No Time for Goodbyes
Andaleeb Wajid writes about food, relationships, weddings, not necessarily in that order. She worked as a technical writer, content writer and food writer for several years before quitting so she could write full time.
Andaleeb has authored four novels, Kite Strings, Blinkers Off, My Brother’s Wedding and More than Just Biryani. She is married and has two sons and lives in Bangalore.
No Time for Goodbyes
ANDALEEB WAJID
First published in India 2014
Copyright © 2014 by Andaleeb Wajid
The moral right of the author has been asserted
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the Publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews
Bloomsbury Publishing, London, New Delhi, New York and Sydney
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ISBN 978-93-82951-19-3
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Bloomsbury Publishing India Pvt Ltd
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Printed and bound in India by Thomson Press Pvt Ltd
For Amma, whose stories about the ‘good old days’ have never really left me.
One
AT SOME POINT OF the day, every day, I wonder if I am adopted. I have mentioned this to my sister just once and she rolled her eyes at me and said that this was one more way in which I was clamouring for attention. Little psycho-analysing twit.
I’ve had it. I can’t take it any longer. I’m facing two whole months of time with my mother waiting for my tenth results so I can get admission in college. I collapse on my bed each night and stare at the ceiling, mentally marking off one more day. A very long, boring and uneventful day.
I don’t know which is worse. The night or the day. In the night, I cover my eyes with an eye-mask and stuff my ears with cotton balls so that the frenzied whispers of my sister who is studying for her final exams doesn’t reach my ears. During the day, I can’t watch TV when she’s around because it will ‘disturb her concentration’. Of course, when she’s in school, my mother is tuned into all these mindless soaps that she watches throughout the day.
She makes me shell the peas as we watch these soaps with names that are so long, they should be illegal. My mind is thoroughly muddled with the characters, and I really don’t get why they cry so much. Thankfully my mom doesn’t cry with them. She’s not given to expressing her emotions openly and I’m perfectly fine with that.
I miss my friends, the routine of going to classes, the comments about teachers we used to make behind their backs, the passing of secret messages to each other. I miss my school. There, I’ve said it.
When we finished school, almost everyone rejoiced. No more school meant freedom from boring uniforms, no more icky black ribbons, no more yellowing keds that we sometimes tried to shine up with pieces of chalk. Many ‘no mores’ later and I’m still not convinced. But then that’s me, I guess. I tend to think just the opposite of what everyone else wants, not because I want to be contrary but swimming against the tide is so much more fun.
So, here I am today, on day seven of this vacation, feeling like I’m stuck between two worlds. Although neither of the two worlds seems to care much whether or not I exist.
‘Why don’t you join some classes, Tamanna?’ Mom asks me as I flick through the channels. The remote, for once, is behaving itself in my hands. I don’t bother replying to her.
‘You know the other day Mrs Sharma was telling me about this woman who runs this really good cooking class!’ Mom says.
‘Then why don’t you join?’ I ask her, not looking away from the TV. Seriously. Cooking. That might have been what she would have wanted to do when she finished school. Come to think of it, she did.
‘How about candle-making? Or … or … origami?’ she asks unfazed.
‘I don’t have a single creative bone in my body. You say so yourself,’ I remind her.
‘Well you could try …’
I turn around to face her, exasperated. ‘I’m not interested in any of this, so just drop it, okay?’
She makes a face at me, and I’m surprised because I know I make a face just like that sometimes too.
‘When I was your age …’ she starts and I get up from there. I cannot listen one more time to how obedient and dutiful she was when she was my age.
‘Computer classes? Music? Skating? Swimming?’ she asks, even as I leave the drawing room.
‘No, no, no and NO,’ I reply, before heading upstairs to my room. I shut the door lightly and settle down on my bed with a randomly chosen Harry Potter book. It’s book 4 … Goblet of Fire. One of my favourites.
I’ve hardly reached the interesting bit, especially the part where Harry summons his broomstick, when Raina comes thumping inside the room and drops her school bag on her bed. The books spill out haphazardly and some fall on the floor. She walks past me, undoing her belt and tie and throws them in the general direction of the bed but they miss. I grit my teeth as I watch this slob of my sister emerge from the bathroom, dressed in her sweats, dropping her dirty uniform under the bed, and throwing her wet towel at the back of her chair.
Looking at our room, it’s a bit like Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde. I haven’t read the book so I don’t know which is which okay? But I’m the clean freak here. You just have to see my side, especially my desk and my bed and you will wonder if I am adopted, or if she is.
Anyhow, I know that the moment she eats something she will come back upstairs and start chanting Physics or Chemistry and I cannot bear to listen about coefficients or chemical compounds. So with a sigh I get up, wondering if there is a place in this house that I can ever call my own.
There’s a tiny patch of garden outside but it’s not the kind where I can lie down and read a book in peace. I rule out the dining table because of its proximity to the kitchen. That’s when I remember the attic. Yeah, it’s dusty and probably teeming with spiders but I’ll be alone. It will be so quiet I’ll finally be able to hear my own thoughts.
Clutching the book to my chest, I run upstairs and lift the dusty latch that locks the attic. It makes an ominous creaking sound as I slide it open and then push the door. Before you start imagining what this attic looks like, stop, okay?
First of all this isn’t an attic or anything. I’ve just read the word so often that I like to use it in sentences like—Oh, there must be hundreds of spiders in our attic. An attic brings to mind a dark gloomy place with a caving roof and plenty of trunks with mysterious things inside.
This is just a spare room. So we’ve used it to dump everything that we don’t want seen downstairs. So there’s a corner that is piled high with old textbooks that mom keeps meaning to give to the raddiwala. There’s also another section with our old clothes that were meant to be passed on to others but somehow ended up here because we didn’t have space below.
It’s also quite bright as it opens onto a sunny patch of terrace. There are a couple of windows with dusty grills and I look around wondering if there is any place where I can sit down and read without getting grimy myself.
There’s a nice bright corner near one of the windows and I make my way towards it, ignoring the screaming clean freak part of me that cannot look at a mess without wanting to clean it.
I pull out one of my old school uniforms from a nearby bag and spread it out on the floor to sit down on it, cross-legged. Aah. Peace.
I’m once again engrossed in the book and lose all sense of time. It’s only when my mobile phone r
ings that I look up, startled. It’s mom, probably calling to see where I am.
My natural instinct is to answer it and tell her that I am on the second floor. But that would mean she and Raina would get curious and come upstairs and Raina would make fun of me for sitting here and reading. So I ignore the call and decide to head back downstairs. It’s not like this is a secret hiding place but it’s the most unlikely place I would go to so I’d rather they didn’t know I was here.
Just when I am dusting my jeans meticulously, I spot something under the uniform where I have been sitting. I must have spread the cloth over it so feeling curious, I pull the material away and realise that I am staring at a Polaroid photo.
Ooh. I didn’t know anyone at home had a Polaroid camera! And this isn’t even in colour which means it’s really ancient. I pick up the photo and look at it with interest. There are four people in the photo and I have to stare hard to make out their features. There are three girls solemnly staring at the camera and a boy who is smiling. One of the girls is my mother. Look at her! Wearing those funny flowery flared pants and those huge sleeves!
I wonder if the other two women are her sisters, my aunts. That’s when I sense a strange smell in the air. It’s like sweet almond oil, the kind my mom insists on rubbing my scalp with every now and then. I turn around holding the photo in my hand, surprised.
There’s a whooshing sound in my ears, softly, as though waves are rolling up the beach and gently crashing. I straighten up, feeling uneasy. What’s happening? I shut my eyes and shake my head to clear it and then, taking a deep breath, I head back downstairs. Maybe I’ll show the picture to mom and we’ll all have a good laugh although I don’t think she will take it too kindly if Raina and I howl at her fashion sense. But there’s something strange about this photo and for some reason it’s making me feel all weird inside.
I drop the photo in a hurry and run back downstairs, ignoring the somewhat alarming combination of the sweet almond smell in the room and the sound of the sea in my ears.
Two
IT’S VERY QUIET I realise as I head back downstairs. It’s almost evening so I can’t even see where I am headed. I carefully place my feet on each step till I come short and my leg is dangling in the air. Huh? I tentatively place my foot down and realise that it’s level ground. There are no more steps. Weird.
Shrugging, I head towards my room to put my book back inside my shelf, where all my books are lined neatly and I notice for the first time that the lights in the house are different. What the ...? When did mom replace the CFCs with these fat yellow bulbs? And why are there so few of them?
I look around in confusion and head in the direction of my room when to my utter shock, all I can see is a wall. Am I dreaming this up? My room, which was right here a couple of hours ago, is no longer here. I pinch myself as they do in books and yelp because I’ve pinched myself rather hard. This is no dream.
Who changed my house when I was upstairs? I’m beginning to feel a little bewildered as I make my way down the corridor and then I stop short because right before me is the kitchen. On the first floor! Since when?
I can hear sizzling sounds from inside and the sound of voices. Feeling scared, I step inside and once again I’m shocked because it looks nothing like our kitchen. There are no counters, no oven and there’s no stove. There are also no cupboards. Instead, just a whole line of shelves stocked with tins and bottles. Two women are crouching near a round kerosene stove and they are frying something. Where’s my mother?
I’m completely alarmed now, and pretty much on the verge of screaming when one of the women looks up at me and is taken aback.
‘Who are you?’ she asks, nudging the other woman and both of them stare at me balefully.
Before I can bounce the question back at her, another woman enters the kitchen, looks at me and shakes her head. ‘She must be Manoj’s pen-pal. Hadn’t he said that she was finally coming? What an idiot that boy is! Couldn’t he have told us for sure that you’re coming today?’
My head is now spinning. Who is Manoj? And pen-pal? What is wrong with these people? Is this some sort of joke I wonder, and immediately try to look nonchalant. What if it’s one of those hoaxes that family members play on each other and someone will leap on you suddenly and shout ‘bakra’? I don’t want to look like a bakra.
But it also occurs to me that this seems a very elaborate thing to do just to play a trick on me. Also, my family is not the kind to play tricks on each other. So what is happening here?
‘Come, sit!’ the woman tells me, pointing at a mat on the ground. ‘You must be very hungry. When did you get here? And where is that boy?’
I’m unable to move because I need someone to explain everything to me. Where am I? Where’s my house? Who are these people?
The woman who entered the kitchen is older and when she looks at me, I feel a flash of recognition. I know her. Those eyes and that smile, they remind me of someone I know very well. But who?
‘Why are you still standing ma? Don’t they sit in your country?’ one of the women asks me.
Country? What? We’re all in India right? Have I been magically transported to another country? I move forward hesitantly and sit down on the ground, cross-legged in an ungainly manner, and one of the women shakes her head.
‘Aiyyo, look at those tight pants she is wearing. They don’t have any shame or what?’ she whispers to the older woman, whom I think I know.
I feel annoyed at her tone when I’m handed a steel plate with four murukkus in them and suddenly I’m hungry. They smell so divine, delicious and yet very familiar. For just this moment I’m willing to ignore all this craziness as I bite into a murukku and there is instant recognition.
‘Ajji!’ I exclaim and the women look up together in shock.
‘What did you say?’ the older woman asks and I realise I’m unable to breathe. I’m saved by the arrival of three young girls and my eyes widen when I recognise their clothes. I’ve just seen these clothes in that Polaroid photo. One of the girls turns towards me and I gulp. There she is—my mother, a teenager.
Three
NO, NO, NO. THIS has to be a dream. I haven’t pinched myself hard enough. But my mother is here and she looks younger than me.
‘Amma! Why did you call us?’ she says, flouncing towards the woman in the centre, the woman who gave me the plate of murukkus. The woman I know. My grandmother.
‘I called out to you girls half an hour back. Where were you all?’ my mother’s mother admonishes her.
‘Who’s this?’ my mother has just spotted me and looks at me with frank and curious eyes.
‘This is Manoj’s pen-pal. She’s come from Australia,’ she informs my mother proudly and my eyes almost fall out of my head.
‘But … but he just went to the station to receive her!’ My mother says, looking confused.
‘She’s come all the way from Australia by train?’ One of the other girls asks Ajji, looking at me in wonder.
My mother—okay, I’m finding it absolutely crazy to refer to her as my mother—Suma rolls her eyes at the girl and shushes her. To be honest, it’s double weird to refer to her by her name.
‘No! Haven’t you heard even a word he’s said all week? She came by air plane to Delhi to stay with her cousins and she’s coming to Bangalore today by train. She’s been travelling for nearly three days now. But she doesn’t look that tired to me,’ Suma says, her gaze assessing me once more.
I cringe and then quietly bite into the murukkus although the sound they make when I crunch my way through is anything but quiet. Whoever this Manoj is, when he comes with the real pen-pal, god only knows what will happen. And what is happening by the way? How did I end up in my mother’s teenage years? Until I get any explanation, why stay away from my Ajji’s special murukkus?
‘Where is she going to stay?’ One of the girls asks Ajji, looking wide-eyed. These other girls are my aunts? I turn towards them and see that they are staring at me as well. My murukkus are
now over so I have nothing to keep me occupied.
‘She’s going to stay here with us,’ Ajji confirms and I look up, not knowing whether to be relieved or surprised.
‘Where?’ Suma asks, her eyes narrowed and I cringe when I realise that I make the same face almost all the time.
‘With the three of you,’ Ajji explains patiently as she stirs sliced onions in a kadai.
‘Where’s her luggage?’ the other girl asks Ajji and I’m tired of being referred to in the third person even though I am right there.
‘I lost it,’ I mumble and Suma looks at me, her lower lip jutting out mutinously.
‘You mean we have to share our clothes and our room with her?’ she asks Ajji who looks at me sympathetically.
‘Why didn’t you tell us about your luggage? We would have given you something comfortable to wear,’ she says.
I sigh loudly. Will someone explain what is happening? But I can’t possibly ask these people without alarming them. That’s when I remember my Harry Potter book. And my cell phone.
The book is right next to me and my phone is in my pocket. I pull it out without trying to attract attention but there’s absolutely no signal. Right. I don’t put it back inside.
Suma’s sisters, my aunts actually do have names. But I have to pretend not to know them so I ask them for their names. They oblige happily.
‘I’m Reena, this is Suma and that’s Vidya,’ my aunt trills and she looks at me expectantly. Oh, so they don’t know the pen-pal’s name? Should I take a chance? What if Suma knows?
‘Tamanna,’ I say and for the first time, Suma smiles at me.
‘That’s a lovely name,’ she says and I blush.
‘Come, we’ll help you freshen up. But how did you find the house on your own? Why didn’t you wait for Manoj at the station?’ Reena asks. I’m confused. Who is this Manoj and what will I do when he turns up with the real pen-pal?
I get up, brushing the seat of my pants awkwardly and note that Suma and her sisters are gaping at me. Yes. Tight jeans.
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