The notice had been on the society noticeboard for eleven days before Nirmala Iyer actually read it.
She passed the noticeboard every morning on her walk to the milk booth — a walk she took not because she needed the milk urgently but because it gave the morning a shape, a reason to put on proper clothes and leave the flat before nine AM. The flat was perfectly fine at nine AM. The flat was perfectly fine at all hours. This was, she had come to understand, part of the problem.
The notice said:
ZUMBA FITNESS CLASS — NEW BATCH STARTING MONDAY!
Venue: Society Clubhouse, Ground Floor
Time: 7:00 AM – 8:00 AM (Mon / Wed / Fri)
Instructor: Mr. Freddy D'Souza (Certified, 8 years experience)
Age no bar! All fitness levels welcome!
Fee: Rs. 800/month
Contact: Rekha Joshi, Flat 4B
Nirmala read it, thought Rekha is behind this, and walked on to the milk booth.
She was fifty-eight years old. She had been fifty-eight years old for three months, which was still new enough to sometimes feel like a mistake. She had retired from teaching — thirty-one years of Class VI English at Vidya Niketan School — two years ago. Her son Arjun was in Singapore with his wife and a baby she had met on video call seventeen times and in person once. Her daughter Meghna was in Hyderabad, which was close enough to visit but not so close that anyone felt obligated to do so often. Her husband Rajan had died three years ago — a heart attack, sudden, on a Sunday morning when he had been annoyed about a cricket match — and the flat had been, since then, exactly large enough to feel both comfortable and quietly, persistently empty.
