"Very good. He has a way of explaining things — very patient, very encouraging. You know how some teachers make you feel stupid if you can't follow? Freddy is the opposite. He celebrates small victories."
Vikram celebrated nothing. He returned to his newspaper. He did not read any of it.
That evening, while Sunita was on a call with their daughter Preethi, Vikram read the WhatsApp messages in the Emerald Greens Zumba Ladies group, which Sunita had left open on the tablet. He did not consider this snooping. He considered it information gathering.
What he found was: seventeen heart emojis in response to a photograph of Freddy demonstrating a step. A message from Mrs. Apte saying Freddy is a gift from God I am telling you. A voice note from Rekha Joshi that he did not listen to but whose transcript (he had turned on the auto-transcription setting) read: Ladies he complimented my footwork today I may never wash my feet again.
Vikram put down the tablet.
He was sixty-two years old. He had retired last year from a career that had involved building seventeen bridges across three states, two of which had won engineering excellence awards. He had a full head of hair, which he considered reasonable evidence that the universe was not entirely against him. He was not an unreasonable man. He was not a jealous man. He had been married to Sunita for thirty-four years and had never, in thirty-four years, had cause to feel the specific unease that was currently installing itself in his chest like an uninvited tenant.
He thought about it for two days. Then he went downstairs to the noticeboard, read the notice about the Zumba class, and came to a decision that he would later describe to no one because it was, even by his own admission, not his finest hour.
He was going to join the class.
Not because he wanted to do Zumba. He wanted to do Zumba approximately as much as he wanted to do a cartwheel off the society terrace. He was going to join the class because he was going to observe the situation firsthand, assess this Freddy individual with the rigour of a professional who had spent his career evaluating structural integrity, and determine for himself whether there was anything to be concerned about.
He called the number on the notice.
"Hello? Yes, this is Vikram Mehta, flat 7C. I'd like to join the Zumba class."
A brief silence on the other end. Then Rekha Joshi's voice: "Vikram? Sunita's husband Vikram?"
"Yes."
Another silence. He could hear Rekha processing this. "Okay! Yes! Of course! Monday, seven AM, clubhouse. Wear comfortable shoes."
He hung up. From the bedroom, he heard Sunita singing again. He went and stood in the doorway for a moment, watching her — she was reorganising her shelf, completely absorbed, not aware of him at all, still singing.
She looked, he thought, the way she had looked in Goa in 2017. And the thought did not comfort him. It complicated matters considerably.
