After the Storm

by Lakshmy Ramanathan

  ‘Well, knowing Chanda, she would have,’ replied Meenu.

  ‘But … what if I get an infection?’ she asked sounding almost ultrasonic and pulling out a sanitizer and some anti-bacterial wipes from her bag.

  ‘I am sure you won’t,’ said Meenu in a soothing voice. ‘What would you like to report on Ria?

  She looked up from her bag and around the office and said, ‘I would like to do business reporting, you know, but it doesn’t interest me,’ in a tone that suggested it was less her fault and more the beat’s. ‘I thought reporting could be fun, you know? Like meeting your subjects at coffee shops and spas’.

  ‘So you don’t want to be part of the pit-sweating beats then?’ asked Meenu, looking at the time on her computer’s screen. If she had any hope of filing the sailing story she would have to hurry. But first the baby had to be settled.

  She beckoned her and led her towards Pinky’s desk. The entertainment head owed her a favour and, all things said, most people would luurve to get into the good books of the owner’s niece. Pinky was sure to find something fun and easy for her.

  14

  Late on Saturday night, Meenu picked up her phone and whatsapped Rakesh.

  ‘Are we meeting tomorrow?’

  ‘Definitely,’ came the reply, to the point and after ten full seconds.

  She wished he sounded chattier. They hadn’t talked to each other since their date seven days ago. Seven nights ago, to be precise. And what a night it had been, thought Meenu, smiling and tucking in her thighs at the mere memory of it. If it was any consolation, she was meeting him in a few hours.

  At half past five in the morning, Rakesh emerged from his audi A3 wearing a dark green hoodie and grey tracks. Not spotting Meenu anywhere in the vicinity, he walked around the bonnet of his car to the bench on the pavement. Unknown to him, a pair of molten chocolate eyes was subjecting him to a thorough inspection from behind a curtain.

  Meenu noted with a smile that she could see his trademark, tousled hair even from her mama’s first floor balcony. The over-six-foot-tall chef had started doing dips, it would seem. She watched for a full minute before heading down.

  ‘Are we going for a jog?’ she asked coming and standing in front of him.

  ‘No,’ he said standing up. ‘Slept well?’ he asked breaking into a sunny smile.

  ‘Not much,’ she replied. ‘But enough,’ she added brightly.

  Taking in her shirt over racerback black tee and denim shorts, he said, ‘Get in. I’m taking you somewhere’.

  The somewhere turned out to be a bustling flower market where crowds, scents and colours elbowed to outdo each other with no real success. After parking the car in a nearby alley, the two headed there past bunches of stemmed roses, baskets of marigolds to a lone, wizened man hunched over his wicker basket.

  ‘Kaka … violets hain?’ asked Rakesh, smiling eagerly at the man.

  From his left, the old man pulled out a small basket where the most delicate of violets lay as if asleep. He showed them to Rakesh who looked nothing short of thrilled. Certain that she would be ignored for the next few minutes, the rather sleep deprived Meenakshi looked for a place to sit. She spotted a couple of rectangular tubs a little ahead. Piling them over each other, she sat down on top of it pulling her phone out from her shorts’ pocket and plugging in ear phones.

  Rakesh who had been examining the violets with a critical eye and furrowed brows looked up suddenly and around. Spotting Meenu a few feet away, he smiled apologetically and signalled for five more minutes. Meenu blew back a kiss. Might as well make it known that he had kept her up last night, she thought with a grin. Besides, she was craving for it – his kisses, his touch.

  When he was finally done, he came and tapped her upturned nose. She looked up, eyeing the daisies and violets in his hand.

  ‘For me?’ she asked simply.

  ‘No, for the restaurant kitchen,’ he replied, flushing a bit.

  She shrugged her shoulders and pulled out the earphones. She led him through the crowds this time, her back to him. Once they got into his car and settled down, Rakesh fished out a tiny yellow flower from his kangaroo pocket and gave it to her.

  ‘What’s this?’ she asked crinkling her nose suspiciously.

  ‘A pumpkin’s first blossom,’ he replied.

  ‘Really?’ asked Meenu animatedly, holding the lemony flower by its stalk with childlike glee.

  ‘God! I can’t lie to you,’ said Rakesh, running his fingers through his hair.

  She looked at him quizzically.

  ‘I was in the kitchen garden this morning and snipped some of those for the restaurant,’ he said warily.

  Meenu turned back to examine the flower more critically.

  ‘Oh God, yes! I can see a speck of brown soil on the stalk.’

  ‘Guess I don’t empty my pockets out prop—’

  Meenu snatched the violets and hit him over the head with them.

  ‘No … they’re for the restaurant!’

  Her eyes blazed, the violets held high in her fingers.

  ‘Anything! I’ll do anything to make it up to you,’ he pleaded.

  Meenu seemed to consider the offer momentarily and then craning her neck gave him a warm kiss on his lips, dropping the flowers in the back seat.

  Rakesh looked surprised but recovered quickly enough to pull her towards him and give a long, lingering kiss.

  ‘Are you going to the wedding in Chennai?’ he murmured his face buried in her hair.

  ‘Yes. Are you?’ she asked.

  ‘Have to,’ he said. And then drawing back and looking into her eyes he asked with a grin, ‘Will you be my date?’

  ‘Hmm … you mean sit next to you at the wedding and hear you talk about food?’ she asked, teasing him.

  ‘Yeah, you do that,’ he replied. ‘I’ll be doing much more,’ he added in a low growl, running his hands intimately under her tee making her giggle and shiver at the same time. Meenu couldn’t believe the heat blooming in her cheeks. She whacked his exploring hand out of her tee.

  ‘Don’t get too naughty,’ she said adding ‘the sambhar mafia have eyes everywhere. They’ll be watching you.’

  ‘All the better,’ he said clicking on his seatbelt and signalling for her to do the same. ‘They’ll know you’re taken,’ he said in uncharacteristically good spirits.

  ‘Wonder how that’ll make my mother feel,’ murmured Meenu.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well … she has always been on the lookout, you know.’

  ‘Even though you’ve always been—’

  ‘Saying no,’ Meenu cut in.

  ‘Why?’ asked Rakesh, looking at her.

  ‘’Cause I don’t want to get married!’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Don’t know. All I know is I don’t want to get married now,’ she said in a huff.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘’Cause I just want to have some fun,’ she replied.

  ‘So…?’ he said, manoeuvring the car through the narrow back streets. ‘You think marriage is not fun?’

  ‘How can cooking and dusting be fun?’ she cried in exasperation.

  ‘That’s what you think women do after marriage? Clean and cook?’

  ‘Well, in most homes, yes,’ she said, crossing her arms.

  ‘I think you are stuck in a time warp,’ said Rakesh with a tinge of amusement.

  ‘I am not!’ fought back Meenu. ‘It’s the families who make women do these that are.’

  ‘I think you and I have very different notions of what a marriage can be Meenu,’ said Rakesh quietly.

  Meenu opened her mouth to retort but found that she didn’t have anything to add.

  It was the morning of Diwali and Mumbai city boomed and dishoomed as patakas burst in a riot of colours. The Daily Times was working and as Meenu dressed, her phone rang. It took a while for her to hear it. She picked up the call and shouted ‘hello’ over the din.

  ‘Hi kanna, happy Deepaval
i,’ shouted back her father in his deep, bass voice.

  Since the time she had come to Mumbai, Meenu hadn’t spoken with her father. She had thought about him several times but had never gotten down to calling him. Her relationship with her dad had always been of a quiet steady type unlike the loud unpredictable exchanges with her mother.

  ‘Ganga snaan over?’ her father enquired.

  ‘Yes, Appa. With shika and oil. Mami made sure,’ she added with a snort.

  ‘I told you staying with relatives comes with certain … disappointments,’ he said wryly.

  Meenu smiled into the phone.

  ‘Is it raining there?’ she asked.

  ‘Like always. But something’s different this time.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ she asked running a brush through her hair absently.

  ‘I don’t think it has rained like this in recent times. You know how it always rains during Deepavali? Only this time, you can’t even hear people bursting crackers! At least not in our neighbourhood.’

  Meenu wasn’t sure if this was a good thing or not. Here in Mumbai, the festive din over the past few days had given her a right royal headache.

  ‘Last Sunday, it rained so hard we could barely see beyond a few feet,’ continued her father. ‘It was as if the rain was falling down in sheets … grey all around.’

  Meenu sat down on her diwan processing the information.

  ‘In a way it’s good ilaya pa? Chennai will finally get some water.’

  ‘Actually, reports say only 15 per cent of the city’s four reservoirs have been filled,’ her dad clarified.

  ‘There!’ said Meenu sounding relieved. ‘Guess we need the rains then!’

  Her father went quiet as if analysing a problem in a question paper.

  ‘Why? Are the papers saying anything different?’ prodded Meenu.

  ‘Well they are saying a cyclone is headed our way’.

  ‘Don’t we always experience cyclones this time of the year?’ she asked rhetorically.

  ‘Yes, we do but the intensity is something else. If you were here, you would have seen it for yourself.’

  ‘Where’s Krishna?’ asked Meenu looking at the time. ‘Is he around?’

  ‘Dey Krishna!’ he beckoned to his son who was close by. ‘Akka,’ he said signalling to the phone.

  ‘Happy Diwali, Meano.’

  ‘Happy Deepavali, Krishna.’

  ‘Aaah … you didn’t shorten it like north Indians do.’

  Meenakshi bit back from saying, ‘as if’.

  Krishna grinned into the phone. It was good to have a go at his sister. Especially after months.

  ‘Not rowing today?’ she asked peaceably enough after realising Krishna was just being his annoying self.

  ‘Are you kidding? It’s too dangerous to row in now. From the boat club, two boats were washed away from the stand on which they were parked, right into the Adyar river.

  ‘Really? I thought Appa was exaggerating about the rains!’

  ‘When has he ever exaggerated? Pump sets and super sucker machines are already at work in Velachery, Kotturpuram … you know all those low-lying areas.’

  Meenu went quiet. The rains had begun just three weeks back. How could Chennai be reeling already?

  ‘Aren’t you reading the papers?’ demanded Krishna upon encountering her silence.

  ‘Of course, I am,’ she answered defensively. ‘Just that there is no news of it in the papers here,’ she explained while slipping on an earring.

  ‘Then pick up a Tamil newspaper or go online la? Aren’t you supposed to keep track of news around the world?’ he said with slight surprise.

  ‘Clearly, I don’t do some parts of my job very well,’ she said ruefully.

  ‘Meano, I didn’t mean to find fault. But the scene is pretty bad here. Streets are inundated; buildings are collapsing,’ explained Krishna. ‘The fire and rescue teams have been out on boats moving people to higher grounds.’

  ‘Already?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’

  ‘I have been trailing them, trying to offer my help; you know … putting my rowing skills to use.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘So far they haven’t required it.’

  Meenu blinked, surprised by both the developments and her carefree brother’s sudden inclination to help others.

  When Meenu crossed the reception area past the biometeric door, she didn’t feel very upbeat. She wasn’t sure if it was due to the dampening news from home or the fact that she hadn’t learnt of it by herself or because of the row (albeit small one) she had had with Rakesh on Sunday. If it was the third, she knew how to fix it. She would leave office early and turn up at his restaurant. It would lead to some thawing and hopefully much more, she allowed herself to think with a smile.

  Since she didn’t have a story to file for the day, she spent the day, scanning through the wires meticulously. There weren’t any reports on Chennai though there were a couple on neighbouring districts such as Cuddalore, which routinely bore the brunt of the northeast monsoons. Meenu wondered if she should collate all the data and present it to Mistry. He might allocate a two-column story if he got his tongue around the district’s name, she thought wryly.

  Just before heading for lunch, she logged into her official email account. There was one unopened mail:

  Happy Diwali, Gorgeous! Terribly busy; arriving on Saturday

  Love,

  Rathore

  Meenu stared at her screen, bile rising to her mouth. She had almost forgotten this man and what he had tried to do to her. Now that he had dropped a mail, it all came rushing back to her. The sooner she broke up with him, the quicker she would feel relieved. So she awaited his return like nobody else at the Editorial of The Daily Times. The irony didn’t make her smile.

  15

  The evening stretched out even as frenzied typing and lung-tarring smoke filled it. Edit meetings rolled out one after the other cancelling and redrawing leads. Amidst the chaos, Meenakshi’s off-white extension peeled.

  ‘Gurd everning’ rasped the slightly familiar voice.

  ‘Commodore Patil!’ recognized Meenu after a pause.

  ‘Happy Diwali dear. Busy?’

  ‘No, no please go on,’ she replied.

  ‘Did you hear the Dufferin Cup got cancelled?’

  ‘Oh … erm … no’ stuttered Meenu. ‘I thought you mentioned the cup was going to be held in Chennai.’

  ‘Yes it was,’ Patil admitted.

  ‘Out of sight, out of mind you know,’ she joked weakly.

  ‘No worries, dear,’ she replied in a soothing voice. ‘The weather was just awful on Sunday. We couldn’t set sail.’

  Yet another update on Chennai’s rains.

  ‘That bad?’ asked Meenakshi, alert now.

  ‘Yes! The clouds were so low, the skies burst open even before we reached the jetty! All the teams had to march back to the club though we sailors, let me tell you, aren’t put off course that easily,’ she said with a snort.

  ‘There is a depression developing southwest of Bay of Bengal, isn’t it?’ asked Meenakshi. ‘My father told me just this morning.’

  ‘Oh! Of course, you must have family in Chennai. I hope they are alright.’

  ‘Yes they are. Thank you.’

  ‘It’s because of the record warm seas you know.’

  ‘Sorry?’ asked Meenu not understanding.

  ‘The depression, the low pressure formation – its because of the waters; they haven’t been this warm in decades! Most sailing and yachting clubs keep track of surface water temperatures through the year.’

  Meenu listened as the commodore further elaborated on the connection between warm seas and a strong El Niño.

  ‘One last thing, Minaakshi,’ rasped the commodore. ‘The Dufferin Cup has been postponed to the twenty ninth of November. If you could put me onto any reporter by then, it would be really helpful. We are hoping to get some coverage this time at
least.’

  ‘Commodore, I did ask around but we don’t have reporters in Chennai,’ Meenakshi lied. She had been informed (very matter of factly) that the paper’s sole reporter would not be sent to cover a sailing race even if members from three different states were participating in it.

  ‘Let me check if any of my other journo friends are in Chennai.’

  ‘Oh, okay,’ replied the commodore sounding a bit disappointed.

  ‘Be in touch,’ Meenu chirped and disconnected the call. It had become routine – the favours for coverage but slowly and surely, Meenakshi was getting better at saying ‘no’.

  As she leaned back against her chair for a moment, conversations with her dad, brother and the commodore began to swirl in her mind. It was clear that Chennai rains had to be written about. But how was she to make The Daily Times sit up and take notice? Cancelled regattas and Dufferin Cups wouldn’t cut it, but hard-hitting news items and gritty pictures might.

  So she spent the next few hours scanning through Tamil news websites and dailies that had a Chennai edition, collating data. There was no way she could meet Rakesh tonight – not if she wanted to pitch a compelling story the next morning.

  Meenu woke at 5 a.m. to get hold of the newspapers; any later and she wouldn’t get a chance until both Mama–Mami had read, reflected and reviewed every piece of news carried in The Post (a Chennai based English daily that every Tamilian woke up to), Dinamalar, a leading Tamil newspaper and India Times, the country’s most widely read English daily.

  She picked up the papers that had been thrown carelessly over the intricately drawn kolam and scanned through them. While two carried several news items on the rains, in the third, there was not even a mention. She felt anger mounting but decided to put it aside and head to her office instead.

  Her self-righteousness didn’t last though when she strode past the reception into the Editorial. Mistry was unpredictable and just because the rains had pummeled Chennai and the northern coast of Tamil Nadu, she knew he might not see reason to allocate the story even a few hundred words. Tiny beads of sweat began to appear between her brows.