He brought good biscuits.
He went to the bakery three blocks from the Saket office that he had passed a hundred times without entering and that turned out to make the kind of thing that justified having been there all along — a whole-wheat shortbread with cardamom that tasted like someone had thought about it carefully. He bought a box. He felt slightly absurd about the box. He brought it anyway.
She was in the office alone — Kapil at a site visit. The door was open, as usual. She had the committee presentation on the main screen, projected onto the wall. Papers across the table. Two marker colours on the whiteboard, different from the last time. Chai already made — she had timed it for his arrival, he noted, which she would not have done unless she had been tracking when he was likely to appear.
"You brought something," she said, looking at the box.
"Biscuits. As instructed."
"Let me see." She opened the box. Looked at the contents. Looked at him. "You went to Mehta Bakery."
"It's three blocks from my office."
"You've never been there before."
"How would you know that?"
"The way you're holding the box," she said. "Like someone who's not sure if the purchase was a correct decision. People who have been to a bakery before don't have doubts on the way out." She took a biscuit. Ate it. "It's a correct decision. Stop looking uncertain about it."
