Fishy Chronicles 65: Lockdown Diaries: A Secret

“Hey, what happened out there?” Anjali asked while I cooked lunch. Mumbai was undergoing a heat wave and all I wanted to do was stand in the sitting room with cold AC air hitting me. I focussed on chopping vegetables for a pulao and accompanying curry.

“Where?” I muttered, trying to see through the sudden blur – a drop of sweat fell into my eye.

“Uncle John and Aunty Glory seemed to be giving each other the third degree yesterday. Now, it’s business as usual.”

I stiffened and stopped myself from looking out of the kitchen window. I felt singed by Uncle’s disapproval yesterday and felt bad thinking about the family in the next building –Aunty and I had been watching an amour du coeur unfold between two neighbours for the past year or more. Now the cheating husband had been caught out and the whole thing had upset Uncle, who had in the gentlest way made known his displeasure over our dubious activities.

This morning Uncle John had insisted I come in and have tea with them, and I had managed to chat to the man in flat 502 (FC63)… and his wife. She had pushed her head out past him when he opened the door… and with a look of embarrassment he had introduced her and himself.

Wife could also mean girlfriend, I reasoned unnecessarily. Girlfriends became wives to circumvent 21^st century prudery in housing societies such as mine. I thought of my cousin Mona, thus named because his enthusiastic parents Moncy and Neena wanted a syllable each of their names to make up their son’s – a particularly Malayali habit. They could have gone with Monee, Neecy, Ceeny or Nemon. Or Nomen.

Anyway, Mona had apparently managed to get past the travesty that was his first name and get the girls. He had had a live-in relationship with a classmate on a campus in Karnataka, but eventually married someone his parents chose. Roma and I got to know about Mona’s romance while eavesdropping on his calls during our holidays in Kerala.

Post breakfast Aunty stood near me in the kitchen, while Uncle stood at a window to enjoy the morning sunshine.

“Is Uncle still angry?” I asked Aunty Glory.

“No. We had a fight yesterday… he gave me a lecture. I thought I’d never have to hear one at this age, but I guess I got complacent.”

“Is Uncle angry with me?”

Aunty snorted out a laugh. “Oh, no, darling. He’s angry with me for leading you on.”

“Oh.” I felt relieved I could salvage a useless reputation with Uncle.

“Of course, he knows very well what a con job and rabble rouser you are.” I squawked in protest. “But he has a soft corner for you. You are perfect. If you weren’t already an adult, we would have adopted you.”

“Awww. All lies, for sure.”

“Is my tea ready?”

“Would you have adopted me, Aunty?”

“Yes. In a manner. Your parents asked us to take care of you if they died prematurely. Did you know?”

I stopped straining the tea. “What?”

“In your early teens, when your father had his first heart attack, he had a talk with John and me. Apparently, your parents didn’t quite see you being happy with anyone else.”

“Oh! But they never told me.”

“I’m sure they had their reasons.”

“But even if they had died earlier, I would have probably gone to a relative.”

“No. Your father consulted a lawyer and drew up papers. He was that serious.”

I stared at Aunty, questions flooding my mind about my father’s sudden fears and inexplicable actions. I had never had a sense of it. Only that my patient father had started losing his patience more often, brooding, sometimes watching me and my mother intensely. He had begun to insist we handle the family’s financial matters and erupted when we didn’t co-operate.

I remembered a rant. “You can’t expect Joychyan to do everything for you! You have to stand on your own feet when I’m gone!” Uncle Joy was Papa’s older brother and Roma’s dad.

“Please, Papa. You’ll live forever,” I had teased him. He had given me a blistering stare and I had shut up. Even my mother had kept silent and the air had grown still and tense. After that we quietly went with him to the bank. I filled out all the pay-in slips, making mistakes and having to fill them out several times every visit. I regularly updated the notebook Papa had on his investments. He sent me to the bank on my own to renew fixed deposits, insisting I take the bus. I did not know then if he had so many interests or just wanted to get me out of my comfort zone, but he made me visit the post office, make enquiries about bonds at banks and made me spend hours filling out all manner of forms and reading out the accompanying literature. If the people at the post office were rude and I left without making enquiries or opening the kind of account Papa wanted, I was forced to go back the next day.

I felt Aunty’s hand on my arm. “Are you upset, my dear?”

“N-No, Aunty. Nothing like that. Just didn’t realise Papa felt that way. They never said anything to me… a-about this.”

“Hmm. Well, he thought Joy would be unhappy.”

“Er, but there was nothing in Papa’s papers…”

“Probably destroyed it once you came of age.”

“Maybe.”

“You turned out fine,” Aunty said reaching up to brush the hair off my forehead, a smile on her face.

“Broken and divorced.”

“Silly girl. Broken heals. Divorcées fall in love again… if they want to. There’s so much to do. You should enjoy life. That is some kind of work too, darling – to enjoy life!”

“Have you enjoyed life, Aunty?”

“Yes, I think John and I have. At least, I don’t have regrets. Some, not too many. But yes, we’re happy.”

And not on drugs. Happy because they knew how to be happy.

******

This is a fictional series about the 30-something narrator, based in Mumbai. Her former pet fish and parents’ former man Friday have returned to stay indefinitely, leading to a series of interesting situations.

After watching a wife discover her husband is cheating (FC64), Aunty Glory and the narrator are disturbed by what they have seen and their unhealthy interest in someone else’s torment. They take a break from watching members of their housing society. 

 

                                                                                       ****** 

I was now in bed, tossing and turning and a tad jealous of Anjali in blissful slumber beside me. My mind churned.

I had taken Anjali out for a walk around my building in the evening, and told her about the conversation I had with Aunty Glory.

“Hmm, I can believe it. Your dad thought of everything,” Anjali said.

“You don’t think it’s odd that he wanted me to live with them, rather than with Uncle Joy?”

“It is unusual. But he seems to have worried about your emotional well-being. Your EQ.”

“EQ? Where do you get this crap.”

“You asked me to tell you what I thought!”

“Yes, but you can tell me what you really think instead of giving me such nonsense gyaan.”

“The truth is… no one can handle the truth. Including you. Your dad’s reasoning seems to have been unusual. I don’t know if Uncle Joy would have wanted you, considering he had three kids of his own already.”

“Thanks!”

“Just the truth. And, as long as I’ve known you, Uncle Joy and you have fought like idiots… like cats and dogs. You hate being controlled, he loves to control. I think your relationship would have exploded in time. Think about it. Wouldn’t you have preferred John and Glory? Uncle John's saneness would have tempered all of Aunty Glory’s madness. And you would have turned out a hippie, not the repressed mess you are now. I say that in a nice way,” she said, holding her hands up. Fiery Anjali was taking pains to explain things as she saw them.

“Why do you think Papa did that?”

“May have had a sixth sense about his... er. Didn’t want you to become lost. You’d have been lost if you were with Uncle Joy. You’d have been happy with the Gonsalveses.”

“Even though they have kids?”

“By then the children were grown up, no?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know when Papa decided all this.”

“Aunty told you that it was after his first heart attack.”

“I was 13.”

“Okay. So there you have it. Uncle may have had a premonition. He was doing the right thing about tying loose ends.”

“Yeah. Why didn’t Mom say anything?”

“Really? Did you think they wanted to discuss their deaths with you?”

“Remember how Papa made me do all his bank work. I was only about 14 or so.”

“And I have to thank him so much for it all. I got trained in the process.”

“Hmm.”

“Look at it this way. If Uncle wanted you to be able to handle life without him, he succeeded. No?”

Everything pointed to that. He had made me aware. He had made me independent. He had given me hope and good sense, despite the odds.

I lay sweating in my bed, thinking of my parents. Loss was hard. My grief sometimes felt like an unmoveable mountain. But their choice of the Gonsalveses as adoptive parents surprised me. My parents were inexplicable. I hadn’t really known them. Or they had known me well.

                                                              ******

Fishy Chronicles 64: Lockdown Diaries: Love Hurts

“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.

                                                  ******

Fishy Chronicles 63: Lockdown Diaries: Tackling the Gs

“Where does Genie go every day?” I asked Fish.

There was a long silence in the fish tank and then Penaaz said, “Groceries?”

“The length of time he spends outside doesn’t justify the few bits and bobs he carries home.”

“Maybe he’s checking each veggie carefully,” Portas said, and a snigger made its way around the tank. I wanted to laugh too at the thought of Genie examining sultry fat tomatoes, but this was serious business. Be serious, I scolded myself. We hadn’t forgotten, or forgiven, how Genie had told the Gonsalveses that he had found Anjali and me rifling through his underwear drawer. Though we hadn’t, we were too embarrassed to show our faces to the elderly couple for several days until this morning when Uncle John ordered me to stop running away after I had left their breakfast at his doorstep and rung his doorbell. I was halfway to the lift when I heard his, “Wait! Come here… Now, my dear. This has gone on long enough.”

“Er, what?” I said, reluctantly shuffling back to his door. “What’s wrong, Uncle?”

                                                                    ******

This is a fictional series about the narrator, her parents’ former man Friday Genie and former pet fish. They have returned from their travels and are staying with the narrator. 

Genie, the narrator and her best friend are stuck together in the lockdown due to the Corona virus pandemic but have not been talking for a few days. Uncle John helps her clear the cobwebs. 

                                                                    ******

“What’s wrong is that you’re avoiding me. Tell me exactly what you did to annoy Genie… and why you’re behaving so oddly now.”

“Er, nothing. Nothing happened.”

“So why haven’t you been talking to Glory and me.”

“Really? I… must have been very busy.”

“We’ve been in lockdown for weeks. Everyone’s got all the time now. So what did you do to upset Genie?”

“What did he tell you?”

“You first. The truth.”

I tried to glare at Uncle but was too ashamed of myself to look him in the eye. But why was Uncle smiling that way? “Er, Genie caught us rummaging through his bedside table drawer.”

I saw shock on Uncle’s face, but it became bland in a couple of seconds. “Go on, my dear.”

“Er, then he wouldn’t talk to us for days even though we apologised over and over and over and made him mutton curry just the way he likes it, and those Bengali luchis he loves, and more. He ate it all, but still wouldn’t, won't, forgive us.” At this moment I felt a seething rage for Genie. I hoped his man boobs would sprout, if only to disturb him. But he looked trim and deeply content – if it was possible in this lockdown phase. Was it yoga? Tiny food portions?

“Go on, dearest,” Uncle’s voice dragged my attention away from Genie’s physique.

“There is nothing else, Uncle. It isn’t such a great sin, you know!”

“For a man, it means lack of trust.”

“For a husband, maybe.”

“For anybody!”

“Why are you acting as though you don’t know what happened, Uncle?”

“I don’t.”

“What?”

“Yes, my dear,” Uncle sighed. “Genie wouldn’t pass on any of my messages to you… when I asked why he was annoyed he wouldn’t say. But he did ask me to say you had looked through his drawers. It was a prank, he said. I was surprised he’d asked me to do so, but I went along with it. I told him the charade couldn’t hold for long. Perhaps Glory would have enjoyed stringing you along, but Genie felt you wouldn’t believe Glory. Anyway, we’ve had a good time at your expense. We have rediscovered the world,” he chuckled, “through our binoculars. It is such fun to watch young people fight. But you must stop now. By the way, what did you really do?”

I groaned silently, then sighed and counted to ten, hoping Uncle would get tired of waiting for my answer. But he waited patiently, smiling all the while. “We opened his desk drawer and looked at his things, handled his diary and his pen. Opened his paper clips box. That’s the sum of it.”

“Hmm. Not good. Did you read his diary?”

“Er, we had a look. But there was nothing in it,” I said, cringing. Heat rushed into my face. My shame wasn’t going to end soon.

“I hope you learnt your lesson.”

“This incident alone constitutes a lifetime of learning, for sure.”

Uncle smiled. “I must say, my dear, I think there are huge gaps in your story and Genie’s. But I don’t think I’m going to come any closer to the truth. Would you like to come in, maybe rustle up some masala chai and eat breakfast with us.”

“I might give you something. A virus.”

“Or we could give it to you.” He held out his arms, and though I thought of Mr Soshal Distan Singh, the current joke going viral on WhatsApp, I went to Uncle and laid my head on his shoulder and felt his hand pat my back. “Naughty, naughty girl. We miss you, you know.”

“I miss you too. Made your favourite today – Bombay Toast. I’ll make tea.” I pushed Uncle in, and waited for a few seconds. Door 502 opened. He waved and smiled and I smiled and nodded and went into Uncle’s house.

I started, feeling embarassed. Uncle and Aunty had been watching me from just inside the doorway and were smiling broadly. “Aren’t you going to ask us who he is?” Aunty Glory asked.

“W-Who?”

“The young man who’s just moved in to the flat at the end of the corridor.”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Let’s see,” Aunty started counting on her fingers, “he gets up at 9 and leaves out his dustbin rather noisily. He makes tea, then comes to the door to get his paper with his mug in hand. That’s when he says hello to us. Such a handsome boy. Pity he doesn’t live in an apartment opposite us, else he’d have been the focus of our attention. And… there are no newspapers these days, but luckily for you, there’s still the milk which gives him an excuse to open his door… just as you ring our doorbell.”

“Er,” I interjected.

“He doesn’t seem to have a wife,” Uncle John added mischievously.

“But he moved in before we could be acquainted,” Aunty Glory grinned.

And he hadn’t put a nameplate on his door and the watchman still didn’t know his name... or wasn't telling. Plus there hadn’t been any post to crosscheck.

“Oh, I didn’t know you were into young men, Aunty. I would have surely found out his details,” I countered weakly.

The Gonsalveses laughed and followed me into the kitchen. Aunty’s arms rested around my waist and she chatted about things. I made tea and sat at the dining table, watching them eat. I missed them. Until Genie and Fish had returned from their travels, I’d had some of my meals with the Gs. My eyes moved to the photo of my parents and me on a side table. And then to the one with Genie, the Gonsalveses and my family on a tiny lace table cloth, atop the old, black, well-kept baby piano.

I had to make peace, force a truce, with Genie. Today.

                                                                    ****** 

Fishy Chronicles 62: Lockdown Diaries – Lies And Underwear

Illustration by A. Peter

“So unmanly, I tell you!” Anjali seethed at Genie’s perfidy (Cooking The Goose). She glared in the direction of the Gonsalves’s flat. To us, Genie had suddenly shrunk a foot.

We heard the key turn in the door's lock and, in a flash, arranged ourselves around it.

I looked at handsome Genie and was at a loss for words. The sweltering Mumbai heat had done nothing to him except make his face a little red and sweat stain his tight white t-shirt in places. His handlebar moustache was still stiff and raring to go for a marchpast.

Beside me, Anjali spluttered like mustard in hot oil. “You told on us! So unmanly! So… ooof! It was a one-time thing… someone else would have forgiven and forgotten but you… you!”

Genie looked down his long pointy nose at us and one eyebrow rose haughtily. “What is it that I am supposed to have done?”

“Genie, yoohoo, Genie, sweetie!” Zeba Bobby, my luscious neighbour, cooed from her doorway, and began rushing towards mine. I tried to pull Genie away from the door, but he didn’t budge. I tried to close the door, but Zeba pushed it open angrily and glared at me.

“Where’s your mask, Zeba! Go and get it, don’t you even listen to the news!” Anjali burst out. Zeba shrank back, an uncertain look on her face and backed out quickly.

Genie turned his head around to look, but Zeba had now entered her home and shut her door firmly. “That was harsh, even by your standards, Anjali.”

“I don’t have standards, remember?”

“Tut, tut, save for rifling through my things, I believe you know the difference between right and wrong.”

“Don’t you think you’ve tormented us enough!”

Genie looked at the ground for several seconds, ostensibly thinking, and looked up. “No.” He pushed past us and put the bag he was carrying down in a corner of the kitchen. He noisily put a large stainless-steel vessel in the sink, squirted some dishwashing liquid into it and turned on the tap. The water gushed into it. We crowded into my small kitchen, moving close to Genie. He held up his arms, “Stand back. Don’t touch me until I’ve washed these things with detergent and have had a bath.”

“Don’t you think you’re overreacting?” Anjali said.

“No. If you want to stay alive during a pandemic, these are things we have to do... like killing any viruses on these” he held up the bag of vegetables and emptied them into the soap water. He turned towards the sink, and I could see Anjali working herself into a rage. I pinched her arm and shook my head.

“Come on, Genie. We just opened a drawer,” I said. Genie had seen us open his bedside table drawer and not his cupboards. “You could have thrashed it out with us rather than snitching to Uncle John. What are he and Aunty going to do? Come here and spank us? Uncle is too weak to give us a mighty whack with a rolling pin. It was unnecessary. Childish!”

“Ahh. Why do I deserve any respect, is that it?” Genie turned around, his eyes coldly boring into mine. “This is your home, and I’m a guest, that kind of thing, right? If it hadn’t been for the pandemic, I’d have left you both to your own devices. But here I am, stuck.”

I bristled. “Please don’t stay on my account. I’m perfectly able to fend for myself.”

“Hah!”

This is a fictional series about the narrator and her parents’ former man Friday Genie. The narrator and Genie are home bound because of the Covid-19 pandemic. But tensions run deep.

I stared at Genie, wanting to scream at him and kick his ass, but he was now bent over the sink as though in pain… and trembling.

“Hey, are you okay. Genie?” I moved closer, my hand on his shoulder, craning my head to look into his face.

“YOU!” I grabbed his t-shirt and tried to shake him. “YOUUUUU!!!” He stood up and laughed, holding my hands and laughing into my face. “YOU TROUBLEMAKER!”

“What’s going on?” Anjali said, confused.

I tried to launch myself into Genie, but he had a vice hold of me and was laughing wildly. “The idiot’s fooling about with us, Anjali. You idiot! Let me go, LET ME GO, GENIE.”

“Sshhh! What will the neighbours think, darling,” Genie said, releasing me. I grabbed a dishcloth, trying to stop myself from hitting him with it. I wiped the soap water off my neck where he had grabbed me. He was back at the sink, gently soaping a fat red tomato and looking at it tenderly.

“So much love for a tomato. Is that what you do for Zeba?” I said. Anjali poked me to stop.

“Maybe. Maybe not. Depends on what you mean by ‘do’.”

I opened my mouth but Anjali’s hand covered it. She shook her head at me, and I had a sudden epiphany that this was a war I could never hope to win.

“What exactly did you tell Uncle John?” I said.

“About what?”

“About us!”

“Oh. This and that.”

“Care to elaborate?” 

“I may have told Uncle that two young ladies were caught with their hands in my underwear drawer… examining things.”

“Whattttt!” Anjali spluttered.

I felt my face turn hot. “WE DIDN’T TOUCH YOUR UNDIES!”

“I know you didn’t. But Uncle doesn’t know that.”

“Why-Why would you say something so horrid!” Anjali said, embarrassed.

“It’s called something… something. Ahh, can’t recall the word…”

“What?” I said.

“What’s the word?” Anjali said.

“Ah. Got it. It’s called tit for tat.” He grinned and gently rotated another large shiny tomato at us. If looks could kill, ours would have done someone in. But really, what was there to say. I’d never be able to show my face outside now. I’d be known as that woman who had nothing better to do than root through a man’s delicates. Terrible!

I moved away from that evil man. Anjali glared at Genie, but he was now examining a cauliflower with more interest than he did the tomato.

I slid into the sitting room, took the binoculars from the coffee table, it hadn’t gone back into the cupboard as Anjali and I had started watching the Bollywood actor (Arushmaan Verma, Love Thy Neighbour) in the opposite building. I stood behind the curtain, and trained it through a gap in the curtains.

I felt frustration and rage. Uncle John and Aunty Glory were in their bedroom, using their binoculars and watching Genie in the kitchen with Anjali. They had just witnessed the whole drama. And we had now become their ‘lockdown’ entertainment.

                                                       ******

Fishy Chronicles 61: Cooking The Goose

Photo credit: A. Peter

Genie got out of his room. We stood transfixed and then we smiled, but he ignored us and walked quickly to the front door and left.

I had tried to offer him breakfast, but hadn’t been able to get the words out. Anjali and I rushed to the door and looked through the peephole.

We saw my voluptuous neighbor Zeba, who was madly in love with Genie, intercept him. Now Genie was smiling and looked like he had never been a sourpuss in his life. Zeba moved closer to him. She was wearing another low-necked caftan – yellow with small blue flowers.

“Seriously, what has Zeba got that we don’t?” Anjali said, trying to get a better view.

“Mountainous boobs and oodles of charm,” I said. It bothered me that a minute ago Genie had been cold to us and here he was cultivating the enemy in the corridor… barely two feet away from my door.

“How does Zeba always know when Genie’s going to step out of the flat?”

“Sixth sense… spying from her peephole.” The same way Anjali and I had spied on our early teen crush Tony Mascarenhas. The strapping stud had been three years older than us in school, and we had watched and stalked him for years, even after he had had a string of girlfriends. Now he was married to a beautiful homemaker, had three pretty children and was a VP at a tech company. Sometimes we pulled out the school photo, that I had flicked from my cousin Rajiv’s school album, and we’d wonder what we saw in the then hairy teenaged Tony. We had moved on, but we still envied Tony his perfect life.

“You don’t say,” Anjali said with a trace of sarcasm. “She’s not even wearing a face mask. Neither is he. What do they think, their love will fob off the virus?”

“Can you do a revenge character in your next book... with Zeba as the villain, please.”

“What will that get you?”

“Salvation.” I pushed Anjali aside to look again. Genie had turned and was moving down the stairs.

“I doubt it. It’s a rare sort who can recognize salvation when it hits. You, my darling, are not that person. Come on, let’s see where he’s going,” Anjali moved quickly to the sitting room windows.

We watched Genie walk out of the building. A woman from the opposite building waved a dishcloth at him, smiling shyly. He nodded her way. A couple of women stepped out from ground floor apartments and chatted with him, he stopped to talk and then looked up. We were caught unawares. But not for long. We waved at him and blew kisses, but he looked away and the women with him glared at us. We continued to send noisy kisses and waved a small table cloth at them.

I looked up and caught Aunty Glory watching us from behind her potted plants and through the haze of cigarette smoke. I waved at her and she slowly raised an arm.

I moved back into the room, embarrassed at being caught trying to bully Genie.

“Are you mad? Do you think anyone can bully Genie… you of all people? But yes, we can piss off a saint if we want to.”

“Aunty Glory hates me bothering Genie… such a soft corner for him,” I muttered, peeping at her through a gap in the curtains. She stubbed out the cigarette and went into her sitting room. 

“Every woman in this housing society has a soft corner for Genie,” Anjali grumbled. She rushed into the bedroom, opened my cupboard and pulled out my father’s binoculars. He’d bought it on a trip abroad and we had spent many happy hours watching flamingoes in Mumbai. 

Anjali trained the pair of binoculars first on Aunty’s flat and then quickly moved out of sight behind the curtains. “Shit! Aunty and Uncle are watching us with binoculars from their sitting room.”

“Well, don’t be shy. Wave and smile.” I grabbed the binoculars and trained them across the courtyard into Aunty’s home. I felt shock jolt me seeing them beaming at me and I waved. Then I turned the binoculars onto the road outside our housing society. Genie was nowhere. I handed Anjali the binoculars.

                                                          ****** 

This is a fictional series about the 30-something narrator and her household, comprising a former man Friday and pet fish – both back from travelling the world.

                                                          ******
In the last month the spread of the corona virus was termed a pandemic and looking at the way it had decimated populations worldwide the Indian government announced a lockdown. We had been prepared and despite challenges, fresh milk, vegetables and fruits were available. 

I had also begun calling Aunty Glory and Uncle John every day. I needn’t have worried. Peaceful Society’s committee had swung into action and many of the buildingwallas had adopted an elder. I dropped off meals at the Gonsalves's door everyday and chatted for a bit standing at a safe distance.

But we were now stuck at home with Genie, who refused to respond to notes slipped under his door and awesome mutton curry. I had never known Genie to be so angry. And I felt like a real jerk. We heard music come from his room, sometimes some banging, and every now and then he stepped out to grab a book or the broom and dustpan. Often, when we came face to face, he’d flick the untidy living room or bedroom behind us with a disdainful look that screamed “PIG!” and would then turn and disappear into his room.

“How long can he stay cooped up in there?” Anjali asked me several times. His anger was unsettling and unfathomable. She had written him messages, stood at his door and apologized profusely. She stopped when the music’s volume was turned up. Plus, Fish were annoyed with us. They did not talk to me for a day, angry at our nosey behavior (A Step Too Far).

Anjali put the binoculars on the coffee table, pushed it to the side of the room and spread herself on the cool floor. I sighed. “Do you have a deadline, Anjali? Will this lockdown affect it?”

“No. I mean, I do have a deadline, but it isn’t immediate. And I don’t know how I will go for my meetings, or pay the ladies who clean my house.”

“I meant the writing…”

“Hmm. We’ll see.”

I dialled Aunty Glory's number. “Yes, my dear,” Uncle John picked up.

“See anything interesting through your binoculars, Uncle?”

“Plenty. Don’t you have enough of Genie at home to continue spying on him when he leaves?”

“Can’t have enough of him.”

“I’m sure. Why did you call, my dear?”

“Do you need any groceries, detergent, etc, etc, etc? I’m making my list.”

“Right. Anyone would be irritated with you for going through their personal belongings,” I froze. “You’ve got to let Genie be for some time.”

“Er, he told you?” I felt mortified.

“I think you’re taking him for granted. He’s not your man Friday anymore, doesn’t work for your parents or anyone. He’s his own person… always was.”

“Er.”

“I’ll write the list. But I’m surprised at you two, my dear. Especially at you.” The phone went dead.

In all my 30-something years, this was the first time Uncle John had scolded me – a kind, non-shouty scolding. My face and ears burned at the idea of Genie confiding about our evil deed to the Gonsalveses. 

But what did I expect, they were good friends.

                                                         ******

Fishy Chronicles 60: A Step Too Far

We tried calling Genie, but he didn’t pick up his phone.

“Do you think he’s left?” I asked Anjali.

“Left where?”

“I mean, gone. Taken his stuff and left.”

“Let’s check his room and see if his things are still here.”

We did the unthinkable and went into Genie’s room. I rarely entered this room, even though I was tempted. The room was extremely neat. Tidy paperless surfaces, with no personal belongings outside. A pink-themed patchwork bedspread my mother and I had made for Genie covered his bed.

Anjali gingerly tried the door handles of the cupboard nearest the door. It was locked. “Don’t you have extra keys for these cupboards? They usually come in doubles and triples.” She looked at me hopefully.

“Why isn’t there a mirror here?” Anjali said absentmindedly, drinking in the entire room.

“Oh. One of the cupboards has a mirror on the inside of the door.”

“Do you think that’s where he keeps all his toiletries and things?”

It was like the room had no character… save for the picture of my parents, Genie and I in happier times. The photograph was in a slim silver folder, the kind that could be propped up, kept in a pocket or slid into a briefcase. I’d never seen anything like it in India. I picked it up and stared at my parents. A lump soon formed in the back of my throat and my eyes blurred. Anjali took the slim picture frame from my hands and set it down and her arm went around me.

                                                                 ******

This is a fictional series surrounding the narrator, her parents’ former man Friday Genie and Fish. 

The narrator and her friend Anjali are unable to contact Genie and enter his room to see if he has packed and left. Unfortunately, they get carried away.

                                                                 ******

Then she went and tugged at the handles of all the cupboards. The ones without key holes opened, revealing Genie’s toiletries, clothes and other things. “If he keeps his clothes here, what must he be keeping in the locked cupboards?”

That was an interesting question, because there were two tall cupboards with locks and one short cupboard with a lock, in addition to a locked steel almirah.

“He only wears white t-shirts…” I said.

“… white t-shirts and jeans. And how many cupboards of white underwear can a man have? I think the cupboards are empty.” She went up to them and knocked. We couldn’t figure out if the sound was hollow.

“Well, looks like all his clothes are here. Nothing has gone. Maybe we should check the shoe rack.” I opened a drawer in his table. Stationery was neatly organised, instantly putting Anjali and me to shame.

“I really want him to be my housekeeper,” Anjali mumbled. “And I want to bonk him.”

“Me too. The tidy part, for the most part.” Except for the numerous bumps in my life, I had not seen anything ruffle Genie. That included the running of a household. If he didn’t know cooking when he first entered our home, he did by the time my parents left this realm. The only plus was I was a better cook.

“You know, geniuses are like this. Everything in neat rows. Look at this,” Anjali picked up a box of paperclips. “I bet the clips are in neat rows, spooning each other.”

“Okay. Open it.”

We opened it. There were a couple of coins in them. We stared at the Queen Victoria half anna. There was another coin in it, but I slapped Anjali’s hand away from it.

“What did you do that for!”

“We’ve poked around Genie’s things too much. We have no business doing so. Come on!”

“Yes, Miss Potty-Calling-Miss Kettley-Black. Where to?”

I walked to the sitting room. Fish were arguing on the phone. I stopped. It sounded like they were speaking with Genie.

“When will you be back?” Penaaz asked.

“You’ve got to come back,” Pervez said plaintively.

“Who’ll keep order here? And we may run out of food… or toilet paper… or just… things,” Portas said.

“You can’t stay away for long, old man. That Danny business fizzled out long ago. Uncle Joy was a tiresome old fart. A tiresome, game-playing, manipulative old fart. Fortunately, our little one hasn’t inherited any of his genes,” Gregory said.

“Please come back, we’re worried sick. Besides the girls will be alone. What if things get worse… TV news sounds worse by the hour. It’s safer for you to be here at home than outside. Please come back soon!” sweet gentle Dimitri said.

“He’s so annoying and stubborn,” Penaaz grumbled.

“Yes. How rude of him to cut us off while we were speaking,” Portas said.

“I don’t think he had a chance to speak at all, with us yammering and cutting him off every time he spoke,” Gregory said.

That silenced Fish. I moved into the sitting room, wondering why Anjali wasn’t with me. I sighed in frustration. She was examining the other coin in the paper clip box and taking a picture of it. “Anjali, stop that!”

“Stop that, you! You nearly gave me a fright,” Gregory shouted. I could see Fish hold their hearts, panting in shock and pressed into the sides of the fish tank.

“Er, sorry, guys. Do you have any idea when Genie will be back?”

“No,” Penaaz said.

“Did you call him?”

There was a long pause. “No,” Gregory said, looking at the top of my ear and adjusting his glasses. I looked at the other fish, each one of them was acting innocent.

They had learned well the fine art of fingering. It didn’t take a lot. I felt my piss fizz. I wondered what it was. Did they think I only needed to know on a need-to-know basis. Or I was just a helpless useless nut that needed to be manipulated like a puppet whenever they wanted. I screamed shrilly in my head, glaring at them all the while. Idiots!

I looked behind me. Anjali was now sitting on Genie’s bed and looking through a notebook. She then lifted a pen, that looked… my God! I sprinted into the room and grabbed the pen from her hand. “It’s a f****** Mont Blanc. What the eff! Do you think it’s real?” I put the pen to my nose and sniffed.

“Eek! Do you have to smell everything, you crackpot! What if he used it to scratch his balls.”

“Why can’t he just use his hands like everyone else?” I said, still looking closely at the pen. It looked like an original. I’d bought a couple of fakes at the Russian Market in Phnom Penh last year. And I had eyed the originals often enough at the mall. The markings seemed right. I pulled off the cap – it was a fountain pen. “You know, I have never seen him use this pen.”

“Maybe he has a secret journal he likes to write in with a special pen. There are some books and diaries in this larger drawer here. Shall we look?”

“I think we should stop touching his things. He may figure out we’ve been rifling through them. Do you think he’s one of those people who remembers the way he leaves a book or pen in his drawers?”

“I imagine you mean the drawer in this table and not the other type,” Anjali smirked. I felt exasperated but also strangely, and reluctantly, titillated. Anjali shrugged and sighed. “Yeah, I think he’s the sort who’ll remember what went missing and who’s touched what. I better put it back in his journal.”

“Journal? Give me that.”

“Don’t know if it is one.” She showed me a green moleskin diary. It looked like it had been well thumbed, and the sides of the book and pages looked grimy, though they were blank. Most of them. Some had words that didn’t make sense.

I had a sense of foreboding. “Put it back exactly the way you found it, Anjali.” I pushed the pen and notebook into Anjali’s chest. “We have no business touching Genie’s things. Put it back, put it back now!”

“Damn right you shouldn’t be touching my things. Put them down and get out of my room. Now!” Genie said coldly from the doorway. I felt Anjali gasp and I shrank into her, feeling intense shame at our actions and being caught. Anjali pushed me and we stood. She put the pen and book on the table and we walked slowly to the door.

“Very sorry, Genie. We didn’t mean to,” Anjali said.

“But you did.” He moved to the side of the doorway to let us pass, then went in and locked the door behind him.
                                                        ******