Life In First Gear

One last desperate attempt to hold on to the past, that’s what I’ve been trying to do. It’s not easy to let go, especially when you have to accept that you’ve failed at something. But I tried, I tell myself. 

This is going to be my last visit to the bakery. I’m dressed for the Melbourne summer this morning: a summer dress with a scarf, jacket and sports shoes that I’ll change into heels once I reach my tiny spot on La Trobe. As always, an umbrella has taken refuge in my backpack: ten years on and I’m still amazed how much work it takes to just get ready for the day. At 7am, the traffic isn’t bad and the trams are running empty. In half hour, the city will wake up to another Monday and the cafes will start buzzing, ringing orders of flat whites, long blacks and chai lattes. The 20-minute walk from home to bakery is the last for me—I have to finally close to register. Property sold, employees recommended, keep cups distributed to friends and family. No more sandwiches like mum used to make, with cheese slices and potatoes. No more chatting up with customers in the wee hours of the morning. No more whining about how hard things are financially. Today is the last goodbye.

If a passerby finds it strange that a brown-skinned woman, not too young to be teenager, not too old to be wrinkled by life, is trotting with tears streaming down her face, I’m not aware. I can imagine the looks, if not see them: smudged Kajal, puffy eyes and cherry nose don’t shout ‘strong, independent woman, ready to take on the world.’ Pulling my jacket closet, I do my best to focus on the stone pathways and not meet anyone’s eyes. Goodbyes are personal, after all, and a ‘Is everything okay?’ from a stranger will probably turn into a rant. 

On today’s agenda: wrap up and move on. The first might take a couple of hours; the latter a few months of self-pity. 

Oh well, that was easy. Not even two hours. After all the sweat, tears, blisters, it was not even the length of a Bollywood movie to get to the end. Just a box full of sentiments that’ll remind me of what could have been, just like a breakup.

Distractions don’t help when you need to keep your mind off your loss. The small Amazon carton with the happy merchandise is sitting next to me in the Uber and I’ve started crying again, writing this in my Notes. That’s the reason I didn’t want anyone to do this with me: Prateek would have taken the day off; Amber would have skipped lunch for this; even mom offered to hold my hand through it. But my grief is so personal, so dear to me, that I’m going to selfishly cling to it before I let people share it and mourn with me. 

Okay, the Uber driver wants to make polite conversation because I’m a water pot right now. That’s not in his job description, is it, to lend me a listening ear and be sympathetic? But he is. 

I am telling him about the bakery, how I started it with all the savings Prateek and I had. How I realised my dream of being a baker at 32 and how it took two years just to find the perfect spot. And then it took seven months to decide that it wasn’t working out, that life in Melbourne had changed too much, that it was the end. The ride isn’t long, so now he’s parked the car outside the house, meter stopped, and listening to me sympathetically.

“Zindagi ka kaam hai aage badhna hai. Gaadi bhi reverse leke aage hi jati hai. It takes courage to accept that it’s time to call it quits. It takes even more courage to look at the uncertain future and decide where you want to go when it’s a blank slate. But that’s the positive, beta, it’s a blank slate and you can write whatever you like. Abhi toh kahani shuru huyi hai, panna palto.”

His words don’t change my life. They didn’t make it hurt it any less. But I go up to the two-bedroom apartment, I think about the next steps. 

Where do I go from here? First, a grilled sandwich and a warm cup of peppermint tea. Then, who knows?

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.

 

Just Like You

This is a story I wrote a long time ago. I still think it's sweet.

“Life is too short to read books you don’t like.” She muttered to herself, flipping the novel shut in frustration and thumping it on her work desk that already had a mountain of untouched books piled up on one end. The book, The Sense of An Ending by Julian Barnes, was a Booker Prize winner but Shweta didn’t care a hoot for it. Her palms grabbed the arms of the chair and she glided it backwards to stand up. 

Her father was in the habit of bringing books for her he thought she would benefit from and Shweta didn’t have the heart to tell him to stop. On the contrary, in her effort to impress the intellectuals at home, she rummaged through their library and picked books she knew they particularly enjoyed. Sadly, Shweta’s taste was lacking. The 23-year-old English Honours graduate wanted something thrilling, something gripping, something more appealing than The Alchemist and Wings of Fire. Men in her family, however, would be disappointed if they found her buried neck-deep in a mystery by Dan Brown or immersed in the dreamy world of Jane Austen. Not that they would ever mention it to her.

Shweta was the weakling in her warrior family. Submissive, introverted, sensitive—everything her strong-willed father, headstrong mother, and fierce brother were not. Not that she wanted to be exactly like them, least of all her brother who was known to cross swords, and hands and feet, with everyone who irked him. She had been terrified of her five year elder brother, always coming back home with bruised knees after football practice and blackened eyes after fights. Even at 28, he was frequently at loggerheads with everyone, most of all their father, so what everyone said about “getting over it” had clearly not worked on him. As restless as he was, he was all the more intellectual and analytic (a jerk in loose terms. His IIT degree didn’t help). No one could fault him for having a foul temper when he always argued the right point. His one sentence explanation always came with an offhanded shrug that displeased dad very much, “They were insulting a girl!” or “I couldn’t possibly not retaliate when they pushed and shoved me.” No, she didn’t want to be like him, especially when she didn’t like raising her voice needlessly, but it would have been nice to have that talent. How empowering it would be to tell someone the truth.

Sighing, she sauntered towards her queen-size dark wood bed, and ticked off all the reasons why she should tell her father she hated his books. If nothing else, he will stop wasting his money, she assured herself with a meek finality. She ensconced herself in the bed that her mother had helped picked for her room, much like everything else. Her room was second biggest in the house—her parents had the master bedroom just opposite hers but even she had an attached bathroom and enough space to fit a dressing table, a work desk, her bed and two side tables. She had another luxury to make her room the most delightful place on the planet—her 29-inch LCD with more HD channels than she ever desired to watch. They pampered her surely and in return, she wanted to be worthy of it.

She pressed the on button on the remote control and stared into nothingness outside the window, on the right to the TV. She sank deeper until she was hidden neck down in her blanket and eventually fell into a slumber as another reason popped into her head, “They won’t be shocked when I write my own happy novel!”

***

Her father was sitting at the head of the dining table, reading the newspaper like every morning. His face was hidden behind the newspaper but Shweta had every wrinkle memorised. The long, world-weary face had lost its youthful charm but his brown eyes still sparkled whenever he gave one of his lopsided smiles. Jet black and thick with hair, his Tom Selleck moustache gave him a dashing look, just like the actor, while his bushy eyebrows with no arch had the opposite effect of giving the impression of being unapproachable. For the most part of her life, Shweta had been terrified of her father; it didn’t help that he felt like a giant at six feet, when she was only five foot two inches. Since his hair started thinning out a few years ago, Shweta saw traces of consciousness and vanity in him. Every few minutes, he would run his hand over his balding head, still with a hint of surprise that he was getting old.

He always had the same expression while reading the newspaper—his smile turned upside down, his eyebrows knitted together in disconcertion. He devoured one article after another about crime and corruption, growing irate every second, and mumbling about the parasites of this nation.

Fidgeting with her fingers, Shweta mentally prepped herself up and marched towards the mahogany dining table in the middle of the spacious room. “Dad, I have to ask you something,” she spoke as she stopped two feet away from him.  

Folding the newspaper neatly, he returned her gaze as he said in a throaty voice, “Come, sit with me.” He gestured towards the chair on his right as he took a sip of his unsweetened tea. His heavy voice always had a friendly touch. Never had he unjustly raised his voice on his children or wife but his controlled manner was much more terrifying that any raised words could be. 

She crossed the distance in two steps, ran her hands on her skirt as she sat down. Let’s get this over with, she chanted in her head, still fidgeting with her fingers and avoiding looking at him.

“Dad, I hate the books you gift me.” She announced loudly before she lost her nerve.

She finally raised her eyes to look at him to gauge his reaction. He blinked and asked, “What?”

“I hate the books you gift me. They are too serious for my taste but I read them because you and Bhaiya are always talking about them and I don’t want to seem unintelligent,” she reiterated, gaining more confidence with each passing word, but still not enough to look squarely in the eye. Stop twitching in your seat, she reprimanded herself just as her mother used to. 

She may have been mistaken but she heard her father take a sigh. As she gathered to courage to raise her eyes to his face, he saw his face twitching with a smirk, “Thank God! Your brother and I were so bored of these books.”

Now was her time to be staggered, “What?”

Her father’s hand returned to his hair, or lack thereof, and he admitted, “You were always reading heavy books, Greek mythology, feminist literature, Booker Prize winning books. I felt quite embarrassed buying Jeffery Archer, Agatha Christie, and Robin Cook. Your brother has been secretly reading The Game of Thrones on his phone.” She almost laughed out loud imagining her father and brother trying to impress her. The idea was confounding.

“But I don’t even like those books. Those were all my course books and I had no option but to eat them up,” she explained unable to control her animated hand gestures, for the situation seemed so bizarre.

He stared at her strangely for a few seconds and the next moment, he erupted in laughter, the sound rumbling in the room.