9 All in a Day’s Work
All in a Day’s Work
B ollywood has taught me that a date at a carnival is a classic love story waiting to happen. Which is why I showed up in high spirits, ready for my personal SRK to win me a Chalte Chalte stuffed dog or buy me bangles while professing his love to me, Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham style.
What I didn’t know was that fairs aren’t quite as exciting without dream sequences, background dancers and, well, the right guy.
I had also failed to account for the possible heatstroke I might suffer from being outdoors in the dead of the afternoon.
My oversized straw hat was trying its best to shield me from the angry sun right above us, but there was only so much it could do.
‘I told you we should’ve come in the evening,’ Gaurav said as he watched me dab at the sweat beads forming on my forehead with a wet wipe.
Gaurav was my second date of the day. I’d met a guy for brunch earlier, and I was meeting another one for a theatre play later in the evening.
Some people would call packing three dates in a day overkill.
I called it time management. Now that my Sundays were booked for decorating V’s new boutique, I essentially only had one day per week to find myself a boyfriend.
So naturally, I narrowed down my best options over the course of the week to schedule back-to-back Saturday dates. A dating marathon, if you will.
One of these guys, I had convinced myself, would be The One.
I hadn’t had any luck with the brunch dude, who turned out to be so painfully dumb in person that I had to wonder if I’d been chatting with someone else over text.
I truly believed I could’ve managed a more engaging conversation with a housefly.
Gaurav, I realised a few minutes into our date, fell on the opposite end of the intellectual spectrum.
He was well-spoken, wore Harry Potter-style round glasses and talked like a Sociology topper from college, bringing up Marxism every chance he got.
‘Why don’t we get some ice cream to cool down a bit?’ I said, pointing to a dessert stall to our right.
The Fall Fest was taking place in one of the larger grounds of Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium.
Most of the area was occupied by small business owners selling their goods, and the remaining was dedicated to food stalls.
There was a small stage in the lounging area, with no performer in sight.
The music gigs, it turned out, would happen later in the evening, when there were more than twenty people present at the venue.
Gaurav paused at a second-hand book stall before we could reach the ice cream vendor.
He picked up book after book, explaining some of their core social themes to me.
I pretended to listen earnestly for the first few minutes, but when he began spouting gyaan on a copy of Jane Eyre, I realised just how full of shit he really was.
‘Have you read it?’ he asked. When I nodded, he launched into his analysis of the classic text by Charlotte Bronte.
‘People keep hailing it as a proto-feminist novel, but that’s nonsense. You know, Jane eventually marries the same rich guy who tried to enslave her as his mistress,’ he said, waving the second-hand book in front of my face.
‘That’s a pretty simplistic view of a deeply layered text with complex characters,’ I said, disagreeing with him for the first time.
Growing up, Jane Eyre was one of my favourite classics. I’d read it at least a dozen times, and it annoyed me that Gaurav was trying to discredit it so unsympathetically.
My comment took him by surprise, making it clear he hadn’t expected to be countered.
‘Complex characters? Come on. Jane is an orphaned governess who falls in love with a brooding rich dude, pretends to assert her independence for a while, but eventually comes back to submit as his wife,’ he scoffed.
From the corner of my eye, I noticed that the owner of the bookstall was eyeing us from where he sat behind the counter. I wondered if he shared my date’s pseudo-liberal views.
‘Submit as his wife? Mr Rochester is disabled by the end of the story. If anything, he’s dependent on her ,’ I pointed out.
‘And so she’s going to spend the rest of her life serving him. How is that a win for feminism?’ he demanded.
‘You’re missing the whole point. She chooses to marry him and she chooses to care for him. Being financially independent, she’s no longer bound by her circumstances. She marries the “rich brooding” dude for love, and she has every right to,’ I said, crossing my arms to face my date.
Instead of acknowledging that there might be some merit in what I was saying, he retorted, ‘Where did you read that? Sparknotes.com?’
When I just stared at him, he immediately changed his tone.
I wondered if he regretted his snarky comment because of the diminishing chances of him getting any action on this date.
To move on, he began mansplaining a different novel.
I glanced at my phone, praying for an emergency call to rescue me from this headache of a date.
After about seven and a half minutes, the man handling the store couldn’t take it anymore.
‘Will you be buying that one, then?’ he asked, pointing to the copy of Crime and Punishment in Gaurav’s hand.
‘Oh, I’ve already read it,’ he responded, holding out the book uncertainly.
I thanked the man for his time and placed the book back on the table.
Gaurav’s intellectual narcissism didn’t surprise me as much as it irritated me.
Vrinda, who had gone to the University of Delhi for college, used to complain about her encounters with such men.
Now, more than ever, I sympathised with her.
As we walked out of the bookstall and later, the fair, one thing became abundantly clear – Gaurav was not The One.
Fortunately, I had one more date lined up to take another shot at love. And I’d saved the best for the last – Varun, the theatre enthusiast.
But as luck would have it, I got stuck in a traffic jam while trying to cover the short distance between JLN Stadium and the venue of the play. When my cab finally pulled up outside the theatre, I saw a man restlessly pacing outside. It was Varun.
‘Hey,’ I said as I ran up to him, ‘I’m sorry I’m late. Traffic was mad.’
He smiled when he saw me, but the frown lines on his forehead didn’t disappear. He gave me a non-committal side hug.
‘Well, the play began twenty minutes ago. They won’t let us in now,’ he said, his disappointment clear as day.
I wondered if he was trying to make me feel guilty.
‘Oh shit, Varun, that sucks,’ I said. ‘Should we just head for an early dinner then?’
‘Wow,’ he said, his voice stone cold.
‘Um … I already apologised, man. I obviously didn’t mean to be late,’ I said, a little irked by his intolerance.
It was just a stupid play, after all.
‘That’s not it,’ he said. ‘You don’t even remember my name.’
And without another word, he walked away, leaving me standing outside the theatre to unscramble my fuck-up. I had to open Tinder to figure it out – Varun was the name of the guy I’d had brunch with. The man I’d just unknowingly scorned was Vivaan.
Well. Shit.
Relatives in India have a superpower: they can always tell when you’re having a shitty day and know exactly how to make it worse – by showing up at your doorstep, unexpected and uninvited.
Now, before I’m labelled as too modern to appreciate her own family, let me clarify.
I love my family. I adore my grandparents, I enjoy the company of my aunts and uncles, and I even share a close relationship with most of my NRI cousins.
The people I cannot stand are the distant kinsfolk who call once a year and show up once in three, always loaded with the same question: ‘So when are you getting married?’
When I rang the bell to my home, I expected to see the comforting face of my mother.
I hoped she’d make me a nice cup of honey lemon ginger tea to take to my room, where I would spend the rest of the evening, uninterrupted.
What waited for me on the other side of the door was a person I recognised only because of my inability to identify her – she was a mehmaan.
A chachiji, perhaps even a mausiji or a taiji, who knew?
She enveloped me in a brutal hug, crushing me with the muscles she’d built by encroaching on innocent children’s personal space over the years.
‘Ananya beta,’ she said, pulling back to look at my face. ‘Look at you!’
‘Namaste … Aunty,’ I said, failing to read my mother’s lips from behind her.
‘Aunty?’ she said, as a look of feigned hurt covered her features.
My mom stepped forward, saving me from the beast. ‘This is your Mathura wali taiji, beta ,’ she said, then turned to the woman and added, ‘She keeps so busy with work these days, I worry she’ll forget her own mother.’
The two of them laughed, giving me the opportunity to slip past them. I nodded at my dad, who was sitting on the sofa with a man I assumed was my Mathura wale tayaji, looking so uncomfortable he might as well have been constipated. His expression was loud and clear: Run while you can.
I spun around, ready to leap in the direction of my room.
‘Beta ji, come and take a look at the card.’ Taiji’s shrill voice made my escape impossible.
‘What card?’ I asked, slowly turning around to face her.
She laughed as if I had asked the silliest question in the world. ‘Harshita’s wedding card, what else?’
Don’t ask me who Harshita was.
I congratulated the woman, forcing a keen smile onto my face.
‘It is your turn next,’ she blurted the customary line and directed the next statement at my mother. ‘You should start looking, you know. It’s so hard to find decent boys these days.’
‘Ji, that’s true,’ my mother’s tone was sympathetic, but her eyes were nervously flitting from right to left.