Frangipani

Geeta starts from home having gone through a rushed morning routine of packing lunch for her 10 year old and for her husband. She also stops by to check on her in-laws who stay a couple of blocks away. All done, she ticks off in her head. And then heads out to her workplace. She debates between being extravagant and taking an auto or getting pushed around in the Metro. She’s hoping that an auto will show up first and she will be able to take that as an excuse for spending more on herself. 10 mins, no luck! Geeta decides to walk towards the Metro station. As she is about to cross the road, a bike zooms past and a shining new BlackBerry falls to the road with a thud. Her instant reaction is to pick it up. And then, a minute later, start the doubts and the questions. Geeta starts cursing herself for having picked it up and not minding her own business. She thinks if she should just wait for the biker to return to claim it, if yes, for how long should she wait? She looks around furtively...

It was a cold winter evening in New Delhi and we were busy thinking what to cook for dinner. We had to give it more thought than usual because Aju and Aie (my maternal grandparents) were visiting us and they wouldn’t relish a quickly cooked up dinner. While we hummed and hawed about it in the tiny kitchen, we had left Aju and Aie in the living room. Both of them were covered from head to foot and Aju was also wearing his woolen cap. The TV was on and the news reader was talking about the falling temperatures in the city with images of the homeless on Delhi’s streets. We went into the room just to check on them if they were comfortable. Immediately, Aju freshly influenced by the images on TV and the growing coldness said – “Let’s have bread and soup. And don’t spend too much time in the kitchen in this cold.” While we thought that was unusual and he wouldn’t really relish it, I knew that Aju had thought of all of us being together in the warm room and so that we didn’t feel the guilt of...