Varanasi Junction received them at five twenty-five in the evening, when the light had gone the colour of marigolds and the air smelled of incense and the Ganga, which she could not see yet but could somehow already feel — the way you feel a large body of water before you see it, a particular quality of the air.
They came out of the station into the surge and sound of the city. Varanasi in the evening was not a gentle thing — it was alive in a specific way, insistent and layered, the calls of vendors and the bells of temples and the horns of the auto-rickshaws that moved through the lanes in the particular way of vehicles that have given up on the concept of a straight line.
Masterji walked without hesitation. "Aaye ho pehle?" she asked.
"Haan. Meena ke saath. Uske parents se milne. Hum saat baar aaye the. Woh aath baari chahti thi. Sath. Aur woh aath baar nahi hua. Wahi adhoora reh gaya."
Kavya understood. Not the quantity — not the specific number eight — but the principle. The one time you say next time and there is no next time. She thought of her mother in Lucknow and felt a small cold fear that she put away immediately, firmly, the way you close a door on something you will deal with later.
They took an auto-rickshaw to the ghats. The lanes narrowed as they went, then narrowed further, then they were walking — Masterji knew the way — through lanes where the buildings were so close overhead that the sky was just a strip, and the sound changed quality, became contained, became something specific to this city. Kavya stayed close to his side.
Then the lane opened. The Ganga.
She had seen photographs. She had learned about it in school. Nothing she had been told had given her the actual experience of standing at the top of the Dasaswamedh Ghat steps and looking out at the river in the evening light. The Ganga was wide — wider than she had imagined — and it moved with the unhurried certainty of something that has been moving for millions of years and has no reason to change its pace. The evening light on the water was orange and gold and something beyond both those colours that she did not have a word for.
Masterji stood at the top of the steps. He was very still. Kavya stood beside him and said nothing.
