“Look, dear,” Aunty Glory said when I started clearing away the breakfast dishes. “Genie and Anjali have kissed and made up.”
I dropped a cup of fine China and Uncle John steadied the plates that started clattering in my arms. “Careful, my dear. They’re not beyond a little spying either,” he tilted his chin in the direction of my building. “I fear, darling,” he cooed in Aunty’s direction, “we’ve become lawless and unscrupulous.”
But Aunty hadn’t heard because she was now tottering over to the French windows and waving and blowing kisses at Genie and Anjali. The two were squeezed tightly into my tiny kitchen window looking chummy and the binoculars were dangling from Genie’s hand outside the window. Clearly they had been bonding for a while and watching the world from their vantage point. I wondered why they couldn’t have done the same in the more spacious faux-French windows in the sitting room. They waved and blew kisses in Aunty’s direction.
Aunty was right. Something had made things okay between the beauty and the beauty… or the two beasts – I couldn’t decide which one was the beast and both were beautiful to me. I wondered what had happened to improve things between them. But I was not keen to go back and find out. The lockdown (due to the Covid-19 pandemic) had been making me lethargic and cranky and the brief period I got lurking about outside in the guise of delivering food made me feel lightheaded.
At the kitchen sink, I scrubbed the plates and looked around, wondering what to clean. I had swept and swabbed the Gonsalves home yesterday, and they had been upset but very grateful. “It will give you some exercise, pumping your heart – in a good way,” Anjali had told me a few days ago, when I had returned home sweating like a pig after such a workout. Sweat had poured and I felt it uncomfortably everywhere – like watery pools on my scalp, trickling past my ears, into my eyes, sticking my clothes to my skin and Anjali’s matter of factness annoyed me. However, the chance discovery of a vacuum cleaner in the G home had me doing all sorts of things with it. I even checked YouTube for tips.
I felt a body behind me and the plate I was soaping fell into the sink. I drew a deep breath trying to slow my heart rate. “A-Aunty, you’ve got to stop moving so quietly.”
“Do you remember the lovebirds in wing A (Love Thy Neighbour)? The husband of the nightshiftwali and the wife of the frequent-flyer businessman?”
“Yes. Has the lockdown spelt doom for their love affair?” I joked. Not nice, stop!
“Nightshift seems to suspect something.”
“What do you mean?”
“She looks at his phone when he’s not about.”
“Okay...”
“And I’ve seen her crying.”
I set down slowly the plate and scrubber in the sink and turned to Aunty. “Oh?” I felt helpless, sad feelings buffeting me boisterously. “You think she’s read something on his phone?”
“I’m not sure… I think he’s got a password to get past. She suspects something, but isn’t sure.”
“How can you say?”
“He takes his phone everywhere. The one time I saw him leave his phone behind she got hold of it, and he was back in an instant.”
“Aunty, you’ve got to stop watching and leave them alone.”
“We’ve got to tell her that her husband is having an affair!”
“No!”
“Yes!”
“Stay out of it, Aunty! Nothing good will come of it.”
“Everything bad is going to fester, the good will get lost in the mess. He needs to be confronted. She needs peace.”
“I don’t think we’ll be any help. Things may sort themselves out. We may worsen things with idle insinuations. Besides, it’s the lockdown. Everyone is on edge.”
“I’d be suspicious of John if he had to take his phone with him everywhere, including the loo.”
“Thank your stars Uncle doesn’t, Aunty. That would be a pain to sanitise. But, you know, these days people take their phones into the loos all the time. They need to watch TV while they poop or read the paper.”
“Is that why you refuse to handle Anjali’s phone?”
“One of them.”
“And you’re okay touching Genie’s?” Aunty peered up into my face.
“Shee! No!” I felt like scrubbing my hands with bleach and dousing myself with Dettol. “Does he really?! How would you know, Aunty?”
“KKKK, kkk, kkkk!” Aunty laughed shrilly. When she gained control of herself, she pinched my cheeks and hugged me. “No, darling, I wouldn’t know. I can’t see into his bedroom or the toilet. I was teasing you. But why would you need to touch Genie’s phone?”
“Yesterday he gave it to me to… to charge the battery,” I said. At this rate, I’d have to watch everyone visiting the loo. Anjali had developed the habit when her publisher gave her a Netflix subscription. She had gone haywire, especially since she didn’t have a TV in the little Himalayan town she was living in. The publisher had threatened to cut the service when he realized why she wasn’t delivering her manuscript… still, to her credit, she righted herself and finished writing the book. Now, she goes on Netflix binges between books. I don’t know how she has the willpower to resist it.
“Ouch!” I glared at Aunty for pinching me. But she was shushing me with a finger to her lips, and pulling my shirt, which slipped out of my jeans. She let go and grabbed my arm and dragged me to her sitting room. Uncle John was in his armchair, unhappily reading a newspaper on his smartphone. “You can read the paper on your laptop too, Uncle.” He looked at me over his reading glasses while the thought settled. He rose slowly, observed us for a few seconds and then shuffled towards his bedroom.
“There’s a problem there, my dear,” Aunty Glory whispered, tilting her head at the family we had been spying on for some years. Initially it was unintentional. Once we understood there was a romantic liaison in progress, we were hooked – even on days when nothing happened.
We knew the lady slept away her mornings, but laboured for her family. She had a mother in law with whom she shelled peas and watched Hindi serials.
We watched the middle-aged lady in the room with her son. The husband was not visible. Maybe bathing. But the boy, probably about 10 years old, was handling his father’s phone. His mother watched from a corner of the room and they spoke. The son looked embarrassed and waved the phone at her. He assumed a fixed expression, probably playing a game, until his mother snatched the phone from his hands.
They began to argue and then, just as suddenly, the argument ended with the mother handing over the phone to the boy and going back to her chair. We watched for about half an hour, but nothing happened. I said goodbye to the Gonsalveses and left.
******
This is a fictional series about the Mumbai-based 30-something narrator. While doing errands for her elderly friends, Aunty Glory and the narrator spy on a married couple in the next building and become party to a disturbing set of events.
******
I looked at my wristwatch. It was past 7pm, and I had been ringing the bell for some time. I felt a frisson of fear. Were Uncle and Aunty okay? But before I could phone Anjali to get the Gonsalves’s keys, the door was unlatched.
Uncle looked serious and I moved into the dark sitting room. “What’s happening. Why haven’t you switched on the lights?”
He gestured at one end of the French windows. Aunty was watching the family across the courtyard with her binoculars. I had a sudden feeling of dread. I went over to her quickly. She handed me the binoculars and I watched the family whose habits I had come to know quite intimately. I felt a hint of shame that I was wasting my life in this fashion, but my attention was stuck on the young son.
He was hovering over his mother, clearly distressed. She was slumped in her armchair, spent from crying, her face red and blotchy and staring vacantly at a corner. In her hand was a phone. I wondered whose it was.
In a few minutes, it was clear.
The husband came in carrying groceries. His wife ignored him, but the son looked uncertain and upset. He stayed beside his mother. The father said something, but mother and son ignored him. He put the groceries on the floor in a corner of the flat and took off his mask. He put his hands on his hips and said something, but no one looked at him.
And then his body stiffened. He felt his pants pockets and realisation hit him. He went towards them uncertainly and the son moved away. His wife held out his phone. Before he could reach for it she threw it in his face and jumped up and started punching him. He tried to back away, but she rained blows on him. His elderly mother came in and tried to push her daughter in law away, but she backed away in a few minutes of the sustained attack.
Finally, the boy pushed himself between his parents. His father rushed into a bedroom and locked himself in. His wife tried opening the door, but couldn’t. She kicked the door, beat it with her fists and screamed. I hoped the invective was choice and extreme. The bastard. We could see neighbours at their windows, trying to catch what was being said. After trying to ram the door open with her body, the lady gave up and sat in her armchair and rocked herself. She looked at her husband’s phone and kept scrolling. Her frightened mother in law stood watching from the kitchen doorway.
“What do you think?” Aunty whispered in my ear. I dropped the binoculars in fright.
“Uh… I hope she beats the shit out of him!”
“What do you think is going to happen?”
“I hope sh-she takes him to the police.”
“I doubt it.”
“Why?”
“Police won’t help. They’ll say it’s a domestic issue, say he behaved like a man, probably ask her to forgive and forget. She’s got a lot to lose. Chances are,” Aunty looked at the woman and shrugged her shoulders, “the poor thing will try and forget it. Her mother in law will counsel her. She’ll be too embarrassed to tell her own family.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I rarely see her relatives. Only his family seems to make an appearance at festivals and other occasions. She’s definitely not a Mumbaikar.”
“How can you tell?”
“She goes away with her son every year for about three weeks. When she comes back, she’s got a lot of luggage and that dining table is usually loaded with bottles of pickles or jams and mangoes and goodies for some days. Like her mother made them for her...”
“… doesn’t mean anything…”
“… I’ve never seen a parent hugging her or her hugging someone.”
Or for that matter, being happy. She seemed to be slaving all the time… for others. In a permanent rush.
“Are you two happy?” Uncle said coldly from behind us.
We whirled around. Uncle was deeply upset. “Are you happy you watched someone’s joy being snuffed out, their life suddenly in shambles? What will you do now… share and dissect and glean a bitter truth?”
He glared at us both and moved slowly around the room, switching on the lights and the TV.
I looked at Aunty. For once she looked embarrassed and defensive. We sat next to each other on a sofa and watched Uncle surf channels. He ignored us, his lips tightly pressed together in strong disapproval.
I wondered what was happening with that poor family in the next building. Did the boy know? He had access to his father’s phone and knew the password. Did he know what his father was doing over the last year or more?
The silence in the G home stretched. After what felt like an eternity, I bade good bye and left.
******
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