Every Time It Rains

by Nikita Singh

  After that minute passed, Laila picked up her bag and her phone and got out of the car. She walked determinedly to Two, leaving the poor, sad Laila behind in the car.

  Aparna, the girl who worked the counter at Two looked up as Laila walked in. Her face split into a wide smile as she sang, ‘Good morning, Laila ma’am!’

  ‘A very good morning to you too, girl,’ Laila sang back. ‘By the way, any update on when you’re going to stop calling me ma’am?’

  ‘But you’re almost ten years older than me!’

  ‘Wow. Always nice to be reminded that I’m getting old first thing in the morning!’

  ‘NO!’ Aparna looked mortified. ‘I mean, no, of course you’re not old or anything. Damn, I wish I was your age. You’re so beautiful and confident and … perfect … I wish I could be more like you.’ Aparna’s soft voice became even softer towards the end of her fangirl episode, which she clearly felt embarrassed about, judging by the flush in her cheeks.

  Laila tried not to laugh or hurt her feelings. So she nodded shortly and said, ‘I feel honoured,’ as seriously as she could. Aparna was a sweet kid, fresh out of school, about to start college, full of hopes and dreams—everything an eighteen-year-old should be. No, she shouldn’t want to be like me, Laila thought with a grimace.

  After leaving her bag in the miniscule office, Laila walked across the bakery to the kitchen. ‘Yo! All good?’

  Javed, their assistant baker, was on the floor, on all fours, clearly looking for something. He abruptly turned to look up at Laila and bumped his head on the counter in the process. ‘Ouch! No, all is not good.’ He massaged his head with his fingers and bent back down, resuming his hunt for the mysterious lost item.

  ‘Really?’ Laila leaned against the door frame lazily and continued to watch Javed. From that angle, she got a prominent view of his butt. ‘You look pretty good from here.’

  Javed snorted. ‘That’s sexual harassment.’

  ‘Sue me.’ Laila crossed the kitchen and peeked through the oven door. ‘What’s cooking?’

  ‘I’m baking some red velvet cupcake bases for Maahi. She said she wanted about two dozen sent over to One before noon,’ Javed said, appearing from under the counter with a measuring cup victoriously clutched in his hand.

  ‘She hasn’t sent over the cupcakes yet?’

  ‘She did—coconut with sour cream frosting or something strange like that. She wasn’t very happy with them, so we’re redoing Cupcake of the Day.’

  ‘We have enough of the Classics and Crowd Pleasers though?’ Laila asked, checking the display unit. ‘How are we doing with Creatives today?’

  ‘There’s the coconut thing, the red velvet thing—whatever Maahi’s planning to do with them—and there’s banana cupcakes with rainbow nuts from yesterday.’

  ‘We’re selling stale food now?’

  ‘Well, technically, we baked them in the evening, so we’re still well within the twenty-four-hour window,’ Javed said. ‘Do you have any ideas for today? I can start as soon as I know what I’m baking.’

  ‘What’s up with the attitude, man?’ Laila frowned. ‘Isn’t the menu on the calendar?’

  ‘Oh, yes. We have the timetable, all right. But it’s blank.’

  ‘Get started on the Classics and Crowd Pleasers then. Use your judgment on the numbers—go back to the books and estimate according to the quantities we sold last week. I’ll talk to Maahi and come up with something for the Creatives,’ Laila said, texting Maahi as she spoke. ‘Meanwhile, I’ll ask Ram to prepare the bases and frostings for Bake Your Own and have them sent over here when he’s done.’

  ‘Got it.’

  ‘You good on inventory here?’

  ‘Shit, I forgot—we’re running low on sugars. We’ll last today, maybe tomorrow, but all we’ve got is cane sugar, corn syrup and molasses. Seriously low on honey and other brown sugars,’ Javed said, counting off the list on his fingers.

  ‘We’ve ordered dark brown, so it should be here today. I’ll check if we have any light brown in One and have it brought over. Hold on,’ Laila noted all of it quickly on her phone. ‘I think we’re fine on flours, fats and flavours? I’m asking Maahi to check spices, dry fruits and toppings.’

  ‘We could do with some fresh fruit.’

  ‘Noted. If you think of more things, email me whenever. But make sure it’s in the same thread and please, please, please email. I’d like my WhatsApp to not be bombarded with one word texts throughout the day.’

  Javed sniffed. ‘That was only the one time! And we were in a serious crisis.’

  ‘All I’m asking is for you to please gather your thoughts and form one message with all the information. If you can’t wait for your thoughts to collect, send me whatever pops into your head by email so that I’ll at least have all pieces in one place.’ Laila laughed.

  ‘Whatever, dude.’

  Laila laughed harder. ‘Seriously, though, you have to tell me what’s up. Why are you in such a bad mood?’

  Javed began pulling out utensils and slamming them on the counter one by one. ‘It’s my life. My whole life,’ he said, measuring flour and transferring it into a huge mixing bowl.

  ‘Sure. That really narrows it down.’

  ‘This isn’t funny. Not everything is funny.’

  ‘I’m aware,’ Laila said, setting up the KitchenAid stand mixer for him. ‘What happened to your whole life?’

  ‘Vedika’s family. We finally got her parents to agree to meet mine, but now there’s this whole drama about where to meet. Vedika’s sisters and cousins were all “shown” for marriage or whatever in temples and my Ammi and Abbu don’t want to go to a temple to “see” Vedika.’

  ‘Where do they want to meet?’

  ‘Anywhere but a temple.’ Javed shook his head. ‘I swear to God—all the gods—this is the twenty-first century but nothing’s changed. This Hindu-Muslim conflict is still very real. I don’t know why we can’t just follow our own religious beliefs without undermining others’, you know? It’s so frustrating.’

  ‘It is.’ Laila nodded. ‘But I guess you’d be better off concentrating on smaller problems at the moment—one small solution at a time. Decide on a neutral ground to meet. Maybe a restaurant?’

  ‘That would be giving in and accepting their terms, when my parents are clearly wrong by refusing to go to a temple. Allah doesn’t have a problem with Krishna!’

  ‘You’ve got to pick your battles if you want to win the war, man. The point is—let this one go. Meet them in the middle, compromise, get it over with. There might well be bigger, more important battles you’ll need to save your energy for.’

  Javed thought for a moment before shrugging. ‘I guess that makes sense. It’s just so narrow-minded and annoying. Anyway, how come you have so much gyaan?’

  Laila snorted. ‘It’s easier to have perspective on things when you’re not the one dealing with them. I’m not in it, so I have all this gyaan for you.’

  ‘For a second there, I was concerned about you. I thought you were turning all philosophical and deep.’

  ‘Well, I’m not, but I am still your boss, so get to work!’

  ‘Yes, boss,’ Javed said, tipping his invisible hat.

  Laila checked on a few more things at Two before going to One, leaving Javed and Aparna in charge. When she got there, things barely seemed under control.

  ‘Whoa! What’s all this?’ she asked, walking into the disaster zone.

  ‘Don’t ask. Been putting out one fire after another all morning. First, the new coconut recipe turned out to be a disaster. Then Ram called and said he’ll be coming in late today. I’ve been alone here and now the oven’s exploded.’

  ‘Exploded?’ Laila inspected the oven, which was splattered with semi-cooked dough mixed with burnt crumbs. ‘What the fuck happened here?’

  Maahi was shaking her head furiously. ‘My cupcakes exploded. I did everything right—I’ve done it a million times. But I put this batch in and started working on the
Creatives over there and heard some sort of electrical noise … there were suddenly sparks and fumes. I couldn’t turn the oven off right away because of the sparks coming out of the sockets, so I tried the digital buttons at the front. Didn’t work. Eventually, it got worse and finally the oven gave up and died!’ Maahi was out of breath. ‘The cupcakes exploded. Can you believe it? I spent hours on the recipe. Literally all morning!’

  ‘Cupcakes exploding isn’t the same as the oven exploding. This is a bigger mess to clean but less dangerous.’

  ‘Trust me—it was plenty scary! What do we do now? I’m still running behind on the Creatives for today—the first one sucked and we lost this one. And now the oven died! Dammit, not today. I don’t have time for this!’

  ‘I’ll take care of it,’ Laila said mildly, sinking down to the floor to look at the damage to the wires, which looked fried.

  ‘No, I’ll take care of it! You already have your hands full with Two.’

  ‘Well, I did my baking last night, so I can be a businesswoman now. You go be a baker.’

  ‘Are you sure? I mean, you’re already so overworked. Don’t worry, if it’s really inconvenient for you, I can totally do it,’ Maahi said, but her face betrayed how terrified she was.

  Laila laughed. The oven was switched off, but as a precaution, she held a part of the burned wire carefully and pulled it out of the socket. ‘Dude, you need to chill. Cookies + Cupcakes is all about fun and rainbows, remember? I’ve got this.’

  ‘You have this?’

  ‘I’ve got this!’

  Maahi exhaled in relief. ‘Oh, thank God,’ she said.

  ‘Which one?’ Laila asked, her mind going back to her conversation with Javed.

  ‘Whichever one sent you here today.’

  ‘That’d be Krishna and Allah.’

  ‘Is that supposed to mean something?’ Maahi asked, starting a fresh batch of cupcakes.

  ‘Javed’s having problems with both his and Vedika’s families. The whole Hindu-Muslim thing.’

  ‘Oh, right. He told me about it. It’s so sad. They’re so in love and so good together. They should be excited about having found each other but instead, they have to go through this family drama.’

  ‘It’s definitely not going to be an easy road. Because these aren’t everyday issues for us, we think that they don’t really exist anymore,’ Laila said. She thought about when she was a kid, she would go to school and make friends without the question of religion or caste ever occurring to her. Because her mother was a progressive woman, a teacher, she never allowed these discriminations to grow in Laila’s mind. And they were taught equality and unity in school, given moral science classes. Such stories of religious tension seemed like something they only read about in history books but never noticed in real life. It was only as she grew up that she slowly started seeing how much of a reality the tension was. The unfair stereotypes and animosity towards people from different religions still very much existed, and many people lived with it every day.

  ‘But it exists for Javed and Vedika,’ Maahi said, shrugging.

  ‘I have a question,’ Laila asked, as a thought occurred to her. ‘When we were scanning résumés for the assistant baker positions, did you notice Javed was Muslim?’

  ‘Looking at his résumé? No. I didn’t really pay attention to the names as much as to qualifications. I figured when he came in for the interview though.’

  ‘Did that affect your opinion at all?’

  Maahi looked up. ‘The fact that he’s Muslim? You think I wouldn’t want to hire someone because of his religion?’

  ‘I’m not saying that I think so. I’m trying to …’ Laila paused for a moment, collecting her thoughts. ‘Okay, so you and I? We are from middle-class Indian families. We weren’t taught discrimination. Our parents are reasonably progressive and encouraged us to be the same way, right? But just because that’s how it’s been in our homes clearly doesn’t mean it’s the same for the whole country.’

  ‘I guess. There are definitely people who care about other people’s religion and stuff. Some of my friends in school were always talking shit about people from other castes. Their festivals and clothes and foods and all that,’ Maahi said thoughtfully.

  ‘Exactly! People make light of those things. Religion wasn’t a factor or even a thought for us when we were considering Javed for the job. But I was wondering whether, while waiting to hear from us, he thought it would weigh in on our decision.’

  ‘Maybe … now that I think about it.’

  ‘I hope not. I’d hate to think that we said or did something to make him feel that way.’ Laila pushed back hair from her face and got up from the floor. ‘I better get started. I’m going to find someone to come take a look at the oven and also check inventory. You do your baking at Two.’

  ‘Got it. I really am sorry about this. I have no idea what happened!’

  ‘I don’t know if I can forgive you for this,’ Laila said in all seriousness. ‘How do I know that you didn’t blow up your cupcakes because your second Creative was also sucky?’

  ‘That’s not true! I mean, I don’t know if they were sucky—they could be. I’m a sucky baker today. But I definitely didn’t blow them up on purpose!’

  ‘Can you prove it?’

  ‘How?’ Maahi’s eyes grew wide as she searched around the kitchen, clearly looking for a way to make Laila believe her. ‘I don’t even…’

  ‘God, Maahi! Of course you didn’t blow up the oven on purpose! How would you even know how to? I’m just playing with you!’

  Maahi went quiet for a moment, exhaled and shook her head.

  Laila laughed. ‘You’re awfully tense today. I’m noticing a pattern—all the people I work with seem to have issues today. Aparna, Javed and now you.’

  ‘I don’t know about them, but look around you—my stress is justified.’

  ‘Be that as it may, there’s definitely more going on with you than a morning of disasters at C+C.’ Laila squinted her eyes. ‘How was your date last night?’

  ‘Oh, this is not about that. The date was fine,’ Maahi said. ‘He seemed good enough and we had an okay time.’

  ‘He was shorter in person, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Come on!’

  ‘Admit it,’ Laila pressed, enjoying watching Maahi squirm.

  ‘Fine. He was a couple of inches shorter than he appeared in his picture. He was, like, five eightish.’

  ‘Technically though, did he say he was five ten or did you assume that from his pictures? Because if you assumed it, it’s on you.’

  ‘He didn’t say it but, hold on, let me show you his pictures. They’re very strategically taken, you know—sitting down, with short friends and girls and animals or alone on a cliff. Definitely a lie by omission.’ Maahi scrolled through his pictures and shoved them in Laila’s face.

  ‘I believe you,’ Laila said. ‘I don’t need proof. Also, I don’t need to see this stranger’s picture again, especially if he’s not going to be a part of our lives. Is he going to be a part of our lives?’

  ‘Maybe … He was nice and seemed like the kind of person that’s great once you get to know them. There was some awkwardness, but that’s just a first-date thing, right?’

  ‘Dude, I’ve never met him. You have to trust your own gut.’

  ‘Yeah, I know, I know. I’m just wondering …’ Maahi bit her lip. Her eyes were unfocused, clearly remembering last night and trying to form an opinion.

  ‘You don’t have to decide the future course of action right now. Take your time,’ Laila said.

  Maahi nodded and focused on her batter, but Laila couldn’t help feel that her friend felt lost and maybe a little afraid. She gave Maahi some space and went out to track down an electrician. When she got back, Maahi had already left for Two. All day, at the back of her mind, she had a nagging feeling that Maahi wasn’t being completely honest with her. She was hiding the truth, and Laila tried to understand why that could be.

  At the e
nd of the rather long day of putting out all the fires and restoring the shops, Laila went over to Two, where Maahi had packed up and was ready to leave.

  ‘I’ve decided,’ she said when Laila walked in, ‘I’m going to give it another shot. I’m going to see him again and see how it goes.’

  ‘No, you’re not,’ Laila said firmly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re doing no such thing. I’m sure he’s a good guy and maybe if you guys try again, it might become something good. But do you want good, or do you want great? I’ve been thinking about this all day. You said the date was okay and he was good enough. That’s so dumb! Do you want okay? Do you want good enough? You deserve so much more. You’re a wonderful, kind, compassionate person and you deserve more than good enough. I never say this to you because it’s cheesy and disgusting, but I hope you know that any man would be very, very lucky to be with you!’

  Maahi was frozen to the spot, standing by the counter, staring at Laila unblinkingly. Her eyes were shining with unshed tears.

  ‘Dammit, don’t cry! How am I supposed to have a real conversation with you if you—’ Laila began to joke but stopped suddenly, noticing Maahi’s head drop to her chest, her body shivering. ‘Hey, come on,’ Laila said softly and went to her.

  Maahi swiped the back of her hand over her face and sniffed. ‘I had great.’ Her voice was barely a whisper and Laila knew exactly who she was talking about.

  ‘It wasn’t great at the time. The timing sucked.’

  ‘I lost it. I lost great.’

  ‘Maahi, listen to me. You did what needed to be done, what was right at the time for you and for Sid. You guys were great, but … in a vacuum. You worked only in an isolated box, away from all outside factors like the time you had for each other, your baggage with your ex and his baggage with his family. It wasn’t practical,’ Laila said. She was grasping at straws now, trying to find a way to placate her. Maahi and Sid had been very much in love with each other when they had decided to break up. Laila believed that it was the right decision at the time—neither of them was prepared to take care of something so special and rare. It didn’t mean that a year later Maahi couldn’t still miss him.