A 38-year-old widow in Varanasi hired a Shudra boatman to teach her son how to swim. Through their 5 a.m. boat rides, they fell in love—but she feared she was betraying her late husband.
Part I – The Teacher Who Stopped Reading Aloud
Anjali Mishra was thirty-eight and she had become very good at living a life that was exactly half.
Half of the staffroom laughter. Half of the festivals. Half of the bed. It had been three years since her husband, Alok, had left for office one morning in the month of Shravan and did not return. A heart attack at thirty-nine, in the staffroom of his own school. The kind of death that does not give you time to fight or to forgive.
After that, Varanasi continued as Varanasi does. The bells at Kashi Vishwanath still rang at four in the morning. The boys still cycled too fast in the lanes of Lanka. Only Anjali’s house became quiet. She was an English literature teacher at the DAV Inter College near Godowlia. She taught Wuthering Heights to Class 11 and told her girls that love is not always about happy endings. The girls would giggle. The other teachers would look away. A widow teaching love stories is always a topic of staffroom discussion in small cities.
She lived with her in-laws in a two-storey house in Mahmoorganj. Good people. Decent people. Her mother-in-law loved her, but with that extra carefulness that makes you feel more alone. They never said no to anything. They only said, beta, log kya kahenge. What will people say.
Her son, Aarav, was ten. He was born with his father’s straight nose and his mother’s love for stories. In May, after watching the other boys jumping into the municipal swimming pool near Sigra, he came home and said, Mumma, I want to learn swimming. I want to learn in Ganga, like a real Banarasi.
Anjali first said no. Ganga is not a swimming pool. Ganga is mother, but mother also has strong currents.
But Aarav kept asking. And her father-in-law, who had been a clerk in the railways, said, if you want, there are boatmen at Assi ghat. They teach children. They know the river.
So one Sunday, Anjali went to Assi ghat at five in the morning. She had not been to the ghat at five in the morning since Alok’s asthi visarjan. The ghat was a different world at that hour. The sky was not yet blue. Diyas were still floating. Sadhus were doing pranayama. Tea sellers were clanking their kettles.
A boatman was washing his boat with Ganga water. He was tall, thin, the colour of wet sand. He wore a faded blue lungi and a vest. His boat was painted green and yellow, with faded letters – Jai Ma Ganga.
His name was Vijay Nishad. Forty-two. A Mallah, what the old books would call Shudra boatman. A widower. He had two children – a daughter, Guddi, twelve, and a son, Deepu, eight. His wife had died two years ago during the second wave of Corona. Fever, no hospital bed, gone in three days.
Anjali felt a strange kinship before he even spoke. Not because of caste or class, but because she recognised the look in his eyes. The look of a person who has learnt to fold his grief and keep it in his pocket while he rows.
“I want my son to learn swimming,” she said. “Is it safe?”
He looked at Aarav, then at the river. “Madam ji, Ganga does not teach swimming. She teaches floating. Swimming is fighting the water. Floating is trusting it. I can teach him floating. If he learns floating, swimming will come.”
Aarav liked that. Anjali, the English literature teacher, liked that even more.
They fixed five a.m., three days a week. Two hundred rupees per hour. He did not bargain.
Part II – Five O’Clock Philosophy
The 5 a.m. boat rides became a routine.
Varanasi in May-June is already hot by seven, but at five it is still forgiving. Vijay would be waiting, his boat already in water. Aarav would jump in with his swimming trunks and a plastic bottle. Anjali would sit at the other end, with her dupatta tucked tightly, holding her slippers in her hand.
Vijay did not teach like the coaches at Sigra pool who shouted, kick harder. He taught Aarav to first sit on the edge of the boat and put his feet in water and feel the temperature. Then to hold the side of the boat and let his body lie flat on water, looking at the sky. “Don’t fight, beta. Ganga is not your enemy. She is carrying you from ages. Just let her carry,” he would say.
Aarav, who was scared of water in the first week, started laughing in the second week. By the third week he was floating for two minutes without support, looking at the kites.
While Aarav floated, Vijay and Anjali talked. Not much. Not in the beginning.
He told her the river has three kinds of mornings. One morning when she is sleepy and slow. One morning when she is angry after rain in the mountains. One morning when she is playful, making small whirlpools like a child.
She told him about Tagore. She had started reading Gitanjali again after Alok’s death, because her MA professor had once said Tagore understood grief like a river understands its banks. She would read a few lines aloud, in English, her voice low so that other boats would not hear.
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high…
Vijay would listen, rowing slowly. He did not know English much, but he knew rhythm. He said, “Madam ji, this is like our Kabir. Same meaning, different language.”
One day she brought an extra book, a small, battered copy of Tagore’s The Gardener. She gave it to him. “For Guddi. She is twelve, you said she likes reading.”
He took it with both hands. “I studied till class eight only. After that, boat. But Guddi reads Hindi very well.”
Slowly, the class divide that everyone in the colony talked about – educated respectable teacher and manual labour boatman – started looking very foolish on that boat. On land, Anjali was Mrs. Mishra, widow, teacher, who should wear only light colours and not laugh too loudly. On land, Vijay was Nishad, boatman, who should call her bhabhiji and not look directly. On water, they were just two people who had both lost their partners and were trying to teach a ten-year-old how to float.
Aarav started calling him Vijay Chacha. Guddi sometimes came in the morning and sat with Anjali, asking her meaning of difficult English words. Deepu, the younger one, would try to copy Aarav’s floating.
It was all very gentle. Very healing. Like Varanasi itself, which does not heal you by making you forget, but by making you sit with your loss till loss becomes less sharp.
Anjali started waiting for five a.m. She would wake up at four-thirty, make tea, wear a simple cotton saree, not the white widow saree her mother-in-law suggested, but a light blue one. For the first time in three years, she started putting a small bindi again. Not for anyone. For herself.
And then, on a Tuesday morning in late July, when the Ganga had risen a little and the ghats were half submerged, Vijay said something that changed everything.
That morning, as the mist was lifting off the water and the temple bells from Assi were just starting, Vijay did not start the boat. He kept holding the rope tied to the iron ring on the ghat, and looking at the water near Manikarnika, he said quietly, as if he was talking to the river and not to her, Bhabhiji, three years ago on a Tuesday just like this, at half past six in the evening, I carried your husband’s asthi in this same boat. Your sasur ji had booked me because the pandas were all busy due to Dev Deepawali rush. You were standing behind the pillar in a white saree, crying without sound. Your husband, before he died in the hospital, told the ward boy, who is my cousin, tell that boatman at Assi ghat, the tall one with the green-yellow boat, if my wife ever comes alone to the ghats, take care that she does not feel scared of water. I have kept that booking open for three years, Bhabhiji. I did not charge you because that ride was already paid for.
Part III – The Chains Inside
Anjali did not go to the ghat for the next ten days.
She told her mother-in-law that Aarav had cold. She told the school she had some work. She sat in her room, with Alok’s photo on the small table, the one where he is wearing a maroon sweater and smiling with his eyes half closed.
She felt she had done something wrong. Not wrong to Vijay. Wrong to Alok.
In our middle-class families, a widow is given many invisible rules. She can work. She can teach. She can raise her son. But she cannot be seen as wanting anything for herself. Especially not companionship. The society outside will whisper anyway, but the harshest whispers are inside your own head. For three years, Anjali had kept that voice inside her very carefully locked. She would tell herself, I am Alok’s wife. Even if he is not here.
Now, when Vijay had said that Alok himself had asked him to take care, it felt as if Alok had given her permission. And permission from a dead husband is more confusing than no permission.
She kept thinking, am I dishonouring his memory by feeling peace on a boat with another man? Is it okay that I laugh when Vijay Chacha tells how Deepu once tried to sell pakoras on the boat? Is it okay that I feel less heavy after 5 a.m.?
Her mother-in-law noticed. One night she came and sat on Anjali’s bed.
“Beta, that boatman, Guddi’s father, people at ghat are saying you go daily,” she said, not accusing, just stating.
Anjali’s heart beat fast. “Mummy, he teaches Aarav swimming.”
“I know. Your father-in-law asked around. He is a good man. Lost his wife. Works hard. People are saying because people always say. But what are you saying to yourself? That is more important.”
Anjali started crying after many months. Not the silent crying she did after Alok’s death, but loud, shoulders shaking crying.
“I feel guilty, Mummy. I feel like if I feel happy even for one hour, I am cheating Alok.”
Her mother-in-law, who had been a widow herself for six months before remarrying Anjali’s father-in-law in the 1980s when widow remarriage was still a scandal in their Kayastha community, held her hand.
“Alok was my son. I know him. He would never want you to live like a photo frame. He would want you to live like Ganga. Flowing. Not stuck.”
That night Anjali opened her old diary. She wrote a letter she would never post.
Alok, if you were here, would you be angry that another man knows how I like my tea without sugar? Would you be angry that our son calls another man Chacha and learns to float? Or would you be happy that I am learning to float too?
She did not get an answer. But she felt lighter.
Part IV – Tagore and Tulsi on the Same Boat
She went back to Assi ghat on a Monday. At five a.m.
Vijay was there. His boat was there. He did not ask why she did not come for ten days. He just untied the rope.
Aarav was excited to be back. He jumped in. “Chacha, today I will float for five minutes!”
While Aarav floated, Anjali said, “You knew Alok?”
“I did not know him as Alok Mishra, MA, teacher. I knew him as the sir who always gave ten rupees extra and said, keep it for your daughter’s books. He came to ghat many times alone, just to sit. He told me once, my wife is scared of deep water, but I tell her deep water is also water.”
Anjali smiled through tears. That was exactly Alok.
From that day, their talks changed. They were not just about river and poetry. They were about practical things. Guddi wanted to go to Class 10 but the municipal school near their basti had no English teacher. Aarav needed a small table to study because the dining table was too high. Vijay’s boat needed repair before monsoon and he had no savings.
Anjali started going to Vijay’s basti, near the looms behind Assi. It was not the Dharavi slum that outsiders imagine. It was a small lane of Mallah families, with boats being repaired, nets being dried, children running. His house was one room, but clean. His daughter Guddi had made a small tulsi plant in a broken bucket. On the wall, there was a photo of his late wife, Sunita, wearing a red saree, and next to it, a small shelf with three books – a Hindi translation of Gitanjali, a torn book of Kabir dohas, and a Class 9 English textbook.
Vijay would make her tea on a small stove. It was too sweet, too milky. She would drink it.
One evening, Guddi asked, “Anjali didi, will you teach me English? I want to become teacher like you.”
Anjali said yes. She started teaching Guddi and Deepu and two other basti girls at four p.m. at the ghat steps, before her boat ride. The other teachers at DAV said, what is this new social work. She said, nothing, just reading.
The biggest moment came not as a proposal, but as a quiet offer.
It was in September. The Ganga was full. Anjali’s in-laws had gone to Prayagraj for a wedding. Aarav was at Vijay’s house, playing with Deepu. Anjali and Vijay were sitting on the boat, tied to the ghat, not going anywhere. It was raining lightly. The river was grey.
Vijay said, “Bhabhiji, I am thinking of sending Guddi to her nani’s place in Mirzapur. Here basti boys tease her because she wants to study. I cannot protect always. My boat is from morning to night.”
Anjali said, “Don’t send her. Let her stay. I can…”
She stopped. She wanted to say, I can stay nearby and help. But saying that in Varanasi means a lot.
Vijay understood. He said, “Bhabhiji, my community will also say. A Brahmin widow teacher living near Mallah basti. They will say I trapped you.”
Anjali said, “Let them say. They already say everything. For three years they said I should wear white. I wore blue. They said I should not go to ghats alone. I went. The biggest barrier was not them. It was this voice inside me that kept saying, you are Alok’s widow, you cannot. Today that voice is quiet. Your Ganga taught me floating. You don’t fight water. You trust it.”
He did not hold her hand. In their world, holding hands is a big thing. He just looked at her and said, “If you shift near ghats, Aarav will have more time to swim. And Guddi will have a teacher. And my boat will have one more passenger who reads Tagore loudly so that even Ganga can listen.”
It was not a proposal. It was a practical, middle-aged, gentle arrangement. No kneeling, no ring.
Part V – A Small House Near The Ghats
Anjali did not do a big fat wedding. There was no lehenga, no band, no invitation card that said Anjali weds Vijay. Varanasi would not have understood it, and more importantly, she did not need it.
She spoke to her in-laws. Her father-in-law, who had initially been shocked, said after two days, “You have looked after Aarav and us for three years. If you want to live near Assi, take a small house on rent. We will not stop. People will talk for one month. After that they will find someone else.”
Her mother-in-law gave her a small gold chain that had been Alok’s mother’s. “For Guddi,” she said.
She rented a small one-bedroom house, just behind Assi ghat, in a lane where teachers and boatmen both lived. Rent was seven thousand. It had a small balcony from where you could see the Ganga if you craned your neck. The landlord, a retired postmaster, did not ask much.
She moved with Aarav, with her books, with Alok’s photo. She kept Alok’s photo on the same table. Vijay did not ask her to remove it.
Vijay did not shift in with her. He continued living in his basti house with his children, which was only three minutes walk. But mornings and evenings, their lives became one. Aarav and Deepu went to the same school. Guddi came every evening to study English. Anjali taught her Wuthering Heights and told her, see, even Cathy had to choose between society and heart.
In the morning at five, Vijay’s boat still goes. Now it has four passengers daily – Anjali, Aarav, Guddi, Deepu. He teaches them all to float. Anjali reads Tagore, sometimes in English, sometimes in Hindi translation that Vijay understands better.
Where the mind is without fear…
And Vijay replies with Kabir –
Jab main tha tab Hari nahi, ab Hari hai main nahi.
When I was, God was not, now God is, I am not.
Tourists on other boats sometimes stare. Some locals whisper. A few of Anjali’s old colleagues stopped talking to her. But the Ganga does not whisper. She just flows.
Last week, Anjali’s old principal from DAV met her at the ghat. She said, “Anjali, you left a good house in Mahmoorganj for this small house?”
Anjali smiled, the kind of smile that comes after many years of not smiling.
“Ma’am, I did not leave a house for a small house. I left a half life for a full life. Alok taught me how to love. Vijay taught me how to float after love is gone. Both are needed.”
In the evenings, when the aarti happens at Assi and the diyas float, Aarav sometimes asks, “Mumma, are you happy?”
Anjali looks at Vijay, who is tying his boat, at Guddi who is reading loudly, at the Ganga who has seen a thousand such stories and will see a thousand more, and says, “Beta, happy is a very big word. I am peaceful. And peaceful is bigger than happy.”
And that is how, on the banks of the Ganga, in the holiest city, where people come to die, two widowed people learnt to live again. Not by pulling each other up to their class, not by forgetting their past, but by quietly shifting to a small house near the ghats, where the biggest barrier – the chains that society had placed inside their own minds – had finally rusted away in the river air.
