Rati Goyal

Rati Goyal is an accomplished former Kathak dancer, a respected landlady, and Shivam Goyal’s grandmother. Her importance lies less in commanding the central business or romantic conflicts than in the quiet authority she exercises within them: she creates a space where classical dance can flourish, recognizes Aparna Mahadevan’s discipline, and gives Shivam Goyal the emotional language he lacks when mourning, resisting new love, or misreading Aparna Mahadevan’s life. Through Rati Goyal, artistic inheritance, family custom, and romantic counsel become parts of the same moral structure.

Identity and Setting

Rati Goyal is introduced as a woman in her late seventies or eighties who owns the building where Shanti Rao has established her dance studio. Shanti Rao explains that Rati Goyal was a highly accomplished and successful Kathak dancer in her youth. Her appearance joins restraint with refinement: she wears a plain yellow sari with a golden border, a detail that reflects the combination of simplicity and elegance that Aparna Mahadevan immediately notices in her.

Rati Goyal’s ownership of the property is not presented as merely commercial. She has rented the basement to Shanti Rao’s studio because she enjoys watching children learn classical dance. She tells Shivam Goyal that seeing them practise returns her lost youth to her in some measure. The building therefore functions as an extension of her artistic memory: a former dancer preserves continuity not by remaining onstage, but by making room for the next generation to train.

Her physical condition introduces a counterpoint to that cultural vitality. Rati Goyal experiences vertigo, and on one occasion Aparna Mahadevan accompanies her back to the penthouse after Shanti Rao goes to obtain medication. The elevator opens onto a luxurious portico decorated with orchids and floral creepers, suggesting that Rati Goyal’s taste remains vivid even as age makes ordinary movement more precarious.

Artistic Recognition of Aparna Mahadevan

Rati Goyal becomes an early witness to Aparna Mahadevan’s artistic seriousness. When Aparna Mahadevan performs a Shiva-centered Bharatanatyam piece for her, Rati Goyal watches closely and occasionally nods in approval. After the performance, she praises Aparna Mahadevan for doing justice to the glory of Lord Shiva and calls her Shanti Rao’s finest student.

The encounter is framed by a traditional gesture of respect: Aparna Mahadevan bends to touch Rati Goyal’s feet, and Rati Goyal takes both of Aparna Mahadevan’s hands in hers. Her advice is affectionate but also custodial. She tells Aparna Mahadevan not to forget what she has learned there and expresses confidence that the dancer will make them proud at her Arangetram. Rati Goyal thus grants more than personal approval; she places Aparna Mahadevan within a chain of instruction, memory, and public artistic responsibility.

This recognition becomes significant when Shivam Goyal later attends Aparna Mahadevan’s Arangetram at the auditorium in Matunga. Rati Goyal accompanies him, even laughing at his earlier mistake: he had mistaken the Arangetram invitation for a wedding invitation and the singer, Rahul Ramachandran, for Aparna Mahadevan’s groom. At the performance, the auditorium is filled with guests in zari-rich Kancheepurams, formal shirts, and dhotis; a decorated sculpture of Lord Nataraja stands behind the stage while the master of ceremonies describes Bharata Natyam’s antiquity and divine nature. Rati Goyal’s earlier blessing therefore finds its public fulfillment in a ritualized performance witnessed by the wider community.

Counsel to Shivam Goyal

Rati Goyal is one of the few people before whom Shivam Goyal allows his uncertainty to become visible. She asks about Menka Goyal’s condition and listens as he struggles with the possibility of moving beyond his first love, Mohini Bhattacharya. Shivam Goyal insists that Sherlie D Costa is a loyal friend and an effective ally who has supported him against Girish Goyal in boardroom battles, but he cannot see her romantically. Rati Goyal does not force him toward Sherlie D Costa. Instead, she distinguishes gratitude and friendship from love while warning him against closing his heart forever.

Her counsel is deliberately unsentimental. She tells Shivam Goyal that Mohini Bhattacharya was his first love and that he cannot simply remove first love from his mind; he must live with the grief. Yet grief does not mean that the doors of his heart must remain closed. Her position gives emotional legitimacy to mourning without treating mourning as a permanent identity. In this respect, Rati Goyal mediates between fidelity to the dead and the possibility of a second emotional life.

She also recognizes a family pattern in the D Costas’ stubbornness and approves of Shivam Goyal’s decision to state his position clearly to Sherlie D Costa. Her advice favors directness over prolonged ambiguity, even though Shivam Goyal remains uncertain about what he should do. When Aparna Mahadevan’s image, particularly her jhumkas, continues to occupy his thoughts, Rati Goyal’s earlier argument becomes newly relevant: his attraction to an intern troubles him because he has been resisting the possibility of feeling again, not because the feeling itself is unintelligible.

The Confession and the Misunderstanding

Rati Goyal’s most direct role in the romance between Shivam Goyal and Aparna Mahadevan comes after Aparna Mahadevan confesses that she is attracted to him. Shivam Goyal tells Rati Goyal that he has admitted feeling the same and that he does not know what to do. Rati Goyal responds with indulgent amusement, treating his confusion as a natural consequence of love rather than as evidence that the relationship is impossible. She is immediately pleased by Aparna Mahadevan’s character and says that she seems like a great girl.

Shivam Goyal’s hesitation is revealing. He describes Aparna Mahadevan as too great and fears that he may not measure up to her love or may hurt her. Rati Goyal’s presence allows that fear to be articulated within a familial relationship rather than acted out as withdrawal. Her response does not solve the dilemma, but it reframes uncertainty as something that accompanies love. The grandmother becomes an emotional interpreter: she helps Shivam Goyal recognize that the problem is not the absence of feeling, but the responsibility created by feeling.

Her influence also gains force through physical intimacy. Shivam Goyal settles on the floor and rests his head in Rati Goyal’s lap while she ruffles his curly hair. The gesture places the adult businessman, who manages a company and faces boardroom pressures, back within a bond of care. Rati Goyal’s authority is therefore neither institutional nor coercive. It is grounded in accumulated affection and in Shivam Goyal’s willingness to become vulnerable before her.

Ritual, Memory, and Narrative Role

Rati Goyal links several forms of ritual that shape the novel’s emotional world. She preserves Kathak through the dance studio, validates Aparna Mahadevan’s Bharatanatyam training, and participates in the social recognition of the Arangetram. She also belongs to a family governed by mourning customs. Shivam Goyal remembers that when he turned fourteen, the family could not hold a party because his grandfather had died; the household observed a full year without celebrations after a death. Rati Goyal’s world therefore contains both artistic continuity and disciplined grief.

At the Matunga auditorium, she remains a practical companion as well as a symbolic witness. Shivam Goyal asks for her help because he needs a friend, and he assists her out of the car. She laughs at his temperament while he prepares to face Aparna Mahadevan, turning his romantic panic into something the family can observe and gently challenge. Her humor prevents the religious and artistic solemnity of the Arangetram from becoming emotionally inaccessible.

Rati Goyal’s narrative function is consequently that of a threshold figure. She stands between youth and age, performance and memory, mourning and renewal, private attraction and public acknowledgment. Her former life as a dancer gives her an intimate understanding of disciplined art; her age gives weight to her reflections on first love and grief; and her relationship with Shivam Goyal lets the story dramatize emotional change as something supported by continuity rather than achieved through forgetting. She does not erase his past or dictate his future. Instead, she keeps open the space in which he can honor loss, recognize new love, and allow Aparna Mahadevan’s artistic and personal significance to become visible.