He looked at her. The pause of someone deciding whether to have this conversation. "Because the people who are undecided in this constituency are not going to be moved by more television advertisements. They've already seen the advertisements. What moves undecided voters in an urban constituency with high education levels is direct contact and specific policy." He stirred the coffee. "More advertising is the lazy solution. It's expensive and it gives the committee something to point to and it doesn't change anything."
"That's not the standard party position," she said.
"No," he agreed. "It's my position."
She poured her chai. She sat at the kitchen table — the same end she always sat at, the left end, which had become her end in the way that things became things in a shared space over nine days without being discussed. He sat at the right end. The table was big enough that neither end was close to the other, but it was still a shared table, still the specific geometry of two people at opposite ends of a kitchen table after ten-thirty PM when the day's structure was gone.
"What's your vote gap?" he said.
"I'm not telling you my polling data," she said.
"I'm not asking for your polling data. I'm asking how you feel the campaign is going."
She looked at him. "Why?"
"Because I've been watching you for nine days," he said, "and I've seen what you're doing and how you're doing it and I want to know if it's working the way you think it is." He said it simply, not as a strategy, not as a provocation. As a question. "I have my own read. I'm interested in yours."
She drank her chai. She thought about whether to answer. She was very tired, which was when she was most honest, which was usually a liability. "Ward 7 and Ward 11 are still weak," she said. "I've done ground work but the traditional vote in those wards is BJP-aligned and the alignment is strong. I'm not going to break it. I'm compensating by overperforming in the wards where I should win and hoping the margin covers the deficit." She paused. "What's yours?"
"Ward 3," he said. "Muslim-majority ward, significant young voter population. My ground team is weak there — we have historical negative association from the 2019 campaign that I haven't been able to fully address. The ward is going to go against me. I need to limit the damage."
"What happened in 2019?"
