The bench under the gulmohar had become, by unspoken agreement, a permanent institution. Sometimes Sunita joined them, which changed the texture of the conversation but not its quality. She and Nirmala had developed their own rapport — Sunita was warm and direct and had strong opinions about cookery and mild opinions about everything else, and Nirmala found her company restful in the way that genuinely relaxed people were always restful. One morning Sunita said: "Rekha told me there's a lot of WhatsApp activity about you and Vikram. I want you to know I find it mostly amusing."
"Mostly," Nirmala said.
"Mostly. The remaining small percentage is—" Sunita paused thoughtfully. "Not concern. More like — an observation. He looks forward to Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays more than I've seen him look forward to anything in two years."
"He looks forward to getting better," Nirmala said carefully.
"He looks forward to the bench," Sunita said. Simply, without accusation, the way she said everything — as a fact she had observed and was reporting accurately. "Which is a good thing. I'm saying it's a good thing. He needed somewhere to land."
Nirmala thought about this for the rest of the day.
She had been a landing for other people before — for her students, for her children, for Rajan in his more uncertain moments. She had not, in the past three years, thought of herself as something that could still serve that function. It was, she found, not an unwelcome thing to reconsider.
