Vikram Mehta discovered the problem on a Saturday morning when his wife Sunita was making breakfast and singing.
This would not, in most households, constitute a problem. But Sunita had not sung in the kitchen — not like this, not the full-voiced, unself-conscious singing of a person who has forgotten there is anyone listening — since approximately 2017, when they had returned from a trip to Goa and she had been in a good mood for an entire week. Since then, the kitchen singing had been the occasional hum, the absent-minded repetition of an advertisement jingle. Not this. Not Dil Dhadakne Do at eight in the morning with actual dance moves between the stove and the refrigerator.
Vikram lowered his newspaper.
"You seem cheerful," he said carefully.
"Zumba," Sunita said. She placed his tea in front of him with a small flourish that he did not know how to interpret. "Freddy taught us a new sequence yesterday. We did the full routine without stopping for the first time. Forty-eight minutes."
This was the third time this week that Freddy had been mentioned at the breakfast table. Last Monday it had been Freddy says the key is to not think about the steps. Wednesday it had been Freddy made Pushpa aunty do the shimmy and she actually did it. Now Freddy had apparently taught a new sequence.
"How old is this Freddy?" Vikram said, in the tone he used for professional enquiries.
"Thirty-four, I think. From Goa."
Thirty-four. From Goa. Vikram absorbed this information with the controlled expression of a man who has been a civil engineer for thirty-five years and knows that the most dangerous structural failures begin with very small cracks.
"Good instructor?"
