Beach House Birthday and Other Stories

by Shobhaa De

  Beach House Birthday

  and Other Stories

  Lockdown Liaisons

  Book 4

  Shobhaa Dé

  Beach House Birthday and

  Other Stories

  Lockdown Liaisons

  A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER

  June 2020

  Cocooned in our small little worlds yet living through the most precarious and awful times - this has got to be a first in the collective memory of the whole wide world. Untouched by the footsteps of migrant workers in the hot sun we rave and rant on social media. And as always what helps us to retain our sanity in moments like this are words. Our own words and words from loved ones but even more than that, words from gifted writers who spin stories out of universal experiences, from thoughts and ideas half-formed in our minds.

  Simon & Schuster India is happy to bring to you short stories by the inimitable Shobhaa De as she captures the fragile zeitgeist of the pandemic in her own unique way - through stories that don’t provide an escape into la la land but rather stories of love that will make you sometimes smile, sometimes frown but at all times understand the subterranean world of shifting human emotions. The author, and her stories, don’t shy away from the tremulous uncertainties of the world as we know but rather help us to confront and understand it all, just a little bit better.

  Through these stories you will meet a host of interesting characters, dealing with the lockdown in ways that are unusual and unique. There is the woman who measures her life against the whistles of her neighbour’s pressure cooker, the doctor who tries to feebly justify a hard decision that she takes and the Bollywood star who is stuck in his lavish weekend home and raves and rants to no avail! Yet another narrative tells us about a wealthy and difficult old woman who is forced to spend lockdown in her caregiver’s small flat.

  I hope all of you enjoy reading the stories in this anthology and remember in these difficult times to be kind to yourselves, to the people you meet in the pages of this book and to those in your life and in the world outside.

  A PRESSURE COOKER ROMANCE

  My neighbour’s pressure cooker always annoyed me. God knows what that family ate and how many times, but I would hear that whistle at least twenty times a day - when I was home, that is. My life was different, being a field worker and all that. I don’t call myself an activist as such, because people get put off and become suspicious.

  I just say, ‘I am a research scholar’. It sounds better. I like to mind my own business and don’t let anybody poke their noses into mine. When I travel, I just lock my place and go. It is a small flat. Some would say it is very small. But my needs are minimal. I don’t cook at all. So maybe that is why that pressure cooker whistle bugs me. After the lockdown, I am stuck in this cramped space. And since I have never kept food stuff at home, I have been inconvenienced a lot. How much bread and butter can I eat and how often? I was used to drinking cutting chai when I was on the road. Sugary chai, which gave me the energy to keep walking.

  This is terrible! And each time I hear that whistle, it forces me to think of food. I don’t like feeling hungry and craving something which is out of my reach. That is how I have disciplined myself over the years. I need water - clean water. And tea. That’s enough for me. My colleagues used to find it odd that my kitchen stocked nothing - not even salt and sugar. What would I do with either when I had no use for all that? I didn’t believe in allowing my body to become dependent on such superficial requirements. I was happy to eat street food if necessary - vada pav was always available. And I kept biscuits in my handbag, since I had low blood pressure and had fainted during field work once or twice.

  My ‘Sir’ (I never call him by name) is a good person and keeps telling me, ‘Eat eat eat …’ I smile and lie, ‘I have eaten at home and come to work.’ Each time I think of food, I hear that pressure cooker whistle! These days I have started to hear it in my sleep. In fact, I have become obsessed by that sound - and miss it when there is a long gap between the whistles. That may be because it is the only sound I hear in the midst of this deathly silence. The road outside is normally so noisy, with several vendors going about here and there, up and down this gully, shouting and letting people know they have arrived. Someone who sharpens knives, another who collects old clothes in exchange for stainless steel glasses.

  I am accustomed to their cries. But with this lockdown, there is only silence. Even the stray dogs in the area have stopped barking. Everybody is so scared. Too scared if you ask me. I cannot see a soul on the little lane that leads to the bigger gully. I wonder where those people have disappeared? They don’t come to their windows, forget balconies. What do they think - that this Coronavirus is an eagle that will swoop from the sky and gouge out their eyes? Ignorant people, I tell you.

  Oh God! There goes the whistle. I counted… this is the seventh one since morning. Should I complain that the noise disturbs my sleep? How will it sound? That lady may ask, ‘Who sleeps till 11.30 in the morning?’ I do! Any problem? My choice when to get up - there is nothing to get up for!

  Except Sir’s phone. Yes, that is important. But I don’t know when he is going to phone, or even if he will call. It is not a fixed thing. Sir calls to check on me, he says. I suppose he must be worried - what if I get Corona and die? Nobody will let him know. And then he’ll have to look for a new research assistant. These days, that’s not easy. Nobody wants to do field work and go inside slums. I am used to it, so I don’t mind. Especially on days when Sir also comes and we go from house to house asking questions.

  Sometimes, the sex-workers in these slums ask Sir if I am his wife. He smiles and keeps quiet. I am not sure if Sir has a wife. I think he does not, or he would have mentioned it indirectly, especially now that he phones me, and it is not always about work. Sir said the lockdown is a good opportunity to understand life more deeply. He always says such encouraging things. Last week Sir also heard the pressure cooker whistle when he phoned to ask about the data I had collected.

  He asked, ‘I thought you said you don’t cook? But I just heard a pressure cooker whistle.’ I felt most embarrassed. And also happy - Sir had remembered my stray remark! I got a little nervous and started stammering, ‘No, Sir… I mean, yes, Sir… that is… it is not my whistle. My neighbour is whistling, not me, Sir.’ He was silent and then he started to laugh. It was the first time I had heard Sir laugh. So even I laughed. We both laughed for a good minute or so. The pressure cooker whistle had done the trick!

  Sir told me he would take me to his favourite snack bar once the lockdown was lifted. ‘After we go together on the next field trip to Pune.’ Had I heard right? Sir and me will be travelling to Pune? I closed my eyes and tried not to think too much. Just then the neighbour’s pressure cooker whistled again. I took it as a good omen.

  DOCTOR DOCTOR

  ‘I am tired of hearing how tired you are, okay? I am also tired. Everybody is tired. The whole world is tired.’ I didn’t mean to snap. But I had been through a long day myself. Looking after a Covid ward in an overcrowded public hospital is not a joke.

  The worst part was the wretched PPE suit. I used to feel like a broiled lobster once I got into it. None of us had any idea how grossly uncomfortable the entire drill would become - from clambering into the suit, then those shoe covers, gloves and face masks. Once we climbed inside that space suit we couldn’t really get out easily. Not even to pee! It was that cumbersome! Which meant we had to train our bladders and ignore nature’s call, no matter what.

  Yup. Those damn suits were that cumbersome. Some of my colleagues got UTIs because of it. I decided to be practical and switched to adult diapers. No choice! Nitin laughed and laughed when
he saw the packet. I thought that was a little mean of him. It’s not as if I was enjoying wearing those nappies! I had developed a rash on my private parts because of the discomfort of that scratchy diaper… he really should have been more sensitive. Did he even realise what it was like delivering babies in those wards? I hated the idea of bringing new life into this wretched Covid-19 world.

  My whole thinking had changed overnight. I was sure after we had dealt with this virus, there would be another… and another… and another. Nitin found such talk morbid and told me I needed to consult our common psychiatrist friend. He made it sound like I was going nuts, when I knew it was the additional stress of hospital duty and nothing else!

  Yes, even those shooting pains in my neck… stress! Common condition, I kept saying, with him asking, ‘Then how come I am not showing all these weird symptoms? As if I am not dealing with stress.’

  I told him we were not competing in the stress department. My stress was my stress. How would he know my threshold? It wasn’t as if I was faking all this. He made it sound like I was a compulsive attention seeker, dying to focus on myself, when all of us needed to reach out and help other, more vulnerable people. I told him not to lecture me. Either he understood my position, or he didn’t.

  He said, ‘I don’t! Remember, I am also a doctor. If I don’t “understand”, nobody else will. Remember also, you are a highly qualified, very successful gynae, not an illiterate, unpadh village woman. You should be able to take care of all these new demands without making such a song and dance over it.’ And he stupidly mentioned the names of my colleagues, saying, ‘See how they are behaving! Learn from them.’

  Bloody insensitive! I was so furious! Those Covid wards were worse than hell. He had been spared the ordeal. But I had been roped in, even though I was most reluctant. I had tried to make some excuse and get out of reporting for duty. This was just not fair! So much pressure on doctors, as if they were not ordinary human beings, also worried about their own health. I didn’t want to die of Covid!

  And how much precaution could I take, in any case? My husband was behaving like an unpadh himself and insisting large, imported tablets of Vitamin C swallowed three times a day, would make us both totally immune to picking up the virus. Next he would tell me to swallow what that ass Trump was swallowing and recommending.

  I had said nicely, ‘Please watch those reports and briefings on CNN - there is no cure for Covid! Even if a vaccine is found tomorrow morning, we still won’t get it at a pharmacy for two more years. Stop behaving like our foolish neighbours! They aren’t doctors - we are!’ That Mrs. Gupta keeps sending me Whatsapp messages about drinking three gallons of hot turmeric water daily and biting into soaked peppercorns.

  I told her straight, ‘If you think this is a preventive, why isn’t the whole world taking it?’ She shut up after that.

  When I worked and slaved to become a doctor, I chose to become a gynae. That was then! How could I have anticipated this Covid thing hitting the world? I certainly hadn’t imagined I would be sweating it out for 14–18 hours in a stinking, overcrowded hospital, delivering babies of women who had tested positive. Some were asymptomatic. Others were running fever and coughing. Frankly, nobody wanted to touch them! Even the nurses were scared. So many had left their jobs and gone back to their villages in Kerala, which meant we were hopelessly short-staffed in those wards.

  Every single day, I would pull out wiggly babies from those infected wombs and go to the loo to throw up! I had started to hate the sight of full term, swollen stomachs, with inverted belly buttons and discoloured skin. The whole point of pregnancy had started to nauseate me all of a sudden. I wanted to tell these women something… shout at them… scold them. What fools! Idiots! One more hungry mouth to feed in this terrible world! Those kids would have to deal with toxic gases, polluted seas, wars and worse epidemics in the future. Was it worth it? I couldn’t sleep at night, with my dark, bad thoughts. I often lay awake contemplating killing those squirming things… those newborns… strangling them with the umbilical cord and throwing them into the garbage bin. Couldn’t these mothers see what they had done? I was losing it!

  My husband and I had met in medical school, he was my senior. But somehow we were on the same wavelength from the very first meeting in the maternity ward, when I was the junior doctor, whose job was to go from ward to ward, checking the blood pressure of pregnant ladies and also checking their ankles for swelling. I would do the rounds enthusiastically… especially when our senior doctors turned up, along with the nursing staff.

  I was living in the hostel, and this senior doctor actually noticed me in a group of five junior doctors. He singled me out, and tried to test my competence by telling me to examine a woman who was in her third trimester and experiencing discomfort… spotting. Never a good sign. I must have impressed him, as he started to ask for me by name whenever he came for his rounds. By the time I graduated, he was already a well-established ‘Doctor Nitinsaab’, an ENT consultant with a good practice.

  We had been dating throughout those demanding years - with the approval of both families. When my mother asked anxiously, ‘Is it a good idea for a doctor to marry another doctor?’ Nitin beamed, put his arm around me and replied, ‘The best idea! We understand the pressures and know how to cope during emergencies.’

  He was right. We had the training not to allow work pressures to get to us. Nitin was well-respected in his field as the go-to ENT chap, while I had a decent reputation as a gynae. Between us, we made good money. Oh yes! Mumbai was great for well-qualified professionals like us - it was a teeming metropolis filled with very sick and very rich people.

  My client base was made up of wealthy, pregnant bahus who came to see me each time they experienced a ‘symptom’ - such stupid things - those symptoms! Did they have zero common sense? Not that I was complaining - each time they walked in, I made three thousand rupees telling them not to worry, everything was going fine with the pregnancy.

  ‘Dr. A’, they called me, and I liked appearing cool, young, understanding and clued in with these silly, spoilt creatures. South Mumbai socialites and their pampered daughters-in-law would coo, ‘Mummyji only trusts Dr. A.’ They would tell everybody proudly, ‘We are part of Dr. A’s super exclusive baby club. My gawwwwd! Her waiting list is crazy! I’m so glad she somehow managed to fit me in, when one of her patients slipped in the jacuzzi and had a miscarriage. Yaaa… I know, so saaaad, na?’

  In that sense, Nitin and I weren’t competitors. Nor did our crazy hours interrupt our social life. It did not really interfere with our sex life either - you know? We managed somehow, between his appointments and mine! Coitus Interruptus? That was us! Champions at quickies. Like most docs. We had a super set of cool friends. It was understood weekends were for fun. We both avoided working on Sundays, so we could enjoy our drinks on Saturday, watch a movie, go to the club bar. It was great that things had worked out very nicely. No loans to worry about, two foreign trips, a staff of three. And best of all - two drivers. Mine and his.

  Then came the news about my driver Haribhau testing positive.

  I had suspected something was wrong when he complained of a headache as we were driving to the temporary Covid-19 maternity ward in the hospital for an emergency C-section. I asked if he had fever and he said ‘no’. He had been staying in the garage downstairs from the time the lockdown was announced. Which was a good thing. If he had gone to his home in Andheri, he would have been stuck there and unable to report for duty. The driver network in our building was very good. Some of them decided to stay in the basement, which had two bathrooms for workers. I was so relieved when Haribhau told me he was downstairs, and I could call him up for duty anytime. I discussed it with my my husband and we decided to give him two meals, tea, coffee and biscuits, bottled water, sanitizer, soap, two towels and a deo. Better he ate clean food from our kitchen rather than what the other drivers cooked in that filthy basement. Haribhau was thankful. He asked for a small advance to be sent to
his wife and mother staying in his room in the suburbs. I was a bit startled. I had no idea he had a wife and a mother! What I mean is, I had not given his personal life any thought.

  Mind you, the decision to stay with other drivers in that basement had been taken by Haribhau himself. I had not asked him to stay there. He said he needed the salary and didn’t want to risk losing his job once the lockdown was lifted. We were totally fine with it. Frankly, I was relieved and secretly delighted. But I didn’t show it to Haribhau. Didnt want him to take advantage of the situation and ask for more money. We were not like those other horrible people who exploited servants. We had decided to pay salaries in full. We understood these are poor people. And they were not shirking duty. They were willing to drive us wherever. But there was nowhere to go! They were there ‘on duty’, but minus any duties. Most of our friends thought we were mad! They had not paid their staff at all! Some had reluctantly given half a month’s salary. They told us, ‘You are being ridiculous... do we get paid if we don’t work?’ In a way, they had a point.

  ‘How can we pay for work that is not being done? You mean, we should pay for them to sit at home aaram se, doing nothing? Makkhi maroing, while we have to suffer so much inconvenience! My house plants have not been watered in weeks! How can I lift heavy buckets of water and water them?’ said the wife of Nitin’s golfing partner.

  Another said she had cut four days’ salary, since the lockdown was announced on the 24th of the month, and her daily cleaning lady had not been allowed into the building after that day. Nitin and I were not so stingy and unreasonable. Our building people were also equally generous. We all agreed it was a blessing to have at least one or two staff members with us during the lockdown. We didn’t mind paying them a little extra also. I told Haribhau the same thing - ‘I will pay you something more after this Corona problem ends. Don’t worry.’ I couldn’t drive. And Nitin had said clearly he wasn’t going to do ‘driver duty’.