Nimita's Place

by Akshita Nanda

  The lab. Our flat.

  I missed our flat. I missed the cream-and-blue bedroom, the curtains and jewel-toned cushion covers I had chosen, the balcony from where we looked out into our colony’s garden.

  The flat came in my dreams for months, long after Vicky stopped appearing in them. Six months to the day after my fall, I took the train up to Pune, alone, in spite of Dadi’s concern. My first stop was not to see Dr Savarkar. I went to the colony I had lived in and looked up at the windows.

  There were different curtains at the windows so it took me a while to recognise my flat. I felt hurt and angry and sad because those were bright yellow curtains on my hall windows and I had chosen a completely different colour scheme.

  I bit the inside of my cheek to remind myself not to cry. I climbed up the stairs and rang the bell at Dr Joshi’s flat. She wasn’t in so I left the chocolates with the bai. I didn’t think she would be there and I was glad I didn’t have to see her again. I didn’t want to see anyone who reminded me of that day, even if it were the woman who had been so kind and helped me so much.

  We never like to display our weaknesses. We only like to show people our strengths.

  It took all my courage to go see Dr Savarkar and re-enter her lab, but I had worked too hard at physiotherapy to let it go to waste. It would be a bad return on investment to let that go to waste.

  Rishi and Lakshwant were there and very happy to see me. “You should have come earlier, we could have signed your cast,” Rishi said.

  Lakshwant filled me in on the gossip. “You know, Vikram had to leave too. Some family emergency.” He shook his head. “Hope we don’t get a bad reputation among the next batch. Two master’s students having bad luck is not a good thing.”

  “Stupid, Hong Kong is a very good place. Good opportunity. He’ll earn in dollars,” Rishi said.

  “Hong Kong dollars,” I pointed out.

  “Still, dollars,” Lakshwant said. “Much better than rupees.”

  Dr Savarkar came back from lunch and smiled. “Nimita. How nice to see you. Welcome back.”

  And with no Vikram in the lab, it should have been perfect. It should have been, but wasn’t.

  I stopped eating cream buns because the taste made me sick. I switched desks with Rishikesh so I wouldn’t have to see the empty space where Vicky once worked. Even after a new master’s student took over, every day, every damn thing in the lab reminded me of Vicky. Of us. Of my stupidity, my failure, his outbursts. All the bad things.

  It was a good day when I remembered the bad things because remembering the good times was worse.

  I finished my master’s degree, of course, just after my 24th birthday.

  “Now for PhD,” Dr Savarkar said and I shook my head.

  “Ma’am, I need a break.” What I wanted to say was, I’m done. I can’t do this any more.

  She looked at me. “Are you going to ruin your life because of one small incident?”

  One small incident? What did she know? Maybe to her it was one small incident but it had thrown me out of my home, thrown my degree off track, displaced me in time and space. I didn’t know who I was any more. I didn’t know what I wanted any more. I only knew I could not be in this lab where every single bottle reminded me that I was a fool, a coward and now not even a researcher.

  “I’ll hold your place for three months,” Dr Savarkar said.

  “Ma’am, it’s okay. I really appreciate it. Really. But I don’t know whether I’ll continue.”

  “You’ll continue,” she said. “Call me when you’ve stopped feeling sorry for yourself.”

  It took me almost a year. A year of giving tuition to stupid teenagers more interested in their Blackberries than in cell structure and protein synthesis. A year of avoiding Dadi’s increasingly pointed questions about the time before the accident and of avoiding rishtaas brought home by our relatives and friends.

  A year and a wedding and a new chance to settle down. On my own, this time, I would settle down, prove to everyone, especially myself, that I was in charge of my life.

  When the offer letter from Singapore General Hospital came, I removed a box from the back of my cupboard, took out the jade dragon pendant and earrings and took them to India Gate where I threw them into the sea. Unlike the Ganpati idol, they sank easily beneath the waters. I took it as a good omen for my new life, even though scientists really shouldn’t be superstitious.

  A month after Lee Kuan Yew’s funeral, Dr Alagasamy calls me into his office.

  He is holding a letter from HR and doesn’t look happy. My stomach hurts. I wonder how long I will have to pack up my work station.

  Dr Alagasamy says: “Because of recent events, the results of the grant proposals will be delayed. We won’t hear from the committee until June at least or maybe July.”

  “Sorry, what?”

  He waves the official-looking letter at me. “The grants committee needs more time to consider the proposals. Timelines have been affected because of recent events.”

  Wait, that’s not a letter from HR saying my contract is up?

  “Are you okay, Nimita?”

  Am I okay, boss? I should be asking you.

  “Just a small setback. Your proposal is still very good. I have no doubt, but now there is this delay, we must think about what you are going to do.”

  Do? Is he speaking like I still have a future in his lab?

  I can’t take it any more. I have to ask: “So I still have a job?”

  Dr Alagasamy stares at me. “Oh, my God.” He rubs his face. “I’m so sorry, what must you be thinking. I’m so sorry, with everything that’s going on I forgot to tell you. And the HR letter must have been delayed. Yes. Yes, SGH is renewing the contract.” He smiles at me. “Three years.”

  My knees buckle so fast I have to catch the corner of the desk.

  Dr Alagasamy pretends not to notice. He takes out his diary and a pen. He has a smartphone with Google Calendar but he likes to write everything on paper as well. “What stage are we at?”

  I swallow. I do pranayama breathing. Dr Alagasmy continues to look kindly at his diary.

  “Sir, I’ve found some bands of methylated DNA that could be implicated. I was going to get Siddiqui’s help to sequence them.”

  Sequencer time costs the lab money. Dr Alagasamy taps the desk with his pen. “Okay. Let’s KIV that. What else are you doing?”

  “I was only focusing on this.”

  He makes a duck face with his lips. “Bala could use some help with Transferase-C. Maybe you work with him for a few weeks. Let’s call him in.”

  Bala. Work under Mr Bala. What else can go wrong this year?

  I tell myself to be grateful. I still have a job. I’m safe in Singapore.

  Bala is very pleased to be called into the office. He has notebooks and a presentation on his iPad to explain just where he is on the Transferase-C project.

  “So Nimita can help you work on the next set of proteins down the chain from Transferase-C.”

  When Bala nods, his moustache bounces up and down. “No problem. It will go faster with two people.”

  He smiles at me. I try to smile back.

  “Thanks, guys,” says Dr Alagasamy and we get up.

  Bala gets to the exit before me. My shoulder is in the doorway when boss says: “Nimita, it’s a good project. In two weeks, when you have some lag time from helping Bala, either Siddiqui or I will go through the gene sequencing.”

  I look at him. He’s smiling. “No point keeping everything on ice when we’ve come this far.”

  The lab is not so cold today. I don’t need my sweatshirt, so I only pull on my lab coat before going over to Bala’s workstation.

  He has a fresh notebook out and is writing a list of instructions in very big letters. Haan, he thinks I’m some child or what? I have also been keeping notes for many years.

  “This is the list of deliverables for the month. You must meet my time targets for next Thursday and the following Wednesday or my exp
eriments will be delayed. Okay?”

  Yes, master. “Yes.” I take the notebook.

  Bala holds on to the other end. “I hear you’ve applied for PR.”

  Who told him? “Yes.”

  He nods. “Then you will have plenty of time. Don’t worry. Project will happen.”

  I look at him. Above his oily moustache, his eyes are soft.

  The pain hits like a fist in the stomach. I nod, take the notebook, put it carefully on my desk and then go to the bathroom to cry.

  I have been doing that a lot since I sat down and told Chia Ying everything. Psychiatrists have a term for it: catharsis. I have read about it and know the muscle weakness, the tears, the cravings for sugar are all because of associated hormonal release.

  It is still embarrassing, especially because of all the pimples on my face, now that I’m drinking so much of Chia Ying’s mocha.

  Chia Ying has also been talking a lot about her love life. It turns out Raymond is her second fiancé. Back in Malaysia, she was with an Indian guy. A Punjabi Hindu, like me. They were high school sweethearts, had started going steady when she was only 15.

  She told me: “My parents didn’t like it. His also. But we said it didn’t matter.”

  On her 23rd birthday, they bought each other engagement rings. On her 25th birthday, though, her fiancé told her that they needed to have a serious conversation.

  “After ten years, he says he cannot marry me. Ten years you know! Liddat how? After ten years, he says he cannot fight his parents for me any more. His wife has to be Indian.”

  She still thinks a lot about him. She says the food I cook tastes like the food she ate in his house. I even look a little like his sister, she says. She used to be close to his sister but now she never sees her.

  I don’t know how Chia Ying can stand to be friends with me, if I remind her of the people who hurt her. I can’t even stand to look at Hafeezah, a woman who chose her relationship with one man above everything else, despite all their difficulties. I don’t know why I don’t ask Chia Ying these questions. Maybe I really don’t need to know the answers any more.

  Chia Ying and I are the only ones talking to each other. The Flatmates chat group is at the bottom of my WhatsApp list.

  I haven’t heard from Irving in more than a week. I haven’t seen him in the flat. I don’t know about Chia Ying.

  Chia Ying is out for dinner and I don’t feel like going home to an empty flat. I wander around West Mall and finally sit down in Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. The tea is not proper tea because the water is not boiling. I order a chai latte with low fat milk and more chai, which is almost like tea. “Make super-hot,” I tell the man at the counter.

  Then I say: “Please.”

  In India, when a politician dies, there are riots on the street. Grief becomes madness.

  In Singapore, everyone nowadays is very polite and talking softly, going out of their way to be kind to each other. Since Lee Kuan Yew died, I have seen more people give up their seats to others on MRT trains than in my full four years here.

  I went window-shopping last week. Prices haven’t come down yet, but no one was shouting at anyone else. People smiled at the others who had come to view the flat. They queued quietly to get in and spoke softly to the agent.

  The barista gives me my chai. His uniform is black but he is wearing a black ribbon on the front of his apron. It is a smaller version of the black ribbon I’m seeing on car windows, on desks in SGH and on every second shop window in West Mall. The ribbon often appears next to the bright red-and-white SG50 logo to celebrate Singapore’s jubilee.

  “In Memory,” the ribbon reads. Each ribbon is wrapped around a silhouette of Lee Kuan Yew.

  I’m not used to seeing grief shared so openly. So quietly. For so long.

  “Is this seat taken?”

  I look up.

  I look down at my chai.

  Irving puts his haversack into the seat next to mine and takes the space opposite me. That puts him against the wall.

  The table bounces when he starts jiggling his long legs. My chai splashes.

  “Sorry,” he says and stops jiggling.

  It’s terrible chai.

  “How are you?”

  Are we really going to do this? I open my mouth to say that, but my throat is dry.

  “I’ll get us some water.” Irving bounces out of his seat and gets four small cups of iced water. He sits down, drinks all four and then bounces out of his seat again to refill them.

  The second time he squeezes into his seat, half my chai splashes out of the cup.

  “For God’s sake!”

  “Sorry,” he says, then laughs. “I’m not sorry. That’s horrible chai. The first time we met here I nearly—”

  He stops speaking.

  The silence is horrible. Worse than the tea.

  I think of the first time we sat in this Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf with Chia Ying, interviewing Irving. All the while he sat there, pretending to get to know us, he had already known everything about me.

  The table is moving again.

  It’s not Irving’s leg bouncing, I realise, and put a hand on my knee.

  “So, NTU is ready to open the new residency buildings,” Irving says. “I’ve been bunking in on the sly with some friends.”

  He doesn’t say the friend’s name.

  Is Vicky now an academic affiliated with Nanyang Technological University?

  I don’t ask.

  The table bounces again.

  I put my hand on the table. I look at Irving, his glasses almost falling off his nose, thank God that stupid little beard he had when he first came to meet Chia Ying and me at West Mall is gone.

  “All the while you knew and you never said anything, even once.”

  “I’m sorry.” Irving looks at me. His eyes are very large, very black. “I’m sorry but Vicky asked me not to tell. He’s been my friend for years. Years and years.”

  He has loved Vicky for years, is what he means. What am I compared to that?

  “He told me you were both together and it ended badly. He asked me to find out how you were doing. How could I refuse?”

  “You moved into my home.”

  “I needed a place to stay!”

  I shake my head. “You lied to me.”

  Irving puts both hands on the table, very near mine. His eyes are very big, very dark.

  “Nimita.” Oh, my actual name. He must be serious. “However it ended, he’s sorry for it. He just wants to apologise. Can’t you move on?”

  I look at Irving. “Did he tell you how it ended?”

  His forehead wrinkles. His glasses begin to fall off his nose.

  I push them back up with my right hand, letting it hover close to his face. “See that wrist?”

  I bring up my left hand so he can see the difference, the scar from the surgery, the bumpy extrusion from muscle forever twisted out of shape by a splinter of bone.

  “Vicky Malhotra broke me.”

  Irving makes a sound.

  My wrist. I should have said “broke my wrist”.

  “Yes, it ended badly. Very badly, for me. Surgery, I had to have. More than six months’ physiotherapy and then another six months redeveloping motor skills.” I put my hands back in my lap. He follows them with his eyes.

  “Do you know what motor skills are, Irving? Please imagine frosting your fancy ice cream sorbet cups with a hand that shakes and can’t turn properly and—”

  I taste salt in my mouth.

  Irving opens his.

  “I didn’t know.”

  I put the cup of chai to my lips. I take in a little, a tiny bit of sweet but I still taste the salt.

  Irving’s eyes are even bigger and blacker, if possible. There is water on his cheeks, just below the eyes.

  “I didn’t know,” he says. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. He was my friend. We’d been friends for so long.”

  I get up.

  Irving scrapes his chair, standing.

  �
�Nimita,” he says and leans across the table. “Nimita, please.”

  I shake my head. I don’t want to talk any more.

  I leave him in the café and walk back to the flat.

  The PlayStation is still attached to the TV, but I guess for not much longer.

  2.

  “Chaunsa mangoes, pride of Pakistan,” Siddiqui says, bringing a platter of deep yellow fruit to the table. “Try and see. Your mind will be blown.”

  Rehima jiggles Meher on her hip. The servant Asiah hands her a bottle.

  “Little mango milkshake for baby,” Rehima says. “Just a little, so she is introduced to the taste.”

  “Come, start, start,” Siddiqui says, sitting down at the table as well. “Don’t be shy, Nimita. Take, take.”

  I have seen Pakistani mangoes in the market. These are not like the Alphonso, but they have a sweet, deep smell. The scent of Alphonso is like the ringing of a church bell, this Chaunsa is a little higher, like a Sufi Qawwali singer.

  “These smell better than the ones in the market,” I say.

  Siddiqui nods. “Yes, those are usually export variety. These are homegrown, straight from the tree my own mother planted so many years ago. We have one more variety that is only good for pickling. Asiah, bring that pickle, please! We’ll have with parathas.”

  “No, no, please, this is so much.” Mangoes on the table, cold milk so the throat doesn’t go raw from all the yellow fruit, hot parathas. Haan, these Punjabis will kill you by feeding you.

  Not just Punjabis. Everyone in the lab is on a mission to fatten me up.

  Santha called me home for fresh idlis, dosa and rasam. Bala insisted we have lunch after our Transferase-C meeting on Wednesday and he brought a big tiffin with rasam and some special curd rice, lemon flavour. It was good.

  I’m not actually sad about the throat tumour project being delayed. Okay, I am but Bala keeps me busy and that’s all I want to do right now. I want to work. I don’t want to think about anything else or talk to anyone about anything.

  But everyone wants to feed me and chat with me. Chia Ying has gone full-blown Punjabi aunty on me. She buys bunbelievable buns or biryani or drags me down to the night market for more apple mangoes from Kota Tinggi. I’m learning how to bargain in Malay.