by Nikita Singh
Maahi blushed.
‘Okay, let’s do this. So, how educated are you? Are you in college?’
‘No, but I start this academic year.’
‘Cool. What and where?’
‘DU. Indraprastha College, business economics,’ Maahi said. If asked one day ago, she wouldn’t have been able to answer.
‘Oh, you’re so young. I graduated a while ago—in mass communication, can you believe that? But then I shifted gears—I’m about to start a diploma in bakery and patisserie from IICA. Have you heard of it?’
Maahi shook her head.
‘It’s the International Institute of Culinary Arts. I’ll need to find a big-girl job once I’m done, but this is good for now.’ Laila looked around at the bright purple interiors of Cozy Coffee. ‘But you’re good, you have three years till you graduate. I’m sorry, I digress. It’s just that I haven’t had anyone to talk to all day and now I can’t seem to control my verbal diarrhoea. So, anyway, I come in late—around 2 p.m., and I close the shop at around 8 p.m., so it’ll be perfect if those timings work for you. Right now our schedules are all over the place because I work more hours over the summer, but once college starts, there’ll be a lot more consistency. Unless you want to work longer hours over the weekend?’
‘I don’t know…’ Maahi said. She asked herself what was happening and how she ended up there.
‘Sure, of course. We can figure that out later. By the way, where do you live?’
‘Vaishali.’
‘Oh, that’s a commute. Will you be okay taking the closing shifts with me? We could go up to Rajiv Chowk together. You’ll be on your own from there. But those are details we can furnish later. The pay isn’t much to speak of, but it’s not bad at all as a student. In fact, over the summer, I’ve been able to save a little too by working extra hours.’ Laila winked at Maahi again.
They talked for a few more minutes—Laila spoke and Maahi listened, after which Maahi found herself shaking Laila’s hand, accepting a job at Cozy Coffee. She felt like she had entered an alternate reality where things got out of her control and chose a path for her that she hadn’t imagined before. And in that moment, she didn’t mind.
‘Do you still want me to get that coffee and croissant for you? Or do you prefer getting it yourself, now that you have access to this side of the counter. And we get employee discount,’ Laila said.
‘I’m good,’ Maahi said, and turned around. She had to go back to Fourth Eye Apps and tell Prasoon she was quitting. She felt bad about not giving him a notice, but in her defence, she hadn’t exactly had a notice either.
‘One last question—when can you join?’ Laila asked.
‘Monday.’ Maahi didn’t know why she said that; it was the first thing that popped into her head.
‘Perfect. I’ll send you the offer letter and you make sure you print a copy and sign it. Bring it in on Monday and … that should be it.’ Laila gave her a wide smile.
‘Sounds good,’ Maahi said, meaning it. As she walked back to the office, she wondered what it would be like to work with Laila every day. Would she ever get a chance to speak? She felt drawn to her flamboyant, dramatic, fun personality. Maahi thought it was strange how her personality was the exact opposite of the way she dressed. Admittedly, Maahi had only seen her twice, but both times, under the Cozy Coffee apron, Laila had a grey top, black jeans and black sneakers on. Her hair had been pulled on top of her head in a messy bun again, some strands falling loose against the taut skin of her face—the soft curls quite a contrast against the rest of her. She came across as an independent, confident girl who could take care of herself. Maybe even beat someone up if they troubled her, even though she was skinny.
Maahi chuckled as she entered the office, soon to become her old office. She couldn’t decide how to approach the subject with Prasoon, so she waited for him to drop by, which he did a few times during the day, more out of boredom than anything else, Maahi suspected.
Sure enough, within half an hour of her returning from lunch, Prasoon came to her desk. ‘Hey, how are we doing today?’ he asked.
‘Good.’ Maahi smiled.
‘Great! No difficult calls?’
‘Nope.’
‘Perfect. That’s always good.’ Prasoon looked around her desk, as he always did during their brief, awkward interactions every day. ‘Anything I need to know?’
‘Umm, actually…’ Maahi began, losing confidence fast.
‘Yes?’
He was looking at her, and as Maahi felt the full force of his eyes on her, she tried not to crumble. It wasn’t that he had a personality that intimidated her. She was just easily intimidated, especially when she felt as if she was in the wrong. But she couldn’t work two jobs at once, so it needed to be said. ‘When I first joined, you knew that it was temporary, right?’
‘Yes. Until your college started, of course. You told me before you started,’ Prasoon said. ‘Oh, is it already time?’
He seemed to be quite okay with it. Maahi saw that opening and took it. ‘Yeah.’
‘Do you start college soon? I didn’t realize you’d even picked one yet.’
‘It’s a … recent development. I’m going to take business economics at IP.’
‘DU?’
‘Yes.’
‘Cool. Congratulations!’ Prasoon said and offered her a handshake. He seemed to decide against it and went for a hug, which got awkward when Maahi had to get up and return his half-hug with her desk and computer between them. He looked a little embarrassed and Maahi felt bad. He had been a good boss. He tried to maintain a healthy, professional work environment, and it always felt a bit like make-believe because, no matter how hard Maahi tried, she couldn’t see Fourth Eye Apps as a real company and the office as a real workplace. They might be making profit and slowly becoming a rage amongst iPhone owners, but Maahi just didn’t see it that way. She reflected that it was a good thing for them that she was leaving. She got the job done, but she wasn’t an employee who believed in the vision of the company—whatever the hell that was.
‘Thank you,’ Maahi said.
‘Until when can you work? Or do you have to leave us immediately?’ Prasoon asked. Maahi wasn’t sure how to feel about him not being affected at all by her quitting. On one hand, she was relieved that a possible awkward conversation had turned out to be easy. On the other, having worked there for some time, she hadn’t expected them to not blink an eye when she left.
‘I can work until the end of the week, if you prefer?’
‘Sure, that works.’
‘Do you need me to help with interviewing people and training whoever fills this position? We could post an ad on the website and see if candidates can come in sometime this week for interviews?’ Maahi suggested, trying to make the transition easy.
‘Actually, we don’t know if we’ll hire someone else immediately. All our apps are doing okay, but iPhones are still quite expensive around here … We’ll mostly be working on making these apps available on Android. That should keep us busy for the next few months. We’ll probably look for someone after that,’ Prasoon explained.
‘Oh, sure. I understand.’ Maahi suspected that the ‘company’ wasn’t generating a lot of profit, and they were probably glad they no longer had to pay her. She wondered if they had been keeping her just because they didn’t know how to begin a conversation about letting her go.
After lingering around her desk awkwardly for a few more minutes, Prasoon bid her a good day and left for a ‘meeting’ somewhere. Maahi realized she should’ve just told him she had to leave the same day. There didn’t seem to be a point in her staying and working till the end of the week except for answering angry calls by constipated or sexually frustrated people and engaging with them for no apparent reason. She wondered where these weirdos would go to vent once
that option became unavailable ‘for a few months’ after she was gone.
She couldn’t care less about it. She turned back to her computer screen
, scrolling through the list of responses to choose from, thinking about how she was going to tell her parents that she quit her desk job to work at a coffee shop. She was quite sure Ma would be disappointed. Maahi had managed to extend the disappointing streak against her mom and the aunties in her colony. Maahi knew that most of these aunties would actually be happy to get another opportunity to show concern and judgement on the outside; they didn’t actually care about her future. For a fleeting second, she wondered how different her mom’s attitude towards Maahi’s life would be if she didn’t have all those voices constantly whispering in her ears. She didn’t brood over that for long.
Having made two important decisions in her life that day, she got home after work and decided to suspend the conversation about the day’s developments until the next day. She was in a happy mood, feeling calm and settled. Normally, her days ended with anxiety and restlessness—so she welcomed the change.
Her mom made idli-sambhar for dinner, which was Maahi’s favourite. In all the months that she had been back, this was the first time Maahi got special treatment. Knowing that it was because she had done the ‘right thing’ by choosing a field of education her mom approved of, she didn’t want to stir the calm waters by announcing that, come Monday, she would be serving coffee to strangers. There were jobs that were respected, and then there were ones that were looked down upon in the Kothari household. The Kotharis simply did not believe in customer service jobs.
If only her parents knew the nature of her desk job at Fourth Eye Apps.
8
Maahi hadn’t realized how long she’d have to postpone the conversation about her new job. She began with a temporary excuse—telling her parents her office timings had changed and she was needed from two to eight instead of nine to five. Ma was worried about her commute from Gurgaon alone at night, but Papa convinced her, saying it was only a matter of a few months.
Maahi hadn’t intended to lie about it. It saddened her to lie to her parents. She figured that since it was only a matter of a couple of months, it wasn’t crucial that they knew. It was only once those months were over and her time to quit her job and start her classes came that she realized she didn’t want to quit.
She enjoyed working at the coffee shop, and she didn’t want to leave. She understood that college was important too and she was willing to work fewer hours at the coffee shop to accommodate that. It was better than quitting altogether. Her job might not look like much to an outsider, but she loved everything about it. She loved the long rides on the Metro she took every day to Gurgaon and back, she loved walking from the M.G. Road Metro Station, surrounded by shopping malls, to the Cozy Coffee, which was just five minutes away—she was fascinated by how much quieter things got in a matter of minutes, and she got calmer with it.
Cozy Coffee was located on the ground floor of a five-storeyed building. It was small, cosy, as the name suggested, with six round tables with three chairs each, and two couches lining the front windows. Everything was bright purple and white—the walls, the floors, the ceilings, the countertops, the cups. That could’ve been the only thing Maahi didn’t like about her job—being surrounded by things so violently purple.
When it was time to quit, she couldn’t imagine leaving this place behind, and she talked to Laila about it, who talked to CJ and they came to the conclusion that they could survive with her working fewer hours. She would need to go there after her classes and stay until closing. It would be a hectic schedule, but Maahi didn’t see this as just a job. It was more like therapy. Laila had become a close friend and confidant, a fact that surprised her, since their personalities were exact opposites.
Somehow, somewhere, something had clicked. Staying together in a confined space for hours left minimum leeway; they didn’t have any other option but to become friends. Soon, Maahi couldn’t imagine going through her days without talking to Laila. Laila’s parents were divorced and she lived with her mom. She had been working at the coffee shop ever since she started college, and she needed that job to support herself. But what Maahi admired the most about her was her passion for baking cookies. She was always inventing recipes using the weirdest ingredients and she was always trying to force CJ to let her put them on the menu. CJ was used to rejecting her ideas, but never asked her to stop trying new recipes. Laila said it was because her cookies were awesome and he loved an excuse to eat them. She believed that, one day, she would bake a cookie that would be ‘The awesomest of all awesomes and CJ’s heart would melt with the cookie in his mouth’ and finally, after all these years of tears and sweat, her own recipe would be on the menu.
When college started, Maahi told her parents that the people at Fourth Eye Apps needed her to work until they found a replacement. Things went smoothly for the first five weeks. Her lies worked, until one day, her neighbour Mishra aunty’s son happened by her shop with his girlfriend and saw Maahi working there. Even then, Maahi thought she would be fine because he wouldn’t risk telling anyone anything when Maahi had seen him with his girlfriend. Always a great blackmailing tool.
She even confirmed it. She walked over to him casually and said, ‘So, my parents don’t know that I work here.’
‘Okay…’ he said, exchanging a look with his girlfriend.
‘I’d appreciate it if you don’t tell anyone before I tell them myself, please?’
‘Sure.’ He smiled, but Maahi wasn’t convinced.
‘What’s wrong?’ Laila asked when Maahi went back behind the counter.
‘That guy over there lives three houses away from us. I hope he doesn’t tell my parents I work here,’ Maahi said, stealing a glance at him. For the life of her, she couldn’t remember his name.
Laila laughed. ‘Are you serious? Of course he’s not going to tell your parents! What is this, fifth class?’
‘I don’t know. I’m getting a weird vibe from him.’
‘You need to chill.’
Maahi hadn’t been able to chill and for good reason. That evening when she went home, both her parents were waiting for her in the living room. She instantly knew.
‘He told you,’ Maahi said. She closed the door behind her and sat down on the sofa in front of her parents, putting down her handbag.
‘Did you think we would never find out?’ her dad asked.
‘It’s not like that—’
‘How long has this been happening? Ever since your office timings changed? When was that, three months ago?’
‘Papa, let me explain. I didn’t intend to lie to you. I just didn’t know how to tell you in the beginning and then I thought…’ Maahi tried to explain, but couldn’t find a legitimate reason, other than her parents’ disapproval. If she brought that up, it would show that she knew they wouldn’t approve and did it anyway.
‘What did you think? How could you do this, Maahi?’ her mom asked.
‘I can’t believe this. My daughter working as a waitress… I don’t understand why. What is the need? Don’t your mom and I give you enough?’
‘It’s not about that, Papa!’
‘Then what? What happened to the other job—the one with the app developers? Did they fire you? Is that why you took this job?’
‘No! They didn’t fire me. I quit.’
‘But why!’ both her parents asked together.
‘Because I wanted to do this job. I like working at Cozy Coffee. I like the environment, the people—’ Maahi tried to explain but was cut off by her mom.
‘You can’t be serious!’
‘What do you do there?’ Papa asked.
‘I work the register.’
‘Is that what you want to do with your life?’
‘Who said anything about life? This is something I enjoy doing now—’
‘What do you enjoy there? What could you possibly enjoy working at a coffee shop?’ Mom interrupted. ‘Do you realize what people are saying about us now? Mrs Mishra’s son told her and she told me. You know how she is. She must have told the whole colony by now. Everybody m
ust think we’re too poor to take care of our children and our children need to serve coffee for money.’
Angry tears filled Maahi’s eyes. ‘I’m sorry, Ma. It’s just something I want to do and I knew you wouldn’t let me. So I decided to keep it from you.’
There was silence in the room.
‘Do you realize how much you are hurting us by doing this?’
‘Think about it, Ma. Am I hurting you or am I hurting your image in front of all these aunties from the colony who have nothing to do with us? I don’t understand how they get to decide what we do with our time.’ Maahi hadn’t intended to say it, but in the heat of the moment, she couldn’t stop herself.
‘Don’t talk to your Ma that way!’ Papa said.
‘No, let her. Let her say whatever she wants. At least then I will know why she did this. Why she is intent on ruining our family’s reputation,’ Ma said.
‘She isn’t anymore.’ Papa turned to Maahi. ‘From tomorrow, you’re going to college and coming straight home. Let them know you’re quitting and that’s the last I’m hearing of this place.’ He got up. His was the final word. There was nothing she could do about it. That’s how it always worked. Ma would raise questions about every small thing the kids did and it wasn’t to be taken that seriously. Papa came in only in extreme situations and whatever he said had to be done. There was no explanation, no reasoning—nothing was going to change his mind.
Ma got up too, shaking her head. Maahi looked from one disappointed parent’s face to the other’s. In that moment, she came to the realization that no matter what, they would always be disappointed in her. There was nothing she could do to impress them. In a matter of a year, everything had turned upside down, she had fallen in their eyes completely when she dropped out of engineering college and came back home. She would never be able to redeem herself.
Maahi waited five minutes after her parents left the room, to collect her thoughts. She was going to college every day, she wasn’t missing any classes, she was submitting all her assignments on time. And she was doing all of that for her parents’ happiness. Wouldn’t it be only fair if they can let her do what made her happy with whatever time she had left in the day? She was simply asking to be allowed to do an honest day’s work and earn her money. It was hardly prostitution. And yet, they made it sound like it was. As if she had to give up her self-respect and honour to do what she was doing. The worst part was that they thought she was doing it only for the money.