Kiran hadn’t left the office before ten at night in nineteen days, and he wore the number like a badge, the way people wear numbers they’ve stopped questioning.

The Series B pitch was six weeks out. He’d told himself six weeks was survivable — six weeks of skipped lunches, of answering Slack at midnight, of falling asleep mid-sentence on calls with the Singapore office and hoping nobody noticed. HITEC City at 11 pm looked the same as HITEC City at 11 am, glass towers lit up regardless of the hour, as if the whole district had agreed collectively to stop sleeping.

Then, on a Tuesday, Kiran didn’t get out of bed. There was no single reason he could point to — no fight, no bad news, nothing he could have named if someone had asked. He just didn’t get up.

Not sick, not injured. Just unable, in the way that only makes sense from the inside. He watched the ceiling fan for four hours. His phone buzzed eleven times before he turned it face-down and left it there. By evening he’d eaten nothing except the leftover biryani in the fridge, cold, straight from the container, and watched three seasons of a show he couldn’t have named the plot of an hour later.

Meera found him like that on day three, unshowered, the blinds still shut at 4 pm.

“You’ve barely spoken in two days.”

“I’m fine. Just tired.”

“You’ve been tired for six weeks. This isn’t tired.” She sat on the edge of the bed, not touching him, just present. “This is something else.”

He didn’t have an answer for what the something else was. He genuinely didn’t know — only that the same man who couldn’t stop working three weeks ago now couldn’t make himself reply to a single email, and both versions of him felt equally out of his own control.

His father called that weekend, the way he did every Sunday, and Kiran almost didn’t pick up. He did, eventually, mostly because not picking up would have required an explanation he didn’t have.

“Come to Kompally,” Nanna said, not asking. “The tomatoes need looking at. Thatha’s knees are giving him trouble this week.”

Kiran went, mostly because it was easier than staying.

His grandfather’s terrace garden hadn’t changed in Kiran’s whole life — the same chipped clay pots, the same rusted watering can, the same eleven tomato plants that somehow produced exactly enough for the household and nothing more, every single year. Thatha was out there when Kiran arrived, moving along the row with the can, unhurried, the way he’d been doing it every morning since before Kiran was born.

“You look terrible,” Thatha said, not looking up.

“Thanks, Thatha.”

“Sit. Or don’t. The plants don’t mind either way.” He finished the row he was on, set the can down, and lowered himself onto the low stone bench with the particular care of a man whose knees had opinions of their own now.

Kiran sat, mostly to avoid standing.

“You know I water these every day,” Thatha said. “Rain or no rain. Fever or no fever. The August I had the surgery, your Amma did it, exactly the amount I told her, not a drop more.”

“Isn’t that a bit much? Every single day?”

“Every single day is nothing. It’s ten minutes.” Thatha turned one leaf over, checking its underside for something only he was looking for. “The mistake people make is thinking care has to be dramatic to count. So they don’t water for two weeks, then they flood the pot to make up for it, and wonder why the roots rot.” He set the leaf back down gently. “Or they water so much, so eagerly, the first week, that by August they can’t be bothered to water at all.”

Kiran said nothing, but something in his chest had gone quiet in a way it hadn’t in nineteen days.

“Your father tells me you’ve been sleeping four hours a night for a month,” Thatha said, not as an accusation, just a fact laid on the bench between them. “And now, this week, sixteen hours a day, doing nothing at all.” He shrugged. “Same mistake. Different pot.”

Kiran picked up the second watering can without being asked, and found the row Thatha hadn’t reached yet.

He didn’t overdo it. He didn’t skip a plant either. Just the amount each one needed, moving down the line at Thatha’s pace instead of his own, which turned out to take exactly as long as it needed to and no longer.

By the time he drove back to the flat that evening, he hadn’t decided anything about the pitch, or the six weeks, or what Monday would look like. But he texted his manager — a short message, nothing dramatic, just that he’d be logging off at seven for the rest of the week, starting today.

He put his phone away before he could watch for the reply.

Scripture/Source: Inspired by the Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 14, on the three gunas — Krishna’s teaching that both excessive restless activity (rajas) and heavy inertia (tamas) pull a person away from balance, while steady, even effort (sattva) sustains without exhausting. Not a direct verse translation; adapted as an original story.

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The Pothole — a different kind of daily frustration, and a father who also finds his answer in something small and repeated.