Chapter 10
Aditi rang the bell of her parents’ house.
There was so much noise inside that the sounds were bleeding outside.
Nothing out of the usual for a Friday night.
Every Friday, they had dinner here, because it was the end of the school week and the end of court week.
Mummy would pick from a rotation of home-made pizza, pav bhaji or pani puri, and they would basically all get into the kitchen to either put toppings, roast the pav and make masala pav versions (Zubin style) or make their own pani puris.
The door pulled open, and Aditi stepped inside.
“Mumma, I maded mashpotatoes for pani puri.”
Aditi set her bags down. “Good job. Where is Papa?”
“Bathroom. You know Papa went to a biiig fashion show today?” Aara’s eyes rounded.
“Fashion show?”
“Zubin!” Her father called out. “Chalo, beta.”
“Here, here,” Zubin strode out of the alley, wiping his face on a napkin.
His eyes came to her, and she read the exhaustion.
It wasn’t work exhaustion for sure. But it wasn’t fashion show exhaustion either.
He didn’t have the energy or the inclination to hang out at page three events like he once used to.
Aara turned to him, pointing back at her. “Papa, tell Mumma that you really went to that fashion show, no?”
Zubin nodded. “Witness work.”
Aditi frowned. What witness took meetings at a fashion show?
“Chalo, sit down to eat.” Her mother brought out a big pot of teekha paani, the sharp fresh scent of mint permeating the air.
“Pani puri wala!” Aara squealed, making her startle.
Zubin was shaking his head. “Uh uu, no no.”
“Yes yes!”
“No no.”
“Yes yes!” Their daughter jiggled, rolling her eyes and dancing to herself, the exact moves that, Aditi knew, got Zubin to say yes to anything.
And as expected, Zubin hung his head. He eyed their daughter for all of two seconds, then threw the napkin over his shoulder — “Fine, get me paper bowls.”
“Yaaaayii!” Aara clapped her hands together.
“Line here, Nana!” She was pointing to the space where they usually lined up to have Zubin make pani puri like a street seller and sell them chaat.
He made his way behind the table and plucked Aara down, then began arranging the pots to his liking.
Mummy came with a stack of paper bowls and a red gamcha that she threw his way.
He caught it and replaced his napkin with the gamcha around his neck.
“Me first!” Aara broke the line.
“O, I am standing here since morning!” Her Nana playfully fought back.
“My Papa is the pani puri wala!”
“No pani puri for fightercocks.” Zubin stirred the water, accepting the bag of puris from her mother.
Aditi stood back, admiring her husband as he searched for the smallest puri, broke it in half and filled it with all the condiments that Aara demanded.
A little of each. He dipped it in the sweet tamarind chutney, then into the bigger pot of spicy, dark green mint water.
She knew he had pretended to dip it, because their daughter wanted what the adults ate but of course she couldn’t digest it.
“Madam,” he set the soaking little puri into the paper bowl Aara held between two hands. Her Nana picked it up and Aara opened her mouth, then giggled with her mouth closed as half the chutney dribbled down her chin. “Naonao’s tuorn.”
Zubin had already made the next pani puri and set it in her father’s bowl. Her father threw it into his mouth — “Teekha paani theek se maaro, yaar![2]”
“Pakka?” Zubin bantered, “Aur maara toh aag lag jaayegi, sir.[3]”
“Maaro, maaro, yaar. Baad mein Eno kha lenge.[4]”
Zubin chuckled, dipping the puris he had already readied by now with the sprouts and potato filling.
“Mummy, red chilly powder laao![5]” He hollered to his sous chef in the kitchen.
He had a special recipe to spice up the pani puri — make a spiced potato filling with red chilly, chaat masala and black salt.
He made it, then went on feeding the duo in front of him.
And when they were done, Mummy called out to her — “Aditi, make your plate.”
Aara was faster — “Come eat with pani puri wala.”
They moved aside, and Aditi stepped up. Zubin looked up from his moonlighting business, and deposited a paper bowl in her hand.
“Happy?” Aditi looked down at her daughter, who had eaten a total of four mini pani puris and would need to be fed her khichdi on the side to make sure she was full.
A pani puri landed in her paper bowl and Aditi glanced up. Zubin was busy making the next.
She picked up the pani puri in her bowl and popped it into her mouth.
Perfect. Of course, he knew how she liked her pani puri.
Lots of potatoes, very little meetha chutney and bursting with teekha paani.
She wasn’t even halfway done finishing the puri in her mouth when another landed in her bowl.
She did not look up, popping it into her mouth too.
And another landed. She had to chew the bombs in her mouth before going for the third. And she gagged.
“Wha…” she put a hand over her mouth that was bursting with nothing but sweet tamarind chutney, and glanced up at her husband. “What is this?!”
“Too spicy?”
“It’s very sweet. Add teekha pani.”
He stirred the pot of teekha pani, made a show of making her next puri, dipped it in the sweet chutney and then in teekha pani. Aditi popped it into her mouth and gagged again. Had he pretended to dip it into the teekha pani? She glared up at him. This time, he was smirking.
“Don’t pay this pani puri wala, he doesn’t know how to make it!” She hollered back to her daughter and her father, who were busy making their own plates of sukha puri. The show was over.
“Imagine eating nothing but meethi chutney for five years,[6]” Zubin whispered close to her ear.
Every fine hair on every surface of her body rose to attention. Aditi gulped the sweet, tangy taste in her mouth and raised her eyes to his. He wasn’t smirking now.
“Zu…”
“Who is next? Chalo, chalo, thela band ho raha hai…[7]” he looked behind her, bantering with her mother, who now started pushing him to become the customer while she became his pani puri wala.
Usually, Aditi swapped places with him and became his pani puri wala.
But they never bantered or argued or exchanged jibes.
After the last few days in court, she realised she had consciously curbed her instincts until they never arose again.
Zubin and her were always laughing and joking, on one team, and that was sweet. It was just… too sweet.
————————————————————
They reached home in time to put Aara to bed, and for Zubin to pack.
He was flying out to Dubai to meet a client and would be gone all weekend.
Aditi took over bedtime duty as he came in, kissed Aara goodbye and went to finish packing.
Aditi hoped they’d get a minute before his Uber was here.
Or maybe not. She did not know what to say to him.
And she knew he had a lot to say. He always had a lot to say.
In this instance, he had a lot more clarity than her.
Things that she was just beginning to feel.
“Psst…” he made a low whistling sound. Aditi startled up from patting Aara, the room dark but the door opened to a slit. “My Uber is here,” he whispered.
She nodded, peering at their daughter, who was sound asleep. Aditi carefully climbed down from the bed and padded out, closing the door with the handle turned down. She followed Zubin out to the hall where his small travel bag waited at the door.
“I’ll see you Tuesday,” he turned, rolling his folded sleeves down and buttoning the cuffs on his left wrist. Aditi nodded. He kept his eyes on his cufflinks, shifting from left to right. And she took over. He always struggled with the right one.
“Don’t forget to inquire about Barbie World.” She kept her eyes on his cufflink.
“It’s on my mind. I’ll see if I can secure opening week tickets, whenever that is.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to take the pack of snacks Mummy made?”
“I am going to eat out all weekend, Mummy’s snacks are going to add onto everything.”
“Just take them for emergencies…”
“If they are there, I will absolutely come back having eaten through them.” Zubin took his hand back, pulling the cuff over his wrist.
Aditi was fixated on his wrist. “Has it been that bad?” She asked.
“What?”
“Meethi chutney.”
Silence struck.
“Who said it’s been bad?” Zubin’s astonished voice made her head whirl up.
Her mouth opened, then closed. “I…”
“Aditi,” his voice lowered. “It’s been amazing.
These years with you, dating you, being married to you, doing this life with you.
We have built something so amazing, I couldn’t even imagine this in my wildest dreams again after my parents.
You cannot call it bad. Nobody can call it bad, least of all me.
This is not about that. We have been amazing parents and partners, but… ”
“But?”
He smiled — “Didn’t you experience what was missing in court? Did I feel it alone?”
She blinked.
“We have become two exceptional adults with a child and a house and a life together, and that’s exactly what I set out to do when I proposed to you. But I wanted to do it without changing the zing that burnt on an hourly basis between us.”
“People grow…”
“And I would have believed that if we hadn’t sparked off like we did in the first minute of the first day’s hearing. Didn’t you?”
Her breath stalled. And he took her silence as disagreement.
“Then…” he stuttered. “Maybe it’s my midlife crisis or something…”
“You? Midlife crisis?”
“Can you believe it?” His eyes widened. “Meera gave me sass about average life expectancy and how I am at the exact mid-point. Bullshit. I am a Parsi, I am going to live to be a 100.”
Aditi chuckled despite herself, tears burning the back of her eyes. “You are not alone.”
“Of course, I am not alone. I am going to make you live to be a 100 with me, too. The world is going to keep getting all AI and social media. Aara won’t have time for me, forget her kids. And there’s only so many cases I can fight, even though I will remain fit and active…”
Aditi rolled her eyes — “I meant in feeling the zing.”
His rambling mouth snapped shut, those smart-ass eyes widening even more. “RIGHT?!”
“Shh.”
“Right?” He lowered his volume. “It’s still there. That means it’s what makes us us. I always knew it, but I just forgot it and we became softer on each other. Actually, when was the last time we actually really fought? When was the last time you felt the zing?”
Her brow cocked. “So now you want to fight cases just to get the zing?”
“Don’t you?”
“That’s not fair to our clients, and the work we do is not a joke. Neither are we immune to its effect on our own lives. Look how this one has affected us.”
His mobile pinged with the Uber waiting alert.
He silenced it. “Aditi, I don’t have the answer to this.
But I just wanted you to know that there is something that we have been missing, curbing between us.
We did it consciously after Aara was born and then it became a habit.
I love this life with you, don’t think I don’t.
It’s so full of everything I never imagined I could have.
But there is this part of us that we lost, willingly or unwillingly, and if you’d like it back then I want it back. ”
“We can’t be like that in front of Aara. Not even around her. She can’t hear us like that…”
“That’s why I said I didn’t have the answer to this. Just acknowledging it is a start, isn’t it?”
She shook her head, so badly wanting to break into another one of their banters but holding herself back.
Because suddenly their life of the last six years was standing in front of her in complete clear technicolour and she was consciously combing through their decisions — conscious and subconscious ones.
Even this holding back from going at him was effortlessly subconscious now, when once it had taken everything in her to hold her tongue because there was Aara and her senses were still developing and her parents could not be filling them with fighting.
A warm hand came to her cheek, and he pushed her head up until his mouth was on her temple. “Think about it. Teekha pani is badly needed for you to function on your normal temperament.”
Without thinking, she backhanded his belly — “You get acidity with teekha paani.”
He chuckled, stepping back while palming the area. “Now I definitely will.”
She took a step forward and he took three back, reaching for the handle of his trolley. “Bloody black cat,” he mouthed.
Her lips tipped.
“Call me before you take off,” she commanded as he opened the main door and stepped out.
“Yes, dear.” He shut the door.