Short Story

Okay. So, I gave an entry into this short-story writing contest (June 2014) at http://ellefictionawards.in/

I know I shouldn't care about winning or losing. Anyway, sharing the story here..sit back and enjoy!

PS: I have changed my cousins' names. It is 90% real story with a lil bit tweaking and garnishing here and there. 

PS: It is supposed to be an attempt at writing a funny-but-heart-touching story. I'm really sorry if you didn't laugh or/and if it didn't touch your heart while reading it..I'm an amateur, you see?

 So here it is....

Plan B

‘Duh!’ she exclaimed when I asked her if I should add tomatoes too to the experimental Biryani. It had turned out to be blah (I hadn’t added tomatoes). Sister and I had spent a fortnight managing the house all by ourselves while parents were holidaying in the US. And yes, she had to put up with my amateur cooking in spite of the fact that we could always do the prudent act of just climbing up the stairs and have trustworthy food that dodamma would have prepared. But no! We liked the autonomy!  And we made full use of it even if it meant eating half-cooked Dal.

‘Poohmah! Let’s go to Mast Kalandar for dinner and yeah I wanna eat Gola outside Bangalore Central after that, OK?’ I accepted it, reckoning it’s better than eating the food I cook. We even went on our Brahminical guilt trips together when we craved for our favorite breakfast menu – Omlette+toast+Orange juice. We had to take way too many precautions and pray that thatha won’t come downstairs to read a magazine.

All hell broke loose when I sometimes uncontrollably said something like ‘Let’s invite Augustine for lunch too, what say?’ (I was missing him! We hadn’t met for days and we were knackered with the talks about future). The mention of Augustine made a lot of noise in that house, not to forget the drama.  Sister was cranky as she was missing daddy and I was vulnerable as I was in the verge of eloping with Augustine. ‘NO WAY! NO WAY Pooja! I’m never ever going to agree to your marriage with him! He doesn’t have anything! If you still want to put amma and me down in shame and go ahead, tell us which temple you are marrying in, we will come and just watch like guests!’ was daddy’s last verdict before leaving for the US. (How are they sure it’s a temple? Even in that context, my mind wouldn’t shut up! I dreamt of marrying in a temple wearing a beautiful silk saree AND in a church wearing a wedding gown, just saying!).

 I chucked sister out of the house one evening and asked her to stay upstairs when I had to decorate the living room to host a bachelorette party for my close friend. The party turned out to be flipping awesome. I was so high and tipsy that I kicked an unopened bottle of Vodka that broke into pieces spilling vodka all over the living room, while dancing. My sober friends had to clean the mess and put the other two sloshed girls and me to sleep. The next morning, I broke a decade-old lamp while removing the balloons tied around it. ‘Pooja! You have no idea how angry daddy is going to be when he finds this out!’ sister yelled in wrath . Yes! I had to take my younger-granny-sister’s tantrums now and then. 

My friend later told me that I kept telling this all night – ‘You know what? I have 124 doshas!’ Ahem. The inside story - The previous day, Augustine and I had secretly visited an astrologer to find out if/how/when I’ll marry Augustine. Ironically the astrologer which we decided to visit (randomly decided), had his office a few feet away from the place where Augustine and I met for the first time ever– dance class! We entered the office and were asked to sit. The astrologer had a thin mustache and a saffron shalya around his neck and a streak of sandalwood paste on his forehead (If not for the shalya and the sandalwood paste, he would look soooo…finally I got the right word – local!). The office was unbelievably small, just about enough room for a small table and three chairs. The walls were fully adorned with various gods’ frames of all sizes. It was actually a space under the stairway in a basement turned into an office. I had conned Augustine into taking me there saying I will only ask about a suitable date for the wedding, nothing else. The astrologer jotted down both of our birthdates, times of births, my star and rashi. I mentioned Augustine’s star and rashi too (what is Google for?). Augustine realized he was conned when my question to the astrologer was ‘I want to know IF I will marry him WITH MY parent’s blessings’ (million-dollar question - I would’ve given away prizes for guessing! No one did back then, Sigh!). Augustine gave me a you-are-so-dead look and yelled “Shon!!!” (That’s what he calls me). The astrologer looked at him with a cow-like innocence ‘Can you please wait outside for ten minutes?’ The astrologer understood my frailty. Augustine left to meet his ex-colleagues in the dance class which was in the same basement. I was alone in that office, along with a myriad of gods on the wall protecting me and a man sitting across the table who I assumed knows the answer to my question.

He was looking into his letter pad for a few minutes, probably doing some cosmic Math. He looked up through his spectacles at me. ‘Throw’ he handed over a bunch of cowrie shells into my hands. I shuffled it with both my palms together for a good ten seconds and threw it on the table, taking the almighty’s name. It didn’t make sense to me as there were too many cowries on the table now – some facing downwards and some upwards. He looked at them for a few seconds with a poker face. Meanwhile, I was plucking rose petals with ‘Yes, no, yes, no, yes, no’ in my head. Then came the prediction - ‘It will happen’. I blinked. I blinked, again. He was the only human on this planet who said it will happen (Wait a minute! Did he get it right? Are you sure?). ‘I need to do a Pooja for this in your name. You can come tomorrow at the same time and collect the kumkum’ this sounded feasible, unlike a visit to a doctor meant me doing something, like popping pills or whatever. ‘How much?’ I asked, just like asking for a consultation fee at a clinic. ’Umm Ten Thousand Rupees’ I stood up – reaction to the stimulus. I felt like the floor below will slide and I felt weak in my legs. ‘I really cannot afford it, anyway I want to leave, it’s OK, and you can forgo the pooja’. ‘Seven Thousand’ (What am I doing here? Trading? Bargaining for a pair of chappals in Commercial Street? My mind spaced out). ‘No’ I didn’t budge. ‘Six Thousand last madam’ bloody hell, I thought. So much for loving another human being who happened to be born into another religion. I gave him half the amount, saying I’ll give the rest after he gives me the kumkum. He kept the money near the feet of goddess Chamundeshwari and then into the drawer of the table. (I wished Goddess Chamundeshwari pulled the money into the frame – I was still blank with such erratic thoughts now and then). There went the money that was meant for my post-eloping plans. Damn it!

 ‘So, what happened in there?’ I bet Augustine wasn’t really curious (He did not believe in astrology! And he would’ve punched the astrologer in his face if I told him about the cost of the possible remedy to the whole pickle we were in). ‘Nothing’ my answer had a million words hidden. ‘Don’t worry Shon! He cannot do any magic to make the situation better. We are going ahead with our plan, right?’ He wanted reassurance that the man inside didn’t change my mind. ‘Yeah, we are’ Like I could have a saner plan with the current circumstances. I strongly believed that eloping is the WORST Plan B ever. ‘Augusi, let’s have juice at Nature Fresh like the good old dance class days?’ I so needed it. I could spare another fifteen minutes with him before sister mentally registers the complaint that I left her alone at home.

            Two hours later, the astrologer called (I was at home, still trying to digest the fact that I burnt my pockets in the name of knowing the future and feeling all foolish). ‘Madam, you have 124 small doshas’ stressing on small. I was blank again. ‘How do I mend them?’ ‘Don’t worry madam, I will request my Guruji to do a special Pooja in your name. Do you have a pen and paper with you? I will tell you a list of a few items. Get them along with you tomorrow when you visit’. I listened to his list and my jaw dropped and my eyes widened (WTF expression). I put the pen down and hung up in fury ‘Sorry, I cannot arrange for the items in the “list”. It’s OK. Let my doshas be’. His list was a whopping 25 kilograms of rice, a crazy 5 kilograms of ghee, and a couple of other random grocery stuff along with one or two real Pooja items. Was he going to make me feed his family for the coming month or what? (Sister had laughed for ten minutes straight when I had narrated this to her at Mast Kalandar).

It was the fag end of our escapade. Our parents were arriving at the airport that night. We wanted to receive our parents at the Bengaluru International Airport somehow. How? Sister called our cousin Vineet and he agreed to take us to the airport in his car along with his sister. Now that was fun! Also, it was his sister Diya’s birthday the next day, so we planned to make her cut a cake at midnight at the airport.

It was close to eleven in the night when we had just hit the road when Vineet’s dad, that’s my mom’s brother, called. Vineet spoke to his dad in private for fifteen minutes while we were waiting inside the car, anticipating. He came back and bent on the window of driving seat ‘Dad said “how will you single-handedly take care of three YOUNG girls in their twenties at late in the night? And you are going all the way till the airport! Are you mad?” - in three versions’. We looked at each other, unsure of what to say. Diya justified ‘It’s my birthday tomorrow and I so want to do this night out! Let’s just go anna!’ Vineet snapped back ‘Yeah right! Who asked you to get out of the house like THIS?’ She was wearing a red dress that was well above her knees. Sister and I exchanged looks, still unsure of what to say.

Vineet sat inside the car and started driving. ‘Now what?’ I was clueless. ‘I don’t know!’ Vineet was also clueless. ‘Let’s just go back and do a sleepover at our place! It would still be fun! Anyway, my parents wouldn’t have dreamt that we would be receiving them at the airport, right?’ I tried to make things better. ‘Go home and do what? We cannot even buy booze at this time!’ sister had decided to be nocturnal and out in the city that night. ‘At least for once, I wanted to have a night out on my birthday!’ Diya sulked. We were near the Ashoka Pillar circle and Vineet just did the most hilarious thing. He drove around the circle again and again for umpteen times and we were falling on each other at the back seat and squealing. He stopped the car suddenly and thanks to his craziness, we all had Adrenaline rush. I took my phone and quickly tweeted about it.

‘Why don’t we ask Naveen to accompany us to the airport?’ Sister said. Naveen was another cousin who lived in Jayanagar. Naveen had no idea about our brainless plans and by the time we reached his house, it was half-past eleven. It would be so weird to just barge into his house on a Friday night. Much to our surprise, Naveen and his wife were out on the street chitchatting with their neighbors. They were startled looking at us. We took fifteen minutes to narrate the whole story to them. Meanwhile, Vineet was busy talking to his dad over the phone again. He was justifying to his dad that now the girls will be “safer”. Apparently, Vineet’s dad doesn’t like his kids to mingle with Naveen and his wife because Naveen married a non-brahmin girl. (Like we will brainwash his kids to marry Ukrainians or something! I wondered how even I will join Naveen and his wife’s club when I elope with Augustine and the thought sent chills down my spine). Amidst all this confusion, we had forgotten about Diya’s birthday! We got the cake from the car and made her cut the cake inside Naveen’s house.

The six of us set out on our adventurous drive to the airport. We reached there at half-past one and we had just a few minutes before my parents arrived. We sat in a café and gossiped about other cousins in our family.

It was time for us to wait near the arrivals. After a few minutes of waiting, my parents emerged out of the arrivals with their trolley of  luggage. They looked exhausted from the journey and mom looked weak. As soon as we saw them, sister literally ran to daddy and hugged him tightly. I hadn’t realized how much she had missed him (I remembered sister saying ‘Has daddy forgotten that he has a beautiful daughter missing him in India? He hasn’t called in two days!’). Parents were flabbergasted looking at us. I hugged mom tightly. Mom’s first complaint after she landed ‘Why did you kids take the risk of coming here? We would anyway meet you at home!’ We headed towards home and parents took a cab as there wasn’t enough room in the car.

On the way back in the car, I stared outside the window and let the cool breeze hit me. The darkness and the rustic silence reminded me that I had no right to have so much fun, no right to be happy seeing my parents, and absolutely no right to ask them what they got for me from America. I felt a sudden gush of emotions within me and tears began rolling down seamlessly. The tears blurred my vision. The swiftly moving street lights looked like a line. There was another kind of surprise waiting for them, I thought, a cruel one. I had to elope exactly after two days, a day after my sister’s birthday.