Meet Me In the Middle

by Vani Mahesh

  ‘Shwetha, we will go to your place. I don’t want you to waste your afternoon cleaning up my house!’ Anu insisted. Shwetha was like Sanju. Obsessive about keeping things tidy and if she saw Anu’s house now, one of two things would happen—she would faint looking at the mess, or if she managed not to, then she would clean it till eternity.

  Once into Shwetha’s cosy warm clothes, Anu picked up the large cup of coffee waiting for her. Tucking her legs underneath her, Anu took a contented sip.

  ‘What is happening with you and Dini, Shwetha?’ asked Anu.

  Shwetha was quiet for a bit and then shrugged. ‘He wants to get married soon and wants me to move to the UK.’

  Anu’s heart skipped a beat. She knew that day would come and she was the happiest for her friend, but losing Shwetha to the UK was somehow an unbearable thought. ‘Shwetha, think about it. I feel you are hoping for Dini to change his mind about living in the UK and move back to Bangalore. But he won’t.’

  Shwetha smiled. ‘I am not like you, Anu. You are very sure of what you want but I always oscillate.’

  ‘You will know what to do, Shwetha. Take a day off from work and think.’ Anu lifted her coffee cup in a toast. ‘Here is to Shwetha and Dini’s happy ending.’

  Sanju was going to arrive that night and luckily Radha was back that morning. Anu had to bring Vicky back since her parents were going to an out-of-town wedding. If there was a world record for the maximum weddings attended in a lifetime, her parents would win it hands down.

  ‘Just take care of Vicky for now, Radha. No need to cook. I will bring you food. We will clean the house together.’

  Yashoda aunty had asked Anu to take her for a quick round of grocery shopping. Now that Radha was around, Anu felt relieved. Just as she was about to leave, the doorbell rang. Anu knitted her brows thinking if she had ordered anything online. Well, she only ordered in the first week of the month; after that, she was usually too broke for shopping. Radha opened the door, and Anu gaped at the figure that stood before her.

  5

  ‘Sanju! You are early!’

  ‘No, I am not! You thought I was coming at 2 in the night, didn’t you?’ Sanju shook his head in desperation. ‘Get the dates and time right, Anu!’

  ‘Where do I even sit here? It looks like a haunted house.’ Sanju’s voice held despair as he glanced around.

  Radha quickly removed the newspapers from the sofa, and Anu shoved the plates and cups underneath it. Then she smiled brightly. ‘Here! Sit now.’

  To her relief, a smile played on Sanju’s lips. ‘Very clean now. Where are you going all dressed up?’ He asked, stretching on the sofa. ‘Where is Vivikth?’

  ‘Daddy! Find me … find me!’ The joy in Vicky’s voice from behind the door was unmistakable.

  Sanju picked him up. ‘Hey Champ, what are you doing?’

  Vicky wiggled out of Sanju’s arms, ‘Daddy, play hide and seek with me.’

  Anu intervened. ‘Vicky! Daddy has just come. He will play with you later. Now go play with Radha aunty.’

  Radha handed them both a cup of tea and took Vicky out. Remembering that she had to cancel with Yashoda aunty, Anu picked up her phone.

  ‘I have just come, and you are all ready to head out.’ Sanju flashed a look of disapproval.

  ‘Nope. I am cancelling my date with Yashoda aunty.’ Anu snuggled next to Sanju.

  ‘So you thought I can still get a girl for an affair? I am quite flattered.’ Sanju put an arm around Anu pulling her closer.

  ‘Well, you are a sugar daddy now. You have your appeal with the young.’ Anu smiled. ‘Sanju, if I die, will you remarry?’

  ‘Hmm … if I am still young and dashing like now, I will. If I am old and gnarly, I won’t. You?’

  ‘Just the opposite. If I am still young and dashing, I won’t settle into a marriage. If I am old and gnarly, I will.’

  Sanju began to laugh. ‘I won’t die ever then!’

  Anu felt good. It was nice to have Sanju back. In a way, she even liked the discipline he forced into her life. But though he was laughing and having a good time, his moodiness in the last few days bothered her. She was tempted to shoot her volley of questions at him right away, but decided to wait. Why spoil a good moment?

  But Sanju’s good mood was short-lived. He was back to being sulky and snappy within no time. The bedroom was a mess, she had left the laptop plugged in, the bathroom had too many of her clothes—he was testing Anu’s patience. Sanju had borderline obsessive compulsive disorder but he never got this irritated with things around him.

  Anu decided to let him sleep on it. When she couldn’t fall asleep up until midnight, she texted Shwetha. ‘Call Sanju’s phone in the morning. If he doesn’t answer it, I might have murdered him.’

  ‘Done. Hide the evidence.’ Replied Shwetha.

  But Sanju hadn’t cheered up even by next morning. As Sameer had pointed out, Sanju was not one of those chirpy kind of men but even by his standards, he was too mopey. By afternoon, when he was walking around, moodily picking things up and tidying the edges of the sofa covers, Anu decided enough was enough.

  ‘Sanju, why are you looking like death? What’s wrong?’

  ‘I am not heading a happiness project like you, Anu. Allow me to be how I am.’

  ‘Well, your ways affect the progress of my happiness project.’ Anu flashed him a murderous look. ‘So, spill it, Sanju. Did you lose your job? Do you have VD? Do you—’

  ‘Stop, Anu!’ Sanju shrugged in despair. ‘There is nothing wrong per se. Just that I don’t want to live like this.’ He pointed around him.

  Anu was taken aback. The messy house is causing this distress? He wasn’t even around for three months to see the mess!

  ‘Hey, we can clean it up. No big deal.’ Anu tried not to sound offended, though she amply was.

  ‘No, Anu. Not the mess.’ Sanju added quickly, ‘Not just the mess, at least. I want a better lifestyle. Like what my boss has in the US. His suburban house was straight out of a magazine. He dines in style, drives in style, lives in style. Period.’ Sanju always acquired an accent and Americanisms like Period when he returned from the US.

  Anu furrowed her brows in disbelief. ‘You want to move to the US?’

  Sanju shook his head. ‘No. Don’t panic. Even if we move there, it will take a decade before we can afford that life. And, with the policies of Trump, moving to the US is not even a possibility. I want to live that life here. It is possible, you know.’

  Anu remained silent waiting for Sanju to finish. She could not gauge what his angle was.

  ‘See, we could have lived in the US but you never wanted to move. So I gave that up. Look at the roads here, the traffic, the footpath, the noise—I want to live in a place that at least shields us from all this.’

  ‘Where is such a place, Sanju?’ Anu felt an irrational anger rise within her. When anyone criticized Bangalore, her antennas went up. She loved her city with all its trappings.

  ‘Let us move to a nice house in a classy neighbourhood. A villa in North Bangalore, like in Hennur or Hebbal. Like the one Dave rents when he is in India.’

  Anu almost jumped back in horror. Her mouth went dry, and her heartbeat became erratic. What is he saying? He knew she did not have the stomach for such drastic changes in life! He knew that for more than a decade. ‘Hennur! That is not even Bangalore! Hope you will get over this thought once you are not jetlagged.’

  Sanju sighed. ‘Anu, I am serious. At least let us look at some houses, okay?’

  Anu kept shaking her head. ‘I could have married anyone in the US if I wanted to move! I chose you because you wanted to stay around here as much as I did.’

  ‘You do firmly believe that marrying me was an act of kindness, don’t you?’ Sanju smiled amusedly and ruffled Anu’s hair.

  ‘Not just marrying you but making a nice life for us. See, you don’t do a thing around the house, except smoothen the edges of the sofa covers. Neither do I. That is because I have carefully c
ollected people who ease our lives. Now you want to throw this all away for some absurd dream?’

  ‘Why are my dreams all absurd? Come on, Anu.’

  Plonking on the sofa and stretching her legs on to the magazine table, Anu turned on the TV. She could not continue with the discussion anymore. She could not imagine uprooting her life from Vijaynagar.

  ‘How can I abandon my friends, family, Jake’s, Yashoda aunty, Supriyaji, my school?’ Anu waved her hands dramatically. ‘And, Kavitha!’

  Claiming the seat next to her, Sanju muted the television. ‘Kavitha will follow you anyway. And the others are not going away anywhere. They will all be here and you can add more people to your collection in a new place. You will think about it, right?’

  Anu nodded wearily. Sanju was nice, kind, and adjusting, but was also like a broken record when he wanted something. He wore Anu down. ‘Sanju, is it just the house and the car that bother you or us too?’

  Sanju stretched next to Anu and pulled her to him. ‘You are perfect. I don’t want you to change at all.’

  Feeling all warm-fuzzy with the rare compliment, Anu declared. ‘Vicky is perfect too.’

  ‘He is. Though you could cut his nails and clean his nose more often.’

  ‘Done. Now can we watch TV? Before your snotty little boy comes in like a hurricane?’ Anu smiled. Sanju never prolonged any fight. They hadn’t stopped talking to each other even for a day in the past ten years. Well, except for six months once. A story for another time.

  ‘Think about what I said.’ Sanju was going to be relentless unless she gave in. She knew it already.

  Anu threw the head back, sighed, and nodded. ‘Okay, milord.’

  When the school reopened after two days, Anu felt quite delighted. Holidays had meaning only when there was work. And, she couldn’t wait to showcase her revamped wardrobe after the Amazon Great Indian sale. Luckily, Sanju was so busy at work, he hadn’t pestered her with the think-about-it phrase. So she was secretly hoping that he would forget all about it soon.

  Dropping Vicky to his class room, Anu walked into her class. ‘Anu ma’am, my birthday today.’

  ‘Anu ma’am, I went to the beach.’

  ‘Anu ma’am, I saw a pallot, tigel and fox,’

  The shrill excited voices surrounded Anu. It was a herculean task to quieten them down so Anu decided to close the classroom door and let them squeal.

  At lunch break, the principal summoned the teachers to let them know that the meeting with the parents was going to be in two days. She looked so worried, Anu had an unreasonable urge to make all the trouble magically go away for her dear Sumitra aunty.

  When Anu came home with Vicky, Sanju was already seated on the sofa surrounded by colourful brochures. He looked up and smiled brightly at Anu. ‘Look, all I had to do was ask a developer who visited our campus about the houses in the Hennur area. He sent in these many options.’ He pointed at the glitzy papers on the table.

  ‘Daddy, make an aeroplane!’ Vicky’s highly excited voice brought Anu back to reality. Sanju hadn’t forgotten about the move as she had hoped. Darn!

  ‘No, Vicky. We will make aeroplanes with the newspaper. Go get some. These are daddy’s work papers.’ Sanju grabbed the glossies before Vicky did.

  ‘Newspaper not good, daddy.’ Vicky pouted.

  Anu picked up Vicky and said weakly. ‘He is hungry, Sanju. Let me give him something to eat.’

  She was tempted to pick up all those brochures and blow them out of the window. They were her worst nightmares in technicolour.

  ‘Come soon, Anu. We will make a map of the places to visit.’ Anu did not have the heart to burst Sanju’s enthusiasm. But she had her routine in place. After feeding herself and Vicky, she was going to take a nap. Then she had her yoga class. After that, she was going to take Vicky to the playground and chat with Yashoda aunty or Kavitha or someone. Anu sighed. This was the beginning of the end.

  Half-an-hour later, Anu put Vicky down for a nap and sat beside Sanju with a heavy heart. He began by holding up four glossies as if they were winning poker hands. Anu picked up the one that looked all white and serene. ‘Riviera?’ She laughed. ‘Seriously, Sanju? Have they created a coast in Bangalore?’

  Sanju smiled. ‘Don’t pick on the names. Look at the credentials. See this.’ He showed her a brochure named Helios. ‘This is in Hebbal. Built by—’

  Anu cut him off. ‘Oh, wait! You said Hennur and now you are showing me Hebbal? That is another ten kilometres from here!’

  Sanju slightly knitted his brows. ‘Why are you measuring the distance from Vijaynagar? We should think about my commute to work.’

  As if only his work mattered. Anu felt offended. ‘I still have to work here and visit my parents.’

  Sanju shook his head vehemently. ‘No, Anu. You will work there, not here! Also, I have been commuting twenty kilometres to work all these years! So you can travel twenty once a week to visit your parents.’

  Anu looked at him disbelievingly. ‘You sleep in your office cab both ways. How does the distance matter to you? I meet my parents five times a week, not once a week!’

  When Sanju grew quiet and gathered the brochures, Anu knew she had pushed him too far. ‘Hey, sorry. Sit down.’ She patted on the sofa next to her. ‘We will look through them.’

  Finally, that weekend they were going to visit two places in Hennur and two in Hebbal. All of them looked so posh, Anu made a mental note to check if any movie star had a weekend home there. A selfie with Upendra or Yash would look good on the DP.

  Anu picked up her coffee from the self-service counter and looked for a table to sit. The meeting with the school parents was in another half hour. Her colleague Disha was going to join her for the coffee. As there were no empty tables, Anu sat on one that was occupied by two women.

  One of the women seemed to look distinctly uncomfortable with Anu sharing the table. Anu smiled at her. ‘You are not from here, are you? It is common to table share here.’

  But the woman instead of smiling and saying it was okay, looked a bit irritated. ‘Then thank god I am not from here.’

  That was rude! Anu looked at the other woman who looked familiar and mildly embarrassed. Before Anu said anything, her phone rang. Shwetha. Anu forgot all about the women and perked up. Disha too joined her with her coffee.

  ‘Hey Shwetha,’ Anu began enthusiastically when Shwetha asked where she was. ‘I had told you, no? Meeting with the parents today? Silly that they are worried about the education of their toddlers.’

  Anu felt Disha’s foot on hers and withdrew hers. Then continued. ‘Some parents are demanding that the school affiliates with a central board. Overenthusiastic folks, man. They can’t let their children enjoy childhood.’

  Disha’s foot kicked hard at her shin. Anu moved her chair a little and bid goodbye to Shwetha. Now, the rude woman caught Anu’s eye and asked. ‘Couldn’t help overhearing you. Are you a teacher?’

  Anu perked up and enthused. ‘I am. Today we have a meeting where we have to convince the parents that our school is good.’ Anu rolled her eyes. ‘We have the best system. Kids are not stressed with exams or homework.’

  Disha whispered, ‘Anu, listen—’

  But the rude woman cut in. ‘So, you don’t think the kids need to develop a competitive spirit through exams? Don’t we need to teach children to work hard?’

  ‘That will happen with time. Also, children have to work hard if they want to. Not because of parental pressure.’ Anu was now feeling uncomfortable with the belligerence the woman was showing.

  Disha stood up and walked out and Anu followed her murmuring a bye to the woman. As soon as they were out of the hotel, Disha blurted. ‘Anu! One of them is a parent at the school. You went on saying so much!’

  Anu blushed in anxiety. What had she done? How damaging were her statements? Disha assured her that nothing was too bad and Anu decided to go with it.

  Vicky was playing with the other teachers’ kids in the play area,
with an Ayah watching over them. Anu peeked in to make sure he was doing all right. He was rolling in the sandpit like a cute puppy. The thing with Vicky was, he was an influencer. Even as Anu watched, two other kids joined him in the roll-in-the-mud game. Anu shrugged and moved towards the meeting room.

  ‘Anu,’ she heard Kavitha’s voice call her name. The principal had insisted on sending out an email to all the parents to join in. Luckily, there were only about twenty of them.

  ‘Hey Kavitha, why are you here?’ Anu waved and stopped.

  ‘Just came. We can go back together, no? We can have a Masala Dosa and coffee on the way home?’ Kavitha was like the boyfriend one never had. She was so eager to be with Anu at any given opportunity!

  ‘Okay! See you at the meeting.’ Anu agreed. Who can say no to Dose and coffee?

  By the time she entered, the parents were seated and the teachers had gathered on the podium next to the principal.

  ‘Why are there only four teachers?’ Anu asked the principal in a low voice all the while scanning for the parent she was supposed to have met. They weren’t there!

  ‘After school hours. They all must have gone home.’ The principal answered a bit dejectedly. Anu couldn’t believe the teachers. This was a time to show their support and they went home?

  Anu excused herself to go into the school office. Luckily, four staffers were still at work and Anu dragged them to the meeting room, instructing them to simply stand confidently and nod in vehement agreement at everything the principal said.

  Sumitra aunty’s eyes lit up when Anu came back with the office staff but Anu’s heart sank. The two women from the coffee shop were seated right in the front.

  The meeting began with the principal welcoming everyone. Then she opened up the floor for questions.

  ‘What is the future of our kids if we continue here?’ The questions started hard and rude.

  ‘The same as any child studying in any school! Here children are learning to gain knowledge, not to ace exams.’ Anu admired Sumitra aunty’s soft yet confident voice.