Memory of Coffee

My first memory of coffee as , for anyone else, is its incredible and addictive aroma.
A magical fragrance, a feel good after taste, and you are hooked for life.
I drank my first coffee , standing on the pavement of a hill-station , blowing and sipping rich , frothy, sweet and seductive concoction , all red nosed and bundled up against the mountain chill.

That was eons ago.

So many years later, a sniff and a whiff of the potent brew, and I still go weak in the knees. Anytime, anywhere.

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Morning person

Oh yes!

5 am. Sharp. The alarm goes off. Yawn. Milk truck arrives.
Switch on the geyser for kids bath.
Yoga on the mat.

5.30 Wake up the kids. Pack their tiffins , fill water bottles, make cold coffee.
Black coffee with fruit for the “Yogi”, and comb the younger one’s hair .
Snatch her crumpled shirt and iron it.
Someone needs a new shoe polish.

6 .30 am Read the newspaper headlines, gulp coffee , make beds.
Am I a morning person?

Long weekend

First came the fever.

Inexplicably spiked, unrelenting. The child began babbling . Febrile delirium. Medicine box was turned upside down. In the mess on the dining table, one tablet of a forbidden drug was given. Fingers crossed, as others drenched her , sponging. The mattress turned soggy.

The child opened her eyes. Smiled. Wiped her dripping brow. Whew!!

Then the old lady called, and called. Again and again. Without any reason. You rush to her bedside, and find her mumbling. Trying to form words. Eyes screaming fear. Fear of death.

Ambulance shrieking into midnight. Concerned neighbours in nightgowns.

Sleepy intern taking history. The beep of monitors. Hum of icu.

Long long weekend.

Monkey business

She sat in the Starbucks café, sipping coffee and staring out of the window. The blood stained knife lay next to her handbag, covered with her blue silk scarf. Her hand shook, spilling coffee into her saucer, where it lay in a dark, foreboding pool.

A fair skinned, pudgy and manicured hand held her hand. Mrs. Banerjee, Onu, her neighbor. Neha  was grateful  Onu was silent , for once. The incredible and shocking events of the day had stunned her into unusual silence. Her round, kohl-lined eyes had grown larger and rounder, brimming over with unspoken questions.

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She had this premonition of something going hideously wrong, from the moment Saurav’s deputation signal had arrived. He , a newly posted Army Captain to this remote” junglee-posting”(That’s what Neha’s mother had derogatorily called it as), had to pack his bags and move to Congo, as a part of UN Peacekeeping efforts in the African Nation. Neha had begged with him to take her along, but it was a “non-family” deputation. In retaliation, Neha dug her heels and stay put in the crumbling, ancient and sprawling bungalow, a heirloom bequeathed by the space-loving, erstwhile British residents of Jimaguri.

“The very name sounds like a disease, that you could catch by a mosquito bite.” Her younger sister’s wisdom, shared on iphone.

To pass her time, Neha the newlywed Army wife, took to decorating her house, which was enormous, dilapidated, and vexed her to no end. “It eej “bhootiya, if you ask me.”Her closest neighbor, Mrs. Anupama Banerjee, alias “Onu”, would confide in her. Discretion in speech was not one of Onu’s virtues and she had made many such pronouncements, like how foreign deputees were made to undergo HIV tests for they lived “such a sexy life” in phoren lands. This last remark had made Neha squirm, and gave her sleepless nights. Still, she was good –natured, and called on to look her up often. Besides, she was the only neighbor within five km radius, she too lived in a “Bhootiya” crumbling bungalow, and her husband was a surgeon in the Army Hospital.

In this lone some existence, two things buoyed her up. A chance meeting, with the CO’s wife.She decided to teach her oil-painting, and her sudden interest in growing a garden, with help from her watchman cum gardener,”Bahadur”.

So, now, Neha’s life was full of thinking of subjects to paint, fetching supplies from the city , which lay 35kms away, and scheming with Bahadur on how to drape the broken backyard fence with vines of ‘kaddu, lauki and tori.”Monkeys , in the cantonment , were a plague. Amazingly, Bahadur had an”Unbahadur-like “attitude, so far as monkeys were concerned. Whenever a troop descended, he would, shivering, lock himself up in his small wooden guardroom at the gate, leaving Neha to vent her rage at her vandalized roses, broken flowerpots and shredded lauki vines, beating the ground with her broken canvas stand legs, screaming obscenities in a futile rage, while Bahadur watched from the peephole.

The monkeys, of course, were unfazed. Occasionally, they would snarl at her, and pretend to give a chase, and she had to flee to the safety indoors.

Saurav would caution her on phone, ‘they are primates and intelligent, do not attempt to harm them. They remember.” Humph! Easy for him to say!! Here, she had to just watch helplessly as they chomped up all her painstakingly grown geraniums.

“I too am a primate. They should remember that.” She would retort, Saurav would laugh, and she would slam the transcontinental call down, immediately regretting afterwards.

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That day dawned gray. Bahadur overslept, probably sleeping off his last night’s toddy. Neha had a bad headache, and it looked like it might rain any moment. The bamboo fences around the front and back lawns were still broken from last week’s monkey raid, Neha noted with dismay.

The paints were due to arrive today, at the store in the city mall, and the needle in the fuel gauge of her SUV veered dangerously close to E. This was bad news in Jimaguri. Petrol meant more than fuel. It meant freedom, accessibility and life.

The maid had come and gone and the house still smelt musty and old. No amount of Lizol, Neha thought lady-Macbeth-like, would sweeten this home. Sigh.

By noon, Bahadur deigned to wake up, and was seen pottering amongst the broken flowerpots, when Neha shouted instructions, from the driveway, of sweeping the lawns, and tying up various vines in her “laukassic-park” (Onu’s jibe)in the backyard. It was a miracle . Bahadur even heard her, for he was so engrossed, raking up fallen mangoes from the numerous trees and making small mountains of the now messy and squelchy treats, to be cleared later. Strange! neha had never seen him do that before. He would just plonk them into the large dustbin by the shovel-fuls. Now , it will attract wasps and flies, and of course, monkeys. "Oi!" Neha screamed ," Bahadur , use your brains, don't do that, just phek do unko!" Heads down, Bahadur smiled, a sly smile , that said, "I am using my brains , Madam."

“Funny creepy fellow! Never looks me in the eye. Always stares at the ground, even when I talk to him. And what was that smirk for?The brainless bufoon!.”Neha talked to herself as she revved up and reversed, disappearing in a cloud of exhaust fumes.

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It was close to six, and darkness was already descending on this small cantonment town. Not to mention the downpour, which had, left wisps of moisture, free gray clouds and shin deep puddles everywhere.

There was a black-out. Only oil lamps flickered in sundry hut windows as Neha raced back, spraying muck at startled sepoys.

Nothing prepared Neha for the sight that greeted her, when she turned into her rusty iron gates, four hours and a huge downpour later.

Millions of furry shapes filled her garden, squeaking, hissing, and chattering. At first, she thought, she was dreaming. It looked like a scene from “Planet of the Apes”. They occupied every post on her broken bamboo fence; they swayed from the leafy boughs of mango trees like Tarzan. The driveway was littered with mango peel and stones. The mounds of mangoes had all but disappeared. Bahadur was nowhere to be seen. "The cowardly swine!! I told him not to leave the fruit out."  Neha thought angrily.

As Neha peered through the post rain mist, two things happened simultaneously. Neha skidded on a wet patch, or a squelched mango, on her concrete driveway, and heard a thud and a sickening crunch.

A furry thing fell off the hood. She had hit a monkey. Omigod! Probably, crushed it.

There was a long moment of utter silence. No one chattered, swung or squeaked. Hundreds of pairs of primate eyes swiveled in her direction.

Then all hell broke loose. Every furry limb made towards the SUV. Snarling, chattering ,and leaping.

She had to run. A large, new, canvas lay at her feet. Using it as a shield, she opened the driver side door, and sprinted towards the back door of the house. The front was already swamped.

Panting, heart in mouth, she ran, with all her might. The chattering seemed to be closing in.

The wire mesh door to the kitchen was latched, but the balcony door wasn’t. Leaping in, she made for the first light that she saw. The skylight, through, the kitchen roof.

The house was eerily dark and silent. Suddenly, a large rustle and thump was heard in the backyard. The monkeys!! Neha bolted herself into the kitchen. A large kitchen knife lay in the third drawer. She grabbed it by the handle, and took huge gulps of air.

Almost immediately, she heard a rustle, a looming of a large dark shape from the corner of the kitchen. Every nerve on edge, Neha reacted instinctively. Screaming, she held her hands taut as the thing leapt on her. The knife sank till the hilt, with no resistance. She heard a startled gasp. A human gasp. A breath that smelt of toddy and paan-masala.Her hands felt clothing, and buttons as the shape sank at her feet,with a sigh, a dark sticky fluid making a growing pool around her  shoes. The lights came on, that very instant, and she saw lying at her feet, with life oozing out of him, Bahadur.

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Now, She was waiting at Starbucks. In a few minutes, police will come to record her statement.

Horror on a Sunday afternoon

“The face was gone , totally.” He scrubbed his hands vigorously at the sink, as if trying to wash the gory memories of the operating theatre. How painfully yucky and bloody to be faced with human misery, day in and day out , creatures at their most vulnerable .

“How come ?” I could not restrain my curiosity.

He usually doesn’t encourage gossipping about his cases at home. But , this was a baby, a mere 5 year old. It had a gut-wrenching effect on him, having to intubate a gaping hole, instead of the mouth, squirting blood from everywhere. Five and a half hours of painstaking skill to sew on the teeth, the nose, the cheek-flaps, the reconstruction of lips.

“He stood in the lawn and a sheet of broken glass from the first floor window, fell on him; shearing off the face.”

“Aargh, the poor baby.”

“They brought the severed pieces on a slab of ice.”
“292 stitches.”
“Oh my God!!” I was sorry I asked.

Lips

The lips were very provocative. Red lipsticked,full, and turned up at the corners , into a permanent semi-smile , that would have people believe, she was a good -natured person. Well, she was not.

Her cold eyes totally contradicted , whatever story her lips set out to recount.

But people are fooled by appearances. They always are. So they all fell for her fake half-smile, that became toothy, the moment she saw men in Armani suits, alighting from BMWs, clutching their iphones,

She could see their gullibility, and wealth through her glass walls: they saw a pretty mouth and heard a dulcet voice inside the dim air-conditioned comfort of her showroom.

She was a good saleswoman

Family dinner

“We are having a family dinner next sunday.”
This declaration was greeted with a shocked silence.
Then a storm of protests broke out.
“Does this mean I have to share my ipad with Anusha the twit.?”
“No way , Mama, There is a repeat telecast of “Prisoner of Azkaban”, and Ayush is again going to ruin it by flying his wretched aeroplane in my face .Last weekend, by the time I rescued it from the curtain loops, my “Dark Knight “was over.
“Look,I am in no way responsible for the sulkiness of your sister Mona, and I am definitely not going to apologize to her dimwit husband, Harry the hairy, for not calling him up even once last week. So don’t make me.” This from the head of my family. Sigh.
Please ask Aunt Mona not to bring those rock-hard home made cookies, please.Even if I forgive her, my friends won’t.Two of the guys lost their premolars to those stones.”
“Stealers of your tiffin , you mean.”
“Whatever.”
“This is a very bad idea.”
“Can’t you somehow cancel it ? You could say we are all down with conjunctivitis or some such contagion?”
“Okay, okay calm down. For heaven’s sake, it is just a dinner. They will be here at 8 and be gone by 10.”
“And leave us shattered…”
“And toothless..”
“Don’t forget my missed movie….”