Episode 15: The Good Chairs

Bahadurgarh, Haryana · 2026

Mama-ji carried the good chairs in from the Guptas’ house, one under each arm, sweat through his vest by the second trip.

“Both?” Sushma said from the doorstep. “I said three.”

“They only have two.”

“The Guptas have six chairs. I counted them at the kitty circle.”

“They only gave me two.”

“Because you didn’t ask properly. You asked like a man borrowing chairs. You should have asked like a man whose daughter has a proposal coming.” She checked the clock on the wall. “Twelve o’clock. That gives us one hour to make this house look like people with standards live here.”

She turned to the front room and saw it the way a visitor would. The photo on the wall, crooked. A dal stain on the tablecloth from Thursday. The curtains not the right kind of white — not bright white, the kind that says a woman bleaches, but tired white, the kind that says a woman washes and hangs and hopes.

She straightened the photo. Changed the tablecloth. Left the curtains.

In the bedroom, Rashika sat on the bed in the blue kurta — Diwali sale, still in plastic until that morning. Hair oiled and pinned back.

“When they ask about your job,” Sushma said, circling her, “you say ‘just until marriage.’ You don’t say ‘newspaper.’ You don’t say ‘reporting.’ You say —”

“Just until marriage.”

“Like you mean it.”

“Just until marriage.” She said it the way someone reads a parking ticket.

“We’ll work on it. If the uncle asks about cooking —”

“Which uncle?”

“There is always an uncle.” Sushma pinned a stray hair back into place. “If he asks about cooking, you smile and say ‘I learned from my mother.’ If they ask about education, B.A. pass — don’t mention the journalism diploma, that scares people. If they ask about your father —” She glanced toward the front room, where mama-ji was arranging the borrowed chairs at angles that suggested the house owned twelve. “Tell them he runs a printing and stationery business.”

“He fixes staplers in the back of a stationery shop.”

“He is a proprietor. Do not argue with me today.”

Mama-ji appeared at the door. “Grey shirt or white?”

“White. Tucked. And I don’t want one word about the akhaada. Not one word about Baba Ramji. Not one word about the morning slot, the dangal, the new exercise routine. You are a businessman today.”

He withdrew.

“Gopina.”

Gopina stepped forward from the kitchen doorway.

“Clean kurta. Hair tied. Your job is the kitchen. Samosas out when they sit down — not before, not after. Tea strong, three sugars for the elders, two for the boy.” She paused. “And look presentable. Just in case.”

“In case of what?”

“In case,” Sushma said. “That’s the whole sentence. In case.”