Chapter 6 — Dinner

Priya found them a restaurant on the ashram road — her yoga teacher friend's recommendation, the kind of place that had a wood fire in the corner and no menu, just whatever the kitchen decided, and the kitchen had decided on rajma, makai ki roti, and a dal that tasted like someone's grandmother had made it."This is exactly right," Aanya said, when the food arrived, and she meant it completely, and it was the first unselfconscious thing she had said all day."It's very you," Priya said. "Kabir said you were a rice person. This confirms it."Aanya looked at Kabir. "You told her I was a rice person.""I was explaining the philosophical differences between rice people and roti people," he said. "You came up.""This is how you described me to your fiancée. As a rice person.""It's accurate," he said."It is accurate," she agreed.Priya was watching them with an expression that was too composed to be entirely comfortable and too warm to be uncomfortable — the specific face of a confident woman encountering something she had understood intellectually and was now understanding viscerally. She smiled, and the smile was real, and Aanya thought: she is going to be fine. She is the kind of person who is going to be fine. That is both reassuring and its own specific sorrow.They ate. The conversation moved as conversations at good meals moved — from the food to other meals, to travel, to the specific pleasure of eating well in the wrong context. Priya told a story about eating gas-station food for four days on a road trip and arriving at Hampi feeling like a person who had made very bad decisions and then seeing the ruins at sunrise and deciding it had been worth every petrol station sandwich.Aanya told the one about the dhaba in Ladakh where she'd been the only non-trucker and the truckers had, collectively, treated her with the specific protective warmth of a group of people adopting a stray, and she'd ended up playing cards with them for two hours and learning three Punjabi songs.Kabir did not tell stories. He sat back slightly and watched them talk and ate his rajma with the expression of a man watching something that was both exactly what he'd hoped for and significantly more complicated than he'd prepared for.After the food, chai. The wood fire had settled into embers. The restaurant was mostly empty now, the other tables finishing and leaving."Can I ask you something?" Priya said to Aanya.Aanya looked at her. "Yes."