The Note

A woman in her mid-40s is walking towards Huda City Centre metro station. She has just gotten out of the auto and in her plain maroon salwar kameez, she is now sprinted, checking her watch. It’s going to take an hour to get to work, she thinks, and fears another lashing by her boss.

She gets into the women’s line for the security check and hands off her handbag on the x-ray machine. On the other side, she takes out her metro card from her wallet and stops on her tracks. Her money is missing.

She clearly remembers putting in a hundred rupee note in that black wallet that has seen better days. She moves to the side when people start pushing past her and checks it again. It isn’t there. Did she give it to her daughter for lunch? No, she always packs lunchboxes and gives her daughter an extra 20 for emergencies. Did it fall off into her handbag while paying the autowalah? She starts rummaging through her scruffy gray bag. She reassures herself that it just needs a wash whenever it feels like she needs to replace it. She can still use it for another month. At least.

Sitting on the stairs of the metro station that no one uses, she digs into it again. It’s such a small thing, this note, but she needs it. She needs it to take an auto from Rajeev Chowk to her office. She can’t walk two kilometres to work today, she’s already late. Even if she takes a ride with someone at work to the metro station later in the evening, she will still need it get back home.

In despair, she puts her head down on her knees, her eyes glistening with tears. Around her, the hustle of a 9am Monday morning is about, no one pays any notice to a woman, torn apart by hopelessness.

Ab kya karun? She is thinking when she hears someone politely saying, “Aunty?”

She looks up and her long braid falls heavy on her side. She rearranged her dupatta on her neck and tries to wipe her tears away.

The stranger, a young boy with a foppish haircut and headphones around his neck, is eyeing her. “Aapke paise gir gaye the bahar gate ke paas. Sorry, security line lambi thi toh main de nahi paya. Yeh leejiye.”

Her note. He is extending his palm which has her note. She mutely stares at him and the boy, doesn’t realising what a huge problem he just solved, gives her the note and leaves without expecting a word of gratefulness. She sees him rearranging the headphones on his head, punching in his metro card, and disappearing from her line of vision.

She whispers a thank you. To him, to God, to the universe. And she smiles her first smile in the morning.

There’s Something I Have Been Meaning To Tell You

Chapter 2

Kirti wrote for a parenting magazine. She had researched or experienced almost all sorts of subjects when it came to raising a child—from how to make your child kinder to how to stop compensating for being a busy mom. What she had not (yet) thought of was a way to get out of a situation when your friend finds out she shares DNA with your nine-year-old child.

Fight or flight, Kirti is thinking as the pregnant pause gave birth to a baby and stretched until Vir comes back from the washroom. Sana is still staring at her classmate from college who she rarely spoke to. They were just very different from each other, she always thought. If Kirti was involved in all co-curricular and revolutionary activities such as upstaging a teacher or planning a mass bunk, Sana quietly stayed with her group of friends and passively entertained the ideas. It was all in good fun—and no one could plan a better fest or farewell. 

Rendered speechless for the first time. 

Kirti picks up her bag and tells Vir, “Sorry Champ, umm… I just got a call for an urgent story. We have to go.”

Vir looks up from his plate and says with a mouthful of something that Kirti didn’t see him eat, “But mom, the magazine is wrapped up. It’s too early for the next issue.” 

“No, it’s the digital issue. Let’s go.”

Vir says bye to Sana and his aunt smiles. Flight.

--

“Fuck. Fuck. Fuckity fuck. Fuck!”

Kirti is standing at Sana’s doorstep, working up the nerve to ring the bell. Unbeknownst to her, Sana knows she’s outside. It was hard to miss the five foot, nine inches nervous energy on the camera, rubbing her damp hands on her jeans and tugging at her black t-shirt. 

Sana waits at her dining table, giving her friend the time she needs. If she’s alone, then Vir must be with his grandfather, her mother’s side. 

Kirti brings herself to do it. Her speech is ready; she has recited it twice in the car and she knows what she needs to say exactly. But as Sana opens the door, looking calm and composed in her sundress, smiling encouragingly at her, she blurts out, “How the fuck did you find out?”

Gesturing her to follow her, Sana turns around and takes her place at the dining table. Kirti is too agitated to sit, so she is pacing across the room as she explains miserably, “I never told anyone. And yes, that includes your brother. My own father has no clue. It was just one night. One! I didn’t plan on it, I swear. But I have never regretted Vir for a second. He’s my life.”

“Why didn’t you tell him?”

Kirti stops and looks at her, “Well, let’s see. We weren’t dating. He slept with me and left the next morning before I woke up.”

“You could have still told him.”

“Oh yeah? When? When he left for the US without even mentioning it to me? Or when he started dating that firang? Or, when I called him two weeks before I was due and he said he would call me back and never did?”

“He was always an idiot.”

“I second that.” She mutters in angers and then rapidly explains, “Sana, I tracked you down because I wanted Vir to meet you, to know you. I never figured you’d become so close. The past few months have been the happiest days of his life.”

“Vir knows?”

“Of course. I told him when he was seven. And he promised he would always be on my side.”

An impassioned voice from the back of room speaks, “Then why did he call me and beg me to come back, Kirti?”

“Jesus H Christ!” 

Perfect Timing

At precisely 2 in the afternoon, when the sun was soaking all the hydration from Saachi’s body, she gave the pushed open a wooden door that gave the bell overhead a tug. Even before she had let go of the knob, the chef greeted from behind the display of fresh-out-of-the-oven confectionaries.

“Hey, right on schedule! I’ve just baked a batch of the Danish.” Tanya, the owner of the tiny, hole-in-the-wall café flooded with natural light, untied the knots of her apron and glided to the door in her pale yellow dress to hug her friend.

“Hey, yourself! I need a quick cold coffee and I’ll be out of your hair,” Saachi answered as she took a seat at a table close to the floor-to-ceiling window that had the uninspiring view of the parking lot.

“Ha! This is the slowest time of the day. No one comes in before 5. Wait, I’ll get you some coffee.” There wasn’t much ground to cover—just one room where all pastries and breads where kept, a cash counter and a kitchen at the back that no one but the staff was allowed to enter (Tanya and her two helpers). The tall, slender woman with a pixie haircut brought back with a tray with a glass of iced coffee, four warm chocolate seasalt cookies, and a croissant, and set it on the table.

Sasha smiled at the woman five years her senior. Dressed in her comfort jeans and shirt with her hair in the bun, she looked like she was going to college, but her boss didn’t mind the casualwear. He was happy on the days she reported to work. The younger woman had 15 minutes to talk to her new friend who always had flour somewhere on her face.

“I love the foundation,” Sasha told Tanya as the two got comfortable on the armchairs.

“I’m not wearing—Oh wait, I got flour on my cheeks again?” Tanya asked as she tried wiping off the marks with her left hand that had burning marks on at least five different places. Baking incident.

Sasha gave her a toothy grin and feasted on the chocolate treat. “I have precisely 10 minutes to spare.” She took a sip and then another mouthful.

“Why are you always in such a hurry? For once, you can sit back and enjoy it.”

“She’s timing me.” She told her in a conspiratorial tone.

“What? Who?” Tanya enquired curiously as she buttered her croissant.

“My mother.” Sasha answered settling back against the chair again. Two down, two to go, she thought as she counted the cookies. No wonder I have gained two kilograms in the past two weeks since I’ve met her.

“She times you?” She asked horrified.

Looking at her wide-eyed expression, Sasha had to keep the cookie down. It was comical. “Yeah, she watches the clock like a hawk after I leave for home.”

With a laugh, she continued, “I work for my Dad, just around the corner from here. He doesn’t need me; he has 10 employees that can do what I do way better, which is basically answering some emails and basic marketing for this catering business. But we are indulging each other until I find a better way to use my MBA.”

She paused to take another sip while the older woman with a degree in hospitality and five years experience at a five-star sat nodding her head.

“So anyway, it takes my dad precisely one hour and 23 minutes to make the drive from Hauz Khas to Sohna Road, where we live. Now consider these two things: He leaves at 7pm in the evening and drives at a speed of 50 even on the highway.”

“But what does that have to do with anything?”

“It takes me 45 minutes to make the journey.”

“How?”

“I only come to work for four hours everyday. I leave after lunchtime and it’s light traffic. And let’s face it, I’m a faster driver.”

“And your mom has a problem with that?” She thinks my sweet mother is a cantankerous old fossil, Sasha laughed at the thought.

“I wouldn’t call it a problem. It’s more like an obsession. The moment I leave home, my dad calls my mom because it is grilled into him every morning that he absolutely cannot forget. Then mom stares at the clock. If I’m there in 55 minutes, it starts with “You were speeding,” and ends in tears. Hers.”

The first time it happened, it caught her completely by surprise. Her mother was standing by the standing, the car had given away her arrival, and waiting on her with worried eyes. And then the grilling had started.

“Oh, no!”

“At first, I didn’t realise it was a conspiracy against me. But it was happening everyday and I caught on the pattern. So, I started making pitstops three weeks ago.”

It had been her third day at the office when she marched into her father’s cosy but functional office to tell him she was leaving. On her way to the car, she realised she had forgotten to her him about an email and rushed back in to find him ratting on her.

“When you first entered here?” Tanya prompted.

“I already had checked out some shops in the past week and I hadn’t picked anything up. I didn’t want to go in again for browsing so I climbed the stairs to your cafe.”

“That’s why you look at the wall clock so much!”

“I don’t want to break my winning streak. It’s important to my mother, and honestly, better than reasoning with her.”

Tanya chuckled, thinking about her older brother’s wise words: You can’t have a rational argument with your parents. It’s impossible!

They talked longer than Sasha had anticipated. She stood up to thank her friend, paid the bill through her phone, and tapped the jeans pocket for her car keys. Then, she was on the way home.

What she had failed to mention to Tanya was her near-death accident a year ago that had put her on bedrest for two months. The next eight were painful, too, with physiotherapy as she started claiming her body back. If not for her mom’s strength and support, she would have lost all hopes of recovery and gone into despair. It has been just a month of working for her dad for shorter periods, but driving and sitting was as much as she could bear right now.

As she rounded up her home 10 minutes later than usual, her mother was standing by the door, waiting for her to come up.

“You got late today, Sasha?”

“Yeah, mom. There was some traffic on the road.”

And with that, the worry lines disappeared from the retired nurse’s forehead and everything was peaceful in her world once again.