JUST MARRIED, PLEASE EXCUSE

by Yashodhara Lal

  Vijay was quite insistent. ‘No, but you said that you are tired of not being able to eat non-veg food in your own home. Well, here you are with non-veg food in your own home. So go on now – eat!’

  I was on the verge of telling him hotly that he had completely missed my point about letting me be me, and that I had not been talking about the kind of subterfuge involved in sneaking a paper bag of kababs into my room, but something in his face stopped me. I took a bite of the kabab I had pulled out. It tasted like greased cardboard. I chewed for a while and then swallowed bravely, mumbling with some difficulty, ‘What is this, anyway?’

  Vijay said with a touch of reckless abandon, ‘Oh, it’s the special mixed meat platter from that kabab shop near Toto’s – I didn’t know which kind of animal you would be in the mood for, so I figured this would be the best – it has everything, even fish I think.’

  My stomach was already beginning to churn, but I felt obliged to pick up one more kabab. I looked at it with apprehension, but Vijay was watching me keenly, and encouraged me, ‘Eat, eat, go on.’ I ate.

  It was a particularly uncomfortable experience. I wasn’t in the mood for kababs, but felt compelled to pretend otherwise. They weren’t even nice kababs and I was all too aware of the smell. Also, I knew Mummyji in particular could not stand the sight or smell of non-vegetarian food – and she was in the next room. This realization added even further to my discomfort. When I looked up, I saw that Vijay had his gaze fixed steadfastly on me and it suddenly struck me that he expected me to finish the whole bag of kababs in his presence.

  I quickly scrunched up the top of the bag and said, ‘You know what? I’m going to save this for later. I’ll eat it after we come back from dinner.’

  Vijay protested that I should eat all the kababs while they were fresh. ‘Fresh’ was the last adjective I would have applied to them, but I was determined not to hurt his feelings, so I just said, ‘Look at the time, we’re getting late,’ and dropped the bag in a chair near the window. We finished getting ready quickly and headed out for dinner to a nice quiet restaurant at the Taj Lands End.

  Dinner was a pleasant affair and we enjoyed ourselves, laughing and talking about trivial things – he told me what was going on at the office, I told him about the various recent shenanigans of Kajal and Peanut that he had missed while away at work. It was nice that it was just the two of us, after what felt like the longest time.

  By the time we were ready to leave, we were in a silly mood. We picked up the car from the parking area. Near the exit was a sign that said ‘Please Keep Change Ready.’ I giggled hysterically when Vijay confused the man collecting the parking fee with ‘Bauji, mere trunk mein doosra T-shirt hain. Chalega?’

  It was already past midnight when we reached home and everybody was asleep. We carefully crept past Mummyji-Papaji’s room to our bedroom where Peanut was peacefully asleep in her bassinet. Kajal, who was sleeping near her, woke up and dragged her mattress off to the drawing room in a daze, presumably to fall asleep again within seconds. We sank into bed thankfully. The mood was just right for some cuddling to round off the evening.

  Just then, my nose was assailed by the smell from the packet of kababs, and I grimaced in the dark. The smell must have also hit Vijay because he said reproachfully, ‘Hey! You didn’t finish the kababs! Come on, I’ll get them for you.’

  I said quickly, ‘I really don’t want any more, honey.’

  He protested, ‘But you hardly ate two pieces. There are still ten more to go. I got them for you.’

  ‘I know you got them for me.’ I hesitated but then decided to be frank. ‘Actually, they were not very nice.’

  Vijay was silent for a minute and then said in a hurt and accusing voice, ‘It’s only because you didn’t eat them when they were still fresh.’

  I resented this remark and thought it would be better to explain. ‘They were not fresh even when you brought them in. Look, I appreciate the thought, but I don’t think sneakily eating greasy stale food while hiding in my bedroom is the same thing as eating whatever I want, freely in my house.’

  Vijay was possibly rather nettled by the ‘greasy stale food’ remark because he said, ‘The trouble with you is that you don’t know how to enjoy yourself. Tumhe kabab khane se matlab hain ki ped ginne se? Toh khao! Who is stopping you?’

  ‘Arrey, I’m just saying that this is hardly the way that I would like to eat – a silly bag of yucky kababs as a birthday gift which I have to gulp down secretively in a hidden corner of the house. I keep telling you I just want to be myself and it gets to me when you try to get me to hide things from your parents.’

  Vijay’s annoyance was obviously rising and he responded by imitating me in a high pitched voice: ‘“Be myself. Be myself.” That’s all you talk about any more. You’re like a stuck parrot!’

  Too irritated to even point out and mock his mixed metaphors, I just turned my back on him to avoid any more conversation.

  He must have been in an unusually foul mood at this point because that’s when I heard him add in a spiteful hiss. ‘As if it’s such a great thing to be you.’

  An icy cold rage crept over me as I registered that my husband had actually said those words to me on my birthday.

  He could sense that I was about to explode, and reached out to me and hurriedly tried to backtrack. ‘That was supposed to be a joke. I was trying to lighten the mood …’

  But it was too late.

  Just Married, Please Excuse

  11

  A Fight of Volcanic Proportions

  I scrambled away from Vijay, got out of bed and shouted at the top of my voice, uncaring about who might hear, ‘You’re the biggest jerk on this planet, Vijay!’ Adding one or two rude and unmentionable curses, I stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind me with all my might. I was in such a state that I didn’t even realize the most obvious and immediate effect of my yelling – that I would startle poor little Peanut, who of course woke up and began to cry.

  Through the shut door I could already hear her starting to wail. I wavered for one split second and almost went back into the room, but pride and anger won out and I didn’t turn around. ‘Bollocks,’ I thought. ‘Let him handle her for a while, I need to go and cool off outside.’ I continued noisily down the hallway, and found my way to the door. I fumbled with the latch, my eyes now welling up with tears as I realized that there was no way Vijay’s parents would not have heard this outburst. It was too late to do anything about it, and so I stepped out of the house and stomped down the stairs. The sound of my clunky slippers slapping against each step gave me a strange sort of satisfaction, and I stomped even harder down the three floors, all the way to the ground floor, with the angry phat-phat-phat of my slippers nicely amplified and echoing off the walls.

  I reached the door at the bottom of the stairs and pulled it open, startling awake the sleeping guard who appeared to be momentarily confused as to whether to salute me or shoot me. The confusion cleared and he went for a clumsy version of the former. Too bad, because at this point, I was itching for someone to try and provoke me, so that I could beat the crap out of them. But this particular guard was one of the more timid ones, and he scurried past me across the small complex to open the back gate for which I was headed. Bandstand was just a few feet across the road from the gate, and I figured that only a walk by the ocean with a blast of fresh, salty air in my face could cool me down.

  I was dimly aware that despite the late hour, there were people about. Late night party-ers, a few amorous couples and some shadier varieties, all of whom I ignored as I stumbled along. About half a kilometre later, I slowed down my pace, my head finally beginning to clear, and a sickly feeling of dismay set in.

  I had done exactly what I had resolved not to do – I had looked the gift kababs in the mouth, or something to that effect. The thought was what counted and Vijay had clearly thought that I would be delighted by that greasy carcass bag. It had been wrong for me to let the situation escalate a
nd to barge out of the house as I had done.

  His parents would know that we’d had a fight, and a big one at that. I knew he would probably be getting questioned by them and was hit by how unfair it was that he was probably struggling to pacify them and handle their worried probing while indubitably dealing with a crying baby, while I waltzed around alone by the ocean. I found myself turning around and beginning to walk back towards the house, albeit at a very slow pace.

  A little hope began to dawn in the corner of my mind. Maybe his parents had been sleeping really soundly. Maybe I hadn’t made that much noise while leaving. Maybe he had successfully quietened Peanut down and was now lying in bed, patiently waiting for my return. Suddenly, I just wanted to go home and make everything all right, and I quickened my pace.

  That’s when I first heard the shouting.

  Some major commotion appeared to be taking place. A whole bunch of people were standing around on Bandstand, right in front of my building, shouting something which was incoherent to me from the distance. As I hurried towards them to see what was happening, a group of five or six young men came running towards me. They appeared to be panic-stricken. They were also clearly drunk, given the fact that they were weaving and lurching this way and that and bumping into each other. I sidestepped them all neatly, and they ran past me but one of the men, of the bearded variety with long frizzy hair, paused for a second to give me a wild-eyed stare and then yelled, ‘Run, aunty! TSUNAMEEEE!’

  For a second, I felt my heart sink to the pit of my stomach. Then some modicum of good sense prevailed and I figured that he was obviously too drunk to be taken seriously – why would a bunch of people gather by the ocean if a tsunami was expected?

  Smarting slightly from being called ‘aunty’, I continued to hurry towards the crowd – something was definitely up and it was too close to my home for my liking. As I reached them, I realized that it was mostly, if not entirely, a crowd composed of the people from my building – I recognized a few of my neighbours, including old Mrs D’Costa, who was standing near the back of the group, shivering in her pink nightie. They were all looking up at our building and I could now hear what they were saying more clearly.

  ‘Earthquake … earthquake …’

  ‘The building is about to collapse …’

  ‘Good thing the evacuation happened in time … with these old buildings, you can never tell …’

  ‘… I had always heard that this part of Bandstand was on a seismic fault … but never in my fifteen years here …’

  ‘Did you feel it? Arrey, the pictures almost fell off my wall … my dining room table was shaking …’

  Earthquake?

  My heart thumping, I looked around for the faces of my family, but I couldn’t see them anywhere. After scanning the crowd wildly, I went up to Mrs D’Costa. She was our next-door neighbour and Mummyji had become quite friendly with her over the last couple of weeks.

  ‘Aunty – have you seen my family?’

  Mrs D’Costa had been shivering and murmuring prayers fervently with her eyes closed, but she now looked at me through her hazy blue cataracty eyes. It took her a moment to place me and she said, ‘Oh yes, my dear … I’m sure I saw them somewhere … in fact, our floor was the first to raise an alarm, and as soon as I heard, I alerted the building management to evacuate all the other floors too …’ She and I looked this way and that, but neither of us could spot them. She then patted my hand and said, ‘Don’t worry, child. They will be all right. God will help us through this crisis.’ She piously made the sign of the cross.

  The sceptical agnostic in me was unreassured by this, and I continued my search for them, weaving haphazardly through the crowd. But then a panicked thought hit me despite my attempts to repress it – could this be some sort of divine retribution? My bad behaviour culminating in the loss of my entire family?

  I cursed myself for losing my temper and flouncing out of the house – I wasn’t even carrying my cell phone with me so I couldn’t reach Vijay. Where were they? The crowd was now increasing in size – apparently the other buildings had also been alerted, and more people were piling out in their nightclothes and gathering around, a safe distance away from the structures which would inevitably collapse.

  And then a flash of intuition hit me.

  I knew immediately that they were still in the building.

  I didn’t know how I knew, but I just did.

  There was no way I would let them perish in a collapsing building. My baby was in there too. With instant steely resolve, I ran towards the gate which was being guarded by the selfsame meek guard who had let me out barely twenty minutes earlier. He looked as if he were going to try and stop me, but I gave him such a withering look that he just cowered and shrank back. Ignoring the shouts of ‘Arrey, guard! You fool! Stop her! Stop that girl …’ ringing out behind me, I ran through the gate and within a matter of seconds, was rushing up the three flights of stairs leading up to my home where I wildly imagined that my family members were no doubt trapped behind some sort of collapsed wall or burning door or fallen tree or something of that sort.

  Phat-phat-phat went my slippers, echoing again across the empty stairwell and I finally reached the door to my house. I saw that it was not burning, and so I just pushed it open and went inside yelling, ‘Vijay! Mummyji! Papaji!’ and sure enough I speedily located at least two of the aforementioned family members. Mummyji and Papaji were positioned at the drawing-room window, looking down curiously at the commotion on Bandstand, and they turned to face me as I came rushing in.

  Mummyji immediately came over to me and put her hand on my shoulder. ‘Arrey beta, Yashodhara, tu theek hain, na?’ As I looked around in wild panic, I registered what she was saying. They had been worried that perhaps in a fit of anger, I had gone and done something stupid, and that’s why Vijay had just gone down to see what the crowd outside was gathering for.

  I stopped shooting wild panicked glances around the house to stare incredulously at her for a split second. They were worried that I had done something stupid? Here they were, wasting time peering out of the windows of a building which was on its last legs and they thought I was the one going around doing dumb things?

  ‘Mummyji! Papaji! Earthquake! Aap log yahan kya kar rahen hain!’ I screeched in my hapless mother-in-law’s right ear. ‘Peanut abhi tak yahan pe hi hain? Papaji, we have to get out of the house NOW.’

  I ran out into the hall and started to rush towards the bedroom where I could see Kajal rocking Peanut in her arms. I was about to yell some more when Papaji’s firm but gentle voice cut through my panic as it followed me down the hall. ‘Arrey, beta. Koi earthquake nahin hain. Wo toh bas Kajal ki galat fehmi thi …’

  I skidded to a halt in the hallway to consider this.

  Now that he mentioned it, I realized that there was no sign or sound of any earthquake. Everything was still and in its place.

  With a flash of sudden blinding clarity, I realized what had happened.

  When I unthinkingly slammed my way out of the house, I had left behind a scene of complete pandemonium.

  Inside our room, Peanut was crying uncontrollably, even though Vijay had picked her up and was rocking her back and forth, trying to quieten her down.

  Mummyji and Papaji had of course been awakened by all the commotion. Papaji had heard me shouting at Vijay and had caught a glimpse of me as I passed their room, and he had immediately got out of bed and followed me. Of course, I was much quicker than he was and had already disappeared by the time he got out the front door. He stood there at the landing for a while, peering down the stairwell, trying in vain to spot me.

  Meanwhile, Mummyji had reached the door of her bedroom and was looking up and down the hall, trying to figure out what was happening. She had only heard loud noises, some shouting, and became aware that Papaji and I were no longer in the house for some reason.

  It was then, at this point, as she stood there blinking in confusion, that Kajal came tearing out of the drawing
room and shouted in her ear, ‘Mummyji, bhookump aaya! Bhookump aaya!’

  Poor Kajal had been in deep slumber when she, like the others in the house, had been rudely awakened by my shouting, stamping and door-slamming. Of couse, being Kajal, she had immediately jumped to the wrong conclusion.

  In a crazy sort of way, Kajal’s pronouncement made sense to Mummyji – after all, she had just seen me and Papaji both speedily vacating the premises. As she would explain later, she had thought it rather selfish of us – ‘Papaji aur Yashodhara toh bhaag gaye!’ But for the moment, her instinct for self-preservation had kicked in and blocked out other thoughts. And so it was that she took Kajal by the arm and exclaimed, ‘Chal Kajal, apan bhi bhagaein!’

  Vijay heard this exchange out in the hall and tried to quell their panic, calling out while continuing to rock Peanut, ‘Arrey, Mummy – koi bhookump nahin hain … sirf Yashodhara thi …’ But his voice did not make it in time through our closed bedroom door, and so Mummyji and Kajal propelled themselves out of the house in a state of great panic. Just outside in the hall, they bumped into Papaji who, giving up on trying to spot me, was heading back into the house.

  Mummyji shouted, ‘Chalo, aap ab kyon ruk gaye? Bhaago … bhookump hain!’

  A confused exchange followed, but eventually Papaji succeeded in quelling their fears and ushered the two shaken ladies back into the house.

  Unfortunately, none of them was aware of a third shaken lady, who had been peering at them short-sightedly through hazy blue eyes through the open door of the flat right next to ours, quivering in her pink nightie.

  Mrs D’Costa had first been awakened by the sound of some strange vibrating phat-phat out in the landing, and had now come out to investigate the ruckus near her front door. Unable to hear Papaji’s low-voiced explanation of the actual cause of the commotion, she only registered the panicked, high-pitched voices shouting ‘bhookump’. This had been enough for her, and she had proceeded to take positive action to save herself and the residents of the entire neighborhood, after a quick fervent prayer for strength in this hour of need to God in his Heaven above.