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!”
