Tea for Two and a Piece of Cake (14 page)

‘Come on, Mama, I can carry him. I am nearly eight,’ she proudly says as she carries him. I watch like a hawk, in case he gets too heavy for her and they trip over, but she manages perfectly.

My heart fills with maternal pride as I watch them both. Two perfect children. My two angels. How I adore them.

She manages to carry him till the elevator when he lunges towards the buttons.

‘No, no, Rohit. You’re a baby. Tanya will do it for you,’ she says, taking charge breezily, with a confident assurance of innocence which only a child can have.

Then she remembers the ice creams again.

‘Mama, can we go for ice creams now? I badly, badly want one today, mama,’ she says again, her eyes shining. She has her father’s looks and his charms. Her shoulder-length straight hair, which she inherited from her dad, make her look like a doll, and it is hard to refuse when she pleads like that with her expressive eyes.

‘Okay, go change first, and let me get Rohit ready too, after which we will all go together,’ I say.

‘Yay, Mama! You are the best Mama in the whole world.’ She gleams, running off happily to her room to change.

But I wasn’t good enough for your dad, my baby.

I bite back my tears which seem to be coming without any warning, flowing at the slightest nudge, just like a leaky tap that has been fixed temporarily with a sticky tape.

Naturals ice cream parlour is just a short walk from our apartment.

At Naturals, my pain comes back threefold. I see two families there. One is a husband, a wife, and a toddler who is around two. The lady is obviously pregnant. The other is a family with two children, who are around twelve and fourteen. The husband tastes his ice cream, and the joy on his face is hard to miss, as he offers the cone to his wife and says, ‘Try this, this is really nice.’ She takes a lick of his cone, hands it back, and smiles as she says, ‘Try mine now, it is really nice too.’

That simple gesture feels like someone is grinding the shards of glass left in my heart with a heavy army boot, grinding them in really hard. I wince and bite my lip.

I watch them, thinking how Samir and I would have been somewhat like this couple in a few years, only if he had stayed. That had always been my dream, to have a happy family, a
complete
family, something that I had never had as a child. Was that too much to ask?

Tanya is oblivious to my inner turmoil, as she happily slurps the choco-walnut ice cream cone, her favourite flavour.

‘Mama, when will Daddy come back from Germany?’ she asks as she takes another lick.

She is blissful, content, and happy in her childhood, a childhood which is about to change forever, because two people, two mature adults who were once in love with each other, have screwed up somewhere.

Sorry, your papa has left me, and we cannot be a happy family anymore, but here, have an ice cream.

Stop it Nisha, you do not want to cry in front of your children and make a scene at the ice cream parlour, for heaven’s sake! Stop it right now.

I manage to swallow the lump in my throat and tell her it may be a while.

It is only when I walk back with the children, that something strikes me—I have only three thousand rupees left in my purse. Samir is the one who usually hands me money as and when I need it. I do have a bank account of my own, which I have not used for many years now. I had stopped using it the day I had married Samir.

I have an add-on credit card and have no clue if Samir has cancelled it. Panic sets in. I need to talk to Samir. I need to talk to him
now.
I want to ask him about the financial arrangements.

There is only a small problem.

No matter how many times I call, Samir does not answer his phone.

I do not know what to do about the money situation. I send a text message to Samir. It just says to call me as I need to talk to him. I wait for two hours. Then I text him again saying I wanted to talk to him about the money situation (just in case he thinks I want to rant and rave, which I very much want to do, but the more important thing here is to get the finances in order first).

There is no reply. The children have been given their dinner. Tanya now insists that I read her a bedtime story. It is a little ritual that we have. I read her a story, tuck her in, kiss her, and turn off the lights and head off. This is a time Tanya looks forward to as her exclusive time with me, after Rohit has slept. She has my undivided attention all to herself.

But today, my mind wanders off thrice while reading
The Girl with the Broken Wing
to her. It is a book by Heather Dyer and is one of Tanya’s favourites. Even though Tanya can read all by herself and can read very well too, she still enjoys our little daily ritual of reading.

Finally, when I stop midway through a sentence, Tanya gets exasperated and takes out the book from my hand.

‘Mama, you are not paying attention today, I will read it myself.’

‘Sorry, baby,’ I say, as I sit there stupidly listening to my little girl reading out
The Girl with the Broken Wing
. That is exactly how I feel.

Broken and shattered. I am the girl with the broken wing.

And two children.

When Tanya finishes her chapter, I tell her it is time to sleep and kiss her goodnight.

I sit on the balcony and stare at the moon.

What am I going to do? I do need to speak to Samir. I call him, my heart pounding when the phone rings.

He does not answer it again. I call three more times and finally, the call is picked up.

By Maya.

‘Uh, hello Nisha,’ she mutters.

I picture Samir and Maya in bed. The thought is too much to bear. A mixture of disgust, jealousy, anger, resentment, and hurt fills my soul. It travels through my bloodstream, like slow, molten lava. It makes me blind with rage and pure helplessness. I want to scream at her. And at him. I want to go to whichever place they both are in and I really want to kill them both. I would always read about crimes of passion in the newspapers and wonder why such crimes were committed. Now I know. That is exactly what I want to do right now. But I have no way of knowing where they are, and besides, I have the children. So my burning need for revenge remains just that—a helpless longing, lashing deep inside me, burning me out from the inside. I am like a butterfly trapped in a glass jar whose life force is ebbing out. The lid is tightly shut and there is no escape.

I go to our bedroom and put the pillow against my face, screaming loudly. The pillow muffles the sound. I scream again and again. It is a primeval cry for help. Nobody can hear me except myself. Even at that heightened state of anguish, somewhere my sanity reminds me that the children are asleep and should not be woken up.

I pace up and down furiously in our bedroom. Exhausted and trapped, I climb into bed, but I am unable to sleep. The night stretches long ahead of me. In the past, no matter what has happened, I have always slept soundly at night. But now, sleep just evades me.

Finally, when I am unable to toss and turn anymore, I go to the kitchen and make myself a large cup of hot chocolate.

Then I go to the desktop and log in to my mail. I have a habit of checking my mail once in three to four days. I usually get only forwards and spam messages. But today when I open my inbox, my heart starts beating at a thousand beats per minute.

There is a mail from Samir staring at me from the computer screen.

Leaving on a Jet Plane

Nisha,

There is a lot I want to say, but I do not know where to begin. I am going to be honest with you here. I wish I could say the usual line, ‘It’s not you, but me’. But I cannot do that. You have indeed changed a lot in the past eight years. You are no longer the person you were when we first met each other. We have grown apart, and what I feel is so darn pathetic is that you have not even realized it.

I agree I have changed too, but what hurts most is that you were too busy to even notice.

We indeed had a good thing going in the beginning. But where it started going sour, I really cannot pinpoint. Maybe it was when you told me you were pregnant with Tanya. I had made my views clear then, Nisha, hadn’t I? You had told me you were on birth control and you had assured me it was safe. We both had agreed that if at all we had children, we would have them only after
six to seven years, when we both felt ready. But then you got pregnant, and sometimes I wondered if it was a kind of deliberate ploy on your part to tie me down. Even when I had told you that I had no interest whatsoever in being a father (maybe I am different from most people, I do not know), you still went ahead and decided to keep the baby, hoping that once the baby was born, I would change my viewpoint, even when I have been constantly telling you that having a baby at that point is indeed a disruption in my life.

For five years after that, I watched in silence as my house slowly changed. From being spotless and perfectly clean, it went to being filled with toys and discarded diapers, and baby powder, and shampoo, and what not. Our sex life became totally non-existent. I had absolutely no interest in Lamaze class or decorating the nursery. I had made that clear too. But you would nag on endlessly until I consented to going with you to them, where the instructor told you how to breathe, while other proud fathers tried to bond with each other. God—I loathed and hated all of it. Even when I voiced it, you brushed my protests aside—so focussed were you on your needs, your wants.

I know you had your differences with my mother. But when you refused to come with me to London for her funeral, it was truly a huge blow for me. Yes, I know Tanya was only twelve days old, and you were still feeding her, but we would have
anyway flown first class, not even business class. The dead do deserve some respect, Nisha. It would have meant the world to me if you had even made a tiny bit of effort to accompany me. But the way you so flatly refused, and the way you made it sound as though my asking you to accompany me was utter drivel, that was what really hit me hard.

You know how business has grown so rapidly over the past few years and the time when the Singapore branch was being set up. There was so much work pressure on me then, and when I came home at night, it was to a house where I did not even dare ask for a cup of tea for fear of being snubbed, as you were too tired from looking after the baby (which you yourself were so keen on bringing into the world in the first place). And no, I did not mind making that cup of tea for you, provided you cheerfully accepted it. But no—you were grumpy, irritated, and moody most of the time—maybe stress, maybe exhaustion—I do not know.

And how can I forget the sleepless nights.

Just as we settled down to bed, the baby would wail, and you insisted on keeping her crib in our bedroom. There are thousands of parents who have a nursery for their babies, and it is perfectly fine—but no, you felt it was cruel. Still I gave in, I consented.

I longed to discuss the developments at the newly opened Singapore branch with you, but all
you had to talk about was which shop was selling diapers cheaper and which shop was holding a sale for baby merchandise. And then your litany of woes about the live-in help we hired, you had nothing to talk about except how she was not good at her work, and finally you threw her out saying only you are good enough, and that she is incompetent to raise your precious babies.

Your presence was needed at all the official dinners where I met my business partners. You could have contributed majorly and proved an asset to me. But whenever I asked you to accompany me, you made up excuses involving the baby. Either she had her vaccines, or she was not well, or she had to be fed, or she was throwing up, or something of that sort.

Slowly I stopped asking you, stopped discussing business with you altogether.

You even had problems with almost all my friends whom you said were too stuck up and high class. You refused to accompany me to Dev and Vini’s party. You did not want to attend Ranjit’s farmhouse bash. Heck, you did not even want to come with me to a pub for a casual night out, and I have asked you so many times. Even when I had planned that trip to the discotheque (the night when I had also arranged for a babysitter and got the invites as a surprise), you created such a fuss. I began fearing asking my friends over because you deeply disapproved. I threw myself into work to forget about all of it. I had a good set of friends
and a good social life. But you ensured that it all came to a grinding halt.