Episode 10: The Good Spot

Bahadurgarh, Haryana · 2026

Mama-ji left the house at seven-thirty to claim his spot on Civil Lines Road.

“She comes at eleven,” Sushma called after him from the ironing board. “Three and a half hours.”

“Baba Ramji’s people take the good spots by eight.” He laced his shoes with the focus of a man heading to a finals match. “Last time I stood behind Pandit Shukla. Ten minutes of his turban. I saw nothing.”

“The whole thing is five seconds,” Sushma said.

“That is why the spot matters.”

He was gone before she could answer.

The loudspeaker truck had come through Kumhar Gali three days earlier at six in the morning, a rented Bolero with two cone speakers wired to the roof rack and a man reading from a sheet of paper at a volume that woke every dog in the lane: the convoy of Mrs. Komila Modi would pass through Civil Lines Road on Saturday at approximately eleven a.m. Kindly cooperate with traffic arrangements. By the time the Bolero reached the water tank the man was hoarse and the dogs had not stopped.

Three days. That was all Sushma needed.

She pressed her good cotton sari across the board, the one she wore to weddings, Blossom Public’s annual day, and any occasion where the lane mothers might be taking inventory. She held the blouse to the window light, turned it, checked it for creases.

“We are standing on a road,” Gopina said, bringing tea from the kitchen. “In the sun. For five seconds.”

“You stand on roads however you like.” Sushma took the tea without looking up. “Some of us are visible.”

Rashika came out of the bathroom with a towel around her head. “Who is visible on Civil Lines Road at eleven in the morning? The whole town will be sweating.”

“Deepika Khosla from B-block wore heels last time,” Sushma said. “Heels. On a road. In this heat.”

“And you noticed.”

“Everyone noticed. She has an inverter and heels and a son-in-law in Gurugram. I have none of these things and I will still look better than her.” She smoothed the sari across the board. “Discussion over.”

Gopina went to change. She came back in the same shirt she wore to the paper and the same sandals. Sushma looked at her and closed her eyes for one slow second.

“At least comb your hair. You look like you slept in a field.”

Gopina combed her hair. Then she took the camera down from the shelf above her cot. The paper’s Canon, battered, the lens cap held on with tape. Mohit let her take it home on weekends because nobody else wanted it. She wiped the lens with the edge of her sleeve.

She was not on assignment. Nobody had asked for photos. The convoy was not news. It came through, everyone looked up, and then it was over and you went back to whatever you were doing.

But the camera came anyway. It always did.

She had been doing this since she was twelve. Every time the convoy passed through town, twice a year, sometimes three, she was somewhere in the crowd. She knew which side Komila sat on. She knew the hand would rise once, palm flat, fingers loose, and come back down before the car cleared the sweet shop. She knew the window would be up but the glass thin enough to catch the profile behind it, if you stood on the right side of the road.

She had never once been on the wrong side.