How is it, Avantika Pandit thought, that nobody has

discovered what bastards Thursdays are. There you

are, hating Monday and Wednesday, ignoring Tuesday and

its middle-child self-esteem-issues, winking back at Flirty

Friday. And all the while, this jackass, Thursday, is just

whistling a merry tune, as it casually removes the pin from

the grenade it's holding. Hindenburg disaster? Thursday.

Malaysia Flight 17 disappears? Thursday. When is Corn

and Peas the Sub of the Day? Fucking Thursday. Nothing

good ever happened on a Thursday.

Today was a Thursday. And nothing good was happening

in the cabin of Nathan Alvares, the chief editor of The

Mumbai Daily. Which wouldn't have been a problem,

except that was where Avantika was currently standing.

And being yelled at by said editor. And for what? It wasn't

as if she had done anything illegal. Was exploring a different

angle for a potential scoop such a bad thing? Clearly, in

Nathan's book it was, else she wouldn't be standing here in

his cabin, next to her colleague and friend Uday Desai, at

the receiving end of yet another lecture. They weren't alone

6 Vedashree Khambete-Sharma

either. She stole a look at the old woman sitting in the chair

opposite Nathan.

Asha Bhise sat with her back ramrod straight and an

expression of furious dislike on her face, arthritic fingers

clenched into fists in her lap. Avantika had first met her

a few days ago at the GSB Mandal's rangoli competition,

with her granddaughter Prajakta. Now as she watched the

grandmother turn passive aggression into an art form,

Avantika pitied the girl. Prajakta was fifteen, bright, quite

talented at rangoli ... well, she herself wasn't an expert

judge or anything, but the pattern the girl had made at the

competition had seemed pretty enough ... she was willing

to talk about her classmate's suicide and—

'...a minor!' Nathan's words crashed through her

thoughts, 'You both know we don't talk to children if their

parents aren't present and ...'

'I had told her,' the woman's English had a strong Marathi

lilt, as she threw a dirty look Avantika's way, 'I had told her

at that competition only, not to ask Prajakta anything about

that ... that horrible affair, but did she listen? No!'

Well, yeah, but Prajakta didn't mind, na, Avantika

wanted to say. And if what she had told her and Uday about

the boy and his friends was true ... If only this dragon

lady hadn't popped up at the park the next day when they

were talking to Prajakta, they would've got so much more.

Avantika had been taken aback to see the old woman

'taking rounds' in the park at the precise moment Prajakta

was getting to the good part. Almost as if the woman had

decided to follow her fifteen-year-old granddaughter to see

what she was up to behind her family's back. But she kept

her thoughts to herself till Nathan led the woman out of

Fatal Mistakes 7

his cabin, apologising and assuring her this kind of thing

wouldn't happen again. Then she turned to Uday, who was

standing next to her, his hands behind his back. The pose

made him look more like a schoolboy than ever. A worried

schoolboy, going by his expression.

'So ... now what?' Avantika asked him, but the answer

came before he could open his mouth.

'Now ... you can start explaining to me what the hell you

were thinking,' Nathan growled, shutting the cabin door

and returning to his seat in angry strides.

'I—' Avantika began.

'I was talking to Uday,' Nathan snapped, pulling his chair

roughly by its arms as he sat down in it. His expression was

stormy.

'I'm sorry, Nathan ... I should've ...' Uday looked utterly

crushed and Avantika felt a pang of sympathy for her friend.

'First, you involve her in the story without telling me,'

Nathan counted off on his fingers. 'Second, you accost a

child in a park, asking her about her friend's suicide. And

you do this when her grandmom has categorically told you

not to. What is going on, Uday? You're one of my most

responsible guys, what the hell are you doing, pulling crap

like this?'

'It wasn't his fault,' Avantika said. 'I told him ... See, I got

the feeling that—'

'Of course! Of course, you told him, Pandit, who else

could possibly engineer something this utterly idiotic? And

I bet you had a good reason for it, too. Right?'

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