Chapter 1 — The Flat

October 9th to 14th. Week One.The thing about Mumbai that nobody told you — that no article about moving to Mumbai told you, that no colleague who had "done Mumbai" in their twenties told you — was the sound.Not the traffic, which you expected. Not the trains, which you anticipated. The sound of buildings. Old buildings, the kind that Noor Chawl was — 1960s construction, three floors, twelve flats around a central courtyard, the walls doing what walls of that age did, which was to become permeable to the lives on either side of them.Tanvi had lived in a PG hostel in Nagpur and before that in her parents' house and before that in a college hostel, and in none of these places had walls been truly solid. But Noor Chawl was different. The walls here conducted life the way copper conducted electricity — efficiently, without prejudice, transmitting everything with equal faithfulness.She heard the couple in 14/A fight about money every evening at seven. She heard the baby in 13/C from four floors away. She heard the old man in 14/D clear his throat every morning at five forty-five with the commitment of someone performing a ritual.And she heard 14/B — Mrs. Sushila Rane, on the other side of her wall — moving around at odd hours with the specific pattern of someone who did not sleep well and had made peace with it.Tanvi had met Mrs. Rane on the second day. A small woman, late sixties, with the specific quality of someone who had lived in this building for decades and had therefore seen everything and judged most of it. She had brought a small steel container of sheera, which Tanvi had accepted with genuine gratitude, and had stood at the door looking at the interior of the flat with an expression that Tanvi had initially read as neighbourly nosiness and had later revised."You've settled in," Mrs. Rane said. It was not quite a statement, not quite a question."Just starting to," Tanvi said.Mrs. Rane's eyes had gone, briefly, to the mirror. Then back to Tanvi."The flat has good light," she said."Yes," Tanvi said. "The window is lovely."Mrs. Rane had looked at the window. Then at the mirror again. Then at Tanvi with the specific expression — Tanvi understood it only much later — of someone who is deciding how much to say to a person they have just met.She said: "If you need anything, knock. Any time."She left.Tanvi ate the sheera and thought: nice neighbour. And went back to unpacking.