by Zarreen Khan
Ramit
Why can’t Mummy have these embarrassing conversations with Mona instead of me? She insisted on sitting me down to talk about not letting Mona dance at the sangeet, since throwing up obviously meant that my wife was pregnant. I had to tell her all about the Whisper Ultra pack to finally get her to let me go. And then she muttered something about my lack of manners for discussing such private things with my mother.
Sex life, okay.
Menstruation, not.
So there we were. Mona insisted on dancing to all the Punjabi numbers so that all suspicion was thrown out of the window. And dragged me to the dance floor for company. The speakers were blaring ‘Lak twenty-eight kudi da, forty-seven weight kudi da’.
Mona snorted. ‘Forty-seven weight. Here. In the land of pure ghee.’
Didn’t want to say anything, but Mona hasn’t ever been forty-seven kilos either, even if Dehradun doesn’t have pure ghee.
‘I feel like I’m at Prince Charming’s ball,’ Mona commented, shaking her head. ‘Everyone here is wearing a gown! Including the duelling Daisy chachi and Nishi bua. All except Mummy in her starched sari and me, of course, in my outdated anarkali. Look, even Dadi’s outfit looks like a gown!’
As I turned to look, Roshini, Abhiroop’s wife, came charging at me, first tripping on whatever golden monstrosity she’d draped herself in, then balancing her squirmy two-year-old dangling from her hip, and said, ‘Ramit bhaiya, now toh you should also have a baby. Little Roshan needs someone to play with.’
As if I’m responsible for her child’s entertainment! I offered the kid my iPhone.
Mona
And right before leaving Amritsar, I celebrated my thirty-first birthday. In the midst of the Deol family.
The bheed stood around me as I blew the candles on the Jams and Cakes cake that Daisy chachi and Nishi bua both turned up their nose at.
Then some kind soul in the crowd pointed out that there were only thirty candles when I was actually turning thirty-one. Now, the one thing I do know is that the Deol family lacks mathematical genes, but trust them to emerge from the dark when it comes to my age. Before I could say anything, Mummy jumped in, saying I was thirty only. There were some murmurs of protest but no one messes with Mummy.
Right after the cake cutting, someone with their mouth full of pineapple cream cake, which, FYI, I hate – not the lack of manners, the flavour of cake – said, ‘Bhabi, is saal toh good news de hi do!’
Ramit’s ears turned pink.
And I got another taste of Babbu’s mutton tikkas in my mouth.
Week LMP minus 3
If you aren’t getting pregnant, just
keep trying
Mona
Such trying times.
Ramit returned to work with a vengeance – as if he’d been gone for months, when it was only a weekend. What does he do in that office, anyway? He’s quite incapable of having an affair, that’s for sure. He is the worst workaholic I’ve ever known. Even his mistress would leave him.
Two years ago when I’d quit my job to work on my own thing, everyone had naturally thought it was so I could concentrate on getting pregnant. ‘Have a baby now that you’re free!’ Do people even know that your baby-maker needs to be ‘free’ too?
Ramit had scurried off and I was left to do all the packing by myself.
Mr Gopal, our landlord, asked both the Aggarwals on the first floor as well as us on the second to vacate by Monday. He claims his sons are returning to Delhi with their families and they wanted the two floors refurbished for them. I think it’s a lie. I think he’s finally caught on to how much rent he can actually be making in Green Park vs what we are paying him.
I was okay with it. We were planning to move next month anyway as our very own house was ready for possession. I only wished I had started packing much earlier instead of wasting all my time running around for Chiku’s wedding to get my anarkalis altered.
The packing was too much for me to handle by myself so I had to phone Mom – my mom – and ask her to come down from Doon. Mom sent Shania instead, which was no help at all. All my sister did was chuck stuff into the carton saying, ‘Di, do you really need this?’ She thinks I’m a hoarder. And then she wanted to take a smoke break every half hour. I have a good mind to tell on her. She is getting skinnier by the minute and I wonder how she manages to go trekking and backpacking with the amount of damage she’s done to her lungs.
She’s into some sort of hippie thing, my twenty-eight-year-old sister Shania. She wears these gunji tops and tiny, torn shorts, and has a collection of wild headscarves, and smokes like a chimney, and wants to go trekking everywhere. But it’s a phase. It’s always a phase with her. She was all gypsy queen in college, wearing all sorts of cheap trinkets and sounding like a wind chime in long floral skirts and belly-dancing type of waistbands. And then she went through that horrid goth phase during my wedding, wearing black for all the ceremonies. People were freaking out about her being a witch. The camps and shorts and legs and cleavage have been around for a year now, and we’re sure the next phase will hit us any day.
Earlier, I would regularly lecture her on getting a job and settling down, but she claims she has too much of the world to see before she can settle down. (Now who’s being all Simran-like from DDLJ!) She returned from Goa last month with a horrid lizard tattoo that goes right up her thigh. It made Mom so mad, she called me up and yelled at me for not finding Shania a boy! If only she knew how many boys Shania has found for herself since she turned twelve. I blame it solely on Mom and Dad for not setting her right from the start. They spoilt it all by giving her an exotic name like Shania. I wish they’d saved some creativity for me. In school, college, post-grad, office, everywhere, I was forever Ajit’s Loin ki Mona, Mona ke saath Sona. And have you noticed how some Punjabi aunties pronounce it? Moddha! DDH – as in the Hindi alphabet that no one can start a song with when you play antakshari and have to sing ‘ddhing-ddhong-ddhing ek do teen…’
Anyway, sometime during the packing, we started discussing the Amritsar trip. And I told her about Mohini being pregnant.
‘Ek aur pregnant? What does this Deol family eat?’
‘I’m quite sick of it all, vaise,’ she continued. ‘All my friends are getting married and having babies. I don’t even want to log on to Facebook any more. Ek toh, what’s the deal? Why do all babies look the same? Is it the same kid doing the rounds? It might as well be. Bhagwan just has a photocopy machine, I tell you.’
She looked at me for an answer – obviously, I had none. But I knew how she felt.
Earlier, it didn’t bother me when my friends posted pictures of their newly made baby. I was at least ahead of the single ones, since I’d married young.
But at thirty plus, my friends were sending their kids to school! Or having more kids. Though, to be honest, there was not so much about seconds on Facebook because hey, they’re seconds. It was routine. Even when people announce the arrival of their second one, it’s not them who’s to be congratulated. It’s all about ‘my first-born now has a baby brother/sister’. Rather mean to the second one, I think. I was glad I was the first-born in my family. Who would’ve boasted about a child like Shania, in any case?
‘Vaise, di,’ Shania said thoughtfully. ‘In the movies, why do they say ‘Main tumhare bachche ki maa banne wali hoon’? Why doesn’t the woman ever say humare bachche ki? Either she’s saying it’s all your fault I’m pregnant or it’s all your responsibility now.’
I told her sternly to stop discussing pregnancies and get on with sorting out the bookshelf. As if I haven’t been thinking about this stuff enough already!
I’d always been more concerned about Ramit’s mother not having a grandchild. Ramit is, after all, her only child, her only hope. At least Mom has Shania. But just one look at her pierced tongue, her micro shorts, that lizard tattoo peeking out from those micro-shorts and her unending string of boyfriends, and I know I am most likely my mom’s only hope too. Well, for a legitim
ate grandchild at least.
Ramit
Got home slightly late. Mona looked like she was going to explode. Don’t know why. The whole point of Shania being there was so that she could help with the packing. Not me.
To make amends, I’d offered to book the movers and packers for the weekend. But apparently that was not good enough. Mona flung some fungus-infested canvas suitcase at me, asking me to pack up my own cupboard.
Wish I lived in the era of servile wives instead of henpecked husbands.
Mona
One thing I asked him to do and he has palmed it off! And guess who to? My very own traitor of a sister, who had been missing in action all week, meeting this gang and that, attending reunion pe reunion, taking cigarette break pe cigarette break. And then this morning, I actually found her sitting cross legged in front of his cupboard, folding up Ramit’s shirts and trousers conscientiously. He, of course, had run out of the house on the pretext of some meeting.
He must have tipped her heavily.
Ramit
It cost me quite a bit, but I knew Shania would do a good job. Anyway, there were only a few shirts and trousers. How hard can that be? And some vests. And some socks. And some briefs.
Shit! The briefs!
Mona
I entered the room later to find Shania holding up Ramit’s favourite Humpty Dumpty briefs. He’s got them in five colours – yellow, red, blue, green and purple. And I don’t mean nice pastels. They are as bright and sunny as it gets. With Humpty Dumpty’s face right on the crotch.
In any other situation, I would have been embarrassed for him and whipped them off her hands, but this time, it served him right!
‘Di!’ she said, holding them up against her, her bratty grin plastered on her face. ‘Is this what it is? You have a fetish for Humpty Dumpty? I am your sexy, sexy lovah!’ she started to sing.
I opened my mouth to tell her to shut up, but something else had already distracted her … oh no.
Ramit
Shit! Shit! Shit! The Condoms!
Mona
‘Chocolate-flavoured condoms? Ooh di! This is getting more and more interesting!’
And then, I swear, I saw her pocket two boxes.
I’m going to tell on her, you wait and see. My poor, innocent mother deserves to know what type of child she’s raising. Raised. Raising. It’s still not too late.
Ramit
Immediately called Shania and unhired her. She took away half a pack of very expensive cigars as a bribe for not mentioning the unmentionables found in my cupboard to anyone else.
Mona
The packers took sixteen hours to pack our stuff as opposed to the six they’d promised, and I was hopping mad.
I kept looking outside and noticing the efficiency of the packers the Aggarwals had hired, and was pleased to see their progress was even slower than ours. Mrs Aggarwal was throwing a fit and her brat was not helping the process either – he kept wailing about how they were packing off his tricycle and hitting his haggard-looking mother. Why do children hit their parents? My child would never hit me! He’d be meek and do as he was told. He’d sit in the corner and colour and read books and generally be calm and quiet, like his father.
Talking of who, Ramit had planned to run off to another ‘one hour only’ meeting in the afternoon, but I had a major showdown with him, post which he quickly cancelled the appointment and was spending the day supervising the packers.
Shania was unperturbed by my turning into a raging dragon and coolly insisted on being dropped off to the airport. Yes, in the middle of all the chaos! I told her to cab it, but she wailed about how broke she was and how unsafe cabs were and how she didn’t understand Delhi. So, I had to drive off to the airport so that madam could catch her flight to Puducherry. She seemed to have found an ashram there and is going to stay there for a week. Goodbye hiking phase, I thought.
When I returned, Ramit was already getting the truck loaded. I was so impressed that I looked around in amazement for a few minutes. And then realized that something was amiss. Our thirty-two-inch TV had turned into a forty-one-inch one and there was a rather dirty green tricycle huddled next to it. That’s when I realized that Ramit was helping Mrs Aggarwal pack.
He and I are no longer on speaking terms.
Week LMP minus 2
In their thirties, women have about a 15 per cent chance of getting pregnant in any single ovulation cycle
Mona
You may now officially call me Super Woman! I am capable of doing anything and everything! With the exception of remembering my ovulation dates, but that’s a separate issue.
We are all moved in and set up. All thanks to me! Fine – Ramit had a small role to play in getting the telephone and satellite dish installed on Sunday, but other than that, I did everything. I got the drawing room set up, the bedroom done, the guest room done, all our clothes put in the closets and even the linen in the linen cupboards. And we have a linen cupboard! Huge achievement compared to stashing them into the side table drawers, which would then not shut, in our previous house.
But what I was most proud of myself for was having found a maid! Lakshmi is punctual, clean, well-networked and hasn’t stolen anything in three days.
I also managed to go for a walk around the colony today, after working non-stop for five days on getting the house in order, and I think it was a brilliant investment!
Now we are no longer Delhites. We are Gurgaonvaasis. Okay, Gurugramvaasis.
We’ve moved into this newly constructed gated colony that comprises only villas – built in pairs – with a white picket fence as a boundary around each, complete with individual gardens and driveways. We’ve never had assigned parking before. In Green Park, there were times when we wished we could park our cars one on top of the other, and almost did. This is a complete luxury!
On the other side, and in front of the villas, is a lane separating the next pair of villas, and there is a common park a couple of lanes away that has a jogging track, a basketball area, a sand pit (my kids will have a blast growing up here!) and swings. And there are little patches of carnations everywhere. Which is very cool, because we’re called Carnation Estate. And I have a patch of pink roses and a papaya tree in the garden. It’s just too exciting!
The first lot of houses were ready for possession last year, so the colony’s already half full, including our twin villa. Our neighbours have been here for the last six months, I’m told, but I’m yet to catch sight of them. They paid extra to get possession earlier and, judging by the size of the cars standing outside with the uniformed chauffeurs, I don’t find that hard to believe. I’ve also seen a host of servants running around.
But whatever, all-in-all, I’m so happy we’re settled in! Ramit’s office is close by (not very close, but it’s in Gurgaon) and we have a fantastic new house. I can now finally start working on losing weight, work on my business idea and get on with some family planning!
Ramit
I’m a little worried Shania has left behind some of her ‘things’ and Mona has decided to try them or something. Because every day when I return from work, she’s almost high on energy and bursting with enthusiasm, showing me some new fixture around the kitchen or going on about a new curio in the living room or shoving curtain designs down my throat.
Today it was something to do with a name plate. Whether it should be black against white or white against black. I wanted to tell her to speak to my cousin Suttu, since she’s studying design, but I’m not sure it would’ve gone down too well. I’ve learnt not to mention the bheed on our time off.
Mona
Picked up the nameplate and sent a picture of it to Ramit. His response? K.
Ekta Kapoor would love him. She’s the only other person I know who needs to deal with as many K’s as I do.
Anyway, I thought it looked nice. I walked out, hung it neatly on our little gate, and stepped back to admire it – DEOLS, VILLA NO. 22. And then I happened to look across to our neighbour’s
. It said LAILA AND SHASHI, COTTAGE 23, CARNATION ESTATE.
Cottage? Excuse me? Does our sales deed not say ‘villa’? (Okay, maybe it says house number, but the builders always say villa!) So who are they to call it a cottage?
Now I’m a little embarrassed that I’ve got a wannabe ‘villa’ written on my nameplate. Cottage sounds so much better.
Took a walk around the colony. Stomped around, to be precise. There are two more people who have ‘villa no.’ mentioned under their names. None have a stupid ‘cottage’ written under theirs.
But most people just have the house number. They’re so uncool.
Ramit
Got home to find Mona sulking on the couch. Wondered if yet another relative had been knocked up. But she was on some tangential I’m-losing-my-identity trip.
Finally figured it had something to do with the damn nameplate. She’s extremely upset about being labelled a Deol. I don’t blame her.
She wants to put both our names on it. And add Carnation Estate. Don’t know how that’ll help because the entire area is Carnation Estate, but she insists it’s important if a letter comes her way. I don’t remember the last time we received a letter. Even wedding invites are sent via email now. She plans to get a matching letterbox installed outside.
Mona
I know I should be asleep but, seriously, what kind of a name is Laila? So MTV! That is surely not her real name.
I’m not keen to meet the neighbours at all. Flashy cars, flashy names, flashy nameplates. They’ve totally spoilt my neighbourhood.
Ramit
Text from Mona: Come home early
Replied: K
Text from Mona: By 7
Replied: K
Text from Mona: You’re just saying that. You won’t come by even 9, will you?
Replied: Will do
Text from Mona: Is that a will do by 7 or will do by 9?
Replied: 9
Text from Mona: Are you in a meeting?
Replied: No
Text from Mona: Then why are you sending me single-word messages?
Replied: Be home by 9. Love you.