The customer asked about the torn curtain before asking about the divorce.
Ritu preferred that order. It gave her three minutes to be useful.
She spread the cloth over the cutting table and showed Mrs Batra where the lining had weakened. The woman listened, then put her handbag on the part Ritu had just asked her not to touch.
“My husband knows Tarun.”
Ritu lifted the bag and set it on a chair.
“He says you chose cards over your marriage.”
“Do you want the repair completed by Friday?”
Mrs Batra drew back. “I was only asking. There's no need to be like that.”
Ritu wrote Friday on the order sheet. Her handwriting was straight until the last letter.
She was thirty-six. Since the divorce, people had begun treating the life she was paying for as something she owed them an explanation of.
* * *
The workshop stood above a hardware shop in Bhopal. Ritu repaired household curtains and worked on older textiles under Meera, who ran the place. The large jobs were rare; between them came hems, torn linings and customers who thought careful work ought to be cheap because the stitches were small.
Ritu's contract ran for another four months. Meera wanted to offer something longer, but wanted was a word that had not yet become wages.
Then the old performance hall commissioned a set of repairs before its reopening.
Ritu spent two days inspecting the side curtains. She marked weak areas, photographed the fittings and prepared samples for Meera. The fabric had survived several generations of people blaming the person before them.
Tarun worked in event supplies. When Ritu saw his name among the hall's contractors, she asked Meera who would be handling site discussions.
“You and me.”
Ritu looked at the inspection notes.
“Then we should keep everything in writing.”
* * *
At the first site meeting, Tarun pulled out a chair for Mrs Batra, who sat on the hall committee. Ritu was already standing beside the sample table.
He looked at her scissors, her measuring tape and the cloth folded over her arm.
“Still doing your little repairs?”
Meera opened the estimate. “Ritu prepared this assessment.”
Tarun smiled as if that proved he had been encouraging her.
When Ritu explained that the damaged fittings needed replacement before the curtains went back up, he tapped the page.
“We're discussing fabric. Leave the rest to people who understand installations.”
“The fittings have damaged the fabric.”
“Must every conversation become an argument?”
Mrs Batra lowered her eyes. The same words had worked at family dinners. Here they worked beside an estimate Ritu had spent two evenings preparing.
She finished the explanation. Nobody asked a question. When Tarun spoke about the reopening flowers, three people took notes.
* * *
Two days later, Meera received a request to send another worker to future meetings.
There were concerns about an uncomfortable atmosphere. The committee wished to avoid personal matters affecting a public event.
Meera read the email aloud in her office. Ritu watched a fly knock against the window.
“Did he complain?”
“They haven't named anyone.”
“Have they named something I did?”
Meera turned the screen around. There was nothing beyond the request.
She called the committee secretary. Ritu could hear only her half of the conversation: qualifications, continuity, no complaint about the work. At last Meera said they would discuss arrangements and call back.
Afterwards she looked tired.
“I can't afford to lose the order.”
Ritu nodded. She hated understanding. A foolish demand would have been easier to walk away from if the rent had not also understood it.
Meera kept her on the repairs but attended the meetings herself. Ritu's notes went with her.
* * *
At home, her sister Kusum found Ritu washing the same plate for the third time.
“Come away from the sink.”
Ritu explained what had happened. Kusum said they should tell everyone exactly what Tarun had done during the marriage.
“And when they ask for his answer?”
“Let them.”
“And then my answer to his answer?”
Kusum went quiet. She dried the plate and put it away.
On the table lay an entry confirmation for an Indian Rummy event. Ritu had paid for it weeks earlier. It was a modest competition, part of a circuit she had played in before she married Tarun.
She folded the confirmation and put it in her bag.
Kusum asked whether she was still going.
“Yes.”
She did not feel defiant. She felt tired enough to cancel, and she was tired of that too.
* * *
Ritu lost the first session badly.
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Her practice partner Anjali asked what had happened. Ritu began explaining the committee meeting, then stopped halfway through. Anjali had asked about a decision at the table.
They went through it again. Ritu had hurried because she wanted the session over. She had spent the rest of the round being angry with herself for hurrying.
“Next time, tell me you need a break,” Anjali said.
“Would you have stopped?”
“For five minutes? Yes.”
Ritu sat back. At work, asking for more time had become proof that she was difficult. At home, she had once learned to finish arguments by saying she was fine. She had brought both habits here and blamed the room for them.
They played another session without discussing Tarun. Ritu still lost, but she could point to what she needed to change.
* * *
The workshop finished the first repaired curtain on a Thursday. Meera checked it with Ritu, signed the inspection record and sent it to the hall with the written fitting instructions.
The following afternoon, a photograph arrived. A new tear ran down from the top edge.
The committee secretary copied everyone into the message. The repair had failed. Could the workshop explain urgently?
Tarun replied first. He said he had warned them about relying on someone with divided priorities.
Ritu read the phrase twice. Then she saw that Mrs Batra had added another question: would the workshop refund the payment?
Nobody had called to ask what had happened at the installation.
Meera took the phone out of Ritu's hand before she could type.
“We inspect it first.”
The call to the hall lasted eleven minutes. By the end, they were allowed to come the next morning. Meera insisted on bringing Ritu. The secretary said, reluctantly, that it might be necessary this once.
* * *
The curtain was already down when they arrived. Tarun stood beside it with folded arms.
Ritu recognised the repaired section immediately. It was intact. The new tear began where an old fitting had been used, above the area she had worked on.
She asked who had installed it.
“The crew,” Tarun said.
“Which crew?”
“Are we doing blame now?”
Meera asked the secretary for the installation record. There was none. The fitting instructions were in a folder in the office; the crew had not seen them.
Ritu photographed the damage and asked for the fittings to be kept with the curtain. Tarun reached for one.
“Don't throw that away,” she said.
He dropped it onto the table. The noise made the secretary jump.
Mrs Batra arrived carrying the printed email chain. She looked from the metal fitting to the cloth.
“Can you fix it or can't you?”
Ritu took a breath.
“I can assess a repair. I can't promise your old hardware will stop tearing it.”
* * *
Back at the workshop, Meera spread out the photographs from the first inspection beside the new ones. The damaged fitting appeared in both. The written recommendation to replace it was dated before work began.
Ritu prepared a short report separating the original repair from the installation damage. She included the photograph of the finished curtain taken before delivery.
Meera sent it to everyone copied into the accusation.
The secretary called privately to say they understood. Could the workshop now help quietly? The opening was close, and nobody wanted an embarrassing dispute.
Meera glanced at Ritu.
“Send the correction to the same people,” Ritu said.
The secretary explained that committee members were busy.
“They found time to read that I couldn't do my work.”
She was speaking into Meera's phone now. Her voice shook, but she kept it near her mouth.
There was a long pause. Then the secretary said he would draft something.
Ritu asked to see it before they agreed to further work.
* * *
The first draft referred to an unfortunate misunderstanding. Ritu returned it.
The second said the workshop's repair had passed inspection and remained intact; subsequent damage was associated with using the unreplaced fitting. It withdrew the request for a refund of the original work.
Meera checked the wording against the report. Then they accepted it.
For the additional work, she prepared a separate estimate and schedule. It included replacing the defective fittings through an appropriate installer, inspection before rehanging and paid extra hours for the workshop team.
Tarun called Ritu that evening.
“So you're charging us twice.”
“The first work was completed.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yes.”
He stopped speaking for a moment. She heard traffic behind him.
“Can't you be decent for once?”
Ritu looked at the needle mark on her finger. She had worked through lunch to prepare the report they were now being asked to forget.
“Send questions about the estimate to Meera.”
She ended the call before he could tell her what kind of woman that made her.
* * *
The committee accepted the new terms the following afternoon.
Ritu was to lead the textile inspection on site. The secretary put her name on the access list and sent the installer her report. Nobody described her attendance as a personal complication this time.
It was not an entirely happy day. Meera apologised for letting the earlier request stand.
Ritu said, “You sent my notes without me.”
“I did.”
“They could use what I knew as long as they didn't have to see me.”
Meera folded her hands. She did not remind Ritu about the rent or the other workers' wages. They both knew those figures already.
“For future jobs, the person responsible attends the technical meetings,” she said. “I'll put that in our terms.”
Ritu wanted to answer graciously. Instead, she asked to read the revised terms when they were ready.
Meera said yes.
* * *
The next two weeks were crowded. The extra damage required patient work; the deadline had not become kinder because the blame had changed hands.
Ritu made one repair sample Meera rejected. She made another. A younger colleague found a mistake in her measurements, and Ritu thanked her after an uncomfortable minute in which she wanted to argue.
At practice, Anjali pointed out that she was rushing again.
Ritu put the cards down and took the five minutes.
She qualified for the circuit final on her accumulated results. She had not won every event. On the qualification list, her name was close enough to the bottom that she checked the rule twice before believing it.
Kusum insisted on a photograph of the list. Ritu made her include the whole page.
“Everyone above you too?”
“Especially them. I know how hard this was.”
* * *
Three days before the final, Tarun asked to meet. His message said he was willing to put everything behind them.
Ritu read it while waiting for a material delivery. Below it came a second message: his aunt was arranging dinner, and it would help if she could come quietly, without another argument.
The dinner was on the evening of the final.
She replied that she was unavailable.
He asked whether she was really choosing a game again.
Ritu watched the delivery driver count the rolls against his sheet. Once, that sentence would have made her list everything she had chosen for Tarun: bills, postponed trips, the mornings she went to work after staying awake to wait for him.
Now she wrote, I have already answered about dinner.
Then she helped carry the cloth upstairs.
The message still hurt. She checked it again at home. She did not send a better explanation.
* * *
Ritu finished fourth in the final.
For a few seconds after seeing the result, she could not bear Anjali's cheerful face. She had wanted first. She had imagined how neatly a trophy would answer everyone.
Anjali let her be disappointed. They sat on the steps outside until Ritu could discuss the last round without starting every sentence with if.
“Are you going to that dinner now?” Anjali asked.
“No.”
She had declined it before she knew the result. Losing did not change what the invitation had been.
Kusum arrived with an umbrella neither of them needed. She asked how it had gone. Ritu told her. Kusum said fourth sounded respectable, then admitted she had no idea how many players there were.
Ritu laughed for the first time that evening.
On Monday, she had an installation to supervise. She needed to sleep.
* * *
The new installer listened while Ritu explained the repaired areas. He asked questions she could answer and one she took to Meera. They checked the fittings before the curtains went up.
Tarun arrived halfway through and began directing a worker towards another task.
Ritu asked him to wait until the inspection was complete.
“We're already late.”
The secretary, standing beside the installer, said, “Then let's not make her do it twice.”
Tarun looked at him. The worker stayed where he was.
Ritu went on with the inspection. It took forty minutes. Nobody called those minutes a temper, an argument or a woman's inability to move on.
When the curtain travelled cleanly for the first test, she felt her shoulders drop. She asked for another test. Then she checked the edge that had torn.
Only after that did she sign the handover sheet.
* * *
At the reopening, Ritu stood near the back beside the other workshop workers. The committee had paid the additional invoice. Meera had given the team copies of the new terms, including attendance at technical meetings.
Mrs Batra came over before the speeches.
“I should have asked about the work,” she said.
Ritu waited. The woman looked towards the stage, then back.
“Before I repeated what he said.”
“Yes.”
Mrs Batra nodded awkwardly. There was no graceful answer that would make the first conversation disappear. Ritu did not supply one.
The secretary took the microphone. In thanking the restoration team, he described the repair and the installation problem accurately. He named Ritu as the person who had identified it and led the textile work.
Tarun was standing near the front. Two committee members turned to look at him. This time he had no estimate to tap, no private conversation to soften, no woman speaking too angrily for people to listen.
The curtain opened behind the secretary without catching.
* * *
Afterwards, Tarun found Ritu beside the sample display.
“You got what you wanted.”
She looked at the square of repaired cloth beneath the glass. Visitors had been stopping to examine the stitching. For an hour, strangers had asked her questions with answers she actually wanted to give.
“Yes,” she said.
He seemed to have expected a denial.
Meera called her over. The next hall project had been approved, and there was a longer contract to discuss on Tuesday. Ritu agreed on a time, then returned to the display.
A visitor was waiting with her daughter, a young woman studying design. She asked how the support cloth had been chosen.
Ritu began explaining. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Tarun hesitate, looking for a place to interrupt.
The young woman asked another question.
Ritu turned the sample towards her. By the time she looked up again, Tarun had gone.