’

  ‘Strange choice of words,’ she says and adds, ‘Anyway, I have money coming in.’

  I know what she means. We both know where it will come from if it does. It’s the only thing she can muster up the strength to do these days: to claim what she believes it rightfully hers.

  ‘Who knows—’ I start to say, but the words feel pointless.

  She cuts me off, her voice suddenly sharp. ‘I know!’ she says. ‘I don’t care. I know what Aman and I were!’

  My phone rings. This time, it’s the courier guy. At the door, a man in a pale blue shirt, holding a clipboard and a stack of envelopes.

  ‘Ms Aditi Gupta?’ he asks.

  ‘She’s inside.’

  ‘Signature?’

  He hands me a thick brown envelope. Her name printed on it. In the corner—small, easy to miss—the airline’s logo. A cold dread washes over me. I walk back in.

  ‘What’s that?’ she asks, though her pale face shows she already knows.

  I hold up the envelope. ‘From the airline.’

  I place it on the table, between her cup and her phone. She doesn’t touch it. It sits on the table as if it’s radioactive. Her breathing has stopped.

  ‘Should I open it?’ I ask, my voice low.

  She doesn’t respond. Her eyes are locked on the envelope, on the airline’s logo. She whispers, ‘Please open it.’

  Inside is a long letter. I skim through it.

  ‘. . . as legal spouse of Mr Aman Sinha . . . compensation according . . . Montreal Convention, 1999 . . . form enclosed for bank details . . . processed within twenty-one working days . . . our condolences for your loss.’

  I put the letter down on the table, the corporate jargon’s cruel. I have read many such letters for her, written many too. She looks up. Tears well up in her eyes, not falling yet, just shimmering. I don’t say anything. There is nothing to say.

  The tears begin to fall. I walk up and take her in my arms, like I’ve done many times in the past year. Her body heaves into me.

  She mumbles into my shoulder, ‘I don’t want it.’

  I knew she didn’t want it.

  And then, with tears coming down heavily, she keeps repeating it, her voice breaking with a raw, desperate agony, a mantra against the finality she can no longer deny, ‘I don’t want it . . . I don’t want it . . . I don’t want it . . .’

  16

  Aditi

  ‘Naman calling.’

  I cut the asshole’s call again and find happiness in doing so. Happiness? Can’t really call it that, can I? Satisfaction, maybe.

  He calls again and I cut it again.

  ‘Is it Naman?’ asks Raghav.

  He’s sitting on the floor, trying to fix the robot vacuum he bought a few days ago. It worked for a while after he paired it with his phone but now it just bumps into things, unsure of where to go. A directionless robot. Raghav’s wearing an old college fest T-shirt with a hole near the shoulder seam. He’s probably going to try and throw it away in the next couple of weeks, I need to keep an eye on it if he does that. It seems pretty nice otherwise.

  I nod. ‘The group is alive today,’ I tell him. ‘Anniversary . . . also people have started getting cheques. Some people are leaving the group too.’

  ‘Grief has a timeline,’ he says, like he keeps telling me and himself. ‘So does anger.’

  He puts the vacuum cleaner aside and starts scrolling through the updates on the Indigo Crash Support Group. What started off as a grief support group, where people would post pictures of the people they’d lost, transformed into a channel for everyone’s anger to hold the airlines accountable and then get them to eventually pay the compensation that the relatives deserved. Relative. That’s what I was. Legal spouse, they say.

  For however little time I might have been.

  ‘Are you going to cash the cheque?’ he asks.

  The cheque still sits on the table, the cheque that Naman’s calling for because he was, apparently, family.

  ‘It will end if I do,’ I say. ‘What will I do if this ends?’

  ‘Live?’

  ‘Oh please! As if you’re living.’

  Before he can defend himself with something silly, my phone lights up. Naman’s texting now.

  ‘What’s he saying?’ asks Raghav.

  ‘Behen ki laudi . . .’ I say. ‘The usual. Should I call him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I think I should.’

  ‘You will do it as a joke,’ he says, ‘and then get stressed yourself.’ Then in a voice that’s more growl than words, he adds, ‘Don’t.’

  But I like bothering Raghav. It gives me something to do, so I call Naman, and he picks up on the first ring. Obviously. He’s a money-hungry asshole.

  ‘Hi, Naman.’

  I put him on loudspeaker and put on my most nonchalant voice because I know it pisses him off. And then, I brace myself for the stream of expletives that are sure to come.

  ‘Behenchod, if you try to take the money, you see—’

  ‘Is that how you talk to your widowed sister-in-law?’ I interrupt him and though the words scrape in my throat when I say them, I still do.

  ‘Three months, saali kuttiya! You were married for three months! No one cares!’

  ‘Apparently, the law does, Bhaiya,’ I say, just to irritate him.

  ‘Case kar dunga,’ he says. ‘This joke marriage will not stand.’

  I know he’s recording the call, so I say, ‘It was a proper marriage, Bhaiya. Aman took a date, we went there, there were witnesses, and there are pictures.’

  ‘THEY WERE PAID TOUTS AT THE REGISTRAR’S OFFICE! Don’t teach me!’ he screams.

  ‘Are we done here, Naman?’

  There’s silence from the other side.

  Then: ‘Are you happy? Having killed him and now taking away the money from us? Listen, randi—’

  The word hangs in the air, venomous and sharp. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Raghav’s hands pause on the vacuum cleaner. I cut the call before Naman can finish his tirade. Naman calls me again and I cut his call. These little revenges are what keep me alive.

  ‘Well,’ I say, my voice raspy. ‘That was fun.’

  ‘You want to talk about it?’ he asks, his gaze still on the defunct robot.

  ‘Absolutely not.’

  It’s our familiar refrain, the wall we build between us every few days.

  Raghav gives up on the robot. I can tell he has; his jaw is clenched, a tell I’ve learnt from seeing him on his work calls. Two minutes later, he lightly kicks the vacuum—careful not to break it—then processes the return on his phone and hides the robot behind the sofa, out of sight. He’ll order something else now; he had nine deliveries yesterday. It’s how he copes.

  ‘They could have just written “wife” in that letter,’ I tell him, the words coming out in a rush. ‘Instead of “legal spouse”.’

  ‘Technically, you never got to play wife,’ he replies, his voice flat.

  That line stings more than it should. I don’t reply. Raghav was the third person to know about our marriage. After Aman and me. The first time a letter came from the airline, when the initial investigation was over, he was the one who read it out loud.

  ‘Legal spouse,’ he had said, raising his eyebrows. ‘You lied to me?’

  ‘You were a stranger,’ I’d told him, and I remember the way his face softened then.

  ‘Still,’ he’d said, ‘kind of impressive. I mean, I get it.’

  ‘Impressive?’

  ‘I mean . . . commitment. Even if it was just on paper.’

  I remember asking him if he and Megha had ever thought of doing something like that.

  ‘We talked about it since every apartment that I liked wanted married people,’ he’d admitted. ‘I asked around too. But there was a five-month waiting period.’

  Aman and I were impulsive. We joked about it all the time—‘Let’s just get married today’, ‘Can’t wait to be married to you’, until one day, he got a date at the registrar’s office. Why did he do it? To call my bluff? Because he thought I’d run if he didn’t? He’s not here to tell me anything any more. Back then, I didn’t question it one bit.

  ‘And you went through with it?’ Raghav had asked.

  ‘Wouldn’t you have?’

  He’d nodded. ‘If I were that sure? Yes.’

  Everyone else who’s heard the story since—Tejal, my parents, Aman’s family—they all think it’s bizarre.

  Everyone except Raghav.

  We spend the next few hours, refreshing and doomscrolling. Today’s the day we can really lean into what happened. The compensation disbursement has given news outlets a story to report on. They will forget about it tomorrow. That’s just the nature of news, of people. I know I should shower. But today feels like the wrong day for any sort of movement. But Raghav has now showered. He has a lead on me. Which is rare in the grief Olympics of this house.

  I’m about to get up when there’s a knock. Three quick raps.

  Neither of us moves.

  Then, a voice:

  ‘Open the door, gadhon.’

  It’s Tejal.

  ‘Khol bhai!’

  It’s Sumrit too.

  Raghav sighs. Doesn’t budge.

  I go.

  The door creaks as I open it. It always does. Raghav says he’s fixed it, but everything he fixes still creaks like this. This house is . . . unfixable. Us, the door, the burning smell of the stove, the vacuum. Tejal’s standing there, worry creasing her forehead. Next to her is Sumrit, her boyfriend. She’s wearing Sumrit’s XL T-shirt with leggings. Tejal’s tall, 5’6” and even then the T-shirt looks like a large shopping bag on her. It used to be a medium, then a large. Now XL. Apparently, Sumrit’s bulking up and I want to tell him he should stop. There are two momo trays peeking out of her bag. Her eyes scan me, then the hallway.

  She raises an eyebrow. ‘We expected worse.’

  ‘Why? Is today special?’

  Sumrit rolls his eyes. ‘Where’s Raghav? We’re going out.’

  ‘I’m going nowhere,’ Raghav calls out from inside.

  Tejal barges in. ‘Both of you can’t just sit here.’

  Raghav flops down on the sofa, grabs the remote. ‘Of course I can. I pay the rent here.’

  ‘Again with the rent?’ Tejal groans.

  Sumrit’s on the sofa too, peeking at the highlights Raghav’s put on the television and tells him, ‘Bhai, let’s go. It will be a nice change. We can’t leave you alone.’

  ‘Please, guys. Get up,’ Tejal insists. ‘This is not good. Both of you alone, like this.’

  ‘Like what?’ I ask.

  Tejal rolls her eyes. ‘You look like you were just about to cry. So shut up.’

  Neither of us replies.

  Sumrit takes the remote from Raghav and switches it off. ‘Bhai, Tejal’s scaring me that you . . . you guys are on the seventh floor. It’s risky. So, who knows what you might do? So . . . come bhai.’

  ‘You think we’ll kill ourselves?’ I ask.

  ‘Don’t say that,’ Tejal protests. ‘Don’t put that energy out into the universe.’

  Raghav half-smiles. Or whatever his version of a smile is these days. ‘Not a bad idea. Instant death. We could look into it.’

  ‘Point,’ I say. ‘Of all the instant death methods, this one ranks the highest.’

  ‘Guys, seriously,’ Tejal interrupts. ‘Stop feeding this thought. Let’s go.’

  ‘No,’ Raghav says flatly. ‘I have a match to watch—’

  ‘GUYS. PLEASE,’ Tejal yells. ‘I’M NOT STOPPING TILL YOU COME.’

  17

  Raghav

  There’s a spot behind a metro pillar. A known blind spot. It’s where we have hung out before. And there’s a sewer five minutes away, in case someone needs to vomit. Most likely that will be Aditi. She’s not a lightweight. If anything, she might be a budding alcoholic. Once she starts, she can’t stop. And when she does, it’s too late. Lately, drinking is Sumrit and Tejal’s go-to in the healing process they have decided for us. We indulge them because they have been there for us.

  Right from Day One.

  Tejal had almost camped in our house and put Aditi on suicide watch. She would freak out every time Aditi would go to the balcony. As Tejal told me later, she was the one who recruited Sumrit—a reluctant participant to say the least—to help me get better. The first month was the worst, obviously. A lot of crying happened. Existential crisis, what’s the point of living . . . that sort of stuff. Tejal said all the right words, you’re loved, live for us—aided by the internet, I’m sure. Sumrit was always in the background, helping in a more functional way. When my office e-mailed asking when I would be back, it was he who stopped me from sending a ‘Fuck you’ to them. He would restock groceries, pay the bills, keep the house running.

  Once, I heard him say to Tejal, ‘Maybe we are spoiling them. We should let them do things on their own.’

  ‘Are you crazy?’ Tejal had thundered and gave him a laundry list of things to do.

  It was Tejal who had kept Aditi from going full-tilt berserk on her family. Aditi’s Bhaiya had reached out, knocked on the door one day and demanded she come home with them. Aditi had brandished a knife and threatened to slit her throat right there if he took one step further. With the hindsight of a year, it sounds crazy, but at the time I remember watching it unfold and finding it the most logical thing to do. In fact, I envied her. I saw her dead on the floor, blood spilling from her throat, and was jealous. I wanted to be dead, too.

  When her Bhaiya didn’t let up, Aditi went on the offensive and told her family about her jiju’s affair. It was only when she threatened to drop all the proof in the family WhatsApp group that her family retreated. For a couple of months, she would send threatening voice messages to them until Tejal, as she later confessed, made her stop.

  She had also found a new project. When it was slated that the airlines would pay compensation to everyone’s kin who had died in the aircraft, the airlines tried to bury everyone in documents. Aditi took it on herself to fill out people’s forms, print copies, make folders, get everything attested. She buried herself in the torture of administrative work

  I didn’t harbour any feelings for my family. I was dead, instead. They didn’t evoke any emotions within me. When Shilpi reached out and then my parents, I just . . . they were strangers to me. They said conciliatory things, but they were just empty words to me. When I told them I didn’t want to talk to them any more, that they were dead to me, it was not out of spite, but out of feeling nothing. There were times I tried to evoke something in me, think of them as dead—a road accident, a fire in the house, cancer—but even then, I felt nothing.

  The only people who meant anything to me were Tejal, Sumrit and our housemaid. Trauma brings people together and although it didn’t bring Aditi and me any closer—we often told each other we brought bad luck to each other—it did bring Tejal and Sumrit together. A late night turned into a make-out session, a decision that led to Tejal letting go of her old boyfriend. Within a week of that, they started dating. They had announced it with excitement and got blank faces from both Aditi and me.

  That whole year feels like a blurry, dark movie now. And today is just another scene.

  At the metro pillar, Tejal spreads a newspaper like a picnic mat. The concrete is warm. She plays soft, bass-heavy Pakistani music from her speaker. Aditi makes her usual joke about funding terrorists. We all ignore it. I rip the ice packet, drop cubes into plastic glasses, pour uneven drinks. Tejal plates the momos. For a while, no one speaks. The chutney burns my throat. The momos are rubbery. The drink is still warm.

  We wait—for the drinks to hit, for the feelings to surface. As I knew they would, around the second round, I say, ‘So, what now?’

  Tejal flicks a peanut at a crow. Misses. ‘I don’t know,’ she replies. ‘About what, exactly?’

  ‘I think what Raghav wants to ask is, do you think we’ll ever be normal people?’ Aditi asks. The alcohol frees the questions she’s always carrying within. ‘Will you have to keep doing this all your life?’

  Tejal snorts. ‘Normal is bullshit. You don’t “move on” from this. You just learn to carry it. The question is, are you going to carry it, or are you going to let it drown you right here?’