Chapter 2: Two Rickshaws, One Race
The autorickshaw smelled of 2-stroke oil and last night's biryani. I flagged it down at the corner of Linking Road, one arm raised against the October heat, sweat already pooling at the small of my back.
"Bandra station," I told the driver. "Fast as you can."
Reshma appeared beside me like she'd materialized from the exhaust fumes. One moment I was alone on the pavement; the next, she was climbing into the rickshaw, her saree—pale green today, the color of new betel leaves—catching the breeze and billowing out like a flag of surrender.
"Move over," she said, settling onto the narrow seat. Her hip pressed against mine. Her pallu had slipped off her shoulder, exposing the smooth brown curve of her collarbone, the hollow of her throat where a pulse beat steady and unhurried.
"Reshma, this is a three-seater. We can both fit."
"I know." She pulled the pallu back up, but slowly, deliberately, her fingers trailing along her own skin. "But your side is more comfortable."
The driver turned his head, gave us a look—the same look the cab driver had given us four months ago, the same assumption forming behind his eyes. I'd stopped correcting people somewhere around Kanpur. Let them think what they wanted. The truth was complicated enough.
Before I could close the door, Reshma reached past me and flagged down another rickshaw with her free hand. The driver, a skinny kid with a patchy beard, pulled up alongside us.
"Race you," she said.
"What?"
"To the station. First one there wins."
"Wins what?"
She smiled. That smile. The one that had been ruining my sleep for one hundred and seventeen days. "You'll see."
Then she was out of our rickshaw and into the other one, her saree whipping behind her like a ribbon in a storm. She leaned forward and said something to her driver. He laughed. She pressed something into his hand—a hundred-rupee note, folded twice. He laughed again, louder, and the rickshaw shot forward like it had been fired from a cannon.
"You heard the lady," I told my driver. "Follow that rickshaw."
He needed no convincing. Mumbai rickshaw drivers lived for this—the chase, the competition, the chance to prove their three-wheeler was faster than the rest. We lurched into traffic, cut across two lanes, narrowly missed a cyclist who blessed us with a string of Marathi curses.
The October heat pressed down like a wet blanket. Dust and diesel fumes filled my lungs. Somewhere ahead, I could see Reshma's rickshaw weaving through the chaos, her silhouette a green smudge against the grey afternoon. She was laughing. I could hear it even over the honking, even over the engine's roar—that wind-chime laugh that had haunted me since the train.
The train. Eighty-four hours. I still hadn't recovered.
"Bhaiya, faster," I said.
"Saab, this is Mumbai. Fast is a relative concept."
He was right. We crawled through an intersection where a cow had decided to take a nap, swerved around a wedding procession that had materialized out of nowhere—hundreds of people in bright clothes, dancing to a Bollywood song blasting from a generator-powered speaker—and finally hit the open stretch of Linking Road.
That's when I saw my chance.
Reshma's rickshaw was stuck behind a BEST bus, its driver leaning on the horn like it owed him money. My driver saw it too. He gunned the engine—if you could call it gunning; the rickshaw maxed out at forty kilometers per hour and sounded like it was dying the whole way—and we shot past them.
I turned to look back. Reshma's rickshaw was still trapped. I saw her face through the grimy rear window, saw her eyes narrow, saw her lips form a word I couldn't hear but could definitely lip-read. Something unladylike. Something that made me laugh out loud.
Bandra station appeared ahead, its colonial-era façade a monument to bureaucratic decay. My driver pulled up to the entrance with a theatrical screech of brakes. I jumped out, paid him, and ran—ran like I hadn't run since school sports day, my backpack bouncing against my spine.
I made it to the platform. Platform number three. The train to Delhi was already there, its engine idling, its doors open, its passengers milling about with the particular aimlessness of people who had nowhere to be and all the time in the world.
I scanned the crowd. No Reshma. I checked my watch. Four minutes since we'd left the rickshaws in the dust.
I'd won.
I turned to find a bench and wait for her, already composing my victory speech in my head. Something gracious. Something witty. Something that would wipe that smug smile off her face.
She was already there.
Perched on a bench near the tea stall, one leg crossed over the other, a paper cup of chai in her hand. The steam curled up toward her face, catching the afternoon light, making her look like something out of a painting. She took a sip. She looked at me. She smiled.
"Took you long enough," she said.
"That's not—" I stopped. Caught my breath. Tried again. "How did you get here before me?"
She patted the bench beside her. I sat. I didn't have a choice; my legs had turned to jelly somewhere around the station entrance.
"You bribed the driver," I said. "That's cheating."
"I incentivized him." She handed me the cup. Our fingers brushed. Hers were cool, despite the heat. "There's a difference."
I drank. The chai was perfect—strong, sweet, exactly the way I liked it. She knew exactly the way I liked it. She'd known since the train, since the third day of the journey, when she'd ordered for me at a station stall and I'd been too surprised to argue.
"You are young, Rahul." She leaned back against the bench, her saree shifting, the fabric pulling taut across her waist. A sliver of skin appeared—that navel, that whirlpool of shadow I'd spent the last four months trying not to think about. "But I am faster."
"That doesn't even make sense. I'm literally—"
"Age is not speed." She took the cup back from me, took a sip, left a faint mark of lipstick on the rim. "Age is experience. Age is knowing which driver to bribe and how much. Age is understanding that the direct route is not always the fastest route."
"And what route did you take?"
"Shortcut through the vegetable market. My driver knew it." She shrugged, a small, satisfied movement. "You don't know the vegetable market, do you, Rahul?"
"I don't even know where the vegetable market is."
"Exactly." She finished the chai and set the cup aside. "So technically, I didn't cheat. I just... prepared better."
The train to Delhi honked. A warning. A deadline. Passengers began to move toward the doors, dragging their suitcases, herding their children, saying goodbye to people who were seeing them off.
I looked at Reshma. "You spoke to my friend. Before we left."
"I did."
"He asked you to look after me."
"He asked me to keep you out of trouble." She turned to face me, her knee brushing mine. "I told him I'd try. But I also told him you're an adult. You make your own choices."
"And what choices have I made?"
It came out more honest than I'd intended. More vulnerable. Four months of traveling together—Kashmir and back, then this trip, this second journey—and I still didn't know what we were doing. What this was. What I wanted it to be.
She didn't answer right away. Instead, she reached over and straightened the collar of my shirt. A motherly gesture. Except her fingers lingered. Except her eyes held mine for a beat too long.
"You chose to race me," she said finally. "You chose to run. You chose to sit here and drink my chai."
"That's not an answer."
"No." She stood, smoothing down her saree, adjusting her pallu with that practiced flick of her wrist. "It's not."
She walked toward the train. I followed, because what else was I going to do? The suitcase was heavy. The train was waiting. And somewhere in the back of my mind, a voice was screaming that I'd just lost a race I hadn't even known I was running.
She climbed aboard, found our compartment—the same one as last time, the same four berths, the same empty promise of privacy. She claimed the lower berth. She arranged her saree. She looked up at me with those dark, knowing eyes.
"Come down, Rahul. Your legs are cramped."
I sat. She didn't need water this time. She just wanted me close.
The train shuddered and began to move. Through the window, I watched Mumbai shrink—the station, the slums, the skeletal frames of unfinished buildings. Through the window, I watched the city that had given me this woman, this strange and impossible woman, and I wondered what Kashmir would look like in October.
Cold, I thought. Definitely cold.
And the stares—those would be cold too.
But hers? Hers were warm. Warmer than they'd been in June. Warmer than they'd been on the first train, the first night, the first time she'd asked me to stay and I'd said yes.
"That's another hundred rupees you owe me," she said.
"For what?"
"For the chai." She smiled, that slow-spreading thing that never quite reached her eyes. "You drank it, didn't you?"
"I didn't ask for it."
"You didn't refuse it either." She stretched, her arms above her head, her saree pulling tight across her breasts. No bra. She never wore one. She'd told me that on the first night of the first trip, and I'd spent the entire journey trying not to think about it. "You're learning, Rahul. Slowly. But you're learning."
The train picked up speed. Outside, the world blurred. Inside, Reshma closed her eyes and rested her head against my shoulder, and I let her, because I had no choice, because I'd stopped having choices somewhere around the Kashmir valley, somewhere between the snow and the stares and the way she said my name.
I closed my eyes too.
Eighty-four hours.
We were barely two hours in.
This time, I couldn't wait.