Seventeen
Hold it tight, it is shaking,' Omi said. He stood on his toes on a stool to reach
the ceiling. We wanted to drop the tricolour ribbons from the ceiling fan. I held
the legs of the stool, Ish stood next to us with glue and cellotape.
'I'll fall,' Omi warned, dangling his right foot off the stool.
'It's not my fault. The stool has creaky legs,' I said.
I never wanted to celebrate Republic Day, which came in a week. However, we
did want to celebrate our resurrection after the earthquake a year ago. Though
thoughts about that day still made me tremble, I was relieved to have fully paid
off our loans. Our business had tripled from a year ago and it all happened from
this shop.
'January 26 preparations? Keep it up,' Mama's entry distracted us all. Omi
toppled from the stool and landed on the floor. The ribbons fell on his head.
'You let go!' he accused me as everyone laughed.
Mama placed a brown bag of samosas and some yellow pamphlets on the table.
We grabbed a samosa each.
'What exactly are you counting?' I asked idly. 'The number of times we have
made love,' she replied. 'Wow, our score is eight already.' 'You keep track?' I said.
'I keep track of a lot of things.' 'Like what?'
'Like today is 21 Feb, only five days to my period. Hence, it is a safe day.'
'It's safe anyway. I used a condom,' I said as I shifted my cushion for comfort.
'Oh? So now you trust physics over mathematics?' she said and giggled. She
flipped over to rest on her elbows and poked her toes into my shins.
'Are you still embarrassed to buy condoms?'
'I get them from an unknown chemist in Satellite. And I have enough now for a
while.'
'Oh really,' she climbed over me. 'So no problem in using a couple more then?'
With that, our score reached nine.
'Goodnight aunty,' I said to Vidya's mom. I always hated that part, the point
when aunty offered me something to eat or asked me why I worked so hard.
I walked back home with my thoughts. Nine times in two months. We made
love on an average of once a week. Nine times meant I had lost all benefit of
doubt. I couldn't say that I had made love to her by accident, in an impulsive
moment. You don't do things by accident nine times. Though sometimes, another
kind
of accident can happen. And I found out exactly five days later.
★
'There is something you should know,' she said.
We had come to the Ahmedabad Textile Industries Research Association's
(ATIRA) campus lawns. She had SMSed me that we needed to go for an 'urgent
walk', whatever that meant. We had said at home that we had to go and buy a
really good maths guide. No one questioned us after that. The ATIRA lawns in
Vastrapur swell with strollers in the evening. Several couples held hands. I
wanted to but did not. We fixed our gaze on the ground and did a slow walk. Fat
aunties wearing sarees and sneakers and with a firm resolve to lose weight
overtook us.
'What's up?' I said and bought a packet of groundnuts.
'Something is late,' she said.