At twenty-six, Sanjay had learned that adulthood was mostly pretending you knew where you were going.
The trick worked surprisingly well.
Wear an ironed shirt. Keep two credit cards in your wallet. Complain about taxes. Answer your mother’s calls with haan, Maa, kha liya. Post photographs from office parties where everyone held glasses they did not particularly enjoy drinking from.
People assumed you had a plan.
Sanjay had none.
At 8:17 on a humid Saturday evening, he stood outside a small hotel near Boring Road in Patna with a backpack over one shoulder and watched an auto-rickshaw fight unsuccessfully with traffic.
Horns screamed in every direction.
A motorcycle slipped through a gap that did not seem physically possible.
Someone nearby was frying chicken in oil so aggressively that the smell conquered half the street.
Patna had changed.
And somehow it hadn’t.
Sanjay smiled.
His phone vibrated.
Vivek: Room 304. Raja already started drinking.
Sanjay typed:
Without me? Bastards.
Three dots appeared.
Then:
Raja: You spent ten years being late to everything. Tradition matters.
Sanjay laughed aloud.
For a moment he wasn’t twenty-six.
He was sixteen again, running toward the school gate while Raja shouted from inside that the mathematics teacher had already entered the classroom and Vivek stood near the window pretending not to know either of them.
That was the strange thing about old friends.
You could build entire separate lives, live hundreds of kilometres apart, earn salaries, fall in love, get your heart broken—and one stupid message could turn you into a schoolboy again.
Their village lay a couple of hours beyond Patna.
Fields, narrow roads, mango trees, unfinished houses, motorcycles permanently covered in dust.
The three of them had grown up within walking distance of one another.
Sanjay’s father, Arvind, owned a local business and believed there were only two legitimate forms of employment: running your own company or preparing to run your own company.
His mother, Aparna, taught at a school and believed education could repair almost every human defect.
His sister Puja, five years younger than him, believed her brother was an idiot.
She was usually correct.
Sanjay entered the hotel.
The lift took so long that he considered climbing the stairs.
Then he remembered there were three floors.
He waited.
Raja opened the door before Sanjay knocked twice.
“Oho!”
He pulled Sanjay into a hug.
Raja had changed the least.
Same wide grin.
Same thick hair.
Same habit of wearing shirts one button lower than necessary.
He looked slightly broader now, perhaps because of gym sessions or perhaps because adulthood had finally supplied him with decent food.
“Look who decided to come,” Raja said.
“Where’s Vivek?”
“Inside. Acting sophisticated.”
Sanjay entered.
Vivek sat beside the window with a glass in his hand.
He raised it ceremoniously.
“Welcome, Mr. Corporate.”
Sanjay stared at him.
“You’ve grown a beard.”
“And you’ve lost hair.”
Sanjay touched his forehead defensively.
“I have not.”
Raja shut the door.
“Perfect. Thirty seconds together and we’re insulting each other.”
