complex of another fort—this one called Nahargarh, one of our first stops in the city. It was a bit more difficult to get to, since it required driving on winding roads through the Aravalli mountains. But once we arrived, there was an extraordinary, sweeping view of the entirety of Jaipur.
He spent the meal quizzing Wesley on her career, joking that the key to life is avoiding tigers and lawyers. Wesley had dated me long enough to master the polite laugh.
“If you get time, come here during the winter and stay here for one night. It is a heavenly pleasure,” Shyamal said, as we sipped beers.
“You didn’t eat at this restaurant, did you?” I said, asking about his previous trips.
“This is the place!” he exclaimed.
Shyamal told us when he had been to this exact restaurant before: on New Year’s Eve five years prior. He had come with a tour group. Me? I was surrounded by friends at a party at the same time. He also mentioned offhand that this trip to Delhi, Agra, and Jaipur was one of the only times in his life that he had traveled with someone who wasn’t a stranger. He looked out the window as he said it. There was no fluctuation in his tone. He wasn’t fishing for my comfort. This was his life. It was what he was used to.
“Believe me or not, I never expected in this short period of time to become so family. Both of you are my best friends,” Shyamal said, and we clinked our beer glasses together. He said he was proud of me and that he was having the print of my front-page piece in the Times framed.
On our last day in Jaipur, we went to another shop, which sold everything from pashminas, rugs, and saris, to marble and wood carvings. We asked my father if we could buy him something for his kindness.
“You’ve brought me everything,” he responded.
“What?” I said, confused.
“Everything I’ve lost in the last eleven years, you’ve brought me back in ten days,” Shyamal said.
I said nothing, not knowing what I could add. I briefly thought about hugging him but decided against it. Instead, I helped Shyamal learn how to use his smartphone correctly. This way, the next time he was on a trip by himself, he could take photos with his phone rather than sprinting back and forth like Usain Bolt to get the perfect crop. My entire life, I had blamed Shyamal for not being able to properly communicate with me. This time, I was the one unable to communicate how much solace I found in getting to know him on this trip.
At the hotel the night before, Wesley had made an observation that I kept thinking about now, sitting across from my father: “He wants to know you but he doesn’t know how to know another person,” she had said. Maybe the opposite had been true as well. Maybe it was me who had not learned how to know him. That’s not to assign blame. It may have just been that our respective places in the universe had been incompatible, and there is nothing we could have done about it until now. This particular intersection of time and place, both of us in a new stage of our lives, may have been the cipher we needed to find each other.
At the shop, we paid for our souvenirs, including a pashmina and some figurines to bring back for Bishakha, and then we got in the car for the drive back to Delhi. Shyamal was going to fly back to Kolkata the next day, Wesley and I to the United States.
The ride was quiet, except for one time when we pulled over. We didn’t seriously injure a cow this time; it was just to have lunch.
“This time it’ll be harder to say goodbye. Parting will be difficult,” Shyamal said, as we munched on dosas in a crowded cafeteria.
After a couple of seconds of silence, Wesley offered, “It’ll be weird to go home.”
“At least you have each other. I go back to being alone,” Shyamal said.
He paused and gazed off into the distance.
“It is hard to live alone,” he said.
I’ll never forget the unsentimental way he said this, his pure and unbridled resignation to a solitary life. He said it out loud, but really, it was to nobody in particular. The last couple of weeks were a break for Shyamal from his regular life, one that he’d treasure. His life would be lonely now. It