by Nikita Singh
She picked up her phone.
Maahi: My parents found out about the coffee shop. They’re making me quit.
Rohit: Oh, shit. How do they know?
Maahi: Mishra aunty told Ma. Her son saw me at the coffee shop today and told his mom.
Rohit: Wow. What a loser!
Maahi: What should I do now, Rohit? I don’t want to quit.
Rohit: Do you think you can convince your parents?
Maahi: I don’t know. But I can’t imagine the next 3 years of my life going to stupid college and coming back home. To disappointed parents. Every day.
Rohit: It can’t be that bad. You’ll get involved in classes and new friends once you start.
Maahi: It is bad! You don’t know. I feel worthless. It’s like if I don’t go to class or submit my assignments, it would make no difference. The world won’t fall apart.
Rohit: What do you mean?
Maahi: My role at Cozy Coffee isn’t much, but at least I’m needed. If I call in sick and they can’t find someone else to cover my shift, they would have trouble keeping the place going.
Rohit: So the world would fall apart at least a little bit, for a little while.
Maahi: Yes.
Rohit: I get that. You want to feel useful.
Maahi: I just need to feel NOT worthless.
Rohit: Tell them that?
Maahi: They won’t understand. You know how they are.
Rohit: But you’ve got to try, right?
Maahi: Right.
Maahi kicked off her blue converse shoes, unwrapped her scarf from around her neck and breathed for a few minutes, letting herself cool down before padding to her parents’ bedroom in her socks. Ma didn’t like them to wear ‘outside shoes’ inside the house.
Ma and Papa looked up at her.
Maahi stood at the door and spoke evenly, looking at the TV screen. Big Boss was on; she cringed. ‘I know that this makes you unhappy, but I can’t help but feel like anything I do always makes you unhappy. I don’t want that, and I try, I really do. But I’m sorry. This is the one thing that I need to do, and I’m sorry that I’m such a disappointment to you, but I hope you won’t take this away from me.’
She looked away from the TV and at her parents, neither of whom said anything. This time, she couldn’t stop the tears. She could barely stay audible as she said, ‘I won’t let you take this away from me.’
When her parents didn’t speak in the next whole minute, Maahi went back to the living room. People she loved needed to stop doing that to her—being silent when she needed them to speak, and tell her that they would be there for her.
‘Whoa, what’s up?’ Sarthak asked when he came home and bumped into her in the living room.
Maahi shook her head, picked up her stuff and went to her room. She stayed there for a while. She couldn’t stop crying. Beyond the obvious reasons, she felt that there was something else, something big that was being taken away from her. She hadn’t been confident as a child, but there’s a certain amount of confidence a person tends to have until it’s snatched away from them. She had lost all of that when Kishan didn’t want to be with her anymore, and with that she had also lost her purpose, her ambition and her desire to do something, be something. She was only now beginning to get that back.
There was a knock on her door. Maahi sniffed and wiped her tears on her sleeves. She sat up on the floor and looked for something to check her reflection on. She didn’t want her parents to see her cry. She didn’t want to hurt them like that.
She took a second to compose herself before opening the door. It was Sarthak. She turned around and sat down on her bed. Sarthak turned on the light and closed the door before sitting down next to her. He didn’t say anything.
Maahi couldn’t handle more silence. ‘They don’t get it,’ she said, choking on the words.
‘I know.’
‘They just don’t. I mean, I don’t know what else I can do.’
‘There’s nothing you can do,’ Sarthak said.
Maahi paused. ‘What do you mean?’
‘You can’t. Once they’ve decided you’re not enough for them, you’re not enough for them. Trust me, I’ve lived that for years, I’ve experienced that all my life, as far back as I can remember. I’ve never been good enough for them.’
‘No, it’s not like that!’ Maahi said. The thought was too sad to comprehend. ‘You know Ma. She just makes a big deal out of everything. Everything’s dramatic to her. She likes to complain a lot, but she doesn’t mean it. You know that. We all know that.’
‘Yeah? Then why are you crying?’
‘I’m not. I’ve had a hard day and it’s getting to me. That’s all.’
‘A hard year,’ Sarthak said, and she looked at him. ‘I’ve been right here. I’ve seen it. It’s made my life easier—all the attention being directed at you. You being the disappointment for a change doesn’t mean I don’t see that you’ve been sad this whole time.’
Maahi’s lips trembled. ‘I shouldn’t have come back. I should’ve stayed there … no matter how hard it was.’
‘No. You’ve got to stop doing things because others want you to. Why the hell are you studying business economics?’
‘The same reason you’re studying PCM. The same reason you’ll study some kind of engineering once you’re done with school.’
‘It’s different for me. I’m lucky I actually like PCM, and I actually want to be an engineer. But you’re right—I would’ve been doing it even if I hated it,’ Sarthak said. When Maahi looked at him, she noticed how much he had grown. He wasn’t just taller, he had started shaving. He wasn’t the chubby boy she was used to seeing. Ma had raised two chubby kids, but for different reasons, neither of them had retained it. Sarthak was losing width and gaining height. And he seemed more … stable somehow. More grown-up than child. Maahi wondered if he was popular in school. He must be. He was quite good looking, with those broad shoulders, and stupid hair—short on the back and sides, with a long layer on top, sweeping over his head, tapering to a tip at the front. He was quite fond of his hair, spending a lot of time in front of the mirror with a tube of hair gel that Ma said was going to leave him bald one day.
‘Do you want to get out for a second?’ Maahi asked.
‘Out where?’
‘I want to show you something. Let’s go.’
‘Right now?’
Maahi nodded, already putting her shoes back on. She pulled a jacket on in case it got cold on their long ride to Gurgaon.
Maahi was glad to find that Sarthak was a very responsible driver. He followed all the rules, never went over the speed limit, and seemed to have complete control over the bike. It took them less than an hour to reach Cozy Coffee. Once there, Sarthak parked outside and they walked to the entrance. Maahi took out the keys and unlocked the door.
‘This is the place I’ve been hearing about the whole day?’ Sarthak asked.
‘Yep,’ Maahi said.
‘Cool. I like it.’
‘Me too.’
Maahi showed him where she worked, what she did. She told him about the customers, the strange things that sometimes happened. She told him about Laila, whom he already knew about, but she had been using different contexts when she had talked about her day at the dinner table. She was glad she didn’t have to watch what she was saying anymore.
They kept all the lights off, except the one in the kitchen. Maahi pulled out some cupcake recipes she had collected from magazines, YouTube and some she had ‘invented’ the way Laila did. With Sarthak as a helper—which meant someone who passed things to her and ate the half-done batter—Maahi set to baking. She prepared enough batter for half a dozen vanilla cupcakes and handed it over to Sarthak for whipping. She took another bowl and prepared the batter for chocolate cupcakes.
As they whipped, they talked about all the things they hadn’t talked about in ages. They used to be really close growing up. When Maahi thought back, she realized that it was around the time she
got involved with Kishan that she lost her bond with her brother. They recreated it over baking.
Maahi timed the oven carefully, trying not to mess up the end result. She had enjoyed talking to Sarthak, but she knew he would be expecting some cupcakes at the end of all the work. She wasn’t about to be a disappointment yet again, not that day.
When Maahi pulled the trays out, she was relieved to see that the cupcakes were baked right, maybe a little too much, but she would take that—it was better than burning or being undercooked.
‘Oh shit. That looks awesome!’ Sarthak jumped off the counter and walked towards her.
‘Careful. They’re hot. And you have to wait for the toppings—that’s the fun part.’ Maahi was giddy as a child with a candy. She couldn’t wait to decorate them. She pulled open the cabinets on her right and inspected their contents. ‘Let’s see what we’ve got here.’
Maahi pulled out some toppings she liked and Sarthak followed suit. ‘How do you not get fat working here? I would just eat it all.’
‘It’s a struggle.’ Maahi laughed. ‘Okay, so for the vanilla cupcake, how about frosting and sprinkles?’
‘Sounds good to me.’
‘Try caramel and cinnamon dust on vanilla too. And for the chocolate—we can try marshmallow frosting. It’ll take some time. You can have the vanilla ones till then.’
Sarthak gladly agreed.
Maahi found a tutorial on YouTube and began making the frosting. She put eggs, water and sugar in a bowl and began beating. ‘Is that good?’
‘Yum,’ Sarthak said. He spoke a lot less once he started eating.
It took Maahi a good half hour to make the marshmallow frosting, but she was happy with the result. As the last of the marshmallows melted, she brought the bowl to the chocolate cupcakes and poured the topping on one of them. Sarthak picked it up even before she stopped.
‘So good,’ he said after taking a bite.
Maahi laughed at his enthusiasm. She felt a warmth spreading through her as she watched him eat. She didn’t feel quite as worthless anymore.
‘You bake?’ a voice said from behind, startling both Maahi and Sarthak. Laila was standing at the door, chewing gum, inspecting the crime scene.
Part Three
9
‘Did you tell him? Go tell him!’ Laila prodded.
‘No, stop,’ Maahi muttered. ‘That’s not how life works. You can’t just make up rules and make others follow them.’
‘That’s exactly how my life works. We need to enforce cupcake of the day. Trust me, once we start getting good testimonies from customers, CJ’s going to bend. Now go.’
Knowing that Laila wasn’t going to let it go, Maahi went under the counter and emerged on the other side. ‘If he complains to CJ, it’s on you,’ she said.
‘Everything’s always on me.’
‘Because you’re the one always coming up with these ideas!’
‘You’re the one who bakes these cupcakes. I’m just trying to help you get out there. Establish yourself as a baker!’ Laila threw her hands in the air in frustration.
‘Right, of course.’ Maahi rolled her eyes. She loosened the strings of her apron as she walked to the man in a white lab coat at the table by the window. He was sitting, but Maahi could tell he was tall and possibly had a good body. That was also because, when he had come in earlier and she took his order, Laila had whispered ‘I can just tell he works out’, eyeing him with barely concealed appreciation. Maahi’s ears grew warm remembering it, but before she could turn back, he looked up from his phone and right at her. Maahi nodded towards his screen, which had a bright pink and purple maze with pillars strewn randomly in and around it, over fake green grass. ‘Clash of Clans, huh?’
He laughed. ‘If you can tell from five feet away, you know it too well.’
‘My brother plays that stupid game all the time. Gets on my nerves,’ Maahi said. Under the soft sunlight reflecting off the window, his eyes shone. They were brown like hers. Maybe a shade or two lighter. They were intense; she found herself unable to break contact.
‘Umm, sorry, I guess?’ he said, placing his phone face-down on the table.
‘No, no, you can play it. I mean, if you want. You don’t need my permission, of course. I was just trying to make conversation and then I went ahead and made a fool of myself and now I can’t stop blabbering.’
‘That’s quite alright.’ He laughed. Maahi couldn’t get over that laugh. It changed his face. She thought he was attractive, but his laugh was the real game changer. The crinkles that formed near his deep-set, perfect eyes and on the bridge of his nose were adorable.
‘I just wanted to tell you about the cupcake of the day, if you’re interested. It’s a spice cupcake filled with caramel, with vanilla frosting and caramelized apples on top, sprinkled with cinnamon.’
‘Whoa.’
‘Yep. It’s quite good; I made it myself,’ Maahi said, and then blushed. ‘Which means I would totally understand if you don’t want to try it. Cool. So now that I’ve told you about it, I’m going to go hide behind the counter and wish for invisibility as my superpower.’
Maahi turned around and shuffled away without giving him a chance to speak. This place did something to its staff—they could never shut up. She remembered the time when Laila had interviewed her and wouldn’t stop talking. Maybe it was something in the air. Or the icing sugar.
‘So? Does he want it?’ Laila asked when Maahi got behind the counter.
‘No, of course he didn’t want it. Why would anybody want my cupcakes?’
‘Why not? The cupcake has spices in it and caramel filling. On top of that, there’s vanilla frosting and caramelized apples and cinnamon sugar powder,’ Laila said. She paused for a second and asked, ‘Do you think we went too deep?’
‘A bit, yes. There’s too much in there,’ Maahi said, dejected.
‘Well, hey. It’s not just a cupcake—it’s an experience. Don’t get it if you’re not ready for it.’
The seriousness with which Laila spoke made Maahi laugh. ‘I guess he wasn’t ready for it then,’ Maahi said.
‘Then he didn’t deserve it. What a waste. I thought he was cute.’ Laila shrugged.
‘Really? Then why did you send me to talk to him. You should go tell him about cookie of the day.’
‘Yeah, let’s freak all our customers out. No one will ever come here because the employees don’t allow them to drink their coffee in peace.’
‘You insist that we have a cookie of the day and a cupcake of the day. What’s the point in us baking if we don’t sell it?’ Maahi asked.
‘Did you seriously just ask me what the point of baking is? As a baker? As a baker under my training?’
Maahi threw her hands up in surrender. ‘My bad. You’re just confusing me by asking me to market my products and then not marketing your own.’
‘Because we already freaked him out with one announcement. What did you do to him? Did you see the way he ran out of here—all hurried and hassled?’
‘He left?’ Maahi followed Laila’s gaze to the door, and then checked his table. There was no sign of him.
‘You look disappointed,’ Laila observed.
‘You’re the one who thought he was cute.’
‘Yes, but for you. I’ll chew him and spit him out in a week and he wouldn’t know what hit him,’ Laila said.
Maahi shook her head, a bored look on her face. Laila spoke as if she was tough and heartless, but really, she wasn’t. In fact, over the year they had been working together, Maahi had been more and more surprised to find how alike they were. Maybe not on the outside—with Laila in her sleek and minimal black, white and grey outfits and Maahi in her vivid colours and girlish attires. But they definitely shared a deeper connection, a result of their core similarities in nature.
Maahi was confused about Laila’s love life. She acted like a player, but to Maahi, she seemed like someone who would easily get attached to another person and begin to care about them i
n no time. She never went on dates. She said she was concentrating on her classes because she needed to build a career for herself. Her parents were divorced and she lived with her mom, who she wanted to take care of. She wanted to be financially stable so that her mom could retire. She said she had no time for love, but Maahi saw through the ‘tough’ exterior she put up to repel possible ‘fuckboys’ that Laila kept warning her about. She once texted Maahi a definition of the term she found on the Internet.
A fuckboy is the type of guy who does shit that generally pisses the population of the earth off all the time. He will also lead girls on just for hook-ups, says he’s really into you just to fuck you but doesn’t want to deal with all the ‘relationship bullshit’. He thinks about himself and himself only all the time, but pretends to be really nice. He also does really fucked-up shit and then complains about people who do the same old shit as him. Once a fuckboy always a fuckboy.
Maahi had been hurt before, and she could hardly claim to have recovered from her first love and first heartbreak, but this wasn’t how she saw men at all. She doubted Laila saw them that way either, but she maintained that position, at least on the outside. She believed that by not caring about them, she denied them the power to hurt her. Maahi thought it was a good concept in theory, but real life didn’t work that way.
Maahi hadn’t thought about anyone since Kishan, which was two years ago. She kept telling herself to stop being scared and she knew she couldn’t hide forever in fear of getting hurt. But the truth was that she simply didn’t believe she would ever fall in love again.
‘Those look good,’ CJ commented on her cupcakes. Maahi turned to see their manager walking in from behind them.