Two Cups of Chai

The announcement crackled over the loudspeaker for the fourth time that afternoon. "Passengers are informed that the 6:10 to Pune is running late by approximately... three hours. We regret the inconvenience."

A collective groan rolled down the platform. Rain hammered the tin roof of Sahyadri Junction so hard that the stationmaster's voice nearly vanished in it.

Kavya sat down on the last dry bench with her umbrella across her knees, her backpack hugged to her chest, and a tiny, tired smile. She had a nursing exam on Thursday and three chapters left to revise. A three-hour delay was, practically speaking, a gift.

"Is this seat taken?"

She looked up. A young man stood dripping in front of her, hair plastered to his forehead, a long black case strapped across his back like a soldier's rifle. He had the apologetic look of someone who had been rained on for a very long time.

"It is a bench," said Kavya. "Public property."

"Excellent. I love public property." He lowered himself onto the far end, as far from her as the bench allowed, which she noticed and quietly appreciated. "Dev," he added. Then, because that sounded abrupt, "Sorry. I do that. Introduce myself to benches."

"Kavya." She bit back a laugh. "What is in the case? A rifle?"

"A violin."

"Does it play?"

"Only when I do," said Dev gravely. "And only when no one important is listening."

She snorted, and he looked so pleased about it that she had to go back to her textbook to hide the grin. She read one paragraph about the circulatory system. She read it again. A man with a violin was sitting four feet away from her, drying out his hair with his sleeve, and the circulatory system had suddenly become extremely difficult to follow.

A kettle clanged. Down the platform came Raju, the chai seller, who knew every passenger who had ever been stuck at Sahyadri Junction, and who treated each delay like a personal opportunity.

"Chai, chai, garam chai! Two for you? Two for you?"

"One," said Dev, then glanced sideways. "Oh. Unless..."

"I have an exam to revise for," said Kavya. "I should say no."

"You should."

"But it is raining."

"It is raining," Dev agreed solemnly.

"Two," she told Raju.

They drank from clay cups, the kind that smell faintly of earth and are thrown away afterwards. They talked about nothing at first: the rain, the cold, the way pigeons somehow stayed dry on the rafters. Then about something, as the minutes slid past like beads on a string. He taught music to children in a school in Pune. She wanted to work in a children's ward one day. He had once played at a wedding where the bride's grandmother danced so hard her shoe flew into the tabla. She had once fainted at her first blood test, and fainted again watching someone else's.

"But you are training to be a nurse," he said.

"That is exactly why I am training to be a nurse," said Kavya. "You cannot be afraid of something you have got really good at."

He thought about that for a while. "I might steal that."

"It is public property."

Somewhere around the second hour she realised she had not opened the textbook for forty minutes. Somewhere around the third she realised she had stopped caring.

At 9:12 the loudspeaker coughed. "Passengers for Pune, kindly proceed to platform two. The train is arriving."

It did not feel like the sort of announcement that should come so soon. Kavya closed her book. Dev rose, shouldering the violin, and for a moment they stood there awkwardly with nothing to say, as people do when a good conversation ends without permission.

"Well," he said. "This was a really nice delay."

"The best I have had." She looked down at her empty cup. The clay was damp and cool in her hands. "Dev?"

"Yes?"

She almost asked for his number. The question was right there, as plain as a station sign. But she was twenty-two and she had an exam on Thursday and her heart had gone off like a firework in her chest, and what came out instead was:

"The 6:10 to Pune is always late in July. If anyone ever wanted to finish a conversation."

He stood very still. The rain, as if in sympathy, softened for a second.

"I will remember," he said.

Then the crowd carried them both toward the train, and she lost him in the sea of umbrellas.

She passed her exam on Thursday. She passed everything else that year too. The plain, steady days of lectures and wards and long bus rides filled up the calendar, and the memory of a bench and a violin case began to feel like something she had read in a book.

But on the first Saturday of the next July, Kavya found herself in a crowded auto-rickshaw going to Sahyadri Junction, holding an umbrella she did not need, for no reason she was prepared to admit.

Rain was falling softly, like a hand on a shoulder. The platform was almost empty. She walked the length of it slowly, past the stationmaster's office, past the pigeons on the rafters, until she reached the last bench.

It was dry. On it sat a long black case, and next to it, side by side on the wood, two clay cups of chai, still steaming.

"Chai, chai, garam chai," said Raju, quite unnecessarily, from somewhere behind her, in the voice of a man who had been waiting a year to say it.

Dev stood up from the end of the bench. He looked nervous. He looked as though he had practised something, and forgotten it.

"The 6:10 to Pune," announced the loudspeaker, with great and perfect timing, "is running late by approximately three hours."

Kavya closed her umbrella.

"Is this seat taken?" she said.