PART 2 #3
I like how he reflects precisely how I feel.
Two years ago when I landed in a country that wasn’t mine, how intense the feeling of being alone can be hit me for the first time.
Everyone who knew who you were, what your story is, is no longer with you.
Your existence has to be explained to an entirely new set of people who may or may not choose to accept you.
Of course, I fought this feeling because everyone had warned me and I had waved them off.
How difficult can it be to build a new family, new connections, a new life?
I won, too. I made friends and I built a life, and I was mostly happy.
But something nagged at me. I have tried to sugarcoat it, but the truth is, I want something to be just my own.
A world that’s just mine. A life that’s more than just me.
Every time I have said this, old versions of me have pointed at me and laughed.
Those parts of me were right, they had to survive, and what I feel now is right, too, because I need to thrive.
‘We will figure it out,’ he says and holds my hand.
A warmth spreads through me, surprising in its intensity. I didn’t expect this when I came back to India—Saket, a guy who was just a profile picture, a few lines of text, a pixelated face, and now, undeniably, so much more.
3.
Daksh Dey
‘You’re literally the worst Dada in the world!’
The cult of Dada is slipping. These days, I’m training myself to disregard Rabbani’s hateful sentences.
I file them under ‘Temporary opinions formed in moments of insanity’ and not ‘Facts’.
She’s eleven, still two years away from the dreaded teens, but her mind and her attitude have raced ahead.
But I’m prepared. I’m Teflon now. Nothing sticks.
‘Worse than even Ptolemy was to Cleopatra?’
‘No one’s interested in your history lesson,’ she says and turns dramatically towards Baba. ‘Who’s he to give me permission to go on a school trip? You can also sign!’
She waves the permission slip in the air.
Baba looks up from the prosthetic leg he’s polishing and shakes his head. ‘I agree with your Dada. Eleven-year-olds don’t need to go on a trip.’
‘Then why are Naman and Nishant going? They are ten-year-olds. They are practically infants compared to me.’
‘All those books and you keep using “literally” and “practically” in every sentence,’ I point out.
With a theatrical sigh, she comments, ‘I’m so unlucky. I’m like the unluckiest sister in all of time! OF ALL TIME!’
I save this barb too in that file. It’s not a fact. The fact was that she used to chime, ‘Dada is the best, Dada is amazing’ all the time just a couple of years ago.
‘They are going because Amruta doesn’t have any sense,’ I answer.
She glares at me. ‘Amruta Aunty has a lot of sense!’
‘I’m going to tell her not to send Naman and Nishant.’
She stomps her foot. ‘That’s why she’s not marrying you! You can throw away the wedding ring! Because she’s never going to marry you! No one’s going to marry you!’
Teflon, I’m Teflon.
‘You’ve got to come up with better insults, Rabbani.’
‘That’s a good insult,’ butts in Baba. ‘Being alone is cruel.’
‘Don’t get into this, Baba,’ I warn Baba. ‘And I’m not alone. I have you two.’
Her eyes roll in annoyance, ‘You can’t stick on to me like a parasite, Dada! You need to let me go! This is unfair!’
Her eyes are little pools of tears.
‘I’m Teflon.’
‘What?’
I compose myself. ‘I will let you go when you’re old enough. Right now? Absolutely not. You want to go to Manali? Be a traveller? Taste the wanderlust? We will all go!’
She swivels to bore her eyes into Baba. ‘Why did you not have me earlier? Who has their second kid fifteen years after the first?’
Baba sniggers. I forgive him. He’s at an age where people crack and find joy in inappropriate jokes.
Just as I’m about to speak, the doorbell cuts me off. I catch Rabbani smiling. Which only means one thing. She has called for a back-up.
* * *
‘You need to let her go,’ says Amruta, as she closes the door to my study which doubles up as an alternate podcast studio. ‘You can’t keep clutching her close to your chest all your life.’
From the living room, Rabbani’s voice filters in as she vents to her friends about me. It’s a strange twist of fate. In this very room, we have recorded podcasts where we’ve dissected the nature of overbearing family members. The irony hangs heavy in the air.
‘I have brainwashed Rabbani her entire life that there’s no better life out there than the one she lives with me,’ I respond, thinking of all the times I told her stories that siblings should always stay together. ‘You think that’s gone waste?’
‘Naman and Nishant will be there, too. They will look after each other. They are old enough.’
Naman and Nishant are Rabbani’s cronies. They do what Rabbani asks them to do. They are the only example of ‘If your friend does it, will you do it too?’ They would. They would happily jump into a well.
‘You mean Rabbani will take care of Naman and Nishant.’
‘It’s the same thing. The point is that they will be together. They will always be in touch. I have the numbers of all the teachers and the parents of the kids who are going. Everything.’
‘A list of phone numbers is not enough for me, sorry.’
She takes out a little box from her bag and slips it in front of me.
‘Here,’ she says. ‘It’s the watch every kid’s wearing these days. Naman and Nishant have theirs too. We can call them any time we want, video calls too. I have already put the SIM in it.’
I refuse to take the box. She keeps it on the table.
She draws in a breath and with a look of understanding, she says, ‘I know it’s hard for you.’
‘The fact that you’re using the word hard tells me you know nothing about how hard it is. Use a thesaurus and find a better word.’
‘But you’re overdependent on her, Daksh. It’s not normal. You’ve got to let her live a little.’
‘Live a little? Do I keep her locked in the house? She goes everywhere and does everything. All I’m saying is that I don’t want her to go to Manali with people I don’t know. That’s it.’
‘She’s not three years old any more, Daksh. She’s eleven.’
‘Then why does she talk like she’s fifteen?’
‘Will you let her go when she’s fifteen?’
‘Eighteen is fair, I think.’
She steps close to me and holds my hand. ‘You need to trust her. She’s smart and intelligent—’
‘I know all that already. I trust her, I just don’t trust the world. How is that so hard to understand?’
‘If you don’t let her go, you’re going to make her hate you. You literally don’t want that.’
We have given the same advice multiple times in our podcasts. And, of course, doling out advice is far easier than following it.
I grunt. ‘Has she picked the word “literally” from you? It’s annoying.’
‘Literally every teenager speaks like this.’
I hear a shuffling of footsteps just outside. I bet Rabbani is out there, eavesdropping against the door. I walk two steps closer to the door.
‘My decision is final,’ I say a bit loudly so Rabbani can hear it too. ‘Manali’s not even that good. Half that place has eroded, the noodles are overrated, and it’s not even that cold. Delhi gets colder.’
Amruta also picks up on the sound of footsteps just beyond the door. She approaches and pulls it open. Rabbani retreats quietly. With a soft click, Amruta shuts the door once more.
‘It’s not final because I have not told you the final piece of the puzzle. This trip is not only going to be good for them but for us. It’s a win-win.’
‘No matter—’
Noticing the glint in her eye, I choose to stay silent.
She says, ‘I’m giving you a chance to be twenty-eight.’
‘I’m already twenty-eight. If you’re like that vampire billionaire on Instagram who wants to stop ageing, then we can talk.’
‘To be twenty-eight for real,’ she says, her voice dripping with excitement.
‘What does that mean?’
She steps close.
‘You and I, we take a holiday. Without the kids. I have enough Marriott Bonvoy points. Just imagine, we will be just like everyone else. Two young people without a care in the world. We can party without having to come back to our rooms at nine.’
‘You are sleepy by nine,’ I remind her.
She holds my hands with both her tiny hands. Her eyes brim with hope and excitement. It’s like she’s already half there, on a beach, or a mountain, wherever she’s decided.
‘But it would be nice to have the option of getting drunk and being really hungover the next day and having nothing to do.’
‘That doesn’t sound like you, Amruta.’
‘Just think for a moment,’ she exhorts me.
‘We don’t have to be up at seven, fix their clothes, then make sure Rabbani, Nishant and Naman are having breakfast. We don’t have to scream at them to wear their clothes and leave the house.
It will be . . . just us. Think about it. We will be young again.’
We will be young again.
‘I don’t feel particularly old,’ I mumble.
‘You’re a thirty-five-year-old mother trapped in the body of a twenty-eight-year-old boy. You mothered Rabbani, you raised her, there should be more to you than—’
‘She raised me too. She made me all that I am today. Taking care of her is all I have known since I was nineteen.’
Amruta continues, ‘Maybe now it’s time to let go. You have to wean yourself off her. She’s a big girl now.’
‘She’s still little,’ I say, not fully believing my words.