The Perfect Girl

Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay 

Ma’s head fell back against the pillow and I heard soft snores. She had finally fallen asleep after tossing and turning in pain for several hours. I stared at the clock mounted on the wall. It was nearly four in the evening. I hadn’t eaten anything in hours and my stomach had begun growling angrily in protest. If I rushed down and grabbed a quick bite at the cafeteria downstairs, I’d be back in time for the doctor’s evening rounds. Picking up my bag, I made sure ma was fast asleep and made my way to the tiny café crammed between the reception and the pharmacy on the ground floor. 

As my rotten luck would have it, the café was jam-packed. People were spilling out of every corner, all the tables were occupied. I walked up to the counter looking back over my shoulder to examine my surroundings once more. Perhaps there was an empty table I’d missed? But no, there wasn’t an ounce of space free anywhere to have a cup of tea and croissant in peace.

“Should I pack it for you?” the boy stared at me expectantly over the counter.

“Why don’t you sit here?” someone called out from amidst a sea of faces. I looked to find a woman sitting by herself at the one of the tables. I hadn’t noticed her before. She pointed towards the empty chair in front of her. “There’s no one with me, you can sit here and eat if you like.”

Now I don’t really like sharing tables or eating meals with strangers. But I was ravenous and there wasn’t much time to spare. Besides I didn’t want to appear rude. So I agreed albeit slightly reluctantly. She seemed pleasant enough. Small with a thin, drawn face and laugh lines around her eyes. Medium length brown hair framing her face. I could see a faint line of vermillion at the parting of her hair and a black-and-gold mangalsutra around her neck.

“You have a patient here?” she enquired as soon as I sat down opposite her. Oh no, what have I done, I thought to myself. I wasn't in the mood to make polite conversation with her. There was too much clutter inside my head. I was worried about my mother, anxious to meet the doctor. Exchanging pleasantries with strangers that one randomly meets at hospital cafes was not something I was prepared for.
I didn’t say anything out loud. I smiled weakly and told her that my mother was admitted and she’d had surgery. She nodded sympathetically. I felt as though I was obliged to return the favour by asking her the same question. So I did. “Are you here to see someone?”

She stared at me for several minutes as though formulating what to say in her mind. Finally, after a longish pause, she said, “I’m here with my husband. He had a biopsy done.”

Over the next fifteen minutes or so, she proceeded to tell me about her husband and how she had noticed a lump in his throat and the family doctor had advised a biopsy to rule out cancer. She told me that they lived in a joint family with her in-laws and no one had a clue that the two of them had come away to get the biopsy done. She didn’t think it right to alarm her husband’s elderly parents. “If cancer is detected, we will have to tell them. Why worry them unnecessarily?”

I nodded. She was right in a way.

The croissant had arrived. But I wasn’t able to eat it. She hadn’t finished talking. Her husband’s biopsy wasn’t the end of her tale. She told me about her husband’s soda bottling plant and her two sons who were gearing up to take over the family business from their father. The eldest chap was ready to get married and she was looking for a bride for him.

“You see,” she said, taking a sip from her coffee cup. “My son is perfect. He doesn’t drink or smoke. He has no bad habits. I can’t find a single girl who matches up to him. Besides we live far away from here, in a village on the outskirts of Gurgaon. I can’t find anyone who is prepared to settle there. All the girls we meet, the young and modern girls of today, want to live in the big city, go to malls, do shopping. I can’t find anyone willing to leave the pleasures of the city and live with us in a village.”

I nodded my head as though I understood. I mean, what was I supposed to do? I couldn’t believe that she was telling me all this. After all, I was a complete stranger, sharing a table with her in a hospital cafeteria. Why on earth would anyone blurt out so much about their personal life to a stranger?
I realized that I had to make a quick getaway without hurting her feelings. This was getting way too awkward. I wrapped the croissant in a napkin, drained the contents of my cup and got up quickly. “I have to go now,” I said glancing casually at the clock on the wall. “The doctor will be making his evening rounds and I don’t want to miss him.” It wasn’t a lie.

She looked disappointed and I felt like a heel. “Oh yes, of course. No problem. Take care. I hope your mother gets well soon.”

“I hope your husband is okay too. Don’t worry too much. I’m sure you will find the perfect girl for your son.”

I think about her a lot. I wonder whether she did find that girl after all.

Apocalypse Aunty and the Vegetables!

Photo Courtesy: World Wide Web

The vegetable shop was empty. 

Well, almost empty. I could see one lady at the checkout counter getting the vegetables in her plastic basket weighed. My heart skipped a few beats and suddenly, there was an extra spring in my step.

The tiny shop inside our condominium is packed like a can of sardines on most days. Residents, domestic help, nannies, chauffeurs – all of them jostling each other as they eye, poke and pick at the assortment of fruits and vegetables that the truck drops inside the building every morning. It’s a battlefield and one is lucky to get out of there on a busy morning, unscathed.

I hate vegetable shopping. Actually, I hate shopping. Period. I hate walking down aisles looking for things that are either too high up on shelves or not there at all. I hate banging into errant carts and trolleys on the way. I hate waiting at the counter behind people. Hate, hate, hate. You get the drift.

So you will understand the adrenaline rush I felt when I realized that I wouldn’t have to wait. The woman looked as though she was almost done. I couldn’t help but congratulate myself on my superb timing. I hastily threw a few things inside my basket and took my place politely behind her. The young fellow at the counter was holding out the bill.

The woman reached inside her bag for the money and then paused for a heart-stopping moment before reaching behind me to pull out a huge cabbage, narrowly missing my skull in the process.

“How much is the cabbage for?” 

Her shopping was not done evidently. The boy sighed and proceeded to weigh cabbage.

“And spinach? Oh, and how much are you selling the apples for?”

For the next fifteen minutes or so, she kept adding things to her basket. The old bill was discarded and the boy went back to weighing. 

What on earth was she stocking up for?  The Apocalypse? Her basket was overflowing!

My temper had started to flare and my eyelids were twitching like Chief Inspector Dreyfus in the Pink Panther movies.

Now I’ve been working really hard to keep my anger issues in check but this woman at the shop was not helping. Why on earth had she come to the counter without finishing her shopping? I see people doing this all the time in shops and malls and it is really bad etiquette. One of the reasons I hate going out in the first place. The app keeps my blood pressure in check.

I mustered all the self-control I could manage so that I didn’t whack her with my shopping basket. I turned purple with the effort.

Finally, after what seemed like hours, Apocalypse Aunty had finished and I saw her yelling for someone to help her lug her shopping. I heaved a sigh of relief and handed my basket to the chap. Just as he was about to weigh the potatoes, woman comes back and shoves a bundle of coriander leaves under my nose.

“You didn’t add this,” she told the boy accusingly. “You should have given this to me for free.”

The boy shook his head. “I can’t give you that much for free, you’ve taken too much already.” I could tell from his face that he was exhausted.

She gave him a dirty look. “This is not done,” she grumbled. “Well, how much is this much for?” 

He mumbled the amount.

And then she had the gall to ask me. “Are you done with your shopping?”

I would have vaporized her on the spot with my glare. 

She threw a five rupee coin on the counter, dumped the coriander in her bag, ordered her coolie to lift it, held up a floral umbrella and walked off, waddling her butt in the process. A butt I really wanted to kick.

Well I never!

The Mummy! And it’s not a Review

Around the time Wonder Woman was leaving Paradise Island to put an end to the World War, another woman was preparing to wage war, of a different kind, on an audience of around 100 unsuspecting movie-goers.

As the story unfolded on-screen, through the corner of my eye, I saw a little girl (she couldn’t have been more than two or three years old) walk down the red, carpeted stairs of the aisle in the movie theatre in search of her Mummy.  “I want to go to Mummy,” she yelled out loudly in Hindi, startling everyone in the audience. I could see heads turning this way and that, all around me. We all wondered where the mother was and why she wasn’t with her daughter.

The little girl walked a few steps down, tottered in the darkness and yelled out for her Papa this time, undaunted by the loud “ssssshs” emanating from various corners of the auditorium. A figure, possibly her harried Papa, darted out in the dark and proceeded to pull her back to her seat. The little girl wouldn’t move. She had reached the landing. Her mission to find her mother seemed more urgent than Wonder Woman’s quest for Ares. God knows where the poor woman was hiding. I had half a mind to look for her myself so that we could all get on with the movie in peace but the husband gave me a warning look and I froze.

Instead I watched as Papa sat his toddler down on the steps next to my seat and kept her entertained for the remainder of the movie with bags of popcorn and cola that attendants delivered at regular intervals. The two kept up a steady stream of conversation that made it impossible for me to concentrate on the movie. I couldn’t even glare at them. It was too dark for them to see!

So I slouched back in my seat and sulked while Wonder Woman saved the World. Unfortunately for me, Papa and his little wonder had ruined mine! Several hundreds of rupees flushed down the toilet. I would cheerfully wring the Mummy’s neck if I spotted her.

Thankfully for her (not for me), she remained as elusive as the prospect of a relaxing movie night after a hard, work week!