Recap: Seher is enjoying teaching a bunch of children in a space created in the gym, when Mehra strolls in looking for Jaspal and gets talking with Seher.

With Neelu’s clever ‘empowerment’ spin on the Dancing Queen episode, Zaara had become something of a GenZ feminist icon in addition to Nectar’s glamour girl. All the pictures that made her seem drunkenly promiscuous had vanished — with a little financial help from Arjun Bajaj. All the ones that made Zaara seem innocent in her youth, flooded the Internet so she simply looked like a young woman embracing her girlhood, without a man.

Overnight, Zaara had become something like the Cara Delevigne of India. Wild, but with a cause.

And that evening, Victoria’s Secret had called.

They were launching their first Indian flagship store in Alibaugh and they wanted Zaara to be their first angel. They would all be ferried to Alibaugh in a fortnight to commemorate her daughter’s ascent into superstardom. Raahi had come to inform Seher of the travel dates so that she could reschedule some of her English classes.
And she was delighted by what she saw through the window of Jaspal’s gym: Mehra and her Seher sipping coffee and sharing a Snickers bar.

How could she have not guessed at it before? Mehra, the handsome older man of quiet humour and a solemn mind, was perfect for her elder, cautious daughter. They would understand each other. He would never make her feel uneasy as that fickle Saahil, who had still not called.

No, Mehra had lived through enough life, had found his feet securely enough that he would never make Seher feel insecure. And in the safety of his solid strength, she may even grow to take risks and have fun. As Raahi had always wanted for her.

But most importantly, from the snatches of conversation she had heard today, Raahi saw that he respected Seher’s mind.

“I suppose now you’ll have to get married quickly, so that your sister doesn’t have to wait too long,” Mehra had said with a slight smile, in allusion no doubt to the rumours of Zaara and Arjun Bajaj doing the rounds of the city.

“Zaara doesn’t wait on anyone for anything,” Seher had said with a tight smile. “So I won’t worry about holding her up.”

Mehra chuckled. “It seems almost ridiculous now that I should have thought I’d have a chance.”

Seher looked at him, surprised. She wasn’t going to bring it up if he wouldn’t have.

“Ah might as well get it out of the way, I thought.” he said. “And this way I get to explain myself a little too. I hadn’t meant to disrespect your sister or your family in any way. I’d asked with the most decent intentions. To get to know her, that’s all. And if she found she liked me, to marry her.”

Seher smiled. He belonged to a straightforward generation. The kind she understood.

“We weren’t insulted,” she reassured him. “Well, I wasn’t. I thought it was flattering for Zaara. And I didn’t think you were trying to laud your wealth over us either.”

Mehra’s expression turned horrified. He put his coffee down, utterly confused.

“My... wealth?”

Seher grimaced. “I’m afraid Jaspal uncle talked a lot about your net worth and how Zaara should clamp on to you while she still had the chance. It didn’t go over very well with her or my mum.”

“Oh God. No wonder she gave me the dirtiest look in the elevator,” Mehra said, shaking his head. “I had thought she’d liked me.”

“She did like you. We all did. You were the only tolerable person at that fiasco of a dinner party.”

“Jaspal’s got a heart of gold,” Mehra said, with a shake of his head. “Unfortunately, he’s also always got the price of gold on his mind. And at the tip of his tongue.”

Raahi smiled now, already forgiving this man for an insult that she had earlier suspected too, to be due to Jaspal’s lack of tact, not Mehra’s.

“If Jaspal turns up with a proposal for you, don’t refuse it just because it sounds like a merger and acquisition,” Mehra said with a shake of his head. “It’s not the boy’s fault.”
“Alright. I won’t refuse it for that reason.”

Mehra seemed piqued now. “You’ll refuse it for another?”

“I don’t think I’m equipped like Zaara is, to weather the excitement and anxiety of a romantic relationship. I nearly tried it once.”

“Not your cup of tea?” Mehra said.

Seher shook her head once, with a smile.

“I like who I am. I like what I do and how we live,” Seher explained, “And loneliness does grate sometimes but I’ve found that I can distract myself from it by focusing on other things.”

“Like teaching,” Mehra said, pointing at the textbook. “And taking care of your sister and mother. And reading, I assume.”

“And this. Enjoying a cup of coffee,” Seher said, taking her cup and clinking it to his. “I’ve fought hard to be able to take pleasure in my simple pleasures. I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready to give it up, not even for the heady rush of romance. Especially not now that we’re in... Bombay. With so much left to figure out still.”

She ended with a blush. Raahi’s heart went out to her daughter. Always thinking ahead for all of them, living in the worst case scenario so that it may never befall them again.

Mehra didn’t say anything. He was regarding the girl before him with a unique curiosity.

“It’s shameful, isn’t it?” Seher said lightly, “that I like being a spinster. Women like me are a threat to society. An insult to the nuclear family.”

“I don’t think you’re a spinster,” Mehra said, shaking his head. “You’re too... soft for such a harsh word. I think you’re a... bachelorette.”

Seher laughed. “That’s nice,” she said, “and young. A bachelorette!”

“A life-long bachelorette,” he nodded, taking a sip of his coffee. Relishing it.

“And are you a life-long bachelor?”

Mehra sighed.

“I don’t know yet,” he said. “I had thought I would be, till...” he shook his head. He looked at Seher, tentatively then. “I don’t mean to offend.”

“You won’t,” she smiled. “Zaara does have that effect on men.”

He sighed.

“She just seemed so much like — like someone I used to know,” he laughed. “My…” he waved his hand as a substitute for his relation to the girl of his fondest memories. “...ruined me for lesser girls,” he said, shaking his head. “I can’t be happy any more with just a pretty face who’s fixated on spending my money to make her Instagram look good. I want to have conversations with someone who has a thinking mind. But...”

“...the women you meet with ‘thinking minds’ aren’t as attractive as you’d like.”

He grinned, caught out. Seher laughed at the twin spots of colour that had appeared on his cheeks. “I guess I also really really need a pretty face.”

“You have very high standards.”

“Yes, but not impossible ones.”

“No?”

“Not if there are other girls like your sister and you.”

Seher laughed in a way that gave no credence to his compliment. It was clear that she thought herself included only due to Mehra’s good breeding.

Raahi, however, knew better. She could see from the quietly appreciative expression in Mehra’s eyes that he had begun to admire her elder daughter.

“There aren’t any other girls like them, Mr Mehra,” she thought. “I raised mine to be unique.”

And with that Raahi decided she had heard enough to go upstairs and cancel Seher’s ferry ticket to Alibaugh. Zaara would go. Raahi would accompany her. Neelu would accompany them. And Jaspal may tag along for the fun of it. But Seher must stay here where loneliness and proximity may force her into another cup of coffee with Mehra.

That evening when Seher entered her mother’s room, she was surprised to find Raahi neither watching Netflix, nor reading, nor going over Zaara’s “tracking” for the day.

Instead, her mother had her head bowed in front of a little marble Ganpati perched atop her vanity, in prayer.

“Ma?”

Seher was surprised. Raahi was not a religious person.

Raahi stood up immediately, feeling caught out. Seher entered, tentatively, and handed her an envelope.

“What’s this?”

Seher shrugged. “I thought we could put something towards the repairs of the house.”

Raahi pulled out the thick wad of notes. Her daughter’s first, proper wages, she realised.

“It isn’t nearly as much as Zaara makes but we’ll need to save all that for her wedding in any case,” Seher said. “This is just enough to get rid of the pillar in the hall that’s making everyone so unhappy.”

Raahi was silent for a moment. Then she laughed. Then she pulled Seher into her arms and gave her thin daughter a big hug. Seher seemed taken aback. They didn’t, as a rule, really engage in physical contact. But as Raahi began to sob, Seher let her mother hang on to her, tolerating the excess warmth and floral fumes of her neck.

“Oh so what if he’s dead. So WHAT? I’ve got my girls! I’ve got my girls!!!”

Seher didn’t ask what she meant. Raahi took the notes out of the envelope and handed them back to Seher. Then she placed the empty envelope, with ‘Tuition Fees — Seher Pandit’ scrawled on it, at the feet of the Ganpati, right next to another envelope, with Raahi, written in her father’s unmistakable hand under a Hinduja Hospital letterhead.

“There. We’ve answered him,” Raahi said. “We’ve done it.”

“Are you alright Ma?”

“Alright? I’m fantastic.”

She kissed her daughter’s face. Seher tried not to flinch.

“Your sister’s going to be a star. And you’re going to marry Mehra and finally have a partner. And none of this would have happened if your father hadn’t died and left us without a penny!”

Seher said nothing. Her mother had bent her head down at the feet of the little elephant God and was laughing, with tears streaming down her face, in manic relief. “My girls are fine. My girls are fine.” She let out a sob. “And no thanks to you, you CHEATING BASTARD.”

Seher watched her, shocked. This was the first time she had heard Raahi hold Maahir accountable for his actions.

Seher did something she never did then, she slipped her hand into her mother’s and squeezed it tight. Like she used to before, when she couldn’t cross the road alone.

She may not have agreed with Raahi on all counts but she was united with her in this: Maahir had died and they had survived. They owed that to nothing but each other and grace.

Seher bent her head down with her mum and prayed.

(Concluded)

Riva Razdan is a New York university graduate and currently working as a screenwriter and author based in Mumbai. Her debut novel Arzu was published by Hachette India in 2021