IT IS MUMBAI IN NOVEMBER, WHICH IS TO SAY: HOT. I HAVE STOOD WHERE I AM STANDING MANY TIMES BEFORE, IN ALL ERAS OF MY LIFE—AS A BABY WOBBLY ON MY OWN TWO FEET, AS A BESPECTACLED KID WITH SCRAPED KNEES, AS AN AWKWARD TEEN TUGGING DOWN THE SKIRT THAT ATTRACTS TOO MUCH ATTENTION, AS A YOUNG WOMAN BACKPACKING AFTER COLLEGE, AND AS A NEWLYWED, VISITING WITH MY HUSBAND.
THIS TIME I am here as a writer, wife, mother. I’m around the corner from the park teeming with morning walkers, in the leafy suburb of Vile Parle, on the street where my grandparents, and then my aunt, used to live in a building called Nav Samaj. I remember every inch of it: the mineral smell of the staircase, the daybed where I spent hours as a child reading piles of Reader’s Digests. The cool tile floor I’d lie on when the heat was overwhelming, the dark kitchen in which some of the most spectacular meals of my life were created. The almirah in the bedroom that held my grandmother’s starched, mothball-scented saris.
But the view has changed; Nav Samaj is gone. A new building, Navasamaj—the name spelled out intimes the size of the original—is being erected in its place. I point to show my four-year-old daughter, Kavi, trying to explain the rift in my vision. She’s never been to India before: She’s too young to see this ghost.
