The "smallest" things

This post has been written as part of the writetribe initiative.

***“Ajay, I’m leaving you.”

 “What?” If a bolt had hit him from the blue, he couldn’t have been more taken aback. “What’s wrong with us?” he managed to say.

 “I don’t know. All I know is that I’m just not happy with you anymore.”

“But..but what have I done wrong? You’ve got to tell me!”.

“Where do I start?” I paused for a moment. “Ok, remember my miscarriage?” It was something we didn’t talk much about, especially after our now 3-year old daughter, Aditi, had come into our lives. But I had to bring it up to make a point.

“Yes, what about it?”

“Well, you weren’t there at the hospital with me, were you? And I needed you more than anybody else at that time.”

“We’ve been through this before. I told you I was hosting the annual office Christmas party. Everybody was there, I was the chief host.  I just HAD to be there. I did keep constantly in touch with the hospital on the phone, you know.”

“Remember the time my parents had taken a stopover in Mumbai on their Singapore-Paris journey just to see us one evening? I told you weeks in advance to keep that evening free. But you HAD to fly out of town on just THAT day! Now my dad’s gone forever…”

“I know – and I feel really bad about it. You know I liked your dad. But when I flew out that morning to Delhi, I was very sure the contract would be signed in a couple of hours and I could be comfortably back by evening. But those guys suddenly wanted to go through all the fine print and the meeting went on till late evening. I really couldn’t help it, dear”.

 “And is there a reason you call Aditi Aditya all the time? You always said it didn’t matter whether it was a girl or a boy, as long as we had a baby. Yet, you’ve never once called her by her name. Is there a problem, Ajay?”

“Oh, that!” he laughed. “No, not at all! She’s my little boy”.

“No, she isn’t. She’s our little girl. And if you have a problem with that, fine. I’ll rephrase that - she’s MY little girl.”

“Come on now, don’t be silly. You’re blowing these small things way out of proportion. Ok, so you’re right about all this stuff – but haven’t I made it up to you every single time? After the miscarriage, I took you to London to make you feel better. And I did get you a diamond bracelet to say sorry for not being able to meet your parents, didn’t I?”

“That’s just it, Ajay. That’s exactly the problem. For you these are “small” things – which you can “make up for” with a gift. Well, you know what? Sometimes the smallest things take up the most room in your heart.  And after so many of these “small things”, there really isn’t any room left in my heart anymore. Maybe you wanted a trophy wife – you sure picked the wrong person to marry then. I’m leaving you, Ajay – and I’m taking Aditi with me.”

“You can’t! You wouldn’t! Where will you go anyway? You need me. A man. You don’t know how tough it is for a woman out there on her own. That too with an infant child”.

“Thanks for your concern. But I’ll manage just fine, thank you.  I don’t need a man in my life. It’s a myth that a woman needs a man to take care of her”.

Ajay was stunned. He’d never seen his wife like this.

As I left, I called back from the driveway. “By the way, I’ve left the diamond bracelet and all your other fancy guilt gifts in the cupboard. Feel free to worship the cupboard now. You can even call it Aditya if you like”.

***

Life's like that!

Even by the standards of his terrible job, the day had been bad.

It had started with his car breaking down on the way to work. It was then he realized that his phone battery was also dead. By the time he finally managed to get in to work, it was as if all hell had broken loose. 

A critical server had crashed. Thanks to his company’s belt-tightening efforts, the backup server, never used operationally until now, was nowhere close to being capable of handling the load now expected of it, rendering it practically unusable. His colleague had decided to call in sick that day – leaving him now to deal with the problem. In other words, fix it.

John, his boss, was in no mood for explanations. “Fix it – then we’ll talk!” he barked at Mike.

Mike didn’t say a word. Getting straight down to business, two hours later, after a lot of searching and testing and rebooting,  voila – the server was up and running again. They were back in business.

“John's cabin. NOW.” came the terse message from John’s secretary.

“It is ok now, John” Mike said, as he entered John's cabin.

“What’s ok? Four hours! FOUR hours we’ve lost today. Do you have ANY idea what that means? Do you know how many orders we’ve lost? How many customers we may have lost? Do you know how difficult it is to retain ONE customer nowadays?”

“Sorry...I did the best I could. It was quite a complicated problem. The system directory…”

“Spare me the details. You walk in one hour late, we can’t get you on the phone – who do you think you are?”

“Sorry, my car broke down. And my phone died too. I didn’t know Jim wouldn’t be in today. Anyway, it’s working now. We really should be getting a faster backup server, John”.

“Sure, why don’t we just get it out of your salary?”

Mike went silent.

“What are you doing still standing here? Have you finished that network configuration schematic that I asked you to work on? I want to see it by end of day today on my desk.”

Mike returned to his desk. The day was only half over but he was already feeling very tired. Oh, how he hated this job! But he needed it. He needed the money. Not for himself, but for his daughter.

Mira. His ten-year old. She’d been five when her mother had died in a fire accident in front of her eyes. She hadn’t spoken a word since.

He’d shown her to every doctor he could. “It’s a trauma case. We can try – but no guarantees”.

 And they’d tried. Without result.

He’d finally taken her to Chicago. A friend had suggested this speciality clinic there. Not very well-known but apparently it had shown some good results for similar cases. It was over a thousand miles away – but he was willing to try ANYTHING.

 “No guarantees, Mr. Wilson” the doctor had said “but we’ll try our best. You can leave her in our care.”

It was expensive – and insurance covered only a fraction of the costs – but it didn’t matter. Mira was all he had. Money was no object.

He’d call up the clinic every week. “We’re working on it” is all they’d say.

The phone rang.

He was in no mood to pick it up. It went to voice mail. “Mr. Wilson, this is Dr. Adams from…”.

He grabbed the receiver.

“Yes, Doctor?”

“Mr. Wilson, somebody wants to speak to you”.

“Papa”.

He froze.

“Papa”.

He couldn’t speak. Tears were flowing down his eyes.

He covered his eyes with his hand.

Nothing, NOTHING, could spoil his day now.

(Pic courtesy morguefile).

This post is written as part of the writetribe  initiative. 

The Drift

In hindsight, I suppose it had to happen sooner or later.

Our relationship, at the best of times, had been struggling for real warmth. Cosiness was a level it never ever came close to.

At other times, it was about two indifferent people. Living together, but indifferent to each other’s existence.

She would do her thing, I’d do mine. She was musically-inclined – especially interested in classical music. I tried getting into that world – but found myself completely out of my depth in it. She was interested in fine dining, with a meticulous interest in learning new recipes and experimenting with food. And while I appreciated this, and even participated in some of these experiments, I wasn’t quite able to garner anything close to her level of enthusiasm for it.

My interest, on the other hand, lay in news. I was a news junkie – every day, I’d follow every little news item of the day. From multiple sources. Analysed in detail by multiple experts. I’d make my own analysis of it all – and even try to explain it to her. Not that she was really interested in it. Her interest in the news was at a headline level – five minutes of the headlines.

I must admit she never once complained that I didn’t share her interests. Nor did she ever make a fuss about the fact that I was always glued to the news. In fact, she just wasn’t the type to complain. She seemed happy to be left alone to do her thing. And to let me do my thing. Sometimes, we’d go hours without speaking to each other, even if we were in the same room!

That the marriage lasted as long as it did, seems now, in hindsight, as some sort of mini-miracle. I can’t help wondering how we went on for so long.

Eleven long years. Yes, that’s how long we stayed together.

And long years they certainly were.

Pretending that everything was fine. Pretending that this was how married life usually panned out anyway. Pretending that being together was the most important thing anyway.

We didn’t have fights or anything of the sort. Most couples do tend to have tiffs – we surprisingly had very few of them, if at all. In fact, I cannot remember any.

And yet, there was no love in our marriage. We were two individuals, living together under one roof. That was it.

To the outside world, we were a fine couple. We didn’t have many friends - and the few we had were not particularly intrusive anyway. Although there was that one occasion on our tenth wedding anniversary when one of our friends gave us a surprise visit and almost caught on to the sham that our relationship was. We were not celebrating the occasion – and we had to think up a reason quickly for him.

That was the tenth anniversary.

I don’t even remember the ones before the tenth. They are a blur – much as those years are.

By the time the eleventh came around, I guess I should have been more prepared. For the eventuality that there wouldn’t be a twelfth.

But I wasn’t. To me, life with her, even if it wasn’t with her in a traditional sense, wasn’t really bad.  Ok, so we’d never really been madly in love with each other but we’d been together for a big part of our lives. Surely that counted for something. And she had never once hurt me, even if she’d not been exactly generous in showering love.

I figured it was the same with her. And maybe that is why we’d been together all those years. Without love, but caring enough about each other, not to think of rocking the boat.

No, I wasn’t one bit prepared when she broached the subject.

“How old would Jack have been, you think?” she asked me one evening after dinner. Normally she would have been preparing for her post-dinner dose of music, just as I would be getting ready to catch the latest breaking news happening around the world. But that evening she actually started a conversation.

Jack - one of the middle-aged men we often came across in the neighbourhood. We didn’t know him very well, but he was a cheerful sort and we’d exchange greetings with him whenever we’d see him.  A pleasant man, who seemed not to have a worry in this world.  Until he suddenly collapsed one day on the street and was rushed to hospital, only to be pronounced dead on arrival. A massive heart attack, they said.

“I don’t know – maybe 55?”

“Poor guy, that’s no age to go”.

I didn’t say anything. This had happened just a few days earlier and I was still a bit shaken by Jack’s death – it had all been so sudden. He’d never looked ill, or been ailing in hospital, or anything of the sort.

“I think life’s too short to let it just drift”.

I still didn’t say anything. I saw it as just a philosophical remark, not as a lead-up to anything significant.

“Maybe we shouldn’t waste it anymore”.

I looked straight at her. This was suddenly looking like more than just philosophical. What was she really trying to say?

She looked straight back at me.

“Look here, we’re not getting any younger. I’ve been thinking of talking to you about this for a while now, but just didn’t know how to bring it up. Now, after Jack…” Her voice trailed away.

“What are you trying to say?” I was beginning to realize this was the most significant conversation we’d had in ages.

“Well, you know we’re not really the greatest couple out there. We’re not going to win the World’s Best Couple prize or anything”.

“No, we aren’t”. I managed a bit of a hollow laugh. It was the truth, there was no denying it.

“So I was just thinking, we’ve been together so long but in effect…” She paused, then resumed “In effect, we’ve just been drifting all these years, don’t you think?”

“Well…I don’t know about that” I was trying to make it sound better than it was, but I knew it was the truth.

“Come on, you know that’s how it’s been. We haven’t really had much of a truly married life, have we? We’re together…but we’re not REALLY together, are we? You know what I mean”.

I knew EXACTLY what she meant. But I was just too taken aback for words.

She went on “So I was just thinking. The way Jack’s gone…you never know how much more we have. You and I. I’m not sure we’re doing the smart thing by just chugging along like this”.

I was still too stunned to say anything. My wife had never been one for many words – in fact, that might have been one of the reasons we didn’t really connect very strongly. She’d been happy to live in her own world, as I’d been in mine. Sharing thoughts and ideas had never been her strong point. Nor mine, for that matter.

But she was not done yet.

“I think we should live the rest of our lives at least on our own individual terms. The way we’d like to. Whatever’s left of it.”

This was about the most direct statement yet that we were going to split – without saying it in so many words.

“What are you saying?” I was beginning to understand exactly what she was saying – but it was still taking some time to sink in.

“All I’m saying is, maybe we should just go our own separate ways from now on. Yes, that’s what I think I’m saying”. Her voice faltered just a bit, as if that last bit had come out only with great effort.

I think I also just caught a glint of a tear in her left eye.

“But…I don’t know.” I was struggling. She’d said it – and now it was my turn to respond. “We’ve managed ok so far. Ok, so it hasn’t been a “dream come true” sort of married life but hey, we’ve pulled along for so long already, haven’t we? It’s been what, eleven years now? Going on twelve?”

I could now see more than one tear. Welling up.

“That’s what we’ve been doing, John. Pulling along. Just pulling along. And I don’t think that’s what married life is meant to be. Let’s face it  - we don’t exactly have anything in common, we hardly talk to each other. We’ve somehow gone on for eleven years -  and I don’t have a problem as such with you, but…but…”

Her voice cracked – she couldn’t go on. She was now weeping.

I instinctively put my arm around her and pulled her towards me to comfort her. I might not have been in love with her in the usual sense of the term – but if she was weeping, I was weeping too. Within.

“I think we can work it out, honey”.  I managed to say.

“No, we CAN’T.” She pulled away and sounded surprisingly animated. “You know this is the ONLY way. We don’t have an eternity to live – and I don’t want us to go on like this. I don’t want you to waste your years with me…and I don’t…”

She didn’t have to complete her sentence. I knew where it was going – she didn’t want to spend the rest of her years with me. More accurately, she didn’t want to WASTE the rest of her years with me. That was what life with me would mean for her – a waste.

I didn’t know what to say. I knew I should say something – but I just didn’t know what.

“I think it’s all for the best”. She was now more composed. “It’s not like we have children or anything. Nobody’s going to get hurt. It will take a bit of adjustment, that’s all. But that’s for the best”.

She had made up her mind. Strangely, in all these years that we’d been together – when our relationship had been lukewarm for the most part  - I’d never seriously thought it would come to this. I’d been happy to pretend that everything was fine. And I had been pretending for SO long, I had been deluding myself for SO long that I had built a comfortable rosy glass image of our life.

Only now, that glass image was being shattered to smithereens.

She went silent. Clearly she’d said all she wanted to say – and was waiting for me.

“Looks like you’ve made up your mind then?”

She nodded. “It’s not just for me, John. You will do much better without me, I’m sure”.

I wasn’t so sure. I hadn’t ever thought about it – and clearly she had. At least for the last few days. I wondered why I hadn’t noticed her behaving any differently the last few days. And then realized, I hardly ever noticed her, how she behaved, what she did. She’d just been there – all these eleven years.

“Are you ok?” She could see me struggling to take all of this in. I wasn’t good at dealing with even small surprises. And this was like a “wham!”.

“Yeah…yeah…I’m…I’m ok”. I managed to blurt out. I wasn’t ok but I wasn’t going to collapse in a heap. I had to deal with this – and I had to deal with it by myself. It suddenly struck me that I’d have to deal with quite a few things by myself from then on.

“You’ll be all right?”  I managed to ask. Not that it seemed a particularly necessary question. She was dealing with it all much better than I was. But then she’d had more time to think about it.

“Yeah. I think it’s for the best, John. And we can always meet up from time to time. It’s not like we’re at each other’s throats, are we?” She said with a laugh. Yes, she was dealing with it much better than I was.

“No, it’s not”.

So that was it.

We completed the formalities in less than two weeks. Eleven days, to be precise. It took exactly eleven days to end eleven years of married life.

I’ve never met her since. Both of us moved out of our apartment – it was a rented one anyway. She did give me a forwarding phone number. I did speak to her once – about three months after we’d split up. It was one of those spur-of-the-moment things when I just wanted to know how she was doing. Or, to be more honest, wanted to hear her voice. We spoke for just a couple of minutes – but that was enough for me to realize that she’d moved on. She asked me how I was doing – I lied, saying I was doing fine. I wasn’t – but I wasn’t going to let her know.

It’s been three years now. My life’s taken a different turn. I now live in a different city. I’ve made new friends. I do sometimes think about the past – but then I realize that life is full of chapters, and the past is a closed chapter. One has to live in the moment – and look ahead.

And if there’s one thing about life that is an absolute truth, there’s no room in it for “what ifs”.

*Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction and bears no resemblance whatsoever to the reality in my life.* 

M&M Anand : "I want to destroy everybody"

Meira storms into the living room, all agitated.

Raj, on the computer, looks up for a moment – and then gets back it, saying to himself “If there is something to know, she will tell me anyway. And if there is not, no point in asking, is there ?”. Simple logic that he has used – successfully for fifteen years.

“Raj, WHAT have you been teaching Rohit ?”

“Nothing…. Well, I did sit with him for math a few days ago but that was because you wanted me to. Why, he hasn’t flunked it, has he ?”

“I am not talking about math. I am talking about something else.”

Raj, realizing that this was not going to go away easily “Now what?”

“Rohit has just come back from playing with his friends.”

“And…there is a problem with that ?” These things could go on and on.

“No…I mean yes…I mean, he has come back with bruises - on his hands and legs.”

“Oh.”

“Is that all you can say ? Oh ?”

“Come on, he goes to play football every day…you get these little things every now
and then.”

“That is so typically you !!! You don’t really care, do you ? How do you know this is not serious ?”

“Because, honey, if this had been serious, we would not be talking here, would we ?”

“Thank God, it is not serious. I have taken care of it. Anyway, what have you been teaching him ?”

“I have NO clue what you are talking about !”

“You cannot just get away acting like you’ve done nothing…you have obviously been telling Rohit something.”

“Honey, this is getting really tiring. Where IS Rohit, by the way ?”

“He is in his room doing his homework. Anyway, today he looked really badly beaten up…when I asked him what happened, he said “I beat up those guys like Dad told me to - and they got together and beat me up”.

Raj looks uncomfortable. “I need to tell my son to keep my name out of all conversation with his mom” he mutters under his breath.

“So you want to explain ? What have you been teaching him ?”

“Hey, I did not tell him to go about beating people up !”

“ So what DID you tell him ?”

“Well, I may have just told him something like “don’t let anybody tell you that you are not good”. Something like that. ”

“So ?”

“And maybe he took that a bit literally. Somebody may have said something and he may have got into a scrap.”

“Looked like more than a scrap to me. Why do you even talk to him ?”

“WHAT ? YOU are the one who always says I should spend more time with him. He came
to me saying his friends were making fun of him, that he was not good at football, so I said – very encouragingly – “don’t let anybody tell you you are not good”. Just nice fatherly advice.”

Meira is not convinced – her look says it all.

Raj now feels a strong need to defend himself.

“Or what would you rather have ? That I just tell him to let it be…that he does nothing and they keep making fun of him ?”

“No, of course not..we don’t want him to turn out like you. Heaven, no !”

Raj feels hurt but lets the slight pass. This was not about him and he was used to such comments from Meira anyway.

“The thing is, Raj, you don’t really know how to handle these things. Instead of talking to him here, you could have gone to the football yourself and told those bullies to lay off him.”

“WHAT ? You want me to talk to 11-year old kids to lay off my son ?”

“What’s wrong with that ?”

“Honey, I have been there myself. You REALLY don’t want your dad or mom to sort out your problems with your friends, trust me. It is upto Rohit to work it out, if WE get involved he will only have more trouble with his friends.”

“Hmm…I don’t know. I think you are trying to escape from this also. As usual.”

“Trust me…he will be fine. You worry too much about him”.

“That’s because you worry too little. You don’t even know which friends he mixes with.”

“Must be his schoolfriends. And the ones in this apartment block. Who else ?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes I really get worried. The other day he came to me and said “Mama, I want to destroy everybody”.

Raj laughed. “Destroy everybody ? That’s funny”.

“What’s so funny ? Your son wants to destroy everybody - and you find that FUNNY ? You are REALLY something, you know. I will NEVER understand you.”

“Come on honey, relax. So he said he wants to destroy everybody. Big deal. Does he even know what he is talking about ? Must have picked it up somewhere in school.”

“And you are not the slightest bit concerned ? Don’t you think we need to find out where he learns such things ?”

“Honey, forget it. I am sure he has himself forgotten it. These things come and go – if you start worrying about everything he says, you will become a wreck.”

“I am sure it is because of all these stupid video games they have nowadays. It is all about destroying, killing, breaking. They should ban all these games”.

“Yeah, you may be right – maybe he picked it up from one of these games. But don’t worry – he will get over it. He is smart enough to know it is just a game. And anyway he will move on to something else.”

“I think you are being too flippant about this, Raj. He is our son and you may not care - but I will NOT allow him to get bad influence at this age.”

Raj is a bit tired from all this but he knows Meira too well to expect her to stop without having the last word.

“So what do you want to do ?”

“We need to find out where he gets all this from. Which games he has on his PC, what DVDs we have, which friends he borrows games from.”

“And then ?”

“We need to remove all that from his PC, get rid of the DVDs, we need to talk to his friends’ parents.”

“Don’t you think you are over-reacting ? Just a little bit ?”

“Raj, trust me, this is a dangerous age for him. Today he is destroying video-game characters, tomorrow who knows what this will lead him to. You really have to stop all this now.”

Raj, suddenly noticing the change from "we" to "you" is startled.

“I have to ?”

“Who else ? You don’t think I am going to sit and go through those game DVDs ? I don’t even know how they work.”

“Nor do I. Honey, can’t we just forget all this ? I mean, he said it.. what ? Once ? If he says it again, then we will see”.

“As usual. You are using your postponing tactics. And you HAVE to fight with me. You cannot even do a simple thing like this. Why do I even bother talking to you ? You don’t even care about your own son…”

Meira’s voice is breaking - and Raj cannot take it.

“Ok, I am sorry, honey…I will get to the bottom of this. You are right. If he is talking about destroying things, we need to know what’s going on."

At that moment, Rohit walks into the room, scratching his arm.

“Mummy, again I am not able to do my homework. Why do you keep the window open in the evening ? Again there are so many mosquitoes in my room now…give me the mosquito racket…I am going to destroy everybody”.

M&M Anand : A "proper" fight

“Raaaaaj Anand”.

“At your service”.

“What a name…Raaaaaj Anand !”.

“What’s wrong with it ?”

“Nothing…just saying..Raaaaj Anand sounds like such a powerful name. “Raj” as in “rule” and “Anand” as in happiness or pleasure. So Raj Anand is like…what…”you rule over the domain of happiness ?” ?

Raj is silent. Not sure how to approach this.

“Come on…say something !”

“Am scared to. You know how it is…if I say something it will end up in a fight”.

“No…Really ? Of course not..you think I always fight with you ?”

“No..but…anyway, nothing wrong with the name. Raj Anand…yes, I rule over happiness..ha ha”.

“YOU rule over happiness ? Yeah, right ! Your parents must have been really optimistic about you to have named you like this when you were born.”

“Hey, enough fun of my name, OK ? What about yours ? Meira ? It is not like you are a Krishna-bhakt or something.”

“Hey, I do my bit of poojas, OK. I am not like you. Nastik.”

Silence.

“Raj, is this what we have become now ? Is this the level of our fights ?”

“Why ?"

“No, I mean..look at us…even our fights are not proper fights anymore”.

Silence. Raj is not taking chances by opening his mouth.

“SAY something. Do you realize in 2 months we will be celebrating 15 years of marriage ? 15 years !”

“Really ? Has it been THAT long ? 15 years ?”

“Yes..15 long years. It feels like just the other day…I was a happy, free person..before…ok, let it be...otherwise I will get depressed.”

Raj, comfortingly, putting an arm around her shoulders “Hey, it has not been all that bad, has it ? You are still the same…ok, you look a little older…obviously you are not the young person you were then…”

Meira, pulling away sharply “What are you saying ? I am old ?”

“I didn’t say that…all I said was that compared to 15 years ago..”

“Come on, say it…I am OLD…just say it.”

“Come on honey, I did not mean it that way…you are still young but..but obviously not like you used to be. I mean…”. Raj is clearly struggling here for the right choice of words. Muttering under his breath “I should NEVER have got into this..”

“And why is that ? Why is it that I am not like I used to be ? Ask yourself. Ok, let me tell you. Because in the last fifteen years, I have had to do ALL the work around here…bringing up Rohit, doing all the housework, attending to my job, even taking care of YOU because you cannot even take care of YOURSELF…how do you expect me to remain the same ?”

“Honey…honey..it is OK…cool down..you don’t have to remain the same..we all change..”

“And now I am OLD ? Of course I am old..thanks to YOU..”

“Honey…”

“DON'T talk to me..I am SO angry with you…I have wasted fifteen years of my life with you..”

Silence.

“SAY something”.

“You JUST told me not to talk to you..”

“Oh, and you always listen to me, right ?”

She glares angrily at him, they stare into each other's eyes.

And suddenly he breaks into a smile.

“What’s so funny ?”

“Just realized something.”

“What ?”

“You really need to be careful what you wish for.”

“What do you mean ?”

“You wanted a “proper” fight, right ? So ? This...“proper” enough for you ? ”

Meira is taken aback for just a moment – and then bursts out laughing.

“YOU…anyway, I guess now that we have had our fight, I feel much better. Don't get me wrong, living with you for fifteen years HAS been a nightmare but …DON’T SAY IT !”.

“I wasn’t going to say anything…”

“Yeah, right ! You were going to say “likewise””.

“I so wasn’t ! Wouldn’t DREAM of SAYING it...even if I thought it..” Ducks to avoid a pillow coming in his direction.

“So we’re good ?”

“Yeah, yeah…I guess we are. Though a hot, strong coffee would make us better than good. It would make us awesome”.

“Coming up, ma’am. Rightaway”.

M&M Anand : Just Another Manic Sunday

“Am I a nice person ?”

“Hmm ?”

“Dad, am I a nice person ?”

Raj looks up from his laptop, a frown on his forehead, his mind clearly elsewhere.

“What did you say, son ?”

“Am I a nice person ? Are people nice to me because of ME ? Because I am a nice person or are they nice to me because THEY are nice people ?”

Raj stares at him with a busy look. It already got complicated after the first question and Raj's attention had given up after the first few words.

“I don’t know, son. Ask your mom.”

Calling out loudly from the living room to his wife in the kitchen “Meira, take care of him please. I am busy.”

“And I am not ?” Meira mutters under her breath.

“What’s the matter, bete?” she says as Rohit comes into the kitchen.

“Mummy, am I a nice person ?”

“Of course you are. You are a very sweet boy. Who says you are not ?”

“Nobody. I just wanted to know. So I am a nice person because I am nice and not because of other people ?”

“Hmm..sorry, bete, you have lost me there. Anyway, what is all this all of a sudden ? You are a nice boy, ok ? Now why don’t you just go out and play with your friends ? I am sure Aditya and the others must already be out there”.

“Ok, mum, see you later”.

Meira comes into the living room to confront Raj.

“You really should spend more time with Rohit, you know”.

“Hmm ?”

“Are you even listening to me ?”

“Not now, honey. Am in the middle of something.” Raj does not even look at her, he is deep into his spreadsheet on the laptop.

“Will you please look at me ? I am talking to you.”

“Honey, I said “not now”. I am really busy. I need to send this out within the next five minutes. I am already late, it should have gone out in the morning itself”.

Meira goes on. “All I am saying is that you should spend more time with Rohit. He clearly wants to spend more time with you, it is a Sunday today and all you do is sit in front of your laptop.”

“I know honey but I am just tired today”.

“Oh, YOU are tired ? Let’s see what you’ve done today. You got up at ten. You then made breakfast for all of us. Oh sorry, that was me. You did the vacuuming and dusting of the entire apartment. Oh sorry,THAT was me too. You made lunch – oops, me again ! You did the washing of the dishes because the dishwasher - which YOU were supposed to contact the service center for repairing – is still not repaired after two weeks. Oh again that was me ! You at least sat with Rohit to go through his craft project for school, didn’t you ? Oh surprise surprise, that was me too. Hmm..let’s see, what else ? You sat with the newspaper and spent more than two hours reading every bit of it, including the matrimonials pages. Yessss, THAT was definitely you”.

“Honey, five minutes ?” Raj pleads. Years of experience with Meira have made him wise to the futility of any attempt to counter her arguments. If anything, it only lent her more ammunition and that could only mean a longer and more tortured dialogue.

“Do you even know which class Rohit is in ?” Meira is now in full flow and is not going to be stopped mid-way.

“Err..”. Raj is thinking fast – should he make an educated guess and risk being caught out or just delay and hang in there, hoping the question will pass by itself ?

“You don’t, right ? Brilliant ! Do you even know which SCHOOL he is in ?”

“Err…come on Meira, what do you take me for ?” Raj says in a low, not entirely convincing, tone. This is getting too embarrassing, even for somebody to whom embarrassment came in his mother’s womb.

“Ok, come on, tell me..which school ?” Meira senses an opportunity to go for the kill here and is not going to let go, she is in that type of mood.

“Hmm…that one round the corner”. Raj manages to mumble.

“Which one ? Round which corner ?”

“That one..the one with a bus-stop opposite”. Raj makes one valiant attempt. Which school in the world does not have a bus-stop next to it ?

“You really have no clue, do you ?” Meira is finding it hard to believe how this conversation is going.

“I know, I know..St. Anthony’s High School, the one on the main road near the station” Raj shouts in delight. The relief is tangible – he had himself taken Rohit to the school when he had got admission there a few years earlier. So there ! He was not going to allow himself to be mocked so easily today.

“WHAT ?" Meira cannot take this anymore. "Will you please remove that smug look off your face ? You really are the WORST parent ever !!! . Don’t you remember we had gone to St. Anthony’s, filled up all the forms but at the last minute decided to put him closer home here in DAV Public ? Don’t you remember ANYTHING ?"

Raj looks sheepish, his eyes lowered. Caught outside the off-stump...

Meira continues. "How would YOU know ? If only you had attended even ONE Parent-Teacher meeting in the school in all these years...instead of my having to go every single time, taking leave from my work...my job is also important to me just like yours is to you…but I still manage to balance work with Rohit and other house work. Not like you…escaping everything under the pretext of “office work”...You are always looking for an escape.”

Raj, now totally exposed in Rohitgate, decides the safest recourse is to get back to his spreadsheet.

Meira knows she is talking to a brick wall but she carries on relentlessly. She will not give up so easily.

“Sometimes I really wonder why I married you. I had so many better options..I should have listened to my friends instead of my parents... DON’T TOUCH THAT MOBILE…” she screams as she sees Raj reach out towards the mobile on the small table in the living room. “I am TALKING to you”.

Raj looks at her with the ultimate beseeching look, one which has “please please please please please” written all over it.

“Am not touching the mobile, honey…. I am just looking for the remote. Do you know where it is ? The match will be starting in five minutes, I want to know who won the toss and what the pitch looks like today”.