(Note: This is the first chapter of a book project that's been on hold for me for the last few years. I have the first draft of it kind of panned out already, but just haven't worked on it. I don't know if it will ever actually become a book but I've been asked plenty of times about a sequel to my first book, the autobiographical 'Just Married, Please Excuse'.
I've love to have your comments on the below first chapter, of the unpublished, unrefined Still Married, Thank You. If it looks familiar it's because, like the first book, this draws on some experiences on this blog in its earlier years
Let me know what you think, guys!)
‘Wow. I
can’t believe it. I cannot.believe.it.’
I stood at
our bedroom window, gazing outside with a feeling of awe.
It was only
6.30 a.m. – practically the crack of dawn as far as I was concerned. Usually,
getting up this early to give a cranky Peanut her bottle made me cranky too -
especially since Vijay never woke up, despite her insistent whining. I had questioned him about this, and he
thoughtfully suggested that perhaps he was just used to tuning out insistent
whining. He had then given me a meaningful look which I had chosen to ignore.
I envied
the man his ability to enjoy eight hours of peaceful, dreamless sleep. Peanut
was almost a year old, but still a restless sleeper – it felt like it had been
years since I’d had a proper night of sleep – and it had, almost, given that
the bad nights began right with the start of my pregnancy. I was used to having
my sleep interrupted, but that didn’t mean I had to like it.
But today
was different – staring at the beautiful scene outside made me feel very lucky
to be up at this ungodly hour.
We lived in
a company flat with the windows from the dining room and main bedroom
overlooking the prime location called Bandstand. The apartment itself was
small, but the windows opening out to the sea-view were huge - and the salty,
fresh ocean air made for a feeling of openness and oneness with nature that
most people envied.
I had
started taking the view for granted of late. I realized that I shouldn’t have,
as I stared at the bright orb casting its reflection across the bluish grey
expanse of water, relatively still at this hour, as if not to disturb the puny
sleepy mortals inhabiting the various buildings peppered across the coastline.
I heaved a
deep sigh of immense satisfaction and took a step back to sit down on the bed,
determined to enjoy the view some more. Forgetting that I had circled around to
Vijay’s side, I accidentally landed on his legs, rather heavily.
‘Owwww-chhh.’
‘Sorry,
sorry.’ I shifted my bum a bit, but I wasn’t actually all that sorry. ‘Anyway, you
should get up and see this.’
He
continued to lie there, glaring at me in a rather unfriendly manner. ‘That hurt, Y.’
I peeled my
eyes from the window to look at him for a moment ‘Sorry. Am I really that heavy?’
‘Not
heavy…just…’ He mumbled something unintelligible, knowing that he wasn’t going
to win this familiar post-partum conversation either way, and quickly yawned
and stretched. ‘What are you doing up so early, anyway?’
Not
bothering to remind him about Peanut’s feeding schedule, I just gestured towards
the window and said ‘Please, honey…just look at THIS.’
He heaved
himself out of bed, swinging his unnecessarily long legs onto the floor and sat
next to me, peering out through bleary eyes. He stared for a few moments and
then said in an unimpressed manner ‘‘So? Okay… the sunrise. We’ve seen it
before.’
I waited
for him to get it.
A look of
understanding dawned on his face ‘Oh, right. It’s our chance to take a picture
of it for Vivi. That poor fool still probably
believes that we can’t ever see the sun rise because ‘we’re in the west and the
sun rises in the east.’ Wait, I’ll get my camera…’
I stopped
him by catching his arm, and stifled my irritated sigh. ‘Honey. That is not the sun.’
He stared
outside with a disbelieving frown for a few moments, and then his expression
cleared again – this time, I knew the awed look on his face mirrored mine.
The bright
silvery-white moon hung over the ocean – it was large and full. We both sat
together, holding hands and drinking in the view.
The silence
was only interrupted by the strains of soft music – the opening notes of a
ghazal, it sounded like – floating up from somewhere nearby. I went up to the
window and peered out towards the right - a stage of some sort had been set up,
and some people had already gathered there. Of course. I grinned with delight.
Today was the first day of the Bandstand Musical Festival – and we had a
ringside view from our bedroom.
Yes, living
on Bandstand was a treat.
*****
Even though
it was a Sunday which was Vijay’s sleeping-in day, he agreed to join me and
Peanut for an early morning walk.
‘Let’s use
the baby sling.’ I said in a deliberately casual manner. He shrugged and said
‘Sure.’
I quickly
brought out the sling and strapped it onto Vijay. Peanut was still in a bad
mood, unable to appreciate at her tender young age any natural phenomenon
beyond a good burp. However, as soon as she saw the sling, she became all
excited.
‘Walky-walky,
Peanut.’ I murmured as I picked her up and placed her into the sling, nimbly
strapping her in with the air of the practiced, weary mother.
I surveyed
them both with some satisfaction. Peanut was a little too big for the sling now
and was kind of spilling out of it, giving the impression of an overstuffed
teddy bear. Vijay stood tall in his lanky frame, grinning down at the top of
his daughter’s head. She was happy because she loved the sling, knowing that it
meant a long walk by the sea. He was happy because she wouldn’t now want to
escape into ‘Mama’s godi.’ And of course, I was happy that I would get to walk
freely on Bandstand, for once.
We were
soon meandering towards the stage, in front of which some chairs had been
placed for the enthu, music-loving audience. We found a couple of empty chairs
and sat down. Peanut protested once, but settled down when I popped a biscuit
into her mouth. We sat transfixed - an unknown artist – unknown by me, of
course – was performing a ghazal with a rather lovely, haunting refrain. Vijay,
who for some reason could follow Urdu, or at least pretended to, kept muttering
‘Wah, wah’ at what seemed to be the right places, judging the reactions of the
other people sitting near us, who were saying ‘Wah, wah’ just a split second
after him. In a moment of suspicion, I wondered if they were pretending and
just following Vijay’s lead, but it didn’t matter enough to hold my attention.
It was an incredibly beautiful, peaceful place to be just now.
My mind was
wandering pleasantly. I would really have to try and appreciate this city a lot
more, I decided. Sure, it wasn’t my first love, Bangalore, where Vijay and I
had met and lived for a few years, only having to move out to Mumbai thanks to
Vijay’s strange desire to engage in some Village-Do-Gooding-cum-business with the
company’s Rural Project. And it wasn’t my hometown of Delhi, where my mother
lived and where I had spent a rather comfortable months getting spoilt along
with Peanut, until just a few months ago. But Mumbai had a certain something.
‘Character.’
The correct word had finally occurred to me.
‘I know’
Vijay snorted ‘Just because he’s an artist, he thinks he doesn’t need to cut
his hair. But he does sing well, no?’
I had no
opportunity to clarify what I had meant, because Peanut started kicking Vijay
impatiently. We quickly stood up and left, in order to pre-empt the scene
making that she would no doubt have resorted to, had we ignored her gentle
hints about how our purpose here was to walk and not sit around gabbing.
We strolled
along together for a while before heading home to the perfect breakfast –
consisting of Alu-paranthas for Vijay made by our maid Zarreena; and Pancakes
for me, made by good ol’ Kajal who used the recipe that good ol’ Mom had taught
her in the good ol’ days before I usurped her to help take care of Peanut.
******
My eyes
opened at about 3.30 p.m. – Good God, we’d slept right through lunch. That
breakfast had been as heavy as it was delicious. Peanut too, had taken an
unusually long nap today.
I felt a
vague sense of guilt about this, even though it was a Sunday. Not that I had
anything very important to do these days, whether it was Sunday or any other
day. Even though it had been over a year, I was still on maternity leave
because the Company was still trying to find me a project. I had asked for
flexibility in my working hours because of Peanut, and this seemed to have
thrown my HR manager into a bit of a tizzy.
I had
called him – yet again – the previous week, and it had been a familiar
conversation.
‘Anything
yet, Samir?’
‘Not yet,
Yash. But today, I forwarded your mail to the Skin team. Don’t worry, we’ll
hear from them soon’
Yeah. All
Samir seemed to ever do was forward my mails to various Teams – so much so that
I had privately labeled him as Auto-forward, only once, during a particularly
heated conversation, actually addressing him with this endearing nickname. He
had said ‘Excuse me?’ in a confused manner, and I had pretended to have a
coughing fit and then deftly hung up.
Vijay had
tried to make me feel better about this situation, a few times. ‘Excuse
me, but I don’t see the problem here.’
‘Arrey, I
want to DO something, na…’
‘You’re
doing something…you’re raising our baby!’
‘Yes, but
that’s not ALL I want to do. I want to EARN…’
‘Well, they’re
still paying you, right?’
‘Yes! Can
you imagine? They’ve paid me for the last so many months, keeping me on rolls
just because they’re unable to find me a role again! How crazy is that?’
Vijay
stared at me for a moment, before saying.
‘Excuse me.
But I don’t see the problem here.’
I gave up.
He wouldn’t get it, of course.
The deal
was that this mommy-hood thing had been fairly enchanting at first, but I had
figured after several months of diaper-changing and bottle-feeding that while
Peanut was the most adorable being in the entire Universe and all that jazz – I
was SO not cut out to be a full-time mother that it wasn’t even funny. Having
nothing to do but hang around with Peanut and Kajal the whole day had been
making me edgier than usual – and this was saying something.
Peanut
herself was showing signs of developing a rather cantankerous personality, and
I wasn’t too happy about the fact that she clearly looked like she had a bit of
a temper. One day in the previous week, she had been displeased by the Palak
Sag that Kajal was trying to feed her, and we were all treated to the sight of
her silent temper tantrum – she was trembling, one clenched fist waving in the
air, and grinding her eight baby teeth. Her doll-like appearance, with the
perfect pink lips, and plump white cheeks, did nothing to take away from her
current excellent imitation of a tiny Muhammed Ali, pumping himself up for a
particularly vicious round.
Kajal,
being a staunch devotee of Peanut, and therefore unable to see anything wrong
with this, simply burst into hysterical giggles, shouting ‘Oh Baba Goh! Itna
Gussa!’
I was
struggling to come up with the right way to explain to Kajal that this was not
something to be encouraged when I noticed Vijay staring at Peanut, with a
strange mix of amusement and horror.
‘Honey.’ He
turned to me, smiling sweetly ‘Peanut’s becoming more like you every day.
Bilkul apne maa pe gayi hai.’
I sighed
now, trying to shake these thoughts from my head. We would just have to wait
and see when I was able to get back to work. No point ruminating, till then. I
continued to ruminate until I noticed a message from Vivi on my phone, saying
‘Call when free, sweetie.’ My mood suddenly lifted.
Vivi, my
favorite feather-brained friend, was my one savior these days. It didn’t matter
that she was supposed to be assiduously serving the same Company, devoting her
entire time to building their brands – whenever I was feeling truly bored, I
could just give her a call and she’d be there for me in the form of long phone
conversations or impromptu in-person sessions of my whining about my life, and
her sympathetic ‘I knowwww, Sweetie’s. I half-suspected that she was only
half-listening, but her sunny, whacky personality never failed to pick me up
anyway. Soon, my whining would stop and instead she would be treating me to the
latest office gossip, her unique descriptions of people and events making for
entertaining listening. You know that
fellow, Akash Whatsisname? He came to work in a Green Suit today. Green! Arrey,
you know who I mean, yaar…that really tall, thin guy –the one who looks like a
sperm…
After a
brief conversation with her on the phone, I nudged Vijay awake. ‘Vivi and
Anshul are coming over in the evening.’
He grunted
his approval, without opening his eyes. I gazed at him in a dissatisfied
manner. ‘They’ve been out the whole day, while we’ve just been sleeping.
They’re always doing something or the
other.’
‘They don’t
have a baby. We do.’
‘Oh come
on, just because we have a baby, doesn’t mean that you and I can’t go out
together for a nice meal to some romantic place once in a while!’
‘Okay
fine.’ He opened his eyes and stretched lazily. ‘We’ll go sometime. Where are
they right now, anyway?’
I realized
that Mahesh Lunch Home didn’t sound all that romantic, so cleverly diverted the
subject to the one topic that always held Vijay’s full attention – the night’s
menu. We soon settled on Chhole Bhature, in the spirit of this Sunday’s
complete self-indulgence.
*****
Vivi and Anshul landed up a couple of hours later. Vivi was completely
blown away, as I had known she would be, by our home’s proximity to the musical
extravaganza on Bandstand, which had been on the whole day. We opened the drawing
room window to enjoy the music more fully.
A pleasant evening followed, the drinks flowing freely - beer for the
men, wine for Vivi and me. When it was
time for Peanut’s massage, Vivi offered to help me, and I tried to ignore her
as she treated me to her never-ending and entirely senseless advice on raising
babies. Vivi had no experience in the matter of child-rearing, but this didn’t
stop her from applying her imaginativeness with the baseless over-confidence
that carried her through life with such ease. At one point, I left her alone
with the baby for a few seconds, and heard her squealing 'Look, how flexible
she is!'. In a panic, I ran back into the bedroom and found Vivi had leaned
Peanut forward into a strange yoga contortion, with her elbows on the floor
between her outstretched legs, balancing precariously and looking around in a
very puzzled manner. Rescuing my baby, I resolved to keep a more careful eye on
them after this.
While we were busy with the baby,
Kajal was making the Bhature in the kitchen. As one of her pet quirks, Kajal
needed constant reassurance about her cooking, although she was a perfectly
good cook. These days, her complex had been brought to the fore because she was
rather overwhelmed by the speed and efficiency that she been observing in
Zareena.
Her standard compliment-fishing
opener for the last twenty years had been a mournful ‘Mujhe kuchh nahin aata…mere ko pakaana nahin
aata’. Having grown up with her around, I always gave her the
standard automatic-response ‘Nahin,
nahin, aap to bahut achha pakaate ho’. This would satisfy her nicely
– and thus, the moments of insecurity would pass.
Now, while kneading the atta for
the bhatura, she developed the sudden urge to say her line, but couldn’t see me
anywhere in the vicinity of the kitchen. Just then, an unsuspecting Anshul wandered
into the kitchen to look for the bottle-opener. Kajal apparently decided that mild-mannered
Anshul seemed like a good prospect and pounced on him, shouting into his ear ‘Bhaiiya!
Mere ko KUCHH pakaana nahin aata’
Anshul reeled backwards, stunned out of his wits at what probably seemed to him
a rather strange confession, and eventually came back with ‘Eh?’
Kajal misconstrued his confusion to mean that he was simply a bit hard of
hearing. Her enthusiasm undampened by his response, she just said in a louder
voice ‘Kuchh nahin aata! Kuchh BHI nahin aata!’ – she then waited for him
to contradict her and praise her obviously expert cooking abilities.
Vijay had been listening to this
exchange in exasperated amusement from the drawing room. After a long silence,
the very confused Anshul asked, as if to clarify that this was not a sudden
personal attack on his own capabilities ‘Kissko?’
Tucking the now asleep Peanut
into her cot, I headed back to the drawing room. I met Anshul in the hallway as
he came out of the kitchen, looking as dazed as if Kajal had hit him on the
head with her rolling pin. He asked me in his earnest manner ‘She doesn’t know how to cook, is it?...but
she is cooking…’. I tried to explain the whole dynamic but soon
gave up and just urged him to enjoy his beer, and to try and put this episode
behind him.
Eventually, dinner was over and Vivi
and Anshul went home. Vijay and I turned in too but we lay in bed, discussing
Kajal’s crackpot ways - he repeatedly sent me into paroxysms of laughter with
his imitation of poor Anshul’s ‘Kissko?’
Vijay was soon snoring as usual,
but I went over the day’s events in my mind, relishing every moment.
And
reflected on how it looked like I was finally falling for Mumbai.
*End of Chapter 1*