Episode 27

'Ok, so what is the plan again?', Anitha asks me. I had just explained to her what had happened. First my mom comes home to give me a wake up call, but she got a wake up call when Karthik turned up. Then he left, she lectured and she left and Karthik came back again because I sounded upset and took me out for dinner and ice cream and did not bring up the whole incident even after I ranted to him initially for a solid thirty minutes. But he did drop a bomb though. We were back home after the ice cream, we came and found Anitha was back and asleep. I made myself comfortable on my couch and he came sat next to me, held me, his hands moved on my back in circles which was so relaxing after all the stress. I went supple and relaxed and finally he said,

'You know, I told you about winning an award?'

'Oh yeah. I am so sorry, I totally forgot. I am a total drama queen. Congrats! And what award?', I said, leaning into him.

'Yeah, it is called Innovator award, they give this to one person every year and this year I got it. It is not a huge deal but they make a big deal out of it.'

'You won an award which is called the Innovator award? That is cool!', I hugged him to show my support. Seriously? Only one award in his whole company and he bagged it? My boyfriend is a genius. I am so proud.

'I am sooo proud of you Karthik. Wow! Amazing!', I hugged him tighter. He gave me a shy look and I was surprised. Honest to God, I had never seen a shy look on this particular man ever. Apparently, he was shy about receiving awards. Awww.. Modesty can be sexy at times.

'So, there is a whole ceremony that is held and I am allowed to bring family and friends. I want you to come you know..'

I squealed. Yup, I pulled a girly move and squealed. 'Yesss. I will be there. I wouldn’t miss it. I so want to come and see you get the Innovator award. By the way, what are you receiving this award for?'

'A couple of months back, there was a big problem in the module we were working on and it looked like we are not going to be ready for a much marketed feature. I kinda helped with it and we were able to finish it off with only a slight delay.. Soo..'

'Niiiiiiice. You are so cool, I forget you are a nerd!', I told him. He just chuckled. He got up and got ready to leave. He even bent down and kissed me and I felt very awarded for whatever reason. He reached the door and then just looked back at me and said,

'My parents will be there too. It will be exciting'.

Ummm.. Sorry? By the time I let myself face the reality of that statement, he had left already. That jerk! What a complete jackass! Giving me a shock and high tailing off??

'The plan? I don’t have a plan, I am making this up as I go..', I find myself telling Anitha.

'Maybe you should have a plan. Going in a disguise isn’t a good plan. It is a stupid plan. I thought you were joking, but you look serious and that scares me', Anitha adds. Well, I know disguising myself to the award thing is stupid, in my defense, I am desperate. I have thought of a lot of options wherein I can see him receive what seems to be an important career achievement but I do not want to do that with his parents present. One option is to ask him to somehow convince his parents not to come. The other option is me going in disguise. Disguise is actually the most reasonable option.

'I know you are scared. But this is getting really old. You will have to meet them at some point or the other. So just suck it up. It is a big day for him! You can't ask him not to invite his parents?'

Did she just ask me to suck it up? I am not a sucking-it-up kinda girl. I am more of a live-in-denial kinda girl. I mean honestly, does she know me?

'You are right. I can't ask him not to invite his parents for this. I am going to find a wonderful excuse that will prevent me from attending it without hurting his feelings', I say. I have lot of thinking to do. I can see a recorded play back of the award ceremony and appreciate him in some other way that still proves I am a good girlfriend.

'Seriously? You are crazy!', oh yes, that'd change my mind.

'Give me a break. I am not in the right place right now.', I tell her, in a matter-of-fact tone.

'That is why you shouldn’t do any thinking right now', she says in the same tone.

I sigh. A huge sigh. It comes out shaking. Before I know, Anitha is near me, her hand on my shoulder.

'I know this seems like a big issue. But you honestly dodged a bullet. Anything could have happened when Karthik came here while your mom was here. But, your mom accepted it. Karthik, was so sweet, he came to you even after you try to pass him off as a friend right in front of him. I mean, if that had happened to me, I would be having a fight like no other and ended things or given some sort of ultimatum. You got more support and all that. Anyways your mother knows. The cat is out. What is the problem in letting his parents know? If you decide to come, he will probably tell them in advance and prepare them too'

'I will meet his parents , they will get to know too. This means we get engaged again and get married soon. It is all happening and I seem to have no say in it', I say, voicing my real thoughts. Anitha gives a reaction as if they are really stupid thoughts. Well, I knew. I so needed that to be validated.

'Really? You want to hear my thoughts on this?', Anitha all but threatens.

'Nope. I want your thoughts on something else.'. I know she is right. But I am going to need some time to get comfortable with the idea. The award ceremony is after more than a month, plenty of time.

She gives me narrowed eyes, but I ignore her and carry on.

'I am going to start like a group thing. You know that site where we can organize meets and group activities and publish it and people can join and all that?'

'Yeah?'

'I am going to start a group aiming towards people who are going through what I am going through… You know…'

'Mid life crisis?', she asks her eye brows bobbing up and down in an effort to make light of the moment given her previous outburst. I let her do it. I don’t want to have a fight where she is right. So, that is easy.

'Early adult life crisis to be exact'.

'Okay. Why do you want to have this group thing?'

'Can discuss with all these people and do something.. Might get ideas.. Might be useful.. who knows?'

'Okay. I am not sure if anything will come of it. But try it. You haven’t done anything and you haven’t done any self-discovery or self-invention or even useful realizations. So might be something..', she used a lot of air-quotes there. If I am to decipher it, she probably didn’t take me or any of this seriously. Well, I am overcome with support today.

'Yeah. Exactly what I thought, but without the air-quotes', I tell her.

She gives me a half-hug and smiles self-deprecatingly. 'Honey, it is not as if I am having the ball of my life'.

She moves back. 'I am going out with Naren for dinner. Will be back 10ish?', she informs me.

I nod. I have a group to start, online.

I login to the site. They had a lot of rules and regulations and I also visited other groups to get a feel of it. There were a lot of fun groups actually. I joined one named 'Anything Fun' and one more named 'Escape'. They seemed to be having amazing time if one were to believe the pictures. I also joined the 'Chennai Book Club', but it was a restricted group, I had to answer a questionnaire and the admin would decide to add me or not.

I don’t read, but Karthik does. I am able to fill in other questions but I do not know any books that are impressive enough. So I text him to list his favorite books. He asks if I wanted a top five. I reply saying 'Sure'. He sends me a list and I just copy paste it and submit. Okay time to focus again.

After researching for more than an hour on whats and hows, I create my group. Then I get stumped on the first field where I am to enter the group name. I try to think of something catchy but conveying the spirit of the group(or lack there-of). I spend half an hour googling good names and get nothing at all. So I tentatively enter the name as BLANK.

Then I had to choose what is the area that the group targets. This seemed even more difficult. I mean, what does one say for Early adult life crisis or IT life crisis? Hmmm. IT life crisis I type.

I enter the IT life crisis and very interesting options pop up. There are tags that said Mid life crisis and Adult careers 50+ and such. But majority were Swingers party, mid life men, Kinky fetishes, BDSM. Well, I am not sure how these are related to life crisis. But apparently the search algorithm thinks so. There is one option called Alternative Careers, but that kind of seemed restrictive. We might not be looking for just careers, we might be looking for hobbies or part times and such. I might not have a mission, I have vision though, apparently. So I create my own tag and decide to name it Early Adult Life Crisis, because, IT life crisis is too restrictive as well.

After almost being done with the group thing, I still cannot even come up with a name. I keep it as BLANK, unoriginal, but it also reflects my current mindset, and probably the  crisis in question too? Anyways, I can always change the name. Yup, that is me. Jump in without a plan or even much of thought. So yes, I have a group named BLANK. I am promised all people who have selected related areas of interest will be notified and invited. I am also asked to make the group attractive looking to impress people. Okay, so what do I do? I already who the first few members of the group are going to be. I search for memes and ecards that convey the spirit of the group. I find a couple of funny ones and add them. I spend some time browsing for more ecards. Man, they are addictive. Okay. Focus. Focus again.

I send the link to the tall trio, Anitha and Karthik and ask them to join the group ASAP. Karthik replies saying, he isn’t going through any crisis, and also that I should reconsider the name. He then adds another text to say he will call me soon. Not a very supportive boyfriend.

Anitha sends me a thumbs up emoji. I hope this illustrious response means she will join and support me. Naren doesn’t respond, hope Anitha's clout turns him around. Vivek sends me a one word response with an 'OK'. I am sure he isn’t having any life crisis either. Aditya sends me a laughing emoji where his eyes aren’t just watering but attempting to start a river. I will have to cut that friendship I guess. I send the link to all the Whatsapp groups. I hope I don’t get blocked from them.

I keep monitoring the group for members. Anitha joined. There wasn’t any other member. After sometime I see Naren. Cool. I get sleepy just looking at the total members number. But I stay up and find one more member after sometime. Yayyy. It isn’t even one of my friends' group. So, I text the tall trio, Anitha and Karthik informing of this extraordinary achievement.

I again get a thumbs up from Anitha, 'OK' from Vivek and the same extreme laughing emoji from Aditya. No response from my dear boyfriend though. I go visit the member's profile. The member is female and her name is Hema, but she hasn’t put any other details about her. Hmm. This might be a dud member. I don’t let that affect me though. It is till Yayyyy.

I fall asleep dreaming of what all the BLANK group would do and how we will experience transformation. I don’t even have dinner.

Episode 26

'Ummm.. No. I want to. I keep planning but…', I say to my mom.

She came over to my place some time back and I am glad no one unexpected isn’t here. It was only Anitha and she came up with an excuse to leave. We spoke for some time about the normal comings and goings and then she started asking what I am doing towards whatever was my reason for leaving home.

'I had high hopes for you Priya..', she says.

Ouch. That is never a welcome statement from a parent. This is one of those statements that should always be in present or present continuous tense.

'I mean..'

'I keep asking you about this and you keep coming up with excuses.'

'No.. Not excuses..'

'No Priya. I was thinking you are going to find something and make something of yourself or at least explore or move in that direction…'

'I…'. Yeah. But..

'All you have done is enjoy with friends and do things like cooking which you know you don’t like. Do you think you are in your teens?'

'No. I…'. She is right, I was stalling as I had no clue.

'Is this what you wanted to do? Is this why you left home?'

Again, I keep quiet. What do you say to that? I am not allowed to have fun?

'I don’t know. I support you every single time your father talks against the things that you do. I am disappointed.'

'Mom! I…'. That, I do know. She supported me. I mean, she helped me even get out of home.

'I don’t know why I thought you will do something useful with your time. I am not sure what have you been doing with all this time. Seriously. What have you been doing? You have not even tried to change your company.'

'Ummm.. I…'

'Really.. You like your work one day and you are bored and uninterested the other. If you are not going to do anything you want or enjoy in your life, you might as well do what we want or like'

Shit. My mother is on a roll. I have no points to make in my favor. I continue staring at my painted toes. They are about to chip, I guess some vitamin A is needed.

My bell rings. I go to open the door, glad to escape the tirade for even few seconds. It is probably Anitha returning back. Preoccupied, I open the door fully and I hear a very cheerful voice as soon as I open it.

'Priya! I have news to tell you. I got this award at work, I am sooo…', he stops and realize why. My mother who was sitting on one of our new chairs is standing now looking at Karthik, her eyes all narrowed and probably a muscle or a nerve jumping against her temple. I am not very well versed in human physiology.

Karthik isn’t supposed to exist in my world. Karthik is dead to me in the world that exists for my parents.

'Mom…', I start. I start but I am entirely unsure what to tell her. Karthik has to stop just dropping by unannounced.

 'Okay. I know what you have been doing with your time', she says with heavy dose of bitter sarcasm. I look at Karthik, hinting him to leave. But he steps inside, making me move and closes the door. Right. He is going to support me even if I get pummeled in the process.

Sometimes you see a dirty mutt on the street. It looks sick, obviously unkept and like the carrier of multitude of diseases, pestilence personified. You feel an urge to help it, but you don’t want it anywhere near you. That is exactly the kind of look my mother is giving Karthik. Shit. Actually, it is a misplaced look, because one isn’t programmed to direct that look at one's own progeny. It is the way of evolution.

She looks at me, her face blank. Having achieved the blankness of expression, when she again sets her eyes on Karthik, the blankness remains thankfully.

'Explain. Are you friends somehow? Is that what this is?'

'Yep', I say. 'We became friends. He came to talk to me to see what was the real drama and we ended up becoming friends', I add, there, that is believable.

Karthik clears his throat. Come on. His notoriety in this subject is well known, but this is my mother. I don’t want to do anything like stomp on his foot or nudge him in a highly discouraging way with my elbow to his relatively soft stomach area or something to warn him, mainly because we are standing in front of my mom and it will be too obvious. I still quickly give him a quelling look.

'Friends?', my mom asks looking at him, not me. She knows me too well.

Karthik doesn’t answer for the longest time, I think hours. Finally, since my mother wouldn’t look away, he says, 'Yeah. You could say that'.

This here, this exact conversation, is from hell. I would like to know what I did in my life to earn this, travel back in time and set it right.

'You are such good friends that you casually drop by her house, the house where until recently only she used to live in?'

Right. A mother is a mother always.

'We are close friends mom', I say automatically in that chiding tone you use with parents.

'Yes, and I was born day before yesterday', she says in a calm agreeable tone.

Karthik sighs. 'Mrs. Prema', he starts, oh god, oh no. 'We are more than just friends. We did not mean for this to be a secret, we were just waiting for the right time to tell you'.

Speak for yourself Mr.Karthik. I meant for this to be a secret, at least from my parents.

My mother who was standing, now kind of sits back on the chair. God. I have driven her to her limits.

'Mom, I…'

She puts up her hand. 'I know you lie to me but I always, always thought you wouldn’t lie when it came to important stuff'.

Yup, glad to have contributed more towards her disappointment.

'Is there anything else I should know?'

I shake my head.

'Karthik, I know you aren’t at fault for anything here. I am also sorry for what I am about to say. But, would you please leave? I have lot of things to discuss with my daughter…'

Yup. That is my mother.

'Sorry to meet you again like this aunty. I will leave now', he says and quite boldly squeezes my fisted hand on his way out. Man, he has guts. I close my eyes at his display in front of my mother. I would never be able to decide if this is incredibly sweet or extremely thoughtless. I hear the door open and I open my eyes, he has stepped out and gives me a barely perceptible nod before he turns and closes off the door at the same time.

'I see that you have spent all your time in accomplishing that', my mother says pointing at the door.

My mom's face was blank and so is her tone. Not sure what is going on in her mind. Then again, it has never been easy in my life to guess what goes on in her mind. I sigh.

'I…', I start the sentence. But no idea what to tell her, if she is unhappy, then I don’t have an explanation because that is exactly what had happened, I got side tracked, found it easy to keep myself occupied about things I can do something about. If she was happy about this, okay, I have no idea how to even process that.

I hear my mom sigh and I look up giving up the pretense of trying to make some point or the other.

'I came here to talk to you thinking you are lost and that you are feeling down. You sounded increasingly bored and unoccupied', she says shaking her head slightly. I probably sounded that way because I wasn’t telling them about big chunks in my life. I felt guilty. But, I couldn’t have done anything about it.

I go sit at her feet. I always did this in all possible situations. When I was sad, when she was sad, when I did something wrong, when I was depressed, when I wanted something from her, when she was scolding me or being mad at me, I went and sat by her feet when she was on the big sofa at home. If I was sad I put my head on her lap. If she was mad I tried to get her to cool down. If I wanted something I again put my head on her lap, it worked. I have never done any serious shit in my life that put me in such a situation where I am not sure of the extent of my mistakes. I don’t think it tells good things about my life but that’s the truth, I was a daddy's girl and mommy's girl and I never did anything in life which I knew would hurt them or disappoint them or something they disapproved of strongly.

The extent of my parents being mad at me were probably not helping them out on chores or over sleeping on days they had other plans or manipulating them into giving me more pocket money and spend it on silly useless things. I had good academic results, I was interested in other things like debating, sports and things. All my friends were good and I spent my teens and ensuing years going unscathed without any questionable male association or any sort of questionable associations for that matter, hell, I did not even have good guy troubles or friend troubles. Maybe I should have done more. Maybe I should have not stopped myself from doing things I wanted when I was growing up. I did not have any real experiences in my life. I did not have any moments which touched and moved me. I had not invested myself in anything enough for me to know what I really liked and what I didn’t. I just sit down at my mother's feet in front of her and I try to explain this all to her. I know I can't say exactly what is going on in my head because if I told them I had to get away from them as I could never do anything beyond them that would hurt her.

'Mom. You are right. I haven’t been using up my time effectively. I get easily side-tracked and I get distracted. I am not sure what does it for me. I don’t know. I feel like I should live all over again. I have not had any defining moments in my life except the broken engagement thing. I haven’t been moved by anything. I don’t know what is me. I don’t know what makes me happy. All I know is I am missing something and that is not a clue big enough to lead me anywhere. I am having fun. I spend all my time with friends and.. and with Karthik. I like my work and many a times I don’t find it challenging enough. I wish I had this amazing unwavering passion towards it or something else in my life. But it looks like I am all about having fun, at least right now. But, you have to know. I do all this because this is what is working for me now. I don’t know what you expected me to get done. I am not suddenly going to find myself after all these clueless years. It is going to take time. It might not even happen, I have come to terms with the fact that I might spend my entire life finding it and die without knowing what I was trying to find. Or I might find that there isn’t anything to find. I might just find or not that this is life. All I have to do is live it. All I have to do is experience it.'

I am rather proud of that speech. It probably summarizes the non-issues of a lot of clueless young people with lot of time in their lives. But, hey, if that is the only issue in my life, it is a big issue for me.

'I know that lot of people get motivated in life by the idea of success, by the idea of a big salary, a beautiful home, there are people who are motivated by contributing to society, helping people, doing something, creating a change, having an impact, leaving a legacy and all that. I am motivated by none of these.', I add. That has been one of my real problems.I haven’t been able to tell myself that I am motivated by much in life. It would just be that much more depressing.

My mom looks at me. She moves forward and her hand rests on my head like the countless number of times she has done, she strokes my hair, her fingers lightly grazing my forehead.

'Motivation is not real complicated Priya. Everyone is motivated by one thing or only other. They either want to feel or be something or somewhere or they don’t want to feel or be something or somewhere. People want to be happy, safe. That is their only motivation. What changes is what makes them happy and what makes them feel safe.'

Ohhh.

'You are going about it the wrong way. You need to find what makes you happy. Not what is going to move you and change you, not some realization that is going to define the rest of your life. You need to find what makes you content and not what keeps you busy or feel like you have accomplished something. Yes, you need to feel that too, but no point accomplishing something that doesn’t make you happy, right?'

I nod. I mean, what do I say to that? I know I have an opening and I take this opportunity to put my head on her lap.

'I know Karthik is a good guy. I mean we carefully chose him for you. If it so happens that you like him too, although belatedly, I cannot really complain, can I?'

I look up into her face.

'I.. I don’t know how it happened. It just happened. I am not sure why I didn’t like him before. It was somehow different…'

'Are you sure now?', she asks.

'I think so. But, you know, let us not think about more now?'

She shakes her head. 'You were never into any one thing growing up Priya. You were into singing, you gave that up and went into dancing. You were into basketball and all of a sudden you wanted to play chess. You wanted to learn all the languages that they taught in your school and suddenly you found algebra interesting. You have always been like this. You were never someone who could keep at one thing forever. I was really surprised you changed and finished your engineering without much distraction'

Yep. This was true. Embarrassing, but true. I was never the focused-do-one-thing-excel-in-it sort of person.

'But something changed. You went into college and you did your job. You did not do much of anything else. You might be finding something is missing because you haven’t been able to do multiple things. I know part of growing up and the way our society is, you can't keep dabbling in many things. But you should try'

I sigh. Is she telling me my destiny is to keep trying things? What kind of life is that? But food for thought.

'But you can't do that to people.'

Crap. She thinks I will move on to something else because I can't stay with Karthik. Seriously?

'Mom', I call out, outraged.

'I am not saying you aren’t serious about Karthik.', she smiles. 'I am just saying it because you have to realize, if you make everything in your life about one person, it will get difficult, given your nature.'

Ohhh. Do I realize this and is that why I am not fully giving it a shot with him? Is this why I am moving at a snail's pace that Karthik felt if I had the control in this relationship we would be moving backwards?

She of course has more things to say. 'If all you can do now is work, hang out with friends and have fun. That isn’t a bad thing either. I understand why you have to be away from our influence. I do wish more for you but not what you don’t want'.

Wow. How cool is my mom?

I get up and kneeling on the floor give her a hug. 'Sorry. About everything, lying and all that'.

She just gives me a squeeze. 'Take care', she says.

I nod. 'So Karthik? He comes here often?'

Shit. A mother's worry.

'No mom. Not really. We normally hang out with Anitha, Naren and all.'

This is just a white lie. Doesn’t mean anything. She looks at me trying to judge and maybe she read the right thing.

She gets up. 'Okay, I better get going. It is getting late.'

I nod. 'You need to heat up the curry real hot before using it. You also freeze that thokku and heat it every time before use. Okay? The podi is a little spicier that usual, add ghee when you eat it'.

She had brought a lot of containers filled with food. She was giving me instructions which I am sure to forget. But she rattled on anyways. I just hug her and kiss her on her cheek.

'We miss you', she says. Shit.

'I miss you too', I tell her. It was true. I didn’t realize it, but I did miss her and dad. I need to visit them this weekend.

'I won't tell dad unless you are ready. He… he will not wait.'

She is the coolest mom ever. I hug her again. 'Thanks mom', I say.

'Take care', she once again says and leaves.

'Mom? Thanks for everything… That.. that helped'

It did. Nothing like a parent to set you right and help you figure out things.

She gives me a weird look as if it is crazy thanking her for all this and she left.

I call Anitha and let her know I am going for a walk. I grab my phone, hook my ear phones and leave locking the door. Once I reach the road I call Karthik.

'Hey. Everything alright?', he asks immediately.

'I think so. My mom gave me a lot of things to think about.'

'Oh no', he says.

'Why?'

'I am not a big fan of you thinking Priya, especially when it comes to me.'

'Very funny. It wasn’t about you. Not entirely at least'

'Ok?', his okay is a question meaning I have to elaborate.

'It was advice and things like that. Nothing major.'

'Priya?', he sounds as if he thinks I am talking bullshit. Which is true but I am not entirely ready to share what my mom said and what it meant. She actually told me not to make my life about him, now, how do I tell this to him?

'Karthik?', I say in exactly same tone just to deflect him.

I am an equal opportunity liar. I feel guilty but again, what am I to do?

I hear a sigh. 'You aren’t going to tell me what happened, are you?'

'Sorry', I tell him.

'Priya. You can tell me anything.'

What he means is, he won't judge me, and he will support and do his bit. I understand all that in his statement. I knew he is sweet, but it still gets to me.

'I will tell you Karthik. Just not right now. But, I want you to know something..'

I start, but remain silent.

'Yeah?', he prompts.

'I realized just how right you are..umm.. for me. I also realized how important you are….'.

Yup, around the time he gave me the hand squeeze in front of my mother I realized I want him in my life, as in, it would be enough for me if he were in it. I mean, he was so open about his affection even when I had just declared that we were not what we were.

'I am sorry Karthik. I panicked. I didn’t expect. Mom was already angry and you… I am sorry for the way I behaved. I won't do it again.'

'I know you were in a tough spot Priya. It is fine. I understand.'.

'She is okay with us. I mean… she exactly can't be not okay as she also had chosen you before.. I am sorry though…'.

'Babe. It is okay. It wasn’t the right time.'

I sigh.

'You don’t sound alright Priya. I am coming down there'.

Yup. I would like that.

'I will be fine. You don’t have to you know…'

'I know. See you in ten.'

'Okay', I say.

Right. And I have to not make my life completely about him. Piece of cake.