options. They liked your work. So.. .’ He left the sentence hanging.
‘Whatever you say,’ I said.
‘I won’t staff you if you don’t want to. Should I say you are not available?’
‘So I lose my clients now?’ I said.
‘Of course not. You are on. The target company is in Seoul. Let’s go there soon.’
‘I am looking for a sofa. A two-seater, please,’ I said.
‘Would you like a simple sofa or a sofa bed?’ the salesperson said.
I had come to IKEA, the Swedish furniture store, on the weekend. The huge, 20,000-square-
feet IKEA store is located in Causeway Bay.
‘Sofa bed,’ I said. At some point, if I had guests from India, I would need to provide a place to
sleep. The IKEA salesperson led me to the sofa bed area.
There were a dozen models, from Japanese futons to clever snap-shut mechanisms.
‘Do you have a colour preference?’ the salesperson said.
‘Not really. How about the steel grey right there?’ I pointed at one.
‘Oh, that’s a bestseller. Comfortable and minimalist,’ she said.
I sat on the sofa to see how it felt.
‘Good,’ I said. ‘I like it.’
‘Hi.’ Someone waved at me from a distance.
I looked up. ‘Neel?’ I said.
He stood at the other corner of the sofa section.
‘Hi,’ he said again as I walked up to him. ‘Good to see you here. We came for some easy
chairs. Here, meet Kusum. Kusum, meet Radhika, from my office.’
An Indian woman, around forty years old, stood next to him. A three-year-old boy held one of
her fingers. A seven-year-old girl sitting on one of the IKEA sofas played with an iPhone. A twenty-
six-year-old girl, or me, wished for an earthquake that would swallow her deep into the bottom of the
earth.
‘Radhika, so nice to meet you,’ Kusum said in an American accent. She extended her hand.
‘Oh, okay,’ I said as we shook hands. ‘I mean, hi, Kusum.’
‘This is Aryan. Aryan, say hi to Radhika didi,’ Neel said. Aryan extended his tiny hand as
well. I shook it. My heart began to beat fast.
‘And that is Siya. Siya, say hi to didi,’ Neel said. Siya waved my way without looking up from
her screen.
‘Not done, Siya,’ Kusum said in a firm voice. ‘Is that how you greet people?’
Siya recognized authority. She put the phone aside and came to me with dainty steps.
‘Hello, didi. How are you?’ she said, in a rehearsed formal routine.
‘I am fine. Thank you,’ I said.
‘That’s better. Siya, I don’t like bad behaviour,’ Kusum said.
I guess more than anyone, I was the badly behaved one. I avoided eye contact with Kusum. I
did manage a side-glance. She was slim, elegant and had a straight, upright posture. She was wearing
a long black dress with a diamond necklace and matching earrings, the ones you see advertised