To Love is Human
It was Tuesday afternoon and Mr Shankar was inspecting his closet. The tan suit? No, he’d worn that last month. Not the blue either. He eyed his emerald sherwani. Hadn’t she said something once about green bringing out the amber in his eyes?
He snorted. He was being silly and he knew it. Agonising over clothes for a tea party where he might be poisoned? Ridiculous.
Although, to be fair to Uma, he didn't think she'd actually go through with it. The thought had been in her mind; he’d seen it there a few times. But, she wouldn’t, would she? Especially considering the futility of the endeavour? Or maybe she would, just to send him a message of some sort. One never knew with Uma.
Oh well.
Across the thousands of years he'd seen pass, this was only the second time someone had thought about killing him. He had existed for millennia as a bland, blameless entity. A mote of dust floating just outside the periphery of a sunbeam - unnoteworthy, unnoticed.
But Uma? She had emotions. No. She had Emotions. Capital ‘e’. Her emotions writhed and twisted themselves into knots, went around in circles like a snake swallowing its own tail, and loaded interactions with Meaning. You’d think age would have taken the edge off things for her, but Uma was Uma.
Still, he hadn’t seen any homicidal thoughts in her mind for quite a while now, so... progress? He snorted again.
The green sherwani.
-----------------------
Uma Daruwalla stood in her kitchen, hands on her hips, the end of her sari tucked into the waist. The egg salad was done, the cucumbers were sliced, the watercress rinsed.
Maybe she should wash it one more time. They used all kinds of crazy pesticides these days. So bad for health.
She piled the watercress in a colander and ran it under the tap again. Better to be safe.
Shaking out the water, she started fixing the sandwiches. Practised hands sliced bread into neat triangles as her eyes roved the kitchen counter. The pound cake was cooling. The chutney was done. She still had to fry the potato bhajis. What else, what else?
The Vial.
She needed to put The Vial away before Navroz reached home.
A smile touched her lips as she dropped balls of battered potato into the hot oil. Such a good boy, Navroz. Eight hundred thousand applicants for IIT last year and only four thousand accepted. And, of those, her Navroz got into the best of the best - Computer Engineering at IIT Mumbai!
She glanced at the photo hanging on the kitchen wall - a grinning boy, all teeth and gangly limbs, perched on a smiling man’s shoulders, with her standing next to them in her daisy-print dress. Those were good days.
“You would have been so proud of him, Kaizaad,” she said to the photo. “He was the only Parsi baba selected, you know. Behroz was so jealous when she found out - her Dilnavaz didn’t make it.” Uma sniffed at the memory.
Lifting the bhajis out, she shook off as much oil as she could and arranged them on a platter. As she carried the tea things out to the dining table, she continued, an odd note entering her voice, “Mr Shankar is coming for tea today, Kaizaad. Navroz is going to meet him for the first time.”
Frowning, she brushed the wrinkles out of the plastic tablecloth. What was there to feel so guilty about? It’s not like there was anything like that between them at this point.
“You don't understand how it is, Kaizaad. It's easy for you to look down at us from above. And now Navroz is also gone. You think he has time for his Mumma anymore? IIT this, friends that, Starbucks and night clubs and spring break and all. What spring is he finding in Mumbai, you tell me? Wet and sweat, that’s all the seasons we have. But he wants to go for spring break. Silly boy.”
She stomped back to the kitchen. It was safer to be irritated at the frivolities of youth than to think about Mr Shankar with Kaizaad’s photo right there.
Grabbing The Vial, she dragged a stool to the tall cupboard in the bedroom. Her thumb brushed the label on the small glass bottle.
BOTOX® COSMETIC
Onabotulinumtoxin A
100 units/vial
Purified Neurotoxin Complex
Single patient use
Why did she always get It out before one of Mr Shankar’s visits? Did she mean It for herself? To be with Kaizaad again?
That made no sense.
First of all, it wouldn’t have worked on her. But mostly, she didn’t want to leave Navroz even though he was a strapping young man now. He would always be her little baboo.
And there was Mr Shankar. He had shared her joy when she had met Kaizaad. And then he had faded unobtrusively into the background noise of her freshly exciting life. She didn’t see or hear from him for nearly thirty years. Gifts came for Navroz sometimes, sender unknown. And now he was still here. A constant in her life.
Even so, she always got The Vial out when he came over for tea. And she always took It to the kitchen where Kaizaad’s photo was. And she always put It away on top of the cupboard after Mr Shankar left.
Climbing onto the stool, she pushed The Vial behind the food processor, still in its box gathering dust. The gadget had been a gift from Mr Shankar for her birthday last year.
“You can slice and dice vegetables with it, mince herbs, all sorts of things,” he had said with enthusiasm. “Just press the button and the blade will do the rest. It even has an attachment to grind spices, see? You love cooking, so... I thought...”
Men really bought the silliest gifts. After all the years he’d known her. So many parts, oof. The blade, the container, the lid, that pushing-down thing. Who would be the one stuck washing all of it by hand at the end of the day? Just to cut one onion.
But she had smiled that afternoon, thanking Mr Shankar for his thoughtfulness as she accepted his gift. And later, after the bhajis were eaten and the polite goodbyes exchanged, she had packed it away. Maybe Navroz would use it someday.
She glanced at the clock. Three. They would both be here soon.
-----------------------
Mr Shankar sat across from Uma, watching her pick at one of the flowers printed on the tablecloth. He had gifted it to her a few months ago on Diwali.
Theirs was not the sort of relationship where he could just waltz up with a bouquet of blooms. Not done. But a tablecloth with red roses? That was permissible now. And she was using it, so that meant something.
Wooing Uma was like a game of chess - careful moves planned out well ahead. Most men wouldn’t have the patience. Although, once upon a time, Kaizaad did. And he himself? He had all the time in the world.
Mohammad Rafi crooned to Asha Bhosle on the Hindi Oldies FM channel in the background as he looked on at Uma.
Let the veil of evening drop, Rafi sang.
Let my heart have its fill of you.
Let me sip of the intoxication that is your company.
We haven’t said enough to each other, we haven’t heard enough from each other.
Don’t leave and go yet - my heart needs its fill of you.
That had been a good era for music. Far more pleasant to listen to than the heavy classical stuff that predated it.
He glanced at the table. The food was mostly untouched in front of them. Time to begin.
“The bhajis are really good today, Uma. Crispy outside, soft inside. You should have a few. Or some cake.”
White pawn to E4. A safe, benign opening.
She blinked, as though noticing him for the first time. “Sorry,” she said. “I was wool-gathering. My brain is all over the place today. I’ll bring out the teapot. Cake later.”
“So, where is Navroz? I thought he was joining us. Aren’t these the sandwiches he likes? Great Englishman he is. Watercress sandwiches in Mumbai.”
She smiled at the ribbing. “Just because you can’t imagine a world beyond bhajis doesn’t mean everyone has to be like you, Mr Shankar.” She poured out two cups of tea for them and covered the pot with a tea cosy. “He called me earlier. Said he can’t come today. They’re having extra tutorials that he doesn’t want to miss.” She shrugged.
“Extra tutorials? Extra romance tutorials at the cinema with a girlfriend maybe. Can’t blame him for not wanting to be stuck all afternoon with a pair of old fuddy-duddies.”
A smile touched the corner of her lips. “Who are you calling old, Mr Shankar? Do I look old?”
Ah. Black pawn to E5. A defensive block. He looked across at her and she held his gaze. For a moment, he was tempted to reach into her mind and feel her thoughts. He could sense that something was changing, shifting in there.
But no, their game of chess was more compelling. He would go on the offence. Get some things out in the open.
“But we are old, you and I,” he said. “The dictionary should just write our names next to the word ‘old’.”
There. White knight to F3.
He looked on as Uma stirred her tea in silence. On the radio, it was Asha’s turn to sing to Rafi.
If I stay now, she sang, I’ll never leave,
Your heart is not filled you forever will say.
For the bond eternal that ties us
Is not one to fade here in this place.
Theirs was an odd existence. Part of this world, yet separate from everyone around them. What do you do when you’ve seen humankind flow through the ages? When you’ve seen kingdoms arise only to blur into nearly identical iterations? When you’ve lived what feels like the same day a million billion times over? He appreciated the growth and the building introspection of humanity, but in an objective, dispassionate way. It was hard to care about anything in particular when you'd seen everything swept up inexorably into the dustpan of time.
But Uma? She had always wanted to feel. She had spent eternity as an outsider without giving into cynicism or apathy. She was all dreams and hopes and yearning - the essence of humankind distilled into one person who was not quite human.
Her desire to feel a part of this world was probably why Kaizaad had happened. An emotional interlude in their otherwise immutable lives. He didn’t mind. What did twenty, thirty, fifty years matter to a bond built over the span of humanity’s existence?
So yes. They were old.
She looked up then and he realised she must have heard that last thought.
“My friend Behroz cried for weeks last year when her daughter left for university,” she began. “An empty nest, she called it. Me? I didn’t shed a single tear when Navroz left.”
He remained silent.
“Not one tear,” she continued after a pause. “You know why? Because I will watch as my Navroz grows and lives his life. I will see him age even as I remain here unchanged. And one day, he will pass into the Great Tower of Silence. Mine will be the emptiest nest on that day, Mr Shankar. So please, don’t talk to me about ‘old’. I know.”
What else was there to do then? Shankar got up, walked around the table and touched Uma's shoulder. She rose as well, and he held her to him. They stood there a while then – two timeless people, partners yet not, bound to each other for eternity by the strangeness of their lives.
After a few minutes, Uma stepped back. She brushed a few stray hairs off her forehead and tucked them behind her ear. Wrapping the end of her sari around her shoulders, she turned back to the table and asked, “Cake now?”
“Yes, cake now,” Shankar replied. He moved back to his chair and settled down. No more chess. He’d been checkmated anyway.
“I bought some poison, you know. After Kaizaad died,” she said, cutting them a slice each. Her voice was steady, matter of fact. “I thought about putting some in the chutney a few times when you came over. But it wasn’t really for you.” She shrugged. “Or me, for that matter. I don’t even know why I bought it.”
He looked at her, his eyebrows raised. Who are you trying to fool here, Uma?
“It was for you,” he said gently.
She smiled at him then. “Not pulling any punches today, Shankar.”
“I haven’t been for a while now.” He lifted a corner of the tablecloth and held it up. Red, red roses on a cheap, plastic sheet.
She concentrated on a rose next to her teacup. A crumb of pound cake had fallen on it, perfectly centred on the whorl of its petals.
“Yes. Yes, it was for me. It was a link, I guess, to Kaizaad. He was dead and maybe I could die too. It’s not that I was suicidal. I just wanted... to be able to die.”
“You wanted to keep feeling human. Like with Kaizaad.”
She considered his words and slowly nodded. “Death as a barometer of normalcy. Yes. Kaizaad gave me the commonplace and it was beautiful. Loving him, arguing with him, grocery shopping, planning Navroz’s birthday parties, worrying about our house loan payments... just... everything. Dying seemed like a natural progression, I guess.”
“I can’t give you most of that, you know. There’s no changing what we are, who I am.”
This time she was the one giving him the look. Who was fooling whom now?
“The food processor? This tablecloth? The Shankar I knew before Kaizaad would never have bothered.”
He started to explain himself, then stopped. She was right. Why hide the obvious? There was no point in pretending with her. He raised his palms in surrender.
“I missed you,” he said.
“It was just twenty five years, Shankar. A blink. Like that.” She snapped her fingers.
“I missed you,” he repeated.
They studied each other, each one reaching out to feel the other’s thoughts. They were old and, no, there was no point pretending anymore. She had been an interloper in a world that was not really hers to partake of. But it had given her Navroz and she would have him a long while still. Maybe it was time to return to her own peculiar normal.
Uma watched a smile spread over Shankar’s face. He had heard that. Smiling back, she pulled the sari around her shoulders again.
“Would you like to stay for dinner, Mr Shankar?” she asked.
He replied, “I would.”
(NYCMidnight 2022 Short Story Round 1 - 4th Place)
