Deja Vu?

A long, long time ago my grandfather had a dream about my parents and my brother having an accident on the way to Hyderabad. They were driving from Bombay to visit my grandparents. My grandfather dreamt that my parents hit the 7th pillar of a bridge, but no one was seriously hurt.
The next day when they were late in arriving, my grandmother started to panic and my grandfather told her - Don't worry, they've had an accident, but they'll be fine and they'll be here soon.

Last week, I had a dream. I dreamt of a neighbour who I had not seen in several months, and hardly ever spoke to even when I did see her. We were in church, and celebrating some event - it seemed like an anniversary of sorts. I thought it strange the next morning, because this woman was not close to me, nor a close friend of my family, but gave it no more thought.

That afternoon, my mother sent me a message saying that the neighbour had died that morning.

A few days later, I was speaking of a friend who I hadn't heard from in a very long time - and a few hours after that, he called to say hello.

For several years now, I have very strong, recurring thoughts to call a friend at strange hours of the night. And when I call the next morning or afternoon, she tells me that she had been feeling low or depressed the night before.

I'm not a great believer in the sixth sense - women's intuition, sure! But never this level of premonition.

I'm starting to scare the crap out of myself!

Do you really?

A few days ago I heard someone say about me, "Oh yeah, I've known her for years...I know her like I know myself."

That got me to thinking, how much do people really know about each other? Certainly not as much as they think they do.

One of my best friends has no idea that one strange night when I was seventeen years old, he saved my life. With a hug.

My siblings have no idea how many times I've wished I were an only child. And how many more times I've been grateful that I'm not.

A boy somewhere in America thinks nothing of the time that will remain my single worst regret.

Another boy in America will never know exactly how thankful I am for his friendship, and above all, his honesty.

My mother remembers nothing of the sheer terror I felt when she lost me, twice.

A childhood friend has no idea that I walked in on her father and his mistress when I was 9 years old. I didn't have any idea either until much, much later.

The scary/interesting thought is that everyone else I know, or think I do, is just the tip of an iceberg.

Vindicated

To my father, who once threw out several pairs of shoes belonging to my sister and I - I finally have a justification beyond any argument.

Life is too short for ugly shoes.

So there.

Torn

After almost two years spent in denial, I have finally had to admit to the fact that my job entails little more than being a glorified secretary. I have fought this label tooth and nail (primarily because I had some semblance of an ego and a little bit of dignity), but today as I "co-ordinated" between a young journalist and an incompetent travel agent, I found myself wondering if the money was really worth it.

True, jobs that don't let my brain atrophy won't pay as much, but at least I won't want to kill myself, a client or a journalist on an average of 17 times a week.

It was pointed out that this was a bit rich coming from someone that had just sat on her butt for four and a half months and twiddled her thumbs, but that never stopped me from whining before, and it certainly isn't going to start now. But I have a feeling that as I indulge in my next retail therapy trip after a long day at work, it's going to be just as hard to think about quitting...

Dead End

Everyone knows the rush of a new relationship...that heady feeling, the 'what ifs'...
I always thought of a relationship as the beginning of a possible future. Not always in terms of marriage, or happily ever after... but the future nonetheless.
But what happens when your basic premise of normalcy is taken away, and the things you had to offer for that imagined future no longer exist? What if all you have to offer is just yourself as you are now, and that is all.
Is that enough for someone to love you? Is that what someone can not only be content with, but also happy with?
I think I might just find out...

Justice

I needed to close a bank account. A simple enough thing to do... unless you have a recurring deposit account in Andhra Bank.
It all started with an honest attempt to save some money and not regret that it was all wasted on alcohol and other such...in the end, I had to close down the account and withdraw the money so that I would have enough to give the government. I might has well have spent it on the booze!

Anyway, unlike most banks, Andhra Bank does not have an ECS system. Which means you have to deposit a cheque every month. And if you work normal hours, that means you have to do it either really early in the morning (when the bank is supposed to be open, but ISN'T.. because "the trains are too crowded at that time" as I was told after asking for an explanation), or late in the night, when the bank is closed. So mostly, my cheques were deposited by luck... depending on my good fortune if one of the employees had arrived by 8:30 or not. I have been there on many occasions at 8:00 a.m., which is the 'official' opening time, and there has been no one but the guard there... who looked just about as fed up as I was.

But as much as it annoyed me to keep the account going, closing it was infinitely worse. First, I had to submit my passbook to the bank...coincidentally, the same one they had 'misplaced' when I had submitted it for updation several months ago. There is only one person who can close the bank account at the chembur branch - the never present Preeti. Preeti I know now, is a ghost. She may have worked there at one point, but no longer turns up, or has just left, or will shortly arrive - but never actually there! After two weeks of this (and the chartered accountant yelling bloody murder about my taxes), I finally called in late at work to sort this problem out.

I arrived at 9:00 a.m., a decent enough hour even by public bank standards... only to look upon Preeti's empty desk.. again. Mr. Rangarajan, allegedly the bank manager, lent a patient ear to my complaints - even accepted my complaint letter, which was attached to the request to close the account and then shooed me in the general direction of the outer office with the words - why don't you call Preeti, she will help you out.

Five calls later (still no Preeti), and about an hour and a half after I arrived, Mr. Arun took it upon himself to stop me from pacing and being general disruptive to the business of the bank. All it took was to open Preeti's drawer, rummage around, find my passbook (which I then handed back to them), enter my account number into the ancient computer, write out a cheque in my name for the amount shown in my account. Lo and behold - it only took six weeks to get my money back!

I was fuming for the next one week about government employees, their lax working hours, their even more lax behaviour towards customers and of course their fictional employees. True justice was only achieved when I found out from a friend how much the employees of Andhra Bank are paid... and laughed all the way to a private bank.

Playtime

It is a white house. The roof is painted a vivid red. The garden is not beautiful, but it is well maintained. The grass cut, the bushes trimmed and the flowers in perfectly circular beds - the white roses encircling the lantanas. There is a white picket fence that runs around the entire front garden and along the driveway, where the two family cars are parked. One stationed exactly behind the other.

The front door is wide and painted exactly the same shade of red as the roof. Mother is insistent that everything about the house has to be co-ordinated.

Even mealtimes.

The forks to the left, always placed before the spoons. The plates come next and are overturned fifteen minutes before dinner, so that the dust doesn’t settle on them. Water glasses to the right and two long stemmed wine glasses for mother and father. A vase filled with flowers in the centre of the table. The flowers are always picked from the flowerbeds in the backyard, so as not to upset the beds in the front garden. The flowers match the tablemats, which match the tablecloth. Red and white are mother’s favourite colours – the sole indulgence she allows herself.

On Sunday, the family always eats together. Dinner is served at eight o’clock, unless there is company, in which case it is served at eight thirty and for the past twelve years, the routine has never varied. Schoolwork for Monday should be completed; father must finish working or postpone it for until after dinner

At precisely eight o’clock father enters the dining room through the living room door. He carefully removes his glasses and sets them down on the sideboard. Father always sits at the head of the table. Mother is in the kitchen, making sure everything is heated to perfection in the glass dishes meant particularly for Sunday dinner. The children are already seated, their faces washed and their fingernails scrubbed clean of the dirt from the garden where they were playing. Sunday is the only day when they are not expected to help with the meal – their Sabbath respite of sorts.

Mother enters and sets down the roast chicken in front of father. The head of the family must always carve the chicken. The pasta and vegetables follow. Mother enters the dining room through the swinging door from the kitchen for the third time, empty-handed now. She smoothes her cotton skirt behind her and sits down. With practised precision, grace is said almost as soon as she is seated.

Along with the chicken, a new tension is also passed around.

The children feel it.

There is none of the usual banter and jovial conversation that accompanies the meal. The sound of the forks and spoons hitting the blue and white china plates is interrupted only by requests to pass the pasta or chicken. The vegetables, as usual, are left virtually untouched.

Out of the corner of her eye, Sara notices a tear slipping past mother’s control and down her cheek. In all her fourteen years, Sara cannot remember a single instance when mother was particularly sad or happy. She was always…controlled. Sara is taken aback by the tear. She cannot help but stare at mother’s mechanical movements while she cries. Now James has also noticed the tear. Neither of the children is particularly upset by her unhappiness. Merely stunned by the break in the usual routine.

“Stop it.”

Father’s voice cuts into the tense silence. He is looking straight at mother, his face set in an unforgiving stare. As if unable to believe that she is breaking the Sunday custom of a peaceful family dinner.

There has never been a fight in front of the children. There has never even been dissent in front of the children. Both Sara and James wait nervously for mother to respond. For what seems like an eternity, there is no expression on her face. Only a blank face and the single tear, stopping midway down her cheek.

She picks up the wine glass, half filled with red wine, her scarlet lipstick smeared across the rim, and swirls it around. Still swirling the wine, she looks up at father.

There is a red stain on the wallpaper. The wineglass misses its mark, but only literally. Sara is torn between wanting to be excused and wanting to satisfy her curiosity as to what is causing her parents to act so differently. The decision is made when James moves his chair backwards, as if to remove himself from the line of fire and off to the kitchen.

“Sit down James.” It is mother who speaks this time, her face still as vacant as before.

“Perhaps, David, we should end the pretences. This is not a perfect home; this is not a perfect family. You and I are far from perfect parents. I’ve had enough of pretending!

I’ve just had…enough.”

By this time mother is standing up, looking down at father. She looks tired. They have only been arguing for a few minutes, but it looks like hours on her face.

“Either you accept that we’ve got problems, and stop sweeping everything under the carpet, or I end the charade.”

Sara knows for sure now. She wants no part of this. It is safer in the kitchen where she can imagine that everything is all right.

In one quick move, she is out of her chair and through the kitchen door. She stops at the counter and holds on to it with both hands. For a moment, she feels guilty about leaving James there. But James is older, more capable of fending for himself. Sara needs the distance, the barrier between herself and the unreal situation in the next room.

She can hear the voices coming through the door. Father’s voice, harsh and heavy. Mother’s voice, equally strong now, but still, a plaintive note lingers. The voices go back and forth, for what seems like ages. Sara hears the words between them, none of which she likes.

She can hear mother, accusing father of being too busy with work, of not caring about her or their marriage anymore, or being too preoccupied to pay attention to his children. Father retorts with equally harsh accusations – that mother is like a closed book to him now, always silent and uncommunicative. That she is so involved in her children and her home; she has precious little time to devote to him.

All the while, Sara stands holding on to the counter. Listening intently as she wishes that she can’t hear anything at all.

Sara hears footsteps coming towards the kitchen. Mother comes through the door, and it occurs to Sara that even though mother has been so upset, she has not cried more than that single tear through the entire argument. She sees the expression on mother’s face that she never forgets, the one signifying that it’s the last time she will look at her. She wants to say countless things… futile words in comparison to the finality of this mute goodbye.

There is silence everywhere. In the dining room, Father is silently angry; James is silently shocked, while mother silently leaves.

“DINNERTIME!”

The plastic cutlery is stacked.

The red paint from the wall is wiped clean.

The roof is put back on the dollhouse.

The four dolls are put back in their box.

Sara goes to the washroom and scrubs her hands clean.

She goes downstairs and joins in the cheerful argument between James and Father regarding Mother’s cooking.

Mother comes through the door, smiling at Sara while she carries in the glass dishes.

Sara postpones the aftermath till another hour of playtime.