Chicken Sweet Corn Soup

 Kaveri was in her quarterly sales meeting when she got a call from her brother. The phone kept blinking on the table as she scrutinized the Excel her team had been working on. It was a long day and when she finally wrapped up, she checked her phone to see he had called two more times. Now, that was very much unlike Dadabhai, she thought to herself. 

She decided to call him back on the drive back home. Calling three times had to be something important, what could it be she wondered. If it was even a year ago she would have immediately assumed the worst about her mother's health. But she had already received the worst news last year around this time. Yes, it was September and she was again in the middle of something important. He called her a couple of times and something inside her just knew. Their father had passed away a couple of years back. Considering this she wondered what could be the reason. They hardly speak these days, except on mandatory days like birthdays and wedding anniversaries. There used to be a time when they were thick as thieves but those days are long gone. Even now, Kaveri speaks to Dadabhai's wife Neera much more than with him. 

As she pulled out of the parking, she called him. It was unreachable so she tried a couple of more times. They had not spoken in a long time and she just hoped everything was alright at home. The car swam along in the sea of traffic and she suddenly grew restless. She put through a call to Neera to check in on what was the matter. Even now, Neera had more information than Dadabhai. He was travelling for work and would be spending a day in her city. He was calling her to ask if it would be possible for her to meet. But right now he was on the flight so she could not reach him. She felt a little guilty for not receiving his call earlier, what was so important she wondered. 

The emotions moved quickly from guilt to anger. Can't he drop a text? Is it right to leave her in the lurch wondering what was wrong? Could he not have tried calling her one more time? Why is it always her responsibility to call and check on him? Did he check once with her on how she was doing after their mother passed away?

Instead of taking the right to go home, she continued straight heading to the airport. Bikash was not at home, he is also travelling this week. She would anyway have to go to an empty house, take out some leftovers from the fridge and microwave it. Instead she could go and meet Dadabhai at the airport and see if he would want to spend the night at her humble abode. Every time he travels he stays in some five-star accommodation that his office provides. Her small apartment would not be comfortable for him. He never asked to stay and she never offered. When did they become so formal with each other?

Today she was feeling a little different, she didn't know why. She remembered last September when both of them had rushed home after they received the news. Their childhood house suddenly seemed vacant. Now with their mother gone, they suddenly felt like the last anchor was lost. 

Dadabhai and Neera came in with their suitcases and their children. Neera quickly started putting the children away in a room and attending to the relatives. Kaveri was sitting by the living room window, she had not even bothered talking to the relatives, she hardly registered what they were saying. Bikash had been doing most of the talking till now. Dadabhai came and put a hand on her shoulder. 

"That's where we would burst crackers, remember?"

"Yes, every year"

"Then we would go out for Chinese"

"Oh yes, Ma loved Chinese"

"And you loved the Chicken Sweet Corn soup, but could never finish it."

They looked at each other and said "one by two"

The server at their local Chinese restaurant knew the children well. Whenever they went there he would come to the table and start reciting the order and always look at the kids and say "So Chicken Sweet Corn Soup, one by two, right?" with a wink. Then he would get two steaming bowls of soup. The vegetables and chicken swirling in a synchronized dance as the strings of eggy delight moved effortlessly in between them. The steam itself would fill their appetite. It was sickly sweet, just the way Kaveri liked it and Dadabhai would keep complaining the whole time, while adding all the available sauces into it, till it was a brown mushy liquid. 

They laughed a little and then hugged for one infinite moment, it was just a second. This was perhaps the last time they really spoke. She could not remember. 

Fifteen minutes till she reaches the airport, she quickly checked on Maps. While she was swelling with emotions right now, she also wondered if Dadabhai would be surprised, Annoyed or happy to see her there. The last time she had done something like this was when Dadabhai was returning after completing college. Gosh! that seemed like ages ago now. It was his cap phase, were he would wear extremely baggy jeans, oversized t-shirts and a cap. Her parents were accompanying her then. She had made a "Welcome Home" sign. He got out of the departure gates and flashed a boyish grin at them. He hugged her and told her he missed her. Why does it become so difficult to tell your closest people that we love them as we grow older?

She had reached the airport and was waiting at the gate. Looking around she saw so many faces of family and friends waiting for their loved ones - smiling, expectant faces. Some coming home, some just passing through - but for everyone - an island of home, right here between the comings and goings. The flight had landed as per the display but Dadabhai as usual was not answering calls. He must be hovering around the conveyor belt like a hawk, as if someone else would pick up his luggage. He is so much like their father, she smiled to herself. 

Suddenly, he saw him in the ocean of faces, he looked older than she remembered. When did his hair become so pronouncedly salt and pepper? The boyish grin was intact though. The moment he saw her at the gate, as if he was expecting her there all the time. 

"Why did you come all the way?" he said, busily handing her his bag. 

"I don't know about you, but I am famished"

"Let's grab a bite, Chinese?" he said, putting an arm around her shoulder. 

"Chinese, like old times?"

"Yes yes, one by two forever", he said. 

Maybe they don't need to say they love each other, maybe they say love each other like this. Suddenly, she was not tired anymore. The salt and pepper and backaches were forgotten, the outlines of the grown up people they had become were forgotten, they were just a brother and sister, talking and laughing about nothing and everything in a small booth at a restaurant having two steaming bowls of sickly sweet soup. 

Nowhere and Somewhere

 

Chapter 1

Chapter 2 - Nowhere and Somewhere

Arindam and Sharbari lived in a beautiful house. It was a quaint two-storey one. Her social media feed was filled with photographs of perfect table settings and garden seating. Whoever saw these, would always admire the picket fence, the lawn and the perfectly kept house. It was not easy, Ira would think, taking the compliments with a smile. Every morning when the husband would leave and she would have the rooms to herself she would proceed from one room to the other with the precision of a diligent maid. She would arm herself with her small box of supplies, brushes, brooms, gloves, soaps and sprays of every kind. She would be at it till every shiny surface would be spotless and every fabric would neat. She was never known to care much for house work, but she would absorb herself into this world to fill her empty hours.

No one who followed her flawless Instagram page could tell that though. Over there she was the cynosure of her generation, she had made it. She was young, beautiful, settled in a first world country, wife to successful man, what else could a woman want? Happiness was at her beck and call. She wore diamonds and gold. Her wardrobe was full of brands whose names half od her friends never knew or could pronounce. At her school reunion, they would talk about her in hushed tones.

“Remember Sharbari?”

“She is doing really well I ‘ve heard”

“Did you see her latest photos from Thanksgiving, she looks so happy”

If only they knew the difference of looking and being.

While she did preoccupy herself with photographing every shoe she bought or every coffee she drank, soon her interest waned and she wanted to occupy herself with something else, something more. So she would take up new projects.

At first she worked on a herb garden. There on her kitchen window she had carefully grown oregano and cilantro, right beside curry leaves. Now when she would make pasta, the basil would be within her reach. The herb garden bloomed, but her smile did not. She grew a vegetable patch. There were homegrown cabbages and tomatoes. There were an equal measure of photographs. Friends she had never spoken to would say “beautiful” and “wow” on each of her updates. Her family was happy that she was in such a good place.

Next fixated on decorating the walls of the house. She procured stencils and paint. She prepared pages and pages of design ideas. The walls on the kitchen would have cool greens and teal, with some affirmative messages written with her perfect calligraphy. But even as the project progressed, she did not feel very settled. So she moved to other parts of the house. There was a cozy nook in the study which had a reading chair. She intended to make a Warli design on that wall in yellow and maroon. For the small room beside the bedroom which had her small temple, she wanted to make a Tanjore painting for the empty wall. Arindam was happy that she was occupied with something. “Happy wife makes a happy life”, he would chuckle once at dinner to his friends as Ira went to the kitchen to fetch the dessert. In a bid to be at home, she was suddenly left nowhere.

As she slowly wore her mittens and opened the oven, a lesson from childhood came to her mind. She was sitting in the humid classroom and the fan was making an enormous creak every time it made a languid rotation. The geography teacher was talking about earthquakes. The tectonic plates are always moving. Ira was always fascinated by this concept that this land that we are walking on, which seems so solid and steady is in fact always in some sort of motion. So while these tectonic plates were moving, they sometimes just get stuck at the edges. Sometimes, they just don’t fit in like a piece from a jigsaw. But in fact, they rub against each other and cause friction. Over time this friction builds into something greater, and when this stress overcomes the friction there is an earthquake. So fascinating that sometimes, even one event is enough to set off a series of small apparently indistinguishable but significant events in motion to unsettle everything. Something akin to this was happening in her own life right now. The veil of love, or whatever cheap imitation of it covered her eyes, was long gone. Now every little thing irritated her. Every idiosyncrasy she earlier found cute, boiled her blood.

That was not the most unbearable part though. The moments when he would hold her close or when he would dismiss her in front of his friends as not understanding sports were the times she wanted to heave a sigh and with that blow away everything, including this life she had chosen for herself. So that day after his friends had gone and she was cleaning up everything, she decided that she needed to speak with Arindam. She called out from the kitchen while cleaning the oven, but did not hear a reply. After completing her chores, when she went up, he was blissfully snoring.

She went out to the backyard and sat down. Is this how you feel right before an earthquake hits you, she wondered? Everything seemed surprisingly calm. She looked at the millions of tiny stars which had illuminated the sky that night, it was beautiful. But it was also time for her to leave and see the sky from somewhere outside this prison.

Pumpkin Pie

The morning light was bright outside. She knew it, but could not see it. The warmth of the sun crept through the walls, she could feel it. From the corner of the room where she had been sitting crouched for the last hours, all she could see was a small patch of the floor.

No, no, do not get ahead of yourself. She is not hurt, at least there are no marks of injury on her body. Sharbari was not one to take any blows lying down. Just now as she was sitting in the corner of this dark room, she remembered the time in school when a much older boy had pushed her off the swing. It was another summer day, far away from here. She was in the school park, in Kolkata. She was playing with her friends, taking turns to get on the swing. Suddenly this boy came and asked her to get off. She refused, telling him he needed to wait in line like the rest of the children. This did not go down well with him and he pushed her off. What would typically ensue would be the small six-year-old girl crying with sand on her face, while the ten-year-old smirked away. However, the six-year-old Sharbari threw sand into his face and jumped at him, flinging her tiny wrists at his face. While most of the efforts were in vain, a few punches landed and the boy was left quite sorry faced. More than the blows, what hurt him was the little girl hitting him. The child’s parents complained, Sharbari’s parents were called to school and rebuked for “lack of able guidance”. No one listened to little Sharbari when she tried explaining what happened. No one believed her, including her parents. She had to write an apology letter in scrawny handwriting, confessing that it was completely her wrongdoing. The boy who had pushed her off, emerged from the Principal’s office unscathed. She was branded as a problem child. But she was happy, no matter what anyone said, she had got in a punch when she wanted and no one could take that away from her. Her friends who had been at the playground that day applauded her daring act and she knew it was not all useless.

So she would frequently get into trouble. Sometimes just to see if her parents would ever take her side, but they never did. Now as she sat in the dark room on a summer morning, she remembered that day and wondered if she was braver as a child. She wondered if anything had changed. This day was different, so much different from that. Last night Arindam and she had a fight, again. Off late, their arguments had increased. He recently got tenure at University and would be teaching Mathematics full time. This would mean longer hours away from home, or at least away from Sharbari for sure. Even when he was at home, it did not feel like he was there. He was holed up in his study. Not that she was complaining.

Arindam and she were married a year ago. Much against her parent’s wishes.

Will you be happy so far away from home, they said. When did I ever spend time at home, she thought.

Arindam and she met at an art exhibition, where he had visited with his ex-girlfriend. She was an amateur artist whose work was displayed and received quite a few accolades. While she was there front and center, he stood in a corner sulking over his wine. At that time Sharbari found him brooding and mysterious, when he was in fact just being petty and jealous. She should have known then. But love is a heady intoxication which brings you temporary bliss. In two months, the artist was forgotten and Sharbari was the muse for the young Mathematics genius. In little less than a year she was so swept off her feet that she married him and moved to the US. Here in a suburban University town, she was the better half of Professor Dutta, the lady who makes amazing mutton korma and kheer.

She knows the few people her Professor husband introduced her to.

The neighbours are not too friendly. Take today morning for instance! After breakfast, she was working in the garden. She waved to the lady across the picket fence, who scowled back, her red hair flying across her freckled face. As if she was annoyed that Sharbari was breathing the same air as her. But to Sharbari it felt like just beyond the fence was a person she could befriend. So later in the day when her husband was off at the University brightening young minds, she decided to go up to her future friend bearing gifts. She put herself dedicatedly to making a pumpkin pie. She was always good at baking and had made a cookies and brownies in her oven back at home. But here things were different. The temperatures would always be called out in Fahrenheit for example. The first few attempts at baking ended up in burnt dough. She took some time getting used to it. While she was a master at making kheer and halwa, pies were not her strong suit. But then again, when in Rome, she thought and went about looking at the recipe to make the pie. She went out armed with a list, neatly written out on a piece of paper. She walked to the nearest grocery store which was a couple of miles away from home. On weekends Arindam would take her there for the weekly supplies. But if she would try to explore the baking section, he would frown at the unnecessary expenditure she was always indulging in. So she took out the few notes from her pocket money which he would allot her every month. But since she never really went anywhere they had gotten collected to be a bunch of notes which lied unused in the closet.

As she walked to the store, the roads were empty, even in the shop there were hardly any people. It was a working day after all, everyone would be busy at work. She fondly recalled when she would also be rushing to work every morning and catching coffee breaks with her work friends around this time. This lonely walk was so different from back home. For starters, there would be at least a few people stopping her on the way to exchange pleasantries. At that time, Sharbari disliked them, now she missed them. If she would tell Arindam, he would laugh.

“Isn’t this what you escaped, the over-social people, the crowds?”, he would say stroking her arm, as if he was talking to a pet.

As she walked through the well-stocked aisles and picked up whatever she wanted, she felt free. No one was breathing down her neck remarking about whether this was really needed, and whether that could be replaced from something at home. She picked up the ingredients she needed and headed back home. This was a recipe she was trying out for the first time, so she wanted to be meticulous. Alone at home, she put on some music and followed the pumpkin pie recipe to the T. While she was not a master of this dish yet, she was confident that as long as she diligently followed the recipe, the outcome would be good. Afterall, she was preparing this for the neighbors and they would surely appreciate the pains she was taking. She could already imagine her and the red haired woman laughing about the mistakes she had made. She would probably get some helpful tips as well. She could already imagine them enjoying a relaxed cup of tea in the backyard in the twilight. Just like magic, a couple of hours later the entire house was filled with the aroma of freshly baked pie. Armed with her gift, she headed over to the neighbour’s house. The red-haired lady opened the door cautiously. Sharbari could only see one green eye from the slim crack of the door which she had opened. Sharbari could also see her thickset husband in the background and she was pretty sure he was carrying a gun.

Understanding that her presence was not welcome, she left the pie at the doorway and got back home. She kept ruminating over what just happened. It did not sit well with her and she waited for Arindam to get back. Did she intrude upon an ongoing quarrel? Or are they just generally unpleasant people? She was restless through the day. Once Arindam is back she would tell him all about it, how rude the people next door were, how she was perfectly capable of going to the grocery store herself, and how she has mastered yet another recipe. To her delight, he returned earlier than usual.

As she heard him park in the driveway, she rushed downstairs to greet him at the door. But before she could get there he has already entered and threw his keys on the table. Without looking up he said, “Have you completely lost it Ira?”

She was taken aback at this and walked towards him with the same enthusiasm she had and put her arms around his neck. He pushed her away and looked directly into her eye. He was livid.

“What happened?” she started in a small voice.

“What happened? Are you seriously asking me that after trespassing into our neighbour’s?”

Sharbari, or Ira as everyone called her, did not know what to make of this. She was surely not trespassing and even Arindam knew that.

But she again felt like that six year old girl in the Principal’s office. Just like that day, she was barely listening. She was aghast that her loved ones would not even check once on her side of the story. She came to her senses when she felt someone physically shaking her.

“Stop dreaming Ira, this is not India that you can just walk up to people’s home uninvited to chitchat”

There was more. The pocket money had to be stopped, she needed to understand and learn the way of living in civilized society, she was just stupid, maybe some CCTV cameras need to be installed at home, what a headache she is, this marriage was a mistake.

After a while, he stormed off from the house, the door slammed on her face. That was last night, now she sat looking at the slant of a sun ray falling on a small patch of the floor which was the only thing in her vision. She looked intently at the dust dancing in that thin strip of light. Should she stay in the dark  and cool corner just looking at the dust or go out into the sun, burning bright into her eyes. She thought and thought.

 

Ginger Tea

 You bring a cup of water to a boil and put in some sliced ginger. The aroma fills the air and you add a dash of sugar and let the flavors incorporate. Then you add the milk and eventually the tea leaves. That’s how Mr. Bagchi liked his tea, and through his twelve years of marriage there have been various ways in which he has tried to bring his wife up to speed. 

But his wife had other more pressing matters to attend to always. There were the children’s breakfast and school lunch boxes to prepare, his father’s pills to administer, the milk to be boiled, his office clothes to be pressed, or some such, so she never really had the time to dilly dally over a cup of tea. Also, the little time that her husband took each morning when she handed him her version of the tea was her time. The cup she handed him was sickly sweetened with too much milk, always too much milk. He would take the cup and put down the shield of the newspaper he had been hiding behind and would proceed to enumerate where she had gone wrong. This ritual had started in their first week of marriage and had remained unchanged. Through the years Gauri had transformed from a timid girl who hardly knew how to make tea into a formidable cook who could dish out complex menus like it was child’s play. If she wanted, the recipe which he had repeated time and again was not so difficult to follow. In fact, sometimes when she was alone, she would brew herself a cup at her own pace and enjoy it while listening to some radio. 

But that small window of time that she had with him, away from the scruples of the daily domesticity reminded her of a time long gone, when they could talk without one of the children coming in asking for help in Geography, or asking for a test paper to be signed or asking to go to some friend’s house, or when their conversations didn’t comprise the father’s next doctor visit or the plumbing to be fixed. There was a time when he would bring white lilies for her, wrapped in newspaper, on his way back from work every Friday. He knew she liked a single rose, yet he would bring her the white lilies and she would grudgingly accept each time indulging it as his little rebellion. Now she would get gold jewellery on anniversaries and birthdays, which she would dutifully show off to her mother and the neighbours, but she secretly desired the flowers. This was her time and she was not ready to part with it, like she had parted with the morning walks, the occasional theater visit or the lilies.

And so it went, until Mr. Bagchi stopped complaining one day. It happened quite instantaneously, like a band-aid being ripped off. Gauri wondered and wondered what would have happened. No matter how much to his distaste the tea was, he would always finish the entire cup. It is not as if the sweet milky tea was inedible, it was just not his variant of the light ginger tea. For all these years, she had led herself to believe that he had come to like this version, he just did not like to admit it. She told herself that the little banter they exchanged each morning was just a tease, a secret dance only they knew the music to. But things changed overnight. Nowadays, he would take a few sips and just leave it at the table. At first she did not think much of it but it bothered her more than she would like to confess. One day, after he left for work and she was relatively free, she took the cup and sipped. It was not terrible, it was exactly how she had been preparing it for years. So what had happened now?

Mr. Bagchi had not really thought too much of giving up that sweet milky sherbet that his wife passed off as tea. He had always been a connoisseur of tea. A couple of weeks before him dropping off the morning tea ritual, he was lecturing the office boy on the way of making the perfect cup. Neetu, the new girl who occupied the adjacent desk was mildly amused and told him that is exactly how she prepared her tea. Mr. Bagchi was ecstatic to meet someone who shared a passion for the perfect cup of tea and would remonstrate how he missed this dying art. One thing led to the other and Neetu invited him for a cup of tea at her place. She lived right next to the office after all, so it was convenient. The tea she made in her small apartment was so delectable that he got instantly hooked and one morning as he sipped the cup Gauri handed him, he closed his eyes and decided enough is enough. He had tried it all, coached her, rebuked her, coaxed her and cajoled her - nothing seemed to get through. Why did she have to be stubborn about everything? Had he not provided everything for her and all he wanted was a little peace in the morning before he started his day. But she would not give that to him. Yes, very early on in the marriage he had once joked about her father calling this juice tea. Yes, he had said that tea is for the classy and not the commoners. Why did she have to be held up with that, could she not let it go? She has time for everyone in the house but him. Anyway, this was perhaps the only time that they actually spoke with each other and while they could sit and talk peacefully she would rather have him tell her the same thing again and again and again. Mr. Bagchi decided to pay Neetu a visit before going to work and at the cost of sounding inappropriate asked for a cup of tea. The lady was obliging and even if she felt this was an imposition she did not show it. He sat and drank the tea in peace and even made some small talk while he was at it, all the while wondering what was stopping Gauri from enjoying this time with him. 

Somehow he made mistakes at work, sent mails to the wrong people, and was easily irritable. As the week progressed, he refused to touch Gauri’s tea and visited Neetu each morning. Gauri on the other hand was perturbed by her husband’s rebellion. She started smelling his shirts before putting them in for a wash and one day, he found a strand of hair which was unfamiliar. Her worst fears were confirmed. She stopped listening to radio, her curries were salty that day and she forgot to water the flower pots adorning their little verandah. 

After a week, she decided to give in. She had to eventually part with the last semblance of a bygone time. As she diligently sliced the ginger, she told herself that she had had her time and all must move on. The flavor of the ginger and sugar was so heady that she prepared another cup for herself as well. She arranged them on a tray and went and sat across from him, picking up her cup and holding it up to her lips. He put down the newspaper. Another person sipping tea beside him at this hour in the morning is something he had forgotten. This happened only in the beginning, this was the time when he would have called her tea something akin to juice and somewhere down the line she had become too busy for this time. He could smell the ginger and the light and perfectly brewed tea. He picked his cup, took a sip and closed his eyes. This had to be the most perfect cup of tea he had had in his entire life, each element coming together so beautifully. This was bliss. They spoke of something in the newspaper, something about the neighbour and something about their day. 

After finishing, as Gauri was taking the tray away, he said, “Now can you make two cups of your tea?” She smiled and went to the kitchen. That day, Mr. Bagchi went straight to office and came back with a red rose. Gauri held on to the single stem and said, “Get your lilies next Friday.”