Tea for Two and a Piece of Cake

  ‘I must say, it smells divine!’ says Mrs Singh.

  I feel so embarrassed, I want to sink into the floor.

  I squirm as I manage a feeble thank you, and Akash shoots me a warning look.

  Mrs Singh says that she wants to serve it in her serving bowls as they coordinate with the plates, while the refills can be had from the kitchen.

  She opens the containers we placed on the kitchen counter, inspects them, and says that it does smell delicious. And then she asks about the starter and says that she had not ordered it.

  ‘Oh that is complimentary, Mrs Singh. It is a kind of fried chicken which will go perfectly well with the drinks you serve. I do hope you like it,’ I manage to say.

  Her face breaks into a smile, and she assures me that she will surely taste it later.

  I ask Mrs Singh if I can arrange the food on the table, and also ask her if she wants me to stay around for the full duration of the party. I expect her to say a yes, but she surprises me when she tells me that she has enough staff who can handle the serving and the refills. She says it is the food that she was very particular about, and since Akash had raved so much about me, she wanted to try it.

  I thank her politely, but inside I am terrified she will find out about our little deception. This is how conmen and people who commit frauds must feel after duping innocent people. I find it very hard to hold on to the truth, and it is only Akash’s soul-piercing warning looks that stop me.

  I ask Mrs Singh if there is anything else she needs or whether we can leave. She asks me to wait and then brings her cheque book. She asks whose name the cheque should be made in favour of, and I tell her my maiden name, while I watch her writing out a cheque for eight thousand five hundred rupees.

  I thank her once again for the opportunity to serve her and tell her I hope she likes the food.

  Akash and I walk towards the car and, once inside, he suddenly leans over and gives me a kiss on the cheek, saying, ‘You were terrific lady. Simply terrific!’

  I squeeze his hand tightly and say nothing.

  In the car, Akash says, ‘Nisha, it’s been such a long day. Let us have a drink before we get home. I know just the place and they have tables facing the ocean too.’

  I badly want to. But when you become a parent, you sign off forever your rights to live a life for yourself. Every little decision, even the seemingly inconsequential ones like which restaurant to eat food in, have to be carefully thought of and weighed to see if they have high chairs, and whether they hand out printouts and crayons for colouring, all so that your kids can amuse themselves and hopefully let you eat in peace.

  I tell Akash that we have to hurry back home as Tanya has been at Mrs B’s house for almost a whole day now. Plus, we also need to keep a close watch on Rohit’s condition as per the doctor’s instructions.

  ‘Right. How silly that I even suggested it. Sorry, Nisha! I can be such an idiot sometimes,’ says Akash.

  I look at him in the semi-darkness, driving that car, his face lit by the street lights. He is twenty-seven and he is not even a husband, let alone a father. Yet, the maturity he has displayed today, the fact that he has been around with me all through, and the fact that he is now apologizing so contritely, fills me up with an indescribable tenderness towards him. He could be in a pub right now, with young women his age, getting drunk, dancing and enjoying life. Instead, he chooses to spend his weekend in a hospital with me, a woman with two children.

  I lean over and give him a kiss and his face breaks into a big smile.

  ‘You are not an idiot, Akash. You just aren’t a parent yet.’ I say softly.

  But he doesn’t seem to have heard much as he shouts ‘woohooo’ and turns up the volume on the stereo on our way towards my home.

  My Friend of Misery

  Once home, we ring the bell to Mrs B’s apartment. It looks as though we have woken her up from deep slumber as she takes a long time to open. As she slowly opens the door, she looks as though she will drop off to sleep any moment, and I do feel bad for her. Even at my age, looking after two children is no easy job. So for her, it must have been really hard to keep a watch on Rohit.

  ‘Hello, how did it go? Both the children are fast asleep,’ she says in a low voice.

  ‘Really sorry if I woke you up Mrs B, but we got here as fast as we could,’ I say in a whisper.

  ‘That’s okay, I was reading and waiting for you,’ she says.

  Akash says that he will carry Tanya while I can carry Rohit.

  Ten minutes later, both children are tucked safely into bed.

  ‘Let’s do one thing Nisha, let us shift this table and push the bed against the wall. That way, Rohit will have less chances of trying to climb out.’ he says.

  That makes sense. So we move the table and push the bed to the wall, with the two sleeping children on it.

  Then I make a barrier at the foot of the bed with two pillows. I also pull out an old mattress so that in case Rohit falls again, he would be cushioned by the mattress.

  Akash and I go and sit in the drawing room.

  Akash looks at me again and says, ‘God, Nisha, you really are beautiful.’

  I have the grace to blush.

  Even at my age.

  Even though I am older.

  And even though I am a mother of two children.

  And I am surprised. It’s been ages since I felt this way.

  And with that one statement, and with that look in his eyes, we both know he has crossed that fine line which separates friendship from a deeper relationship between a man and a woman. He has altered forever what existed as a pure friendship between us, and there is no going back now.

  I do not know how to handle it, and so I try to cover up. ‘Let us celebrate, Akash. Let’s pour ourselves a drink. To the first successful order execution of The Magic Saucepan,’ I say.

  Akash gets two glasses and pours out the remaining wine from the day he had come over with it. We are sitting right next to each other, amidst the hired vessels, the burnt noodles, and other stuff spread around in the drawing room. We are sitting right next to each other on the sofa, and I slowly prop up my feet on the centre table. Akash puts his arm around me and slowly places his left foot over mine, taking my right arm in his left.

  The air around us is thick with the sexual tension between us.

  Of course I know where all this is leading to. The only man I have ever had sex with is Samir. And somehow, after I became a mother, I had stopped feeling desirable. I am always Tanya’s mum or Rohit’s mum. But, tonight I feel different. Akash looks at me with passion, and to think that I am driving him crazy with desire is hugely flattering. I have a sudden desire to give in, to surrender myself completely to him. Plus, there is a subconscious desire to get back at Samir, no matter how much I refuse to confront it on the surface.

  The top portion of my saree has ridden across my blouse and my breasts beckon invitingly. I make no attempt to push it back and cover myself. I can hear Akash’s breath quickening. I turn towards him and pull his face towards mine and we kiss. It is a kiss of hunger, a kiss of desire and longing, a kiss which expresses just how deeply he feels for me.

  I find desire coursing through my veins. I don’t even remember the last time I had sex with Samir; perhaps it was before Rohit was born. And then too, it was just sex with Samir. Married sex which has a pattern of familiarity and comfort. It is all good in the beginning, but after two or three years, it becomes boring. Even foreplay usually degenerates to just a nudge and a poke. Of course, the arrival of children does have a way of putting a full stop on the libido. Children are natural, walking, talking contraceptives.

  But tonight, in my blue chiffon saree, sitting next to Akash with our arms and legs wrapped around each other and our mouths exploring each other, I forget to be a mother. I have been one for far too long. Tonight, I finally remember that I am a woman too. I want him inside me more than anything else at that moment. I reach out for his shirt and find the gap between
the buttons, hungrily slipping my hand in.

  But he takes my hand and kisses it.

  And then he stops me. ‘No Nisha. Let’s not do this,’ he says.

  I am surprised.

  ‘Nisha, I want you more than anything else in the world, but no, let us not have sex. Let us wait.’

  I wonder what has come over him. One minute he is kissing me so darn passionately and setting my body on fire, and the other moment he is pouring water all over it.

  He kisses me gently on my mouth again and says in almost a whisper, ‘With all my other girlfriends put together, they never made me feel quite this way. It was just sex, even though I had fooled myself into believing I loved them. I never had. It was you that I was looking for in them, Nisha. It was you all along.’

  ‘So now you have me, Akash.’

  ‘But what we have, I don’t want it to be about sex alone. It is something far more powerful. Let us preserve its sanctity. You have had two glasses of wine. I want you to be sure, Nisha. I want you to be dead certain about what you are doing. Don’t get me wrong, Nisha. I love you and respect you. I always will. I always had. Even before you married Samir.’

  The enormity of what he has said sinks in slowly like a drifting leaf falling down in autumn winds.

  ‘Oh my God. Why didn’t you tell me all those years back then, Akash?’ I ask.

  ‘What life could I have given you back then? I was just a graduate then and I was only twenty-one, Nisha! I did not even have my IIM degree, and Point to Point was just a stopgap arrangement till I figured out what I wanted to do with my life. And by the time I realized it, you were already married and expecting too.’

  ‘Yeah, I was in a big hurry to marry Mr Right and become a mother, wasn’t I? And I got what I wanted, and now it is a fine price I have paid.’

  ‘All I can say is that Samir is a fool. Can’t he see that he has a beautiful wife who loves him deeply and who has given him two little angels?’ I contemplate on what he has said. He is partly right, but he is wrong too.

  ‘In the end, what it amounts to is that I just wasn’t good enough, Akash. I agree I did make mistakes, but still I do feel it did not call for such a drastic step. Then again, maybe I have been a good mother, but I don’t think I had ever been a good wife, Akash. I am to blame too.’

  ‘Just stop thinking about all this. What has happened has happened. We can analyse it a million times and still it will not change anything.’

  He kisses me once again and gently escorts me to the bed. I am too drowsy now to even bother to change out of the saree. The day’s events have finally caught up with me and I can barely stay awake now. I slowly sink into blissful sleep. And the last thing I remember is Akash covering me with a blanket and tucking me in.

  The next day is a Sunday, and Akash wakes me up with tea and buttered toast arranged neatly in a wooden tray.

  ‘Wow! You are up early, and who told you to make all this?’ I ask him.

  ‘At least say thanks,’ he says in mock anger.

  ‘Thank you, Akash. That’s really sweet of you,’ I say and he smiles.

  ‘I had to wake up early. Those guys will be here in ten minutes to take away all these vessels. We will have to pay a little extra because we burnt one vessel.’

  ‘Never mind. I wonder what Mrs Singh thought of the food, though.’

  He smiles a broader smile and shows me a text which reads:

  ‘Thank you Akash for recommending The Magic Saucepan. The food was appreciated by everybody and the party was a grand success. I have texted your friend too. Mrs Singh

  ‘Wow!‘ I exclaim, as I reach for my mobile and read her text. She has thanked me for the wonderful food and has said that the party was a huge hit.

  One part of me is hugely relieved, but the other part is also appalled at how causally and easily we have pulled off this deception. We decide to bury our little secret there and then.

  Two days later, after Tanya leaves for school, I get a call from an unknown number asking if it is The Magic Saucepan. When I respond in the affirmative, the lady at the other end says she was a guest at Mrs Singh’s party and that she had really enjoyed the food. She says that she had taken my number from Mrs Singh. She wants to know if I can cook Indian food for eight people for a party to be held this Saturday. She says she can get the food picked up if I tell her the time. She wants two curries and a dry-chicken dish. She says she has a house help who makes good rotis and will also be making jeera rice, and she needs only the curries and the chicken. I tell her it will not be a problem.

  As soon as she hangs up, I call up Akash and convey the news to him in excitement.

  ‘You will get more orders, Nisha. Just you wait and watch,’ he says and he is so certain.

  He wants to know if he can come over on Saturday to help me.

  I tell him that he can come over and look after the kids. I also decide that I would be frying all the masalas one night before itself so that nothing goes amiss this time a round.

  Chetana calls the next day and asks if I will be home as she wants to come over with Dhruv.

  While I am a bit hurt that she did not come when I had called her some days ago , I am also happy that she has now made the effort to call and wants to come and see me. I tell her to come over.

  When Tanya comes back from school, I tell her that Dhruv will be coming to play and she is very excited. She keeps asking how much more time is left for them to ring our doorbell. She asks so many times that I wish I had not told her that they were coming.

  Finally, they arrive.

  The first thing Chetana says upon seeing me is, ‘Oh my God, Nisha, you have lost so much weight! Are you ill or something?’

  I do not know if she means it as a jibe. I just take that as a left-handed compliment and decide to ignore it.

  ‘Come in and sit down,’ I tell her.

  She comes in and looks around incredulously. ‘Oh! This is your real house? It’s really tiny compared to your other one, right?’ she says sweetly, still smiling.

  I want to tell her to wipe that smirk off her face. I thought she was my friend. I thought that she had come to genuinely see me and to offer some kind of support But it is very evident that she has come simply to feel good about herself.

  She has come to gloat over how much I have ‘fallen’. She has come to judge my living style and my home.

  And I feel like a naive fool to have called her up in the first place. I want to tell her all this. I want to tell her to stop acting like her comments are very innocent and that she is a true friend. I want to tell her that her comments hurt like hell.

  But I continue sitting there, smiling a big, stupid smile, pretending everything is okay.

  Lean on Me

  Sometimes, even the so-called ‘closest’ friends say and do things that hurt a lot. But when we have been friends for so long, one just chooses to brush these aside as small things and continue. That is a mistake most of us make, and that is indeed a mistake that I made when Chetana came over that day. It was a mistake that cost me a friendship. Had I spoken up and told her how I had really felt, maybe my friendship with her could have been saved.

  Then again, perhaps everything in life comes with an expiry date. Whatever it was, I learnt a good lesson that day about how situations that we face in our lives change us as people, and how it forever alters the way we relate to others, especially with our closest friends.

  I was at a most vulnerable stage in my life. All I wanted from Chetana were a few kind words of encouragement as a good friend. After Samir left me, I was full of doubts about myself. I was struggling to manage on my own, with only Akash as a big backup. But Chetana brazenly walking in to ‘assess my situation’ (that is what it seemed like to me) bothers me to no end.

  I want to calm down a bit, and so I ask her if she will have tea. She says yes and I walk into the kitchen where she follows me in.

  ‘God, Nisha, it is so hot in here,’ she says, fanning herself with her dupatta. ‘How
do you manage, yaar? This kitchen is really tiny,’ she says in a condescending tone.

  ‘It’s not like I have a choice, Chetana.’

  ‘You did have a choice. He did not throw you out. You walked out.’

  ‘Look, I couldn’t bear staying there really. And honestly, I am okay here. So let us just drop this, okay?’

  ‘Come on, yaar. How can I drop it? Look at you, struggling here. Squeeze his balls for child maintenance. And has he sent you a divorce notice yet?’

  ‘Chetana, I don’t know if this will make sense to you, but I truly do not want his money. He had offered to pay me a sum monthly, but I refused to take it.’

  ‘WHAT?! You refused? Are you out of your mind?’

  ‘I don’t think you will ever understand unless you have been in my shoes. I do not want to be a kept woman anymore, Chetana. I want to earn my own money.’

  ‘Come on! How can you talk like that? You mean to say that all women who stay at home and manage their house while their husbands go to work are ‘kept women’? She retorts angrily. I seem to have touched a raw nerve.

  ‘Look, I really do not want to discuss this with you. I am finally doing something which gives me joy. It is something I am good at and I have now started to earn money from it. It is just a humble beginning, but I am getting there,’ I say.

  I should have kept my big mouth shut about it, but now I had already said it. My words have poured out like a swarm of bees when the hive is disturbed. I had spoken out partly in suppressed anger, and partly because I want to kind of prove to her that I am not moaning and crying because Samir has left me, but I am trying to make my own life and move on. I guess, in a secret way I am also craving for her approval, her appreciation, and I want her to tell me that I am brave.

  But she says nothing like that and immediately wants to know all the details about what I have been doing.

  So I tell her about Akash coming over often and how he has helped to set up The Magic Saucepan. I tell her about our first order and what a huge success it has been. Of course, I leave out the little secret about how we executed it. That is something which is Akash’s and mine alone.