Category: Fiction?

#16 Postcard – The not-so-retired life of Madam S

A Nevilsville curveball was something the old woman could live with, but it would only be a matter of time before the past caught up with her.

It’s a summer afternoon in Texas. A dull wind blows through empty streets as AC generators whir mad at work. Sun-lit balconies stay deserted while TV sets play Sunday cable within, only lazy church bells ring attendance by the hour.

Madam S is busy trotting about her backyard with a shovel, she had to fixate the patch between the oaks every week or the damned pug would dig his way into the ground. (Soil got loose this time of the year). Otis watched from the patio, drooling.

The hammock Maddy and Madam S put up last evening swung in the breeze. It’s still sweltering, they had to wait till at least 8 when sun went down to enjoy it. If Maddy visited today she had to remember to give him Bob’s contact. A Nevilsville curveball was something the old woman could live with, but it would only be a matter of time before the past caught up with her. And good people are hard to come by.

It was a foggy winter evening when Madam S landed in Texas. The trees in her backyard garden had turned skeletons after shedding. Hell, skeletons lined the way from airport to her new cottage – an ironical welcome to her retirement life.

At her age Madam S didn’t have appetite for the foolery that people indulged in the name of socializing, definitely not of the Welcome to Nevilsville Night sort the neighborhood folks threw her. So much for a reclusive retirement, wasn’t this town supposed to be boring? The two of them would resort to silence in the company of others, and Maddy instantly became her favorite.

Later in the evening when air cooled down, Madam S and Maddy sipped tea in porcelain cups from her cupboard, the soaked marble cake leaving a brown trail after each dip.

“Do you want some to take home? I baked one fresh last night.”

“You should let me hang that in the patio, chandeliers weren’t meant to lie around dirty garage floors…”

“Eat cake kid, I’m old enough to know what they were meant for.”
“I’m hoping to get rid of it, soon.” She added as an afterthought.

It would seem that life was filled with irony. After his father’s death last year, Maddy had been spending more time in her backyard. His mom didn’t want him around, the fourteen year old had too much energy for her to handle. But the kid was a sweetheart.

The chandelier lay there alongside Madam S’ garden sickle, drills and her tool set. That reminded her –

Madam S jotted BOB on a piece of paper followed by ten digits, and handed it to Maddy.

“Call this guy if Molly locks you up in the attic again, he lives by the highway. I can’t always hop to your house when you get into trouble.”

“You worry too much. Mom’s glad I’m away, not been herself since father died.”
“On second thought, can I have another bite of that cake?”

Madam S headed to the kitchen table, Otis tailing after her. She did feel for Molly – life is hard. Couldn’t have been easier with an abusive husband in a town with naked trees for company 9 months of the year.
Well that had been taken care of. Partially.

Madam S turned around at the back door to see Maddy leap onto the hammock, hoisted right above where his father lay, between the oaks. She smiled. Bob was a good man.

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#7 Postcard – The librarian

Saturdays are good because you can leave the library an hour earlier than usual. Saturdays are also Bring your kids to work day. If Miss Dena from admin office brought Bella Anne to the library, M’s two girls would be upset to leave by 5.

Saturdays are good because you can leave the library an hour earlier than usual. Saturdays are also Bring your kids to work day. If Miss Dena from admin office brought Bella Anne to the library, M’s two girls would be upset to leave by 5. After saying their goodbyes, the children would run in circles in the outside lawns until Miss Dena raised her voice, and M would have to put on her stern face.

The downtown library crowd was more engaging than the South East branch where M was posted the first six months. There, the crowds were mostly parents dropping by after work to pick up books for their kids, always asking for recommendations (the South East branch stayed open till 8).

In downtown, the weekday crowd spanned university students, retirees and stay-at-home parents with their toddlers. They were also more patient in the queues to drop the books, actively participated in workshops, and took their time to learn the automated check-out and check-in machines – even Carla who was 84, one of their oldest patrons, and still visited regularly during the pandemic. It was partly why she enjoyed working in a library, a similar crowd at a Walmart line would no doubt form a disgruntled bunch.

So many of those self-help counters had stood empty for over a year now. The staff still regularly stacked the New Releases shelves, updated audio books on the website, and had recently refurnished the top floor lounge, although occupancy was down to less than 20%.

Saturdays were more idle because there would be no inventory arrivals, no new Interlibrary Requests to process. M sat at the reception with Bullock, the young assistant who had recently moved from the west coast, and talk about the California housing crisis (It was home, but I already love Texas). The kids would spend time in their section on the third floor without bother (except that time almost two years ago when they first tried to open the Emergency door, sending alarms and the security running, and her heart almost rose to her throat as she rushed to the elevator). Most summer Saturdays they would be occupied in workshops – origami-making, marble painting and crafts – attended by the staff’s young children, pre-teens from town and a handful of sportive adults.
Hardly anyone had attended them in South East location, but who thought it was a good idea to open a branch near a factory site?

In the evening once the girls were downstairs, Bullock would let them grab office stationery from her desk – marker pens, custom HB pencils and colored paper. M would then take them to Flying Fish across the Museum of Art, leaving their bags in the car. The girls always got fish and chips with extra dip and a soda drink, she would have the catfish sandwich with iced tea. Sometimes they’d order a plate of calamari rings. (Only once, when the kids were off on summer camp, she had tried their margarita with the then-assistant).

The grill had a wall dedicated to polaroids of first-visits, there was a picture of the three of them pinned up there from their first day at the place. That was also the day the emergency alarm went off, there was no Dena or Bullock present, it had been a lonely rollercoaster Saturday with the kids. Nonetheless, having them spend weekend at the library was a huge convenience.

M listened as the two of them munched and talked about how many books Stephanie read that day (Paula did not like to read), or how they had dozed off during the recycling workshop. Some days they bumped into Mrs. Sanders on her way back from the university.

As they drove home, the girls argued about whether they should move to California themselves (everyone is pretty there like Miss Bullock, that must be real boring, it went on). M looked at the weekend or what remained of it at her disposal. Tomorrow she had to run the laundry, sew the pinafore sleeve Paula had torn earlier in the week, and get the long pending car-wash. But tonight she’d finish the dishes while water filled in her tub, proceed to light those bath candles that’d been lying in her bottom drawer for over half a year, and then she could attend to the new release of Murakami, waiting in her tote bag.

From the Origami workshop at Arlington Public library

the fantastic dream life

Steve Carell, friends, family and my crush – what more could I want in a dream?

Dreams are fantastic affairs these days.

It started in the dining room of our engineering college staff quarters where my family lived until I was 5. My class was all huddled in that room on chairs and other furniture that I really didn’t take note of, attending a lecture. I scanned across but couldn’t identify any faces except for my crush who sat on the edge of a bed (he wore a yellow tee-shirt and trousers). The professor was Steve Carell.

I mean.

Around 10 seconds into the dream it was revealed that I was sick and had to lie in another bed (in the same dining room), it so happened that Steve Carell was also a doctor and administered me a drip. Curiously my catheter had a plaster on it that said 11 Days in extremely conspicuous red. But also it wasn’t just a mere sickness – it was understood that I suffered a highly malignant disease but was getting better, I’m sure the disease had a name that I could grasp the urgency of in the dream but that obviously didn’t translate so well to real life. My doctor was extremely patient and caring, it almost seemed like I was his only patient and his whole life was devoted to praying for my good health.
Well, the more Carell the better. I’m not complaining.

My class simultaneously transpired on the other side of the room, much like you would expect it to while you’re battling a disease some 2 metres away (it wasn’t a big dining room but it was decent). I have no idea what they were studying but who cares when Steve Carell has all his attention to you? I remember wondering if this can go anywhere, then remembered my crush was pretty closeby (a dilemma I can conjure up only in my dreams, it’s only half-real even in the dream).

The doc later came to my bed and said “11 Days..” in his gruff voice, and just sat there looking into the distance and away from the camera with a proud smile and welled up eyes. He had no other dialogues that I can remember now (it’s been some 6 hours), but he looked at me proudly as if I did well with the medication etc. That’s when I realized – there was no future for us. UGH.

The fact that Steve was probably meant as a father figure in the story dawned on me. I crushed any advances (or thoughts thereof) in my head. I mean even in my dream I knew Carell wasn’t making a re-appearance any time soon in my life except on Netflix.

SETTING: Parallel Dream

In the meantime, I have also been walking around, participating in parallel universes. In the living room (of the staff quarters home) is an ongoing tuition class from my school timeline. I see three familiar faces from a different school (I’m friends with their friend, but whatever). They are speaking in hushed tones, and I make out “pregnant”, “we cannot talk”.

I cannot tell if somebody I know might be pregnant, or if they are talking about 13 Reasons Why that I binge-watched recently, but I also cannot remember in my dream-memory if there was a pregnancy on the show (real-life memory: there was). And then, a gang of my friends from college (CET) come out the class, drag me away and tell me Somebody is pregnant and that I need to leave.

And I leave to meet Reshma at Sreekariyam, right opposite the market but a little further away. She checks my temperature, looks at a bunch of papers that look like lab results and tells me I’ll be fine, that I’m doing good, glancing at my 11 Days sticker plaster. I stand there feeling grateful for the hot doctor and doctor bestfriends I have in my life.

My crush is a pretty nervous person. I mean the outgoing but nervous up-close kind. Or maybe he just doesn’t like me. But either way, I’m sitting there in my family chair made with cane and wood (there are 2 of them and are now in the 1st floor hall at our place), just listlessly looking around on what to do with my time until the plot thickens, the catheter still on.

The dude sits there on a diwan next to mine and I can see him from the corner of my eye, as you do with crushes (the diwan didn’t exist during engineering quarters days though, we bought it some 8 years ago only). I am supposed to be frail and in recovery mode, although I really cannot wait to hear about the pregnancy. In my defence I think my brain was 18 in the dream. The class is dispersed but obviously none of the people I’m friends with are here.

And then, as a climactic move, the dude gets up and plonks on to the cane chair next to mine, making no efforts no hide that he’s making a huge effort. I just hope neither of us makes this awkward. Even in dreams second chances are hard.

So 11 Days huh?

It feels good to know this was rehearsed. I mean that was obviously a rehearsed line.

Yes so crazy. -i must not mention how hot my doctor was- but the effort is going to ruin this-

SO how are you doing now?

And like a Mani Ratnam movie that begins a highly anticipated scene and thence leaves the better but probably understood bits to your own imagination (that is probably wonky and not as advanced as Mani Ratnam’s and is probably going to ruin the story), the camera slowly cuts away, hoping that the leads have made it after lending them a good-enough beginning.

Carell left the scene long ago but also this is crush-logic right here : even if Steve Carell were around, if you have a shot with your crush, just take it goddammit.

SETTING: A Flight on the Runway, boarding

It feels like a college tour but my brothers and amma are with me. The inside looks like a tourist bus, we load our bags in the overhead bins, the rest of my class do not have families with them (I wonder why 😐 ). My family soon disappears into the crowd as I scan the seats to see the dude waving at me with an awkward acknowledging smile from the very back of the cabin.

Wow, so that earlier conversation led nowhere. And I can’t even change seats. Great.

And while everyone is settling into the flight-cum-bus, in an extremely uncharacteristic move, my amma goes missing. I rush outside, my brothers and I are separated into two alternate dreams which soon converge as my brothers and amma return from a paragliding trip elsewhere.

We still need to board and there are too many flights parked on the runway one after another as we run past them to the very end. I lead them to the front entrance and as we enter, my mother asks, Is this the right flight?

Obviously we do not have flight tickets or numbers to refer to. There is only one way to find out. I jump outside and run to the back entrance, open the door (because it’s a bus) and peep inside to see a yellow t-shirted figure.
Excu- oh hey! Thanks!

It’s the dude, he turns and an instant reflex of an exhilarated smile pops on his face, the same on mine, and I run all the way to the front (because it’s a plane) and yell, Ammaaa it’s the right flight. Or at least the one we should be on.

Shubham.

Note: I thought a Steve Carell snapshot would be safer.

Biennale 2 : Jew Street – Parting

“Am I Lola Milford?” She was watching him intently.

The air was less sultry now, the armpit rivers of smaller diameter.
The streets were empty save for a few shops open in the slow-cooling afternoon heat, adjacent buildings looming on either sides of the narrow road.

They walked slowly in their shade, peeping into antique/curios stores and shops selling overpriced tea and unreasonably large white kurtas for the tourist. This was the last stop before catching their separate trains back home, and the thought followed them just as the falling daylight.

“On a Sunday afternoon..,” she sang Groovin’ loudly as they slowed their pace. He smiled. It was Saturday. She had only suggested the song to him that morning and it wasn’t one of their songs, yet.

They could easily live in one of these places, narrow and long, winding inwards, calm. There would be a small verandah with cheap aluminium rails, the kind you see in some houses near the beach, with cycles parked out. Afternoons would be strong tea and a playlist that switched between his, hers, and theirs. They’d sit with friends in summer and in rain, which meant they’d have to make friends here first. The long winding house would be a mystery that opened itself just to the two of them, with partitions for walls and ceramics taken out only during tea. Rent would probably be up the roof though so it’s best they didn’t gamble their chance at business. Would it be odd, living among all of them? Are only Jews allowed to occupy places here? Their music wouldn’t gel with the aesthetic, no. And they were glass-people, not ceramic. Kochi wasn’t their place to be, though they’d miss Shahabaz Aman.

 “Life would be ecstasy, you and me endlessly – ” , ending the song she dropped her head sideways and swiveled, stepping on and off the shade. Like during waves at the beach except he didn’t have to hold her from moving further away as she swayed back to him.

The melancholy suddenly taking over soon after the song ended, as if remembering their impending close, she asked, “What happens when I leave?”

He stopped to watch dreamcatchers hung between the buildings, pretending like he hadn’t heard. It was sad when she was sad.

“Am I Lola Milford?” She was watching him intently.
“No,” prompt came his reply and they continued walking towards the synagogue, brushing past the returning crowd, neither facing the other. He didn’t want them to drown, it was up to him now.

“Why not?”

And as if suddenly deciding to lift the mood, she cheerfully jumped, almost like she might break into dance again to yet another song.
“Am I missing any of her 4 listed attributes? Para para!” Demanding an answer, threatening to pull his fat cheeks.
He gave it a pause.
“We’re too precious to be characters in a book.” He was serious, unlike his usual grinning self, still not looking her in the face.

“You mean we aren’t? Nobody’s too precious.” She stopped hopping and walked by his side again, with a face that looked like it’d been sad for far too long and had just cheated on a quick short break, and was back to being the sad self again.
They stayed silent and walked on, neither minding the surrounding anymore.

They halted in their tracks and sighed. The sign at the deserted synagogue read, “CLOSED ON SATURDAYS.” They stared at the silent white building for a while and then at the clock on its high wall.
He was slow but stern with his reply, filling in the shoes she’d left a while ago, his shadow falling on her as he turned.

“We aren’t in Lola, because you aren’t leaving. And neither am I.”

The frame coyly shifts away, and we’ll never know if the two kissed before they made their ways back home.

Closed on Saturdays.

Biennale 1 : AspinWall House

Her hairs shifted in the breeze that made its way into Aspinwall House from the sea, the familiar smell of hair oils tinged with sweat reaching him.

Her hairs shifted in the breeze that made its way into Aspinwall House from the sea, the familiar smell of hair oils tinged with sweat reaching him. They were curly today because the hair was still wet and there was too much oil in them, with thick wavy strands where dry.

“കിളിവന്നു കൊഞ്ചിയ ജാലകവാതിൽ..”

A middle-aged uncle urgently attended to his loud ringing phone, shuffling in embarrassment and looking around in apology for his ringtone, in all likelihood a mistake by an impatient adolescent son or a daughter. A short woman, probably his wife, identified the song and turned from the queue ahead in front of the black-and-white freedom photographs.

The song brought to mind ill-lit library aisles, shining bright eyes and shy faces too close to each other. The young couple looked at each other and grinned.

“Your armpits are a river.” Her humour was either inappropriate or scathing.
“Yea Kochi’s melting.”
They moved out of the building. Sure enough, everyone on the grounds stuck to the shades of trees and the building, from volunteers to visitors to students running to avoid the sun. Their faces glistened in perennial tropical sweat.

“You know, I think I could’ve squeezed in my final year workshop project somewhere here, it’s got more effort to it than this representative solitary tyre with a measly description.”
“It’s the message that counts, isn’t that what they say. Plus they’d have arranged a JCB and all that.”
“Why aren’t you in a sari? I expected you’d be.”
“Well I expected you’d come naked.”
“Some day. You’re welcome though.” He grinned.

The rooms on the first floor were filled with portraits.
“I’m pretty sure we’re missing something. Something big and important. I’m getting bored.” She leaned up at him staring at a frame.

“She’s got a snake on her face.”
“Snakes.”
“Maybe she bites.”
“It’s probably the rest of the world, not her.”
“Is it poisonous?”
“Should I google?” He had already taken out his phone.
“Let’s just go paint.”

On their way down the stairs was a wall with rows of “Don’t die” handwritten and struck out, right next to suicidal diary notes and pin-ups.

“How much do you think the model was paid to wear snakes on her face?”
“Aaa, ariyilla.”
“If you could put up a single exhibit here, what’d you keep?”
“Us?” He knew he didn’t have to pitch in, the question wasn’t really for him. And yet, between being romantic and sounding cliché, he always leaned towards the latter, armed and betrayed by his limited creativity (which I wouldn’t say is a crime.*)
“I’d keep a picture of me, staring back at everyone from my photo,” she attempted to sound arrogant, answering her own question.
“What are you?” He played along.
“Just me, out-of-step with the world and compressed into a frame – and they’d pass me by, mostly bored and blank. A few make attempts at decrypting me, to make sense. But none of them do, and I stare back at them.”
“Isn’t that what I said? Us?”

“Okay, you’re good today.”

Smart quips were his novelty.

She drew a heart on her portion of the glass wall. A little further away, he painted a house with 2 squares on either sides for windows, a door and a sloping roof, already fading as the water dried.

She extended a long arrow from her fading heart and pierced it into the fading door.

“My heart is a heart and yours is just a door”, she smiled stupidly and made a face at him.
“Mine’s a house.”
“Oh wow I hadn’t thought of that.”
-pause-
“Kollaallo.”

They watched their paintings vanish. A tease once in a while was okay.
She was too proud to lose and he liked her too much to let her.

*That’s me placing up my disclaimer inline, much like Prithviraj in Lucifer

    End to a Beginning, that wasn’t

    We all choose our stories really, don’t we?

    There are high streetlights visible from the coffee shop where we sit. Such an unlikely place to meet.

    I’d always imagined us meeting at a wedding of a mutual acquaintance, in the middle of everyone dancing. It seemed a likely prospect, our world was so small.
    Though which South Indian wedding ceremony involves dance, you may ask.

    Or in an exotic (enough) setting away from home. Homes.
    In a crowded beach with the sun setting behind us, or a random KFC outlet where two disinterested souls spot each other in delight before indulging in incessant chatter.

    Or in one of the narrow aisles of our public library, between tall bookshelves that we’re engrossed in decoding.

    For a long, long time I turned every lane and entered every wedding almost expectedly. Nothing materialized, until I was exhausted of momentarily getting my hopes high and adjusting my hair in place.

    All the while that I was getting dressed today (I may not have much to show for it), I felt old. As difficult as it was, I avoided the thought of how young we had been, Wo jo adhoori si yaad baki hai and Jaise milte nahi kisi dariya ke do kinaare lines continually playing in my head.
    But now, godforsaken Naina da kya kasoor won’t stop and I must repress my headbobbing. I don’t feel like the song though.

    “I don’t drink or smoke”. I casually mention, unsure why I sound like my recently decommissioned matrimonial profile.

    “Oh”

    “Neither does he.” Now I know why.
    It came out surprisingly easy, and I’m only happy for myself.

    “Oh..”
    I’m assuming the dots were there, or maybe the melancholy was only in my air.

    I see fingers, long, thin and straight unlike my long crooked ones. They appear damp and soft, like they always did in pictures. I imagine a fountain pen in them, almost immediately replaced with a Gel pen by memory.

    As we stepped outside and the lights fell on us, for the life of me I couldn’t see the magnificence in his face, hair or arms. And for the life of me, I couldn’t believe myself.

    As I leave, all I think of with every step away are the stories that weren’t written about me, the poems I didn’t feature in.

    Yet we all choose our stories really, don’t we?

    PS : Too many break-up stories, I’ve heard this past year.

    The tea shop with no neon lights

    Story of a tea shop owner near Medical College Hospital

    A man walks into the only tea shop that doesn’t sport animated neon signs in this part of town. He hands over a thermos flask to the owner at the counter stirring the large vessel of boiling milk. He doesn’t utter a word but walks straight in and alights on the cranky red stool against the tea-stained wall.
    It’s a line of adjacent shops on this side of the main road – on the other side you have the hospital buildings – the scanning center, casualty, the subsidized medicine store BPL cardholders queue up at.

    On this side, the neon lightboards are turned on at least an hour before darkness sets in with dusk –  English Medicines in red cursive letters, Hot tea & Biryani in a thick blue font, Vegetarian Restaurant in another. Many announce Tourist Homes – funny they’d call the residents tourists considering none would voluntarily be here.

    The signs vie for your attention like a new breed of daily Instagram feed. They would probably have been irrelevant in another part of town but here, in the din surrounding the government hospital, with a hundred people scampering around any time of day and night, it sells.
    Attempting to charm when every shop offers the exact same set of items – buckets and mugs, coarse threaded towels and thorth, jugs and steel plates, essential crockery – spoons, knives for families that came away from home in emergency, magazines to lighten your mood, and of course neon lights because every shop has it on this side.

    Except this one.
    Amidst the cacophony outside, this tea shop slows time down. Maybe because it lacks the urgency of those flashing lights.
    The owner takes the flask and fills it with tea, looking for signs of objection from his customer before proceeding – he sees and nods in approval. The man knows his customers well. The ones that want to engage in a bit of chitchat, complain about hospital facilities (or lack thereof), others that want to know if there’s black tea available, some offhandedly commenting on the propensity to rain.

    But some just sit on one of his cranky plastic stools, quiet. They’re the ones he wishes God would bless. Though technically he doesn’t believe in God.

    He lives with his wife in a one bedroomed apartment in a lane near Medical college junction, big enough for the two of them to keep their few possessions and their TV. Business is good, especially during monsoons when all the dengue kicks up.

    Before this, he and his wife sold tea with vadas in a road near the temple at Guruvayur. Business was podipooram there. He woke up at 4 and was at his shop by 4.30 after an ice cold bath and a glass of black tea his wife prepared. Men and women from all walks with their little kids, occasionally older fathers and mothers with their newly wed children and in-laws would arrive in Venad Express in the wee hours, stop for a quick tea at his counter before checking into hotels nearby.
    You could see the sleepy-eyed family, kids rubbing their eyes, some threatening to fall off their chairs (there were very few in his shop) before his tea jolted them back to wakefulness. They’d want to know when the queues at the temple were shorter and on what trains they could leave by evening. As day proceeded, his shop would get crowded with people thronging at its steps.

    Back then his shop was neater. Life lent his sturdy Communist spine a 12degree bend but he never acceded to his wife’s suggestion of selling Guruvayur appan souvenirs like every other shop nearby – car fixities, chain lockets, rings, pictures for the pooja room, miniatures for the study table, some Guruvayur pappadams.

    It was big business – all of it – he could be heard saying often. The sheer number of sweaty weddings with couples and their tiny cohort of relatives that stood in queues, devotees lining up from 5 am until 12, all that money clinking in purses and pockets to make way into the temple chests.
    It also made his living.

    His wife’s idea would definitely make some extra cash, but he was a non-conformist and didn’t conform. What’s a tea shop got to do with the deity that feeds on all this money? Sell some knickknacks eda, it’s not against our leaders’ ethics, his wife-appointed Communist maaman assured him. Neither is stashing money away in lockers and hitting their wives, he had retorted.
    He was not one of them and he was proud of it.

    So he had never sold any trinkets at Guruvayur, and when his wife’s arthritis drove them to Trivandrum, he had no neon light adorning the entrance to his shop.
    It was practically useless, there were tall yellow lamps at the wide junction that lit up all 7 roads and the vehicles entering. And who keeps boards for Tea? People poured in anyway. This was a reference hospital and people came in without anyone’s invitation. Away from home, the poor needed hot tea for families, for patients in bed, for those in recovery and those awaiting surgery.

    He could make small talk – it was part of his job, more so part of his curious mind, but it was the quiet customers he really liked having. Who trusted him to do his work and handed over their apprehensions along with their flasks, at least for the few moments it took him to fill them. It’s a solemn entrustment, for someone else to take charge.

    He liked reading too much into things.

    His shop was an entry ticket away from the commotion, from blinking neon lights and hurrying hordes. From the suffocation that built up when they had spent a few days at this place and longed to pack up their few belongings, the mat and the newly bought buckets and mugs but mostly the mended patient, and leave.

    Of course he couldn’t help them with their son’s raging fever, the mother’s acute pneumonia or the longing for heading back home. But for a few moments, life was back to normal – the two glasses of tea everyday, the only permanent bits in an unpredictable life. It’s why they longed to move out of hospitals onto this side – they could talk about vadas and cricket here and nobody would judge.

    Soon enough they’d leave with a word of thanks to the doctor, another word to the person in white and white that nursed them, injecting every dose of prescribed medicine into their vein asking with a smile if it hurt too much.
    The guy on the other side in the tea shop who filled their flasks with hot chaya and gave a reassuring nod every morning and evening remains forgotten. The stranger who asked you about your mother’s illness and your hometown. You’ll remember the taste of his tea on the first evening back home and casually mention him as a token. And then you’re allowed to forget all about the shop with no neon lights.

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