Day 77
The Follow-UpThe lists start on a Tuesday.
p. 5
Unsent Studio
Seventy-seven days until his sister's wedding.
He works nights. Everyone has stopped asking.
He is very good at this.
“There is a pause of no length at all.”
The book does not move day by day. It lands on twelve of them, and the gaps between are where most of it happens.
The last chapter is not excerpted anywhere on this site.
The lists start on a Tuesday.
His mother buys a notebook for them — a thin ruled one, forty pages, the kind Aditi used for maths in class six — and by Wednesday there are four lists, and by Thursday the notebook has developed a system. Sweets. Tent. Cards. Guests. Under Guests there are seventy-one names in her handwriting, which slants uphill, and beside eleven of them there is a tick, and beside three of them there is a question mark, and Vihaan does not know what the question mark means and does not ask.
He comes home at eight in the morning. This is his hour of return, the way other men have an hour of departure. The lift is broken again — eleven days now, there is a paper taped to it at chest height, LIFT KHARAB HAI, in marker — so he climbs. Third floor. He is not tired on the stairs. He is tired somewhere else, behind the eyes, a flat grey tiredness that stairs do not reach.
The flat is already loud. His father is on the phone with the tent contractor. His mother is on the floor with the notebook. Aditi is in the bathroom, the geyser is on, and the meter outside is spinning like a small furious insect.
“You’re back,” his mother says, not looking up. “Tea?”
“I’m going to sleep.”
Night shift. Comes home at eight in the morning, which is his hour of return, the way other men have an hour of departure.
That he didn't send it.
Getting married in seventy-seven days. Her things go into labelled bags along the wall of the room they have shared since 2011.
That she has noticed.
Keeps the notebook. Seventy-one names in handwriting that slants uphill. Eleven ticks. Three question marks.
Anything, mostly. She offers tea instead.
Married two years ago. Uses the same tent contractor as everyone. Knows someone in HR and is genuinely, uncomplicatedly trying to help.
That the question was the worst thing that happened all week.
No kingdoms. No maps of a continent. A flat on the third floor of a building whose lift has been broken for eleven days, a roof where a tent frame goes up, an office that runs at night, and a print shop near the crossing that charges four rupees for two pages.
Gurgaon sits on the horizon the whole time, which is the only distance that matters.
Twelve chapters. Sixty-three pages, set in Palatino. In English, with roughly thirty lines left exactly as they were spoken.
Leave an address and you'll be told the day it's available — before anyone else, and once only.
One email. The day it goes on sale.
The download link goes to this address. Check it carefully.
Bought it already and your link expired? Send me a new one.
One universe at a time. Nothing ships because a calendar said so.
Twelve days, counting down to a wedding. On sale shortly.
The counting starts again. No date, and no promises about one.
Only if the story needs it, and only if it can be done quietly.
There is always another thing nobody said out loud.
An independent storytelling studio. We publish the things that don't get said out loud — starting with this one.
We are small on purpose. Everything we make begins as a book, because a book is the cheapest way to find out whether a story is true. What happens after that depends entirely on the story.
Season Two, and nothing else.