Mrs. Kapoor

Mrs. Kapoor glared at the clock, almost accusing it of moving too fast! It’s quarter to seven already, she exclaimed, feeling stretched out between the minute and hour hand of the clock. The food was only halfway done, little bubbles of flavor popping at the second, mimicking the clock and adding to her anxiety. Watching her work in the kitchen was not so far removed from watching an orchestra; she would masterfully set everything to tune – the spoon scraping the bottom of the vessel, the cooker whistling, the water bubbling, the shelves opening and closing. It was years of practice; she would dance around to the tune, a dance of vexation because so much was to be done! The living room was another territory to be conquered, the shabby sad walls painted with monotony had to be blotted out with vibrant balloons, happy to the point of explosion. Other decorations had to be put up too, and the cake had to be bought! She wanted her daughter’s birthday to be perfect. She didn’t want to leave any loose ends; invitations were sent to the entire class. She smiled as she wrote the names. Parents give their children such peculiar names today, she thought! How simple were her friends’ names – suddenly name after name started registering themselves in her mind’s register: Shilpa, Pinky, Jyoti, Neha. How they would pluck tamarinds from the tree while going to school, how they would rent bicycles to go on expeditions, they would not leave even an inch of their colonies’ street unmarked by their tire marks, how they’d talk and joke and laugh! Where were they now? Did they remember her? How strange to share so much together only to ask this question one day, that too to oneself: Do they remember me? They had attended her wedding, a day they all had planned for months in advance. They sang, they danced, they dressed up and they cried. How they cried incessantly when she sat in that wretched car! They knew they were bidding goodbye to Alka; she knew she was as well. The car took her away from everything that was hers – her home, her friends, and herself. She was to start her minimized existence now, so she felt when she wrote below the invitation: Mrs. Kapoor. Mrs. Kapoor snapped out of her past, she may have mistakenly stirred it while stirring the pot! She brought the boil to a calm and laid out her cooking prowess on the table for everyone – a marksheet of her existence. She recognized familiar faces, mothers of her daughters’ friends, wives of her husband. She smiled wistfully at how over the years she had engaged in the fallacy of calling them friends! How could they be her friends? They didn’t know if she liked kala khatta or rose on her icicle, they didn’t know how much she loved watching trashy cinema, they didn’t know her favorite song, they didn’t know anything about her. They weren’t friends but colleagues, familiar with the workplace of the home and family; their friendship was nothing but familiarity and recognition, relief even – that they are all the same. Agitation, too – that they are all the same. Mothers, wives. A homogenous group of heterogeneous women. Women who plucked tamarind from the trees, women who would rent bicycles to go on expeditions, they would not leave even an inch of their colonies’ street unmarked by their tire marks, women who’d laugh and sing and joke! Where were they now? Do they remember me? She thought as she watched with envy, a crowd gathered around her daughter, how they laughed and sang and joked! Simple names of simple girls swarmed in her head – Shilpa, Pinky, Jyoti, and Neha; they all must be Mrs. Someone now, all enrolled in the workforce where one has to don the homemaker’s uniform shedding all belongings of the past at the threshold of the in-laws’ house. She felt a rage rising in her as the candle was lit; she glared at it, almost accusing it of flickering too fast, memories of her past flickering before her eyes, but soon the candle was extinguished, and she felt the putting out of the flame inside her own self.