They took the seven-thirty back. The return train was more crowded than the one going — the evening passengers, the ones who had made their pilgrimage and were going home with the tiredness that comes not from exertion but from something more interior. Families pressed together on the benches. Children had fallen asleep on their mothers' laps. Old people sat with eyes closed, not sleeping, but in that particular state of calm that is the product of having done the thing you came to do.
They found window seats — window seats, because of course — and as the train pulled out of Varanasi Junction in the dark, Kavya leaned against the window and watched the lights of the city appear and disappear as the train curved away.
Masterji opened his cloth bag and produced something she had not expected: the steel tiffin box. Inside were methi parathas — four of them, still faintly warm — and a small container of achar.
"Aapne banaya?" she said, surprised.
"Subah banaya. Socha tha ki zarurat padegi."
She ate a paratha and it was very good — the methi properly bitter, the dough well-made. She told him so. "Meena ne sikhaya tha," he said. "Pehle main khaana banana bilkul nahi jaanta tha. Jab woh chali gayi toh seekhna pada."
"Aur acha seekha," Kavya said.
"Zaroorat mein insaan kuch bhi seekh leta hai."
