Who Pays for the Fifty Minutes

Imran found her on Instagram. She had a calm face, sensible posts about anxiety, and a link in her profile. He filled in the form on a Tuesday night. The reply came the next morning, friendly and clear: sessions were fifty minutes, online or in person in Koramangala, eighteen hundred rupees each, payable in advance, with twenty-four hours’ notice for cancellations.

He is twenty-nine, and works in operations for a delivery company, and takes home thirty-eight thousand rupees a month. Of that, fourteen goes on his share of a flat, eight goes home to Gulbarga, and four services a loan for his sister’s wedding. He had not slept properly since March. He had begun to have something in the afternoons that he described to himself as a heart problem, and that a doctor at a clinic had told him, not unkindly, was panic.