With a theatrical sigh, she comments, ‘I’m so unlucky. I’m like the unluckiest sister in all of time! OF ALL TIME!’
I save this barb too in that file. It’s not a fact. The fact was that she used to chime, ‘Dada is the best, Dada is amazing’ all the time just a couple of years ago.
‘They are going because Amruta doesn’t have any sense,’ Ianswer.
She glares at me. ‘Amruta Aunty has a lot of sense!’
‘I’m going to tell her not to send Naman and Nishant.’
She stomps her foot. ‘That’s why she’s not marrying you! You can throw away the wedding ring! Because she’s never going to marry you! No one’s going to marry you!’
Teflon, I’m Teflon.
‘You’ve got to come up with better insults, Rabbani.’
‘That’s a good insult,’ butts in Baba. ‘Being alone is cruel.’
‘Don’t get into this, Baba,’ I warn Baba. ‘And I’m not alone. I have you two.’
Her eyes roll in annoyance, ‘You can’t stick on to me like a parasite, Dada! You need to let me go! This is unfair!’
Her eyes are little pools of tears.
‘I’m Teflon.’
‘What?’
I compose myself. ‘I will let you go when you’re old enough. Right now? Absolutely not. You want to go to Manali? Be a traveller? Taste the wanderlust? We will all go!’
She swivels to bore her eyes into Baba. ‘Why did you not have me earlier? Who has their second kid fifteen years after the first?’
Baba sniggers. I forgive him. He’s at an age where people crack and find joy in inappropriate jokes.
Just as I’m about to speak, the doorbell cuts me off. I catch Rabbani smiling. Which only means one thing. She has called for a back-up.
* * *
‘You need to let her go,’ says Amruta, as she closes the door to my study which doubles up as an alternate podcast studio. ‘You can’t keep clutching her close to your chest all your life.’
From the living room, Rabbani’s voice filters in as she vents to her friends about me. It’s a strange twist of fate. In this very room, we have recorded podcasts where we’ve dissected thenature of overbearing family members. The irony hangs heavy in the air.
‘I have brainwashed Rabbani her entire life that there’s no better life out there than the one she lives with me,’ I respond, thinking of all the times I told her stories that siblings should always stay together. ‘You think that’s gone waste?’
‘Naman and Nishant will be there, too. They will look after each other. They are old enough.’
Naman and Nishant are Rabbani’s cronies. They do what Rabbani asks them to do. They are the only example of ‘If your friend does it, will you do it too?’ They would. They would happily jump into a well.
‘You mean Rabbani will take care of Naman and Nishant.’
‘It’s the same thing. The point is that they will be together. They will always be in touch. I have the numbers of all the teachers and the parents of the kids who are going. Everything.’
‘A list of phone numbers is not enough for me, sorry.’
She takes out a little box from her bag and slips it in front of me.
‘Here,’ she says. ‘It’s the watch every kid’s wearing these days. Naman and Nishant have theirs too. We can call them any time we want, video calls too. I have already put the SIM in it.’
I refuse to take the box. She keeps it on the table.
