RECAP

Roshni, 29, single and working as a secretary in a big firm, meets her new boss, the elderly Khushi Ram Khanna ‘KR’ for the first time.  Their day ends on a bitter note when Roshni ignores KR’s instruction to stay late in the office as they have to finalize arrangements for the Chairman’s surprise visit.


CHAPTER 2

Even as I boarded the chartered bus, I started feeling bad.  Pretending headache, I warded off attempts of my chatty friend, Anita Ahuja, to share the day’s tit bits. 

Mother was standing at the door when I entered our two-room flat in Masjid Moth.  She seemed excited over something. But looking at my glum face, she chose to wait for an appropriate moment. 

It took me some time to wash my face and hands.  Against the shiny white surface of the sink, blackish water ran down my soapy fingers.  I had ingested all that sooty filth during the day.  How was my system to cope with it, I wondered. 

In the sitting room, Mother sat on the edge of her favourite chair.  On a small table beside her lay a stainless steel plate, containing a few Britannia Marie biscuits and two cups of tea.   A thin layer of muddy brown scum had formed on the surface of the teacups.  I hated the idea of the slimy film sticking to my lips with every sip of tea.  It would have to be filtered, I decided.  Mother, in the meanwhile, had picked up a biscuit from the plate.

‘We got the fourth packet today!’ she exclaimed, munching a biscuit.

I hated the dry and insipid biscuit, I hated the crunching noise my mother was making with it. 

And I hated Mother for her reference to the responses that we were receiving to the matrimonial ad she had got published the last month for me in the Hindustan Times.  I shuddered at the prospect of having to go through yet another miscellany of marriage proposals. 

Misconstruing my silence, Mother egged me on, ‘I was waiting for you.  Shall I bring the envelop?  It’s bulkier this time…’

‘Just leave me alone, Mother.  Will you?’ I snapped at her, discarding altogether the idea of taking tea with her.

Mother was stung. But she was not my mother if she didn’t give it back to me in full measure.  ‘Who wants to be with a mad creature like you, hain?   If you keep biting like this, one day your own shadow will desert you.  Take my word for that.’

There was a lot of clashing of pans and banging of pots when she returned to the kitchen.  I realized my folly.   Coming home from the street, as Mother was fond of saying, one must first rub off one’s chappals on the doormat to keep the outside dirt from entering one’s hearth.  I had erred in bringing an office squabble into my sitting room.

After the realization, attempting a truce came easy.  The packet sent by the paper was lying on my bed, where Mother had left it a while ago.  I brought the packet to the dining table and we both went through the contents.  Three widowers, five divorcees, eleven hopefuls who ran their own business and two chaps from abroad, who were in a hurry to go back with a bride in the tow.  Mother looked at my face as I cast aside one letter after the other.    Was there a mute accusation in her stare? Or a plea?  I was not sure.  After she had carefully deposited the discarded offers back in the torn envelop, she brought supper. We ate in silence and soon after retired to our bedrooms for the night without exchanging a word.

Alone in the room I felt a disquiet. Life turns out to be such a fuss just when you are trying to be calm.   A chance look at the ornate mirror beside my single bed caught my attention.  Oily black hair which stuck thinly to the head, two black holes for eyes and an unforgiving thin line of tightly pursed lips: that was me.  What was my grouse against life?   The mirror stared back at me bleakly.

A raucous sound disturbed the stillness in the room, like someone crying hoarse for attention.  It was a peacock. These creatures abounded in this part of South Delhi where I lived. Strangely, the bird’s squawk lifted my spirits. The world was, I thought, a nice place to live in; if only one knew how to conduct the business of life. 

It was with a special resolve that I got up the next morning.  Rather than wait for Mother to bring me tea, I got her a steaming cup in her bed.  In the bathroom, I saw to the wash that was there - Mother’s dhoti, a soiled towel, and my own pair of salwar-kameez and under things that I had worn during the day.  In the kitchen, I pealed potatoes, while she kneaded dough. 

Mother looked askance at me.  ‘Is everything going well with you, girl?’ she enquired.

‘It’s never been better, Ma,’ I said cheerfully. 

‘I asked because you are behaving just like the old times.  When you felt bad about yourself, you’d be the nicest girl a mother could have.’

Putting the bowl of peeled potatoes aside, I went to her and hugged her affectionately.  ‘You get annoyed if I act like a grown up and you start worrying when I behave like a nice little girl.  Tell me, Ma, what should I do to make you happy?’

‘Find yourself a groom.  I don’t want my daughter to follow me in the afterlife as an unwed chudail.’

‘It will be fun to team with you there.  We’ll make excellent bhootanis!’

‘Why do you always try to change the subject when I talk of your marriage?  When I was twenty-nine, you were studying in the sixth form.’

‘And what did you get marrying so early? A lifetime of heartache?  OK, I’ll marry.  But where’s he, my groom, Ma?  I’m tired of waiting for him.’

‘Keep quiet, you shameless girl!  Don’t mock at your poor, hapless mother.  God knows how I’ve tried.  Perhaps He has ordained otherwise.  One day I open the door and who is there but you and your chosen one.'   

'Then you may well keep waiting for that day!'
 
Mother wore an inscrutable expression on her face as she proceeded to the kitchen to prepare my tiffin.

                                To be continued.....