PART 1
1.
Aanchal Madan
‘Why are they getting so angry?’ asks Maa, pointing to the group of people talking loudly in the hotel lobby. ‘It will just be a couple of hours more.’
‘Why wouldn’t they, Maa? They have paid for this holiday,’ I tell her. ‘They want things to be perfect.’
‘Unlike us freeloaders, Didi,’ whined my nervous brother, Gaurav.
‘That’s not true,’ I argue. ‘We also deserve to be here, okay? We won the lucky draw fair and square.’
And yet, I feel odd. The only reason we are at this seven-star, Rs 40,000-a-night resort, on an all-expenses-paid vacation is because, for the first time in our lives, we have beenlucky.
Just then, a bright-eyed, tall, polished representative from Mahindra Vacations walks towards the crowd of twenty-odd weary, impatient, grumbling middle-aged people. Most of us have been waiting in the hotel lobby since seven in the morning for our rooms to be assigned. Every thirty minutes, the representative asks us to wait for another thirty minutes.
Other families are angry at the mismanagement, but not us. We have had the welcome drink thrice. We have clicked pictures near the pool, at the beach and at different spots in the lobby. We are sending pictures to our cousins who also can’t believe our luck.
The representative addresses everyone brightly, ‘Welcome to Westlife, Andamans! The check-in is at 12, but we are trying to get everyone into their beautiful rooms by 11 a.m.!’ He checks his watch. ‘It’s 9.30 right now. So, we want all of you to wait around for just a couple of hours more in the lobby, have the welcome drink, enjoy the weather by the patio while the housekeeping staff makes sure your rooms are perfect! Thank you for your patience.’
The crowd raises its hands in exasperation and grumbles under its breath.
‘This is what money does to you,’ whispers Papa to us. ‘Makes you ungrateful. Look at the Mahindra guy, talking so politely and they are not listening to him.’ Papa turns to look at me. ‘Tell me, had you not listened to that Mahindra person in the mall, would we have been here?’
Three months ago, a Mahindra Vacations employee had hounded me at Big Bazaar to fill up a contest form:
One Lucky Winner Gets a Fully Paid Vacation to the Andamans!
We, the Madans, never fill out contest forms because we are the exact opposite of lucky. Everything we touch turns to ashes. It’s as if God didn’t shuffle the card deck before dealing them to us. All we got were cards of humiliation, frustration, despair and hunger.
A year after I was born, Papa’s new shop—Aanchal Stationery—closed down. A few months later, a tree fell on his scooter.
When I was three, Maa fell down while bathing me and has three crooked toes and a slightly unbalanced walk to remind her of that.
My younger brother’s birth was supposed to change the tide. He, too, failed. When I was four, I stepped on my brother’s hand and broke two of his fingers. He made it worse in the following months by getting sick too often and draining money on antibiotics, injections and visits to the emergency ward.
When I was eight, Papa’s second store—now named Gaurav Stationery—shut shop.
Our family turned to religion. The pandits said,Griha bhari hain, once the stars align, we will bathe in milk and sleep in silk. Poojas andhavans,rings on our fingers, lockets on our necks didn’t change our fortunes.
When religion didn’t work, we turned to academics. It was our last bastion: luck could be broken by the surety of mathematics, science, geography. For six years, I stood second in class and missed out on the school scholarship. Paying for education—Gaurav always came third so he used to miss the scholarship as well—meant smaller meals, faded clothes, and we grew up bony and sickly and the only medicines we could afford came in small homeopathy bottles we borrowed from our neighbours.
Maa’s stitching business lost money.
Papa got beaten up after his tuition students failed.
We lost our savings in the bank scam.
Mobiles were snatched from our hands.
We never once won anything in a contest or on a scratch card.
Sometimes our luck would change, but soon after, the universe would balance it out by cracking our water tank or making our scooter’s engine die on us.
Until this Mahindra Vacations holiday.
Only because I filled up that form. I saw the resort on the pamphlet. I saw the people in the images. It was everything I wanted.
