He was standing tall, broad shoulders narrowing down to unbuckled jeans. Bare-chested. The coveted V-shapedtorso. A ginormous roll of polka-dotted fabric was on its feet beside him like a vassal aligning allegiance.
The modal cotton in deep navy was draped daintily on Andrew. It dropped off his almost bare shoulders in a cascading fall that was arranged in a stylish heap.
The annotation extolled the merits of the textile, calling it ‘smooth as sin’ and ‘easy on skin’.
Silly,I thought.
Andrew Brown, political editor going on executive editor, was making a case for the polka print.
I tossed my phone aside and squeezed into my tights. I liked how I was looking. The mirror gave me an objective picture. A deep-purple tee and matching hand band. I wanted to go live instantly.
I picked up my phone and scrolled through the verbose text. Pooja called this ‘one-off shoot’ a victory for her ‘persuasive skills’.
I clicked on Pooja’s handle; she had 57,143 followers, and I was one of them. The most recent maybe. Andrew at ABrownsss1 had 101. It was an unbalanced equation only because Mr Political Editor used Instagram to scroll for work.
He of the many parts. Pooja Patil’s bare-chested muse.
Pooja had three sets of photo dumps of the shoot – same fabric, different angles. Only one was without a shirt. No, wait, there was a shirt; it was unbuttoned, the sleeves rolled up. Whatever.
Who was Pooja Patil? I had a vague idea. She was a fashion blogger who also lived in Bengaluru. I had hit her page last week while searching for that kurta I was going crazy over. I noticed that Sudha was following her and decided to do the same.
I slipped my phone into a side pocket and pulled on my shoes.
I wandered into the dining room of our home and looked around hopefully. I needed conversation, a tête-à-tête to get away from stuff. Home, however, was an empty space at 10 a.m. on a weekday.
My dad had left for ‘work’. I looked around our living space; everything was in its place. The bookshelf, the crockery cupboard and a vase of fast-drying flowers. There were six pictures of me in this room, all from my childhood, my mother’s favourite shots. There were a couple of my parents.
I turned on the radio. A saucy advertisement for apartments was playing. I switched it off.
On the fridge was a pink slip of paper, my father’s note, telling me where my breakfast was. It was always in the same place, to the left of the stove. Eggs made one way or the other and bread. Butter was in the fridge. Papa didn’t have to tell me, but he did, every day. It was how we started communicating after my mother passed away. He makes breakfast, and I put something together for dinner. Rice and… We take it as it comes.
I did the grocery shopping most weeks; occasionally, we did it together. My dad was notoriously thrifty while buying ration; Mummy and I were the other extreme. The economic continuum was adequately covered in the Rai household. Father and daughter made detailed lists, just like Mummy did, but in twice the time. We were constantly drifting off at the mention of a fruit or vegetable that she liked. We argued over recipes we didn’t know a fig about but agreed on my mother’s excessive use of turmeric. Her panacea.
My mother’s favourite breakfast tray consisted of an egg-white mushroom omelette (she hated yolk), grilled tomato, a lightly buttered slice of white bread and black coffee. When she wasn’t feeling her best, Papa brought it to her bed. When he was in a particularly amorous mood, he’d throw in a blueberry muffin, which he’d pretend to have made himself.
We never spoke about what we did for lunch. Mummy took the greatest pains over that meal, even if we were only eating it from a lunch box in various corners of the city. She had it all planned in the night – how many palm-sized rotis for the each of us. Rice, multi-grain ragi or jowar, embellished with herbs and grated vegetables. When we ate them six hours later, they were still soft.
I subsisted on coffee, a bag of crisps, maybe, and if I was really hungry, a chicken sandwich. I had no idea what my father did; I never asked. Maybe he helped himself to the leftovers in the fridge or he was skipping lunch. His belly had almost disappeared. He was by no means lean, but he was slighter now compared to the generous frame of his younger days.
Until that day in August, eight years ago, my mother used to pack lunch for both of us and leave it on the dining table before she headed out to work, no later than 8.32 a.m.
The bus stand was a 10-minute stroll from our house, and she caught the 8.50 a.m. bus to her office, which was two stops away. My mother was a banker and the centre of our world. She was the provider, the problem solver, the go-to person. For as long as I can remember, she was the main breadwinner, oftentimes the only one. My dad couldn’t hold a job; each time he appeared to settle down in one, he’d have a brainwave for a novel business venture that, of course, didn’t go anywhere. Only, he’d quithis work, and more savings would go down the drain. But theirs was a happy marriage. He was proud of his wife, who had worked her way up the ladder in the patriarchal set-up of a nationalized bank to the position of associate finance manager (South). His wallet was empty, but his heart was bursting with love.
My father walked his wife to the bus stop most mornings, carrying her lunch bag. Occasionally, maybe because he had woken up late, or had wasted too much time in the loo with the newspaper, my mother carried on at her scheduled hour. She’d give me a quick hug and remind me for the tenth time that my lunch was on the table while my father stood by, watching the rush and roll of the woman he loved.
That morning, the sky was threatening and there was an uncomfortable chill in the air. She had worn her favourite silk sari, maroon with a mustard border. She was smelling of roses. When I complimented her, she repeated what she always told me, ‘I had a similar combination in college.’ With a smile that seemed to climb all over her face like a naughty child on the monkey bars, she ran her hand over the pleats of her sari.
That is the last image I have of my mother.
Every time she went alone, she called my father as soon as she reached the bus stand. She dialled her husband that day, too, and as always, he answered on the first ring. Only, strange noises came from the other end. He disconnected and dialled again and again but couldn’t get through. He cursed the connection and did what he generally does when the lines are bad. He dialled her office number and left a one-word message, ‘Baleh,’ (‘baby’ in Tulu) on her answering machine. It was a reminder to call him as soon as she got to her seat. Not that she needed a reminder.
I was in my bedroom, in front of the mirror, wondering what to do with my unruly hair, wishing I had taken up Mummy’s offer to side-braid it, when our doorbell sang its ‘Mamma Mia’ tune. It was a little after 9 a.m. My father had just asked me for the third time if my mother had called. ‘It must be her at the door,’ I said. ‘She must’ve forgotten something.’ Barely had my father pulled open the metal contraption than I heard him scream, ‘Whhhheeerrrreeee? Durgggaaaaaa…’ The sound emanated from his deepest depths, ascending, then descending, like a dying storm.
A drunk driver had mowed down two women, injuring three others at the bus stop. My mother was one of the two women. She was rushed to SBM Hospital, where she was declared ‘brought dead’.
Neither of my parents came from large families. My father had two spinster sisters, whom I had met just once, and my mother lost her only sibling a little before her 18th birthday; he had drowned. They only had each other. And me.
My father wouldn’t leave my lifeless mother’s side. I left Andrew with him to pursue the paperwork that needed to be completed. We had to take her home.
