She saw him everywhere.
This was the specific misery of a constituency election: it was contained. Lucknow North was eleven assembly segments and approximately four hundred thousand registered voters and a very specific geography — the old civil lines, the university quarter, the market belts, the residential colonies both old and new. Every candidate worked the same geography. Every candidate visited the same mandis and the same masjids and the same schools and the same community centres. In a constituency of this size, you ran into your opponent constantly, and running into your opponent constantly when your opponent was Aditya Malhotra was a particular kind of constant.
Day four: they arrived at the Aminabad market tour within twenty minutes of each other. She was coming out of the textile section when she saw him entering at the other end, his campaign team around him, the party flag visible above the crowd. He had not seen her. She could have turned and gone a different way. She didn't. She continued walking, and they ended up moving toward each other through the market like two weather systems approaching from opposite directions, both of them aware of the other, neither stopping. They passed each other in the spice section — she could smell cardamom and dried chilli — and he said, without slowing down, "Siddiqui," and she said, without slowing down, "Malhotra," and they continued in their respective directions and the market watched with the interested attention of people who had lived through many elections and understood that this was theatre of a particular kind.
