She heard about it from her ground team captain in Ward 3, who called her at seven PM on Day Nineteen.
"He went," Mirza said. "This afternoon. Malhotra. He went to the Ward 3 community centre. Just him and one junior party worker — no big entourage, no flags, nothing. He asked to speak to the residents' committee."
"What did he say?" she said.
"He said—" Mirza paused. She could hear him referring to a note. "He said: 'In the 2019 election, a statement was made by my party's campaign that was deeply offensive to many residents of this ward. I want to be clear that I personally disagreed with that statement at the time and disagree with it now. I am here as your candidate in this election and I cannot undo what was said but I can tell you that if I am elected I will represent every resident of this ward regardless of community, and if you give me the chance I would like to make that case.' And then he answered questions for forty minutes."
"How did the committee respond?" she said.
"Skeptically," Mirza said. "But respectfully. There were some very hard questions. He didn't dodge them." A pause. "Ma'am. Two committee members told me afterward they had not expected that from a BJP candidate. One of them said — and I'm quoting — 'at least he came and said it to our faces.'"
She thanked Mirza and hung up. She sat for a moment in the bedroom where she had been reviewing the next day's schedule. She thought about an apology that she had advised him to give and which he had given. She thought about the two committee members who had not expected it. She thought about the specific act of going to a room where you knew you were not liked and saying the difficult thing directly and staying for the questions — how many politicians she knew would not have done that, how many politicians on her own side she had watched find careful language to avoid exactly that kind of moment.
He came back to the flat at nine PM. She was in the living room reviewing press coverage — the story of his Ward 3 visit had been picked up by two digital news outlets, framed as unexpected. He came through the door with the specific quality of someone who had done something difficult and was processing it, the internal processing being visible as a slight weight in how he moved.
She looked up. He looked at her.
"Ward 3," she said.
"Yes," he said.
"My ground team captain called me," she said.
"I thought he might," he said. He set down his bag. He sat in the chair — his chair, the right-side chair, the one that had become his over nineteen days. "It didn't go well, exactly. It went honestly. Which is different."
"Did it help?" she said.
