The rain had stopped, but Mumbai still smelled like a wet coin. On the Harbour Line platform, puddles kept little galaxies of neon; vendors knocked water off plastic sheets, and a chaiwala poured amber into cutting glasses that fogged in a second. That is where I first noticed Meera — not because she was dramatic, but because she wasn’t. She stood with a clothbound book, thumb marking the place like a quiet flag, hair gathered in a clip that was already losing the war against humidity.
Our train arrived with the familiar iron lullaby. People folded themselves into doors as if the city were inhaling. I found the corner near the window, the glass milky with breath. She slid into the same compartment, opposite side, the book closing in her hands like a small door. For three stations we pretended not to exist. Outside, laundry lifted on terraces, reluctant birds tested the air, and the tracks wore a seam of rain.
At Cotton Green, the carriage lurched, and a boy selling boiled chana sang his prices like an old movie chorus. Meera smiled — not at me, at the song — and I felt something settle, like a coin deciding its side. I asked for two chana in a voice I hoped was casual. The boy nodded as if he had seen this story before and tipped extra onions for luck.
“Thank you,” she said when I offered the second paper cone, eyes bright with that after-rain light. “I’m Meera.”
“I’m Aarav,” I said, and immediately the carriage seemed to widen, as if our names had bought us space. We ate from our own cones but shared the lemon tucked between them, passing it back and forth like a small sun.
“Your book?” I asked.
“Marquez,” she said. “But I keep thinking of Nissim Ezekiel today. Maybe it’s the puddles.”
We tried a few lines we both half-remembered and laughed when our versions disagreed. The windows breathed on us. Someone’s phone played a devotional; someone else took a nap inside a blue scarf. Life stacked itself neatly for a while.
By the time we reached Reay Road, her clip surrendered, and a strand of hair curled on her cheek with the confidence of a signature. She swept it back; the movement wrote itself inside me. I told her about the deadline I was running from — a deodorant campaign pretending to be philosophy. She told me she was finishing a dissertation on “ordinary tenderness in Indian English poetry.”
“What’s that like?” I asked.
“Like this,” she said, and gestured at our two paper cones, the shared lemon, the city still steaming. “Nothing grand. Just precise.”
When the train slowed into Dockyard, the compartments thinned. She checked her watch and frowned — a seminar she might miss. I didn’t want the story to be one-station long. So I said, “Take my umbrella. You can return it when the city stops auditioning for monsoon.”
She hesitated. Then she wrote her number on my palm — quick, neat, the ink smelling faintly of school. The digits tingled like a pledge. “I’ll give it back with interest,” she said. “Maybe coffee.”
“Maybe coffee,” I agreed, because it is wise in Mumbai to let hope travel by local phrases.
We reached Sandhurst Road. “This is me,” she said, rising with the soft apology of someone leaving early from a good film. At the door she turned back once. “Aarav,” she said, testing my name the way one tests a key, “don’t run from your deadline. Run towards the thing you actually want.”
The train pulled away. On my palm, the numbers had already bled a little, as if eager to become part of me. Outside, the city was busy making new reflections in old puddles. I tasted salt from the sea and cardamom from the chai and decided that maybe this was what ordinary tenderness felt like: a small umbrella, a lemon shared, a name that made room.
That evening, when I finally opened my laptop, the cursor waited like a patient friend. The campaign headline I had been forcing all week let go. I typed instead: “Smell like the first steam after rain,” and laughed at myself for smuggling the day into a brief.
I sent Meera a message that was not a message: a photo of the umbrella by the door, beadlets of water along its ribs. “Safe,” I captioned, which was true of both the umbrella and my newly restless heart.
Three dots appeared, then paused, then returned — a choreography of maybe. Finally: “Seminar survived. Coffee this weekend? If the skies permit.” I looked out the window; clouds were already rehearsing.
“Permit or not,” I typed, “we’ll find a roof.”
From the kitchen, the kettle began to sing again. I thought of her describing tenderness as precision, and I believed her. If precision was seeing the world as it is and wanting it anyway, then yes. I wanted this — the rail-wet city, the patient cursor, the lemon’s bite still on my tongue, and a number, slightly blurred, that I would write again before it vanished.
