I was forced to think these last five days, walk those paths I didn’t have the time to tread. So I had told myself.
I got physically busy at first – my great escape from my thoughts. I cleaned the house, starting with the kitchen. Then I decided to cook – make a few dishes, a couple of dals (my dad’s favourite), nati chicken curry and marinate some mackerel. I froze them in little containers.
In the course of that cooking and cleaning operation, I decided to talk to the office to split my time betweenBengaluru and Mumbai. I could make it possible in a couple of months once I put things in order in Mumbai.
The shift, not just of platform, but cities, too, was not just good for my career, it was necessary. I was handling a team without props, taking independent, professional decisions in a city I was just getting acquainted with.
Yet, it didn’t have to be this way with Andrew. He had apologized from whatever standpoint. I could’ve moved to Mumbai and also stayed in touch with Andrew. Maybe I could’ve helped him understand. I was thirsty; I took a swig from my bottle. Discomposure is hard to swallow.
The car came to a jerky halt an hour after we left home. My tears had abated temporarily. I jumped out of the car and reached for my check-in baggage and wheeled it away. I was walking in a daze, lost to the world, when I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Andrew. He had come to give me my shacket.
Horns were blaring. I looked around me. He had parked in the middle of the road in the most un-Andrew-like fashion. People were shouting at him to move his car.
‘Lehero,ghadi tegiyooo,’ a cabbie gestured madly.
He wrapped the shacket around my shoulders and joined me in my laughter.
‘Lehero,’ I shouted at his back. Andrew spun around and jogged backwards for a couple of steps. He was still laughing.
Chapter 31
Today was one of those days when a minute became an hour and every little task took an aeon to complete. The clock was racing, and I was straggling.
It started with clumsy. The milk carton slipped from my hand, and its contents were all over the floor instead of in my coffee mug. I had just about finished cleaning that mess when I dropped the only packet of biscuits I had in the house. In my hurry to retrieve it, I stepped on it.
I didn’t run today. It was the first time in a little over six months that I gave it a miss when in Mumbai. That must count as some record – Myra’s book of world records (most of them in the maladroit category).
As soon as I completed the story I was to write today, I decided to book my tickets for Bengaluru, most likely for tomorrow morning. It had been six weeks.
I was going to get that Wednesday breakfast with Chhaya. There was something about that day of the week, that hour, that place; it was like it was assembled for us. A coffee withlehero perhaps? I giggled again.
I arrived early to work, not early enough apparently.
I just couldn’t get going with the copy I needed to file by 6 p.m. I was struggling with everything, even stringing words together. It happens to me sometimes with stories that are out of my comfort zone, like data-related copies.
This wasn’t about numbers and aggregates but a hitch that slithered across the heart of the piece.
This was a story of four women aged between 22 and 25 years. They were slum-dwellers, raised by their mothers. Self-taught graduates who only saw the inside of a school or college when they turned up to write their exams. The three older girls, who had engineering diplomas, had been hired by a multinational. The youngest of the four was back in her alma mater as a junior schoolteacher.
The mothers were widowed on the same night some 18 years ago. The slum lord, who had a powerful political nexus, apparently had the husbands bumped off in a police encounter.
The story idea came with a caveat, that no mention be made of the menfolk outside of ‘they were friends and had died in an accident’.
I couldn’t do justice to the piece without taking on the khadi-wearing, paan-chewing don, but the story of the four young professionals needed to be put out there, even if with a few cuts.
I finished my story, which was like balancing a human pyramid, just past 6 p.m. By the time the editor flagged it off and I completed captioning the pictures, it was almost seven.
When I finally sank into my seat, glad the day was almost over, I said a quick thank you to the digital platform that gave a feature writer more time to play. A web reporter had to file at that moment – not that day by 10 p.m., like for print personnel – as soon as a result was out or a pressconference was done. You dare not stop to breathe. As a features person on a website, I could massage my copy until an hour before it was scheduled to go up on the site. AtMorning Herald, I was always rushing, hurtling to a deadline, which was at least eight hours before the piece or the page saw the light of day.
I was so grateful that I contemplated thanksgiving with some online retail therapy. Some five minutes into the drill, I lost interest and decided to buy my tickets instead. I was about to click on the 6.05 a.m. flight when I heard my colleague, who was at my side, peering into my computer.
‘Going home?’ asked Hima, who had joined the desk only a month ago but was obviously in with my ‘missing Bengaluru’ strain.
‘All okay? You need something?’ I asked.
Her face had tilted in a half-smile.
‘You have a visitor,’ she told me softly. ‘If you turn in your seat, you can see him.’
