‘Mom, how do you know I met Karthik?’, I had to know the
field if I had to get away with this.
‘Vishnu saw you in some restaurant yesterday. I remembered
you were giving a treat to your friends. Vishnu told his brother, who told his
mother. She called me today’. Vishnu is my cousin. A cousin not an aunt, I can
work with that; he did not see me at a restaurant, I can work very well with
that.
‘Ohh.. I did not see Vishnu though. And Karthik…We sort of
bumped into each other. He was there at the restaurant too. Soo..’.
‘Oh is it? How is he?’. Why does she want to know that?
‘Dunno mom. It was awkward. We just said Hi.. that’s all.’
‘Is it.. What did he say? Any idea..’
‘Okay, I gotta go!’, I cut her short. No idea where she was
going with this.
‘Ok ok. Try to come home okay? Bye bye ’, she hung up. Thank
God it was Vishnu who saw us. Why did Vishnu have to tell people what he saw?
Idiot.
Anitha is looking at me, ‘How does your mom know already?’.
‘No big. Handled. So
what is the plan? We order up some food?’.
‘Yup. I don’t want to go to my house’. So we order pizzas, sit
around watching stuff on my laptop. After a little more than 25 minutes the
pizza arrives. We both settle in with a small pizza each. Anitha decides to
amuse herself in between bites by talking about me.
‘So, you came here to find yourself right? You wanted to do something?’, undue emphasis on
yourself along with air quotes.
‘Ya?’
‘So how is living alone like?’
‘Ya.. It is fun. I am still getting used to it.’
‘Besides, we don’t let you alone at all.. do we?’
‘Ya, which is good. I don’t know what to do with all this
time I have to myself. I can clean only so much, cook only so much…’.
‘That explains
everything that I have to know about your cooking’, she points at the huge
tomato sauce container and snorts, which in spite of me buying it after I
moved, is almost half done. Okay, I don’t cook so much; I like easy food which
has off-the-shelf tomato sauce as an important ingredient. I shrug.
‘So, are you anywhere near finding out what you want to do?
That was the point right? It is less than a month I know. But, any clues yet?’.
‘Let me eat. This is a heavy topic for lunch’, if this
excuse stands. I am guilty of not doing anything. Even though by my own
admission, I have loads of time.
‘Come on. You always evade!’
Who? Me?
‘Well, if that is the best course of action, then that is
the best course of action!’.
Anitha looks at me as if I have sprouted another head.
‘Okay, okay. I have not done anything serious. I admit. I
have been so busy at work.’
‘So you do like your work?’.
‘No not really. I like what I have been doing recently. The
proposal, the research and all that’.
‘Oh good. That is going to take a lot of time to be done
isn’t it?’.
‘Ya, Sukanya says it usually takes at least 3-4 months for
the client to decide. I have no idea how I got this opportunity. It is normally
the senior geniuses that do this sort of thing. There has been a lot of
attrition in my company and we lost a lot of important people in my group,
maybe.. Anyways, this has been good’.
‘Sounds like you do find this interesting’. I nod. ‘So
realize anything about yourself?’.
‘Maybe, it isn’t clear yet, it is on the way you know’.
‘Right!’, says Anitha. Right.
‘Okay, here it is. So far, I have been learning how to
adjust. But I already have realized few things I did not know before’.
‘Like?’
‘I have been too self-centered. I look at you guys and... I
am not sure I would have helped someone else like Naren or Vivek does. Naren helped
me move in. He checks in with me every other day, says he is worried I am not
taking care of myself. Vivek and Aditya or even you, I hardly know you guys,
but…’
I see Anitha’s face take a look of desperation and realize
it is because of me mentioning Naren’s name. ‘It will be fine Anitha. Naren is
so different from what I remember him as. He won’t hurt you’, I move and touch
her hand.
I hear the doorbell. I get up, go and open the door. It is
Aditya. He walks in so fast and is agitated.
‘Hey Pri. You have to do something. Naren is not listening
to anything I say. He cannot do this to Anitha. He is going to..’, he was too
quick for me to stop him before he said anything that can cause any damage. But
he sees Anitha and stops mid-sentence.
‘Oh, hi Anitha’, he attempts to smile.
‘What is it Aditya? What were you going to say?’, Anitha’s
face is completely blank.
‘What can’t he do? What did he do or is thinking about doing?’.
‘No, no, nothing Anitha. He is just angry. He is talking non
sense. Nothing is going to happen.’, I myself am not convinced. I am pretty
sure where this is going. Anitha’s phone rings about that time. ‘Shit!’ says
Aditya.
‘Naren’, she says and a very short time later, ‘Okay, give
me fifteen minutes.’
‘Guys I have to go’, her face is blank still. I am pretty sure
if I had heard something like this I will be either slapping him or holding him
by his shirt collar, wailing and whimpering. He was about to say Naren is going
to break up with Anitha.
Anitha moves calmly, we can hear her washing up in the
kitchen. She even picked up her pizza box on the way which had almost half the
pizza in it when she went into the kitchen. She probably dumped it in the dust
bin.
She comes from the kitchen, waves her hand and walks off,
closing the door behind her.
‘Shit’, says Aditya.
‘How am I supposed to know she will be here?’.
‘There is such a thing called phone you know’, I say and
watch him whack himself on his forehead with the palm of his hand. ‘I didn’t
carry my phone when I went after him.’
‘What happened?’
‘I don’t know how much Anitha told. Apparently, yesterday
was a huge fight. Anitha asked him to decide if he wanted this relationship or
not. So today morning when I came home, he was sitting on the sofa looking like
he hadn’t slept the night and told me he has decided. He didn’t tell me what.
He goes showers, cooks, eats with me and then dresses up. I ask him again and
he says he is thinking if he should end it with her. Then just leaves the
house. I thought he was going to Anitha’s place.’.
He must have.
‘I knew there was a fight, I was there. I did not know it
was this serious.’ This sort of explains Anitha’s presence here. We almost
always hung out with the guys; I have never seen her alone.
‘They cannot break up Priya. It is ridiculous. They just
can’t break up. They fought a lot, but always got back together.’
They fought? I did not know that.
‘Well, if they break up, they break up. I am not sure what
we can do about this. If they are fundamentally different, then not much can be
done.’
We are both sitting on the couch. I had stopped eating the
pizza so Aditya helped himself to it.
‘Where were you last night? Where is Vivek?’
‘I was helping out a friend yesterday, there was a
recruitment drive. One candidate who had come for the interview collapsed right
there and we had to take him to a hospital. We did not have his information or
whom to contact or anything. So we had to wait until he was awake…’, he closes
his eyes as if to clear his vision.
‘That sucks. Is he alright now?’. He nods. He looks tired.
‘I just helped the recruitment team for a friend. No idea it
was this tough.’, he says rubbing his eyes with one hand and stretching his
back.
‘Vivek?’
‘He probably found some interesting problem or solution at
work and is working on it and sleeping there’. The way he said it, looks like
Vivek does this often.
Aditya eats in silence. I get him water to drink. I keep
thinking about Anitha and Naren. I don’t know how their past was, they didn’t
seem like some couple who were about to break up.
‘You need to sleep I guess’
He just nods and closes his eyes sitting on the couch,
leaning back to rest his head. Okay. That’s that. He can totally sleep here. I
allow it.
I see Aditya trying to rest properly so I get off the couch
and move one of the cushions for him to use as a pillow, he immediately goes
from sitting down to lying down. I have never had anyone in my house much.
People came and left soon, I am here alone or I hang out at Naren’s place. This
feels a little weird. Wait, in fact, I have never hung out alone with anyone,
it was always in a group. Well, whatever. Since I don’t have any other
furniture, I sit down on the floor. I should probably get a couple of chairs.
I am trying to ignore a corner of my mind that keeps
prompting me to text a specific someone. I go to the recent calls and keep
staring at his number as if willing him to make contact. I am not going to do
anything now; I should probably not do anything about this ever. As diversion,
I start clearing things out of the coffee table. The table isn’t big, it is in
fact small, and there wasn’t much to clear. It gets over in no time. I cannot
get back to obsessing about anyone, so I get my laptop and browse pointlessly.
I pick up my phone again after sometime and unlock the
screen. There are four text messages.
I try not to get excited. This would mostly be from my bank
or some retail shops’ loyalty program advertising some promotional campaign. Two
texts were from such ads, one from Sukanya – Be there at work by 8 tomorrow, check
mail, need to rework on the solution.
How very elaborate and social? I sigh.
The last one is from an unknown number; I tap the message
with anticipation; at the same time I feel guilty thinking about Anitha. The
message reads -
Free scalp test. Best dandruff treatments. Contact
immediately for free consultation.
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