Rashmi's Space

We are in a huge hall. Spacious, airy, with large open windows. The hall is divided into two parts. One part is meant for the spectators, who are mostly parents. The other part has four large anti-skid mats placed at a distance from each other. At the head of each mat, a little away, is a table with two chairs facing the mat. Towards one end of the hall is a stage which is set with a table and a few chairs. Certificates and large trays holding medals are placed to one side of this stage on a smaller table. At the back, hangs a large banner with the name of a Karate school, welcoming one and all to the District Level Karate Tournament. As spectators settle down, children gather at the other end of the hall, answer the roll call and settle down in the different batches they have been segregated into. Some of them are very young, with barely all the milk teeth in place. Some others are older. But their faces are similarly angelic to the younger ones, yet. And then there are ...

Note: This is the second and concluding part of the story. Do check out the story so far in  Part 1  so you are up to date :)  I hear a tentative knock on the door. And then a question, softly: “Baba, are you asleep?” “No. Come in,” I call out and my daughter walks in. It is late in the night. Dinner is long over. And my daughter has come to see me. My daughter, who is the most like me of my three children – the only one I had wanted to be there when I returned home today with the auto driver, but was not there because she was visiting a friend in a different city. My daughter, who is my only true source of happiness. My daughter – the only one who loves me for who I am, and not for the locked box I keep in the safe in my closet. My daughter, who lives with us because she has never married. She has vitiligo, you see. Sometimes I feel, I have failed her there. Because even though she has always been beautiful to me, even with the white patches ...

Note: This is the beginning of the story.  Do check out Part 2 for the conclusion.  It is all a blur. The roads, the trees, the shops that pass by, they are all familiar, and yet, unfamiliar to me. The bright lights that zoom past, are they streetlamps? Or lights from the shops? The buildings that pass, the bus stops dotting this tree-lined avenue, the playground in the distance where boys must be playing football in the fading light – it is all a blur. There must be people walking on the pavement, some waiting at the bus stops, some crossing the road – but to me, they are all a blur too. I sit in an auto rickshaw and it zooms away, very fast, making me dizzy. I sit here, clutching the slim iron rod that separates the driver’s seat from the passengers’, and hope that the driver takes me home safely, in one piece. I know he intends to. That is where we are going, in fact – home. But the thing is, see, I had thought it was very close, just around the corner; turns ...

It is Saturday morning. Birds chirp as they sip water from the potted plants in the balcony that I have freshly watered just now. There is very less traffic on the road today as it is the weekend. I take my coffee and sit on the swing in my balcony that I rarely get to sit on. As I sip, I savour the bliss of this unhurried morning. I relish the calm, the silence. And I wonder – why aren’t my everyday mornings like this? Why is it only on Saturdays that I get to experience this beauty of the relaxed morning? And I sigh.   Because I know the answer to that question. I know, that every day, at this time, I am in the kitchen, rushing to get tiffin boxes of breakfast, lunch and snacks ready for my family – coming up with innovative ideas, worrying about portions and running against time to get it all packed and sealed for the day in the meal boxes that my family will carry with them for the long day ahead. Nutrition in bite sized pieces. That is what I am doing at this time on ...

Lata Mangeshkar…or was that Asha Bhonsle...? In a lot of these old songs they sounded so similar! Simi woke up, as usual, to melodious songs of the black and white era being played on the radio. With groggy eyes, she walked up to the kitchen and hugged Mai from behind. “Good morning,” she mumbled, nuzzling the side of her mother’s neck. “Woke up? Go brush your teeth quick, I’ll warm up the tea,” her mother said, caressing her cheek with a loving hand, while the other, cloaked in dough, rested in the wide plate in which she was mixing the atta for parathas. When Simi came back to the kitchen to pick her tea-cup, she saw her mother had kept another cup next to hers. “Who’s is that?” Simi asked. “Baba’s” her mother said, turning to her, smiling. “At home today?” Simi asked, her eyebrows raised. Her mother nodded soberly, while Simi gave a wide grin. “Dada’s going to freak out!” she said. And the mother and daughter giggled like the best friends they wer...

“Mr. Desai?” Ananta looks up. “These are Ms. Kamath’s ornaments,” the nurse says, handing him two gold bangles, a gold chain, and a pair of pearl earrings. Ananta stands up and takes them, the way one would take back an offering from a priest at a temple. Then he sits back down on the bench he has been sitting on for some hours now. He looks down at Krishna’s ornaments. And keeps looking at them long after the nurse has turned and walked away.  How has it all come to this? It was only a few hours back that he had gone to Krishna’s house, late in the evening. He was hoping to talk some sense into her. He was looking forward to making her understand how thoughtless she was being in deciding to go away from him. He wanted to make her realise that she wasn't even understanding the seriousness of what she was about to do. And in the process, she was going to break her own heart too…how could she not see that? And so he had gone to Krishna’s house. But he ...

“What?” “Ananta…” “Have you gone mad Krishna? Do you know what you are saying?” “I am not happy about this either Ananta. But…it is the right thing to do.” “The right thing to do!” He spits out the words, turning away from her. Krishna purses her lips. She can see a vein pulsating at his temple. “And you have decided this?” he asks, still refusing to look at her. “All by yourself? I don’t get any say at all?” Krishna has known this was not going to be easy. Not after what she has told him today. But now she knows Ananta is never going to forgive her. “Ananta, please, don’t get angry…” “You don’t get to do this! Okay? You have no right!” He is livid. Speaking to the housekeeper has made Krishna realise how naïve she and Ananta were being. She has come to understand that what they were hoping for, is something that only works in movies, in fairy tales. Because in reality, the society never sees the good in anything. It always looks for the ne...

“ T ai , your tea is getting cold,” says Latabai, putting away her own cup of tea back on the tray. Krishna smiles and puts her almost full tea-cup to her lip. It is stone cold now. And tasteless. Although, the coldness of it has less to do with the tastelessness of it, than what Latabai sits talking about. The housekeeper came to see her late in the evening when Krishna was sitting on her porch wondering about the sudden change in the weather. The wind had picked up, leading her to think it may rain again, or at the very least, there would be a storm coming soon... making it difficult for Ananta and her to go for their walk tomorrow morning.  Now, she has made fresh tea, so the two women could sit and chat.    They have done this a few times when the housekeeper has had a few hours off from work. And while they aren’t exactly friends, Krishna likes the frankness and honesty of the housekeeper; and admires the fact that the woman doesn’t use her circu...