3528 words <3

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11 November 2010

I placed my Appa's pen between the pages of my homework module, and floated down the staircase towards the fragrance of cinnamon and roasted coriander seeds.

Chikkamma was by the stoves, estimating the salt content in the chole she was stirring purely based off its scent! I have no idea how older women do this, Babbu, it remains a mystery to me.

The comforting smell of a hearty bowl of curry churned my guts. Until then, I had not thought about food, but my cravings for chai weer unsatiable. With an unexpected flutter in my chest, I briskly galloped across the kitchen, sprung on my Chikkamma's shoulders and startled her as the ladle splattered into the gravy.

"Nandu! Dara diya tumne!" She yelped habitually in the language she was most familiar with, and swatting my shoulder mischievously, she reluctantly let herself wobble in my grip from side to side. A smile adorned her face however, as she registered the child-like thrill in my mannerisms that had disappeared on Diwali night but were slowly springing within me.

I genuinely was happy! And the source of that unbounded was one senior from school. The one I shared my ghee-shakkar roll with – Manik.

As his name trembled on my lips, I jumped on my palms and plopped myself on the kitchen counter, wiggling my feet over the drawer handles beneath me. "Chikkamma," I cooed in a tone that most often had things working in my favour. Especially in this family.

"Hmm?"

"Can you make an extra box of lunch for me, tomorrow?"

Chikkamma looked up from her pot, raising an eyebrow. "Why, hmm?" She placed the ladle within the bubbling pot, and my heart skipped. "What's cooking?" I profusely flushed at her uncanny ability to read me like an open book. 

Part of me wanted to tell her the truth, that a boy from school never brought his lunch and that I wanted to do whatever I possibly could to make sure... to make sure he had the energy for the rest of the day. That was basic human compassion, wasn't it? I just wanted to help someone.

Even if it was not Manik, I would have asked her.

"Cooking... um, you are cooking! Haan... of course!" I grinned extra wide to hide the redness on my cheeks from being caught nearly red-handed.

Aiyappa, why was it so hard to get those sentences out of my mind? Why was I overthinking it and making it seem like a bigger deal than it truly was?

Those unnatural symptoms for something so trivial itself might trigger some alarms in Chikkamma. That was the last thing I wanted, for the family to permanently keep tabs on me.

"Nandini..."

My incisors pressed on an index fingernail as I formulated the next perfect excuse, crossing the other hand's fingers by my side... out of her immediate vision. "That... heh, my friend Navya na... she doesn't eat her lunch only. That's why..."

"Navya, the talkative two-braided girl who comes over? Why doesn't she eat her food?" In her authoritative tone, she put a hand on her tip and frowned at me.

It spiked my blood pressure.

"No, it's not that she doesn't eat per se... sometimes the food her mom gives her isn't... enough. I mean it's not filling..." I quickly added, stumbling on my words, "...and you know how much sports they – I mean, we – have after school." "Sometimes, the food her mom gives her isn't... enough." The wince as my inadequate words left my lips hopefully did not reach Chikkamma's ears.

"I will talk to her mother."

Springing off the counter, I clutched her in place. "No, Chikkamma! She will scold me at school then, please don't tell Aunty anything." Before she could press further on the matter, I came clean with an excuse that sanded down some rough edges in the lie and melted it into a figment of truth. "She likes Punjabi food, so I thought it will be nice to take some for her. She usually gets tired, and I just don't want her to go hungry."

Chikkamma twitched her lips and broke into a wide smile. "Arrey bubba, I was just playing around with you. Why wouldn't I make?! Just for tomorrow kya, I'll make an extra box daily if you want me to."

"Thank you Chikkamma, you're the best!" 

Stroking the edge of my eyebrows, Chikkamma's hand drawled over my face. "Tumhari yahi baat mujhe sabse zyaada pasand hai. Mera matlab... you always look out for others without expecting anything in return," she mused, her hand and words as warm as a hug to me. Her fingers went under my chin, tapping it playfully. "Always be like this. Don't change for anything and anyone, okay?" I nodded with a big beam on my lips.

"Accha, now move from here, go finish your homework! You're distracting me from my 'me-time'. Jao!" She fake swatted me, and I hopped off with a chuckle, overcome by a desire to skip away towards my bedroom. The delicate dance did not go unnoticed by Chikkamma, whose eyes twinkled at the back of my figure.

"Waise Nandu..." I spun in my spot, giving my aunt a Bollywood-style palat, as she called it. "Make sure you get a review from them on my chole."

"Them? Them who?"

"Arrey, your sweet friend Navya... Okay?" She bobbed her head sideways in a customary manner. Bile rose up my throat. Unable to say or do anything that could give her an opposing idea or feed into her current suspicions, I hummed in response and began walking back to my room... rather conscious of my gait now.

When I closed the door of my bedroom and leaned on it, I let out the breath I was holding. Her humming to some 90s Bollywood song resumed in the kitchen.

⭒⭒⭒

Manik

I woke up to the light strumming in my skull as a few rays of sunshine kissed my closed eyelids. Instinctively, I groaned and clutched my throbbing forehead, still in a half-dazed state. A sharp sense of pain surged through somewhere behind my head, snapping me up.

"Urgh!" As I pulled myself up and sat upright, bones I had not even injured were blazing with soreness. Black leather was behind me. Evidently, I wasn't on my bed, I was actually on the floor of the living room, in a dry pair of clothes, with my neck perched over the edge of a loveseat facing the TV. My arm acted as a bookmark between the pages of her diary.

What the actual fuck?! How and when did I land up there?

Running my fingers through my hair, I remembered I had last gone up the stairs and had been in Mukti's room. Then, Nandini...

I spun to scout her and found Cabir sprawled on the couch having the nap of his life. The sudden movement swished my brain, earning another loud but involuntary grumble from me that woke Cabir up from this slumber. "Kya hai?!"

"What what?" I slapped the skin below his knee, my voice hoarser than the previous night which signalled either the multitude of drinks I consumed, or the three showers I had taken but could not remember why. At one point, I had also been drenched, how did that happen? "Get the hell up!"

"Ow. Stop needling me, I'm... hmm..." He rolled over, covering his ears with his palms while murmuring irrelevantly, "2 minutes."

Paying no heed to it, I badgered, "How did we end up here, and how am I dre –? Don't tell me you did something when I was unconscious!"

"Tch. Mere itne bhi bure din nahi aaye ki main tujhpe line maaru!" He glowered disinterestedly from the reclined position he was in, and then threw an arm over his eyes to provide the darkness necessary for another nap. "You yourself stripped."

I sputtered, "WHAT?" and glared.

"Ssss... stop screaming, my ears are ringing." Cabir whined, stubbing a finger in them amidst his asleep state to drown the dull buzz. "Yeah, you shamelessly undressed yourself in front of me after a steamy shower with the girl you... oh yes, you're not in love with... and you were saying how you are so heartbroken from it that... that you think you should try on men now."

My eyebrows knitted together. As much as Cabir's narrative did not faze me, the phrases incited flashes of my memory.

Steamy shower: in my sister's shower, I was wrapped in her arms, allowing her touch to tenderly stroke my scars, and pulled a full 180 as I stood insufferable in my gobsmacked trance... with her.

Not in love – you don't have to be in love with me, I'm fine with that. Shutting my eyes, I sighed deeply, a characteristic tremble climbing up my spine at the hypocrisy in my words from earlier that night... when I pretty much challenged her that I would not beg for her to take me back.

I had been on the stage, locking eyes with her and punctuating the expression: you know I have seen a side to you nobody else knows.

Just as she had, mine.

My stomach violently grumbled. All I needed was to wake up from that hellhole of a nightmare I had made my life into, over the course of a single night. Chole... chole usually soothed those problems but a vague memory of scanning some pages that referred to Nandini's Chachi's chole.

Chole sounded revolting after that. A constant reminder of what could have been was the last thing I needed in my fucked up life. Nothing but that book was to blame for it all.

Enough was enough.

Slamming the book shut, I flung it under the couch and made a mental note to ship it to either her Chachi's Mumbai home or back to... wherever the fuck she lived! It would not be with me any longer, that was for certain.

"Ramu, black coffee," I ordered sharply and pressed my temples. "Now!"

Cabir's phone blasted in the living room, drowning my command. He stretched, feeling his surroundings for the device and as he glanced at the screen, his face was painted with a characteristic worry often reflective of a headsore in his way.

Definitely Navya was who it had to be.

⭒⭒⭒

Cabir

Ranbir, Navya's husband, had sent me a text.

An invite to his place for lunch or dinner, on a day that best fit my schedule.

I ignored the hammering in my chest, alarmed by the teeny possibility that visiting him would potentially mean meeting his family and... that would only further fuel the animosity I harboured for destiny. My destiny.

Speaking of destiny, someone tragically shattered from within was being served a long shot of black coffee, lovingly made by Ramu Kaka. Manik had just spent his first night in several years in the same mansion he had been beaten black and blue in. The Malhotra Mansion was no magical palace filled with promises of light and shining armour, nope. Ridden by sectioned tunnels that were too dark to even seep out of, it singlehandedly contributed to Manik's self-destruction.

Nandini was supposed to be his saviour, the one who showed him the power he held within... the abundance of affection he had within him to offer to others... but that didn't mean he had to date her once again to feel all those. At least not when none of those lessons had been learned.

"I'm going to get some fresh air." Manik blurted to the air before him, and staggered to his feet with his mug, wobbling towards the poolside sliding door.

I had never seen the man lose his handle on alcohol like that before. Either he had mixed something with his drink, or had been swigging a lot more before we arrived to be so goddamned hammered.

Last night and its turn of events was unexpected.

The naive woman had been sane in standing her ground and rejecting Manik outright. I had to commend her for her courage... to refuse a love she still so strongly reeled in. It wasn't good for her to reinstate anything with him, and I was glad she knew that, even if she lost herself for a few moments in the shower with him. Those intense eyelocks they shared were proof that a lot of her emotions were boiling beneath the surface. 

Manik couldn't unfortunately perceive them. The whole point of giving him the diary was to teach him about the person he used to be but those plans were backfiring. If anything, Manik's actions and reactions had been the most unpredictable. For the first time since his breakup with Diyah, I figured I had been wrong in my assumptions. Knowing one's own flaws did not make them vulnerable, it made them... unpredictable.

I sniffled my nose from the upcoming sneeze-spree that only emerged on breezy mornings, and sat up straight. Foreseeing a similar fate for myself, as I was assessed side-by-side with Ranbir, would only make me aware of my shortcomings, the list of misfortune bestowed upon me, why life sucked for me, and what I had eventually done about it. Mountains of regret, and nothing else. 

On some level, I had made peace with the fact that he... he was indeed a twin I didn't know I had, and as a result, he led a life completely different to mine. His childhood was not spent longing for affection or being on his best behaviour so he would not go hungry that night. Ranbir was more privileged, picked a stable career that he was also passionate about, and in general was a more honourable man in society's eyes than I was.

It would be way too hard for me to face anyone from his life, or what could have also been my life. As a result, I devised a polite rejection as I paced around the leather loveseat. My feet grazed on a spine, tossing it across the room in my stride.

When it spun towards the dining area, out of it peeked the school photograph of Manik and Nandini taking a selfie together.

I picked up the book and furrowed my brows. What made him leave it there?

Seeking a certain courage she possessed, in choosing what was in the longer term healthy for her rather than what made her presently happy, I flicked through the pages curiously, tracing her uniformly spaced and curved letters.

⭒⭒⭒

6 days later...

Nandini

Life was back to normal, at least that was the hope.

It was Rishabh's first day of college. I had given him a call to wish him the best of luck. He said he was leaving home for college with his friends, and he would update me on his day once he was back.

Home. In six days, that hostel had become home to my baby brother.

Mindlessly, I had walked back into my research lab in Bangalore, where I was surrounded by colleagues who had their own deadlines to meet. Those people I had grown familiar with over the months, and inevitably, I had spent more time with them than my own family. Yet, I could not feel home.

Bangalore was my city; practically all of my childhood had been fragmented into different localities of the city. For some of those developments, I was here but for most... I was just a firefly stuck in the vicinity, observing it from a distance instead of relinquishing them in their prime time. The school girl in me that found comfort in the city was nowhere to be found. I was not home.

My flat, the one I shared with Abhi and Mukti, was the closest thing I could associate to a safety blanket in my life. The only stagnant element that saw a broken version of me, that stumbled into Bangalore in despair after escaping Mumbai, and watched me grow into a woman with purpose... a mission... and a drive to accomplish what she set out to. That, too, was not home.

I had lived away from Amma and Appa long enough to know visiting them did not feel like going back home, I had experienced Bangalore enough to know it was not home, especially not after Ammamma. Neither cities really held fond memories anymore. 

Tears stung my eyes. Would I ever be able to find a place I could call home? 

12 November 2010

We're home, alone. That's breaking news, Babbu!

Today's Friday and Chikkappa's presentation to his clients went so well that he has been invited to a work conference in Dehradun for tomorrow night. Abhi had only playfully suggested Chikkamma to accompany him, but Chikkappa picked up on the idea and was passionate on making a second honeymoon out of it.

It is somewhat understandable. From what I have heard, they had been trying for children for a very long while after marriage and had grown so used to the absence of them that now... having all three of us under the roof with them must be on some levels exhausting. Anything to spend the weekend without the burden of us kids.

Which leaves Abhimanyu in charge of the house for the weekend!

And that means... nobody is going to care what time I go to bed!

Aiyappa, did you just grant me one of my wishes?!

I know, I know teenagers are more excited about the independence of being alone and unmonitored at home for a full two days and two nights but I'm, on the other hand, dreading being away from them.

The drive to the train station to drop them off involved heartbreaking sobs from me for no apparent reason. When Abhimanyu helped them into the bogie with their luggages, I bawled like I was marrying them off and sending them away to live in a faraway land forever!

It was so embarrassing to be hiccupping and breaking down in such a fashion in public, so much that Abhimanyu had offered to arrange an extra last-minute ticket for me, just so I could go with them. Their faces were ridden with guilt, and Chikkamma was nearly ready to call off the getaway from her end. That was when I stopped and sniffled, not wanting to ruin their first trip away in months.

Ammamma says I wasn't this anxious until my parents' accident, so it's no manufacturing defect. She has rationalised the fear as more from the idea of them not returning safely... in one piece... but I can't pinpoint if that is accurate. A lot of events from that night were a blur to me. All I know is that an impending sense of fright washes over me with every goodbye. I am compelled to avoid that thought. Especially while they are already away.

Until fifteen minutes ago, our plan was to eat a portion of the food Chikkamma had meal-prepped for us. Those elaborate ideas were scrapped when Alia, who apparently was going through some sibling crisis with Harshad, messaged her friends 'SOS'. The summoned emergency meeting was happening at our place, for lack of a supervisor to be with me and Rishu.

Abhi is now hassling me to help him clean his room. Aiyappa, why, why of all people did you have to make him my brother?!

Babbu, I got to go. Rishu got sucked in, and I'm next on the list!

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Cabir

A week had passed since I had sent Ranbir a brief response about being a little caught up with the album, and that I would reach out when things were less hectic.

That had been a white-faced lie.

Our album was progressing, but not exactly in the way we wished. We had a couple of songs under our belt, but with the approaching deadline and the several figures that warned us about making the most of our single chance to go big, the pressure was kicking in and stumping our creative spirits.

Manik, in particular, was not doing well. He had lost some muscle around the bicep and torso area, and his hollow eye sockets reflected the lack of sleep and dehydration he was powering through. Those were on the physical levels.

Mentally, he had checked out in different ways. One black coffee last week, that was consumed to soothe his hangover, marked the end of his stay at the Malhotra Mansion. I had hoped that being back at the hotel meant serious business when it came to the album. Manik had however made it to three practice sessions with the band in total.

On the days he did come up with a spontaneous melody, he had either soaked his brain in a jug of beer or had clogged his lungs from the cylinders of tobacco he seemed to light up more often than he took breaths in a day. Nandini's diary had not made it back to him, it was in my possession, and despite knowing that, he had not made any mention of it.

The Cabir who lived in Manchester would have interpreted his behaviour as indifference... aloofness... carelessness for what was someone else's whole reason to find happiness. 

Or frustration... because only he was capable of sparking such a distasteful feeling in a girl as sweet and gentle as her.

Aiyappa! What is wrong with this boy?

Abhimanyu's friends have been here for nearly twenty minutes now and except for some distracted glances here and there – not at me by the way, Mr. Malhotra's attention has only been on his freaking phone!

Could he not see that someone, who went through so much trouble with her Chikkamma to arrange him some lunch for the day, also existed in the vicinity? Forget everything else, the least he could do was acknowledge my presence and keep the smart device down! No, if not even for me... for his beloved friends, couldn't he spare some quality time?

No, seriously, I want to know what exactly he is doing on it, it seemed like he was messaging someone incessantly, but who would he be so carried away with when all his friends – his family, as he called it – were assembled in my living room?!

Not just that, he would always choose corner spots, or areas where nobody could look over his shoulder as he typed away with both hands.

It was the most frustrating thing ever!

And look at my luck, I can't even discuss these things with anyone except you Babbu. Nobody understands me!

I hate this feeling of being unwanted so much!

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Was that a lot in one chapter?

You've waited so long, I wanted it to be worthwhile :")

I will try to post another update before the weekend. Please share your love and support <3 I love you readers, especially my interactive ones who share their thoughts because it helps to know what the book feels like from a different perspective!