ASHOK AND PARVATI

The morning the sky opens, Parvati steams flimsy idlis for breakfast and curses as they stick in the pan. She wishes she were a better cook. A Post-it note with one of her mother’s recipes scrawled on it detaches from the wall. It is sticky and close in their apartment in north-central Mumbai, where many of the buildings are tall—so tall they seem to touch the clouds, almost—but she and Ashok don’t live in one of those. It always gets hot before the rain.

As she finishes the idlis, peeling them out of the pan one by one, the downpour comes all at once. It gives off a thunderous sound. From the kitchen window, she cannot see the cloud-high buildings through the sheets of water. For many days, the forecasters had promised rain, and the Hindu temples prayed for it, chanting mantras. But each day, it had not come.

Parvati does not like the monsoon. To her it means clogged roads, ruined shoes, and that her thick hair goes frizzy and wild. In the green city in Kerala where she is from, there are two smaller seasons of rain. In Mumbai there is just one big fury. In both cities the sea grows rough when the monsoon arrives.

In the living room, Ashok reads the newspaper on the couch. As Parvati hands him breakfast, he says, “Hey, Chiboo,” and looks up at her over his nerdish glasses, which have slid to the tip of his nose. “Let’s spend our Saturday riding the new metro from one side to the end and back.”

He is actually serious about this, she thinks, and shakes her head before disappearing back into the kitchen.

That Saturday, they drive to Khandala instead, two hours southeast of the city. Khandala is in the Western Ghats mountain range, and Parvati hears it will be gorgeous in the rains. With a little thrill, she realizes how much her father will disapprove of this. He will say something like: You’re new to the place, don’t take any risks, why did you drive so far? But he cannot tell her how to behave anymore.

There was a time when Parvati loved the monsoon, when she was little, and she and her sister would play outside in muddy pools after school. They would stay out until their father got home from work or temple, and he would scold them to go inside. She loved it when she was at university too, and she and another student, Joseph, would kiss in the lab as the rains lashed the building outside. After the downpour ended, they always walked their bicycles across a campus that felt cool and clean. Joseph’s kisses felt illicit, electric.

“It’s responding to my touch, like it wants me to drive,” Ashok says, as they get on the highway to Khandala. Parvati rolls her eyes. But she already feels better leaving Mumbai’s city limits. Ashok rolls down the window and sighs. “The air is just rarefied,” he says.

The road to Khandala winds through the mountains, which are lush and unblemished and fantastically green. It is full of switchbacks and vista points. “Look,” says Parvati, pointing. A deep fog is rolling in.

In Khandala, they get out at the base of the Bhaja Caves, ancient rock-cut shelters built by early Buddhists. They walk up the path and pass a waterfall, which cascades down a steep, rocky mountain. Brash schoolchildren scale the rocks to the falls and scream as they dunk in their heads. When Ashok and Parvati reach the top, they take cover under a mounded stupa, built long ago for meditation. Protected as they are from the rain, Parvati thinks, just for a moment, that the monsoon feels romantic. She rests an elbow on Ashok’s shoulder and does not think of Joseph at all.

On the way back to the car, they get their photo taken, smiling at the base of the path. In Parvati’s smile there is just a trace of the six months of difficulty that came before. Months in which Ashok felt afraid of his new wife, who would rant and cry in the night and always blame it on her “past.” Months in which she kept a journal for all her dark and wild thoughts, a journal she did not let anyone see. Now, he thinks she has stopped writing in it.

That night, on the drive home, Mumbai’s traffic and chaos feel unnerving after the quiet of Khandala. As Parvati guides their car over the wet city streets, the road unexpectedly splinters into five. She slows down and then accelerates through the light, and a police officer flags down their car.

“License, insurance,” the officer barks at Ashok, though Parvati is the one driving. Parvati rifles through a pile of papers and hands them through her window. The officer, who is intimidating in his pressed khaki uniform, shakes his head as he walks around to take them. Ashok is not playing his part.

“Baahar aao.” The officer’s tone is a warning now, and Ashok gets out of the car. After a short conversation, Ashok hands over the bribe, and the officer passes back the license in one swift, practiced movement.

“Why did you give that?” Parvati demands once Ashok gets back into the passenger seat. “You could have told them you are a journalist.”

“That doesn’t work,” he says, and feeling her glare, adds, “Anyway, it doesn’t matter.”

Parvati says nothing to this. She grips the steering wheel. After a long moment of silence, Ashok bangs his fist on the dashboard. Their trip suddenly feels spoiled. “Fuck,” he says, and the statue of Ganesh on their dashboard jumps, the pearls around the Hindu god’s neck jangling. “Assholes. Fuck fuck fuck.”

“You shouldn’t let them affect you like that,” says Parvati, primly, not looking at him. As she restarts the car, it begins to rain again. “You shouldn’t let them make you say those words and ruin yourself.”

Joseph, a good Catholic boy, would never have sullied himself that way.