Kayal Nights – Part 2: Backwater Evening

The fish curry was terrible. Anju had said it would be, and she was right. The fish was overcooked, the coconut too thin, and the rice had gone slightly sticky at the edges.

Joseph ate every mouthful.

"You don't have to pretend," Anju said from the other end of the table.

"I'm not pretending. I've missed it."

She looked at him sharply, then away, and he saw the faint colour rise in her cheeks.

The sun was going down behind the palms. The water turned from green to gold to a deep, shimmering violet. Somewhere across the lagoon, a boat's engine coughed and died, and a fisherman began to sing, low and tuneless, the way men sing when they think no one is listening.

They moved to the back deck with two cups of sweet tea and sat on the cushions with their backs against the rail.

"Tell me about Dubai," Anju said.

So he did. He told her about the towers that reached into the clouds, the men who worked eighteen-hour shifts in the heat, the nights he had walked the empty marina alone, trying to remember the smell of the monsoon. He did not tell her about the woman he had dated for a year, who had left him for a banker. He did not tell her how often he had thought about this boat, and this canal, and this girl with the sharp tongue and the soft laugh.

When he finished, Anju was quiet.

"You could have come back," she said at last.

"I had money to send. I told myself that was the reason."

"That's not the reason."

"No." He set down his cup. "The reason is that I was afraid of you. Of what you'd say. Of what I'd feel if I saw you and realised I'd wasted six years."

Anju turned to look at him. In the dusk, her eyes were dark and luminous.

"Have you?" she asked softly. "Wasted them?"

Joseph thought about the cold flat, the glass tower, the nights spent alone with a phone that never rang.

"Yes," he said.

She nodded, slowly, as if she had expected it. Then she reached over and took his hand, her fingers warm and firm against his palm.

"Then don't waste the next one," she said.

He turned his hand over, so their palms pressed together. For a moment neither of them moved. The boat rocked gently on the water, and the lanterns of the village across the lagoon flickered like fallen stars.

"Anju," he said. "Can I write to you now? Properly? Every day, if you want."

"You'll get bored by the third letter."

"I won't."

She laughed then, low and warm, and leaned toward him. "Show me," she said.

He kissed her gently, the way you might touch something you had almost lost. She sighed against his mouth and let him pull her closer, her hand curling into the front of his shirt, and the cushions shifted beneath them as the boat drifted through the dark water.

When they finally drew apart, her breath was uneven and her eyes were bright.

"Still terrible," she whispered, "my cooking."

"Still the best meal I've had in six years."

She smiled, and rested her forehead against his, and they stayed like that until the moon came up over the palms and the fisherman's song drifted away across the lake.

Later, she showed him the letter she had written him, years ago, that she had never sent. It was tucked into the drawer of the small table in his room, under a folded map of the canals, as if she had put it there on purpose.

It said only: Come home, Joseph. I'll keep the boat.

He read it twice, then folded it carefully and put it in his shirt pocket, right over his heart.

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Next: Pujor Raat, the Durga Puja crowds in Kolkata and two strangers who hold hands in the rush.