Coffee @ Starbucks

She sat in the Starbucks cafe, sipping her coffee and staring out of the window. The blood stained knife lay next to her handbag, covered with her blue silk scarf. Mom would kill her if she saw her scarf now. She had always loved that one. Blue with pink stripes and little golden somethings. Like the freckles on her nose.   Mom had always hated that one. Not the scarf this time, the freckles. She thought it looked a lot like the kind of thing one finds on a servant’s or a watchman’s daughter. That was her. Always drawing lines where Lila could not see any. Guess, that way she must have borrowed something from her father. And for that, she was thankful. Not that it mattered anymore. In an hour’s time, there would be people all over the place. And she didn’t know what to tell them. About the noise.  All that shattering and banging. They would now question her, dissect and cross-section the ethics and logic behind what she had done; people who had not turned to look up on her- for what, over a fortnight? Then maybe the police would be here too. With the kind of person Ramesh had been one would think they would have been used to it by now. Ramesh was always repairing something or the other, either at the balcony gardening or doing the plumbing that should have actually been the proprietor’s job. And they had been okay with it too.

Until now.

Just when she needed them to leave her alone!

Ramesh had been very adamant about adopting. That was two years ago. He had grown increasingly distracted and said he wanted it more than ever. That he was sure his career would not be at stake by the decision. Whatever happened to all those disgruntled outbursts? Moments when excitedly he would pace about the room and give lengthy speeches about why he thought he didn’t want it. He would hold her roughly at the elbow and pull her to their French door that had a great view. From there she could see the great suburb of Mumbai. Mumbai with its beautiful Bandra-Worli link road, the rocks by the seashore and little specks of moving silhouettes, which were actually people out on an evening walk. Most of them were young couples, who had probably skipped college and were out there making out wordlessly. Lila sometimes wondered, standing there looking at all that youthful life pass before her eyes, if things would have turned out any different  had she chosen not to marry Ramesh when he had asked her to-one one knee filmi ishtyle. Her girlfriends had all thought that romantic. Lila, had too. Sort of. Today, she wasn’t so sure.

The thing was, Ramesh would stand by her at that balcony and show her the boy who lived with the Varma’s in the next flat. They occupied the ground floor and he could be seen playing with his cute little Labrador. He would pass a ball to the dog and watch it hobble around to fetch it. Sometimes, just sometimes she pitied the fate of the dog. What it must feel like to be pushed about and be made to do things that one simply didn’t feel up to. Ramesh hadn’t been like that in the first three years of the marriage. But, then he started showing more and more diffidence mixed with a sudden burst of assertiveness. He took to planting weirdly common plants like the one Lantana that now grew from the blue pot beside her. Then, from somewhere the notion that they could adopt had crept in and that had slowly but definitely seeped like a slow weedicide into their marriage.  She opposed. He reinforced. She opposed again, this time more vehemently.  And he had argued all the more more violently. Finally, she had relented.

Finally last march they had gone to the adoption centre and adopted Redaan. Mostly, he was playful and contended. But, there were moments when he fell into some deep crevice from where there was no turning back. Where whatever plagued him nobody could guess. The adoption centre had warned them of this. Wherever Redaan had been before, someone had abused him physically in a way that had left him emotionally traumatized. Even today he cornered himself, literally, when confronted by her or Ramesh when he had been naughty.

Less than a month since they had adopted the banging and crashes had begun.

Periodically, someone would call her name from below to ask. It was probably the Mrs. Mehta.  Such nosy people, she thought. Always on time at the wrong time. The other day, when they were, well...

“You wouldn’t have a little ginger, would you Lila darling?” The pot’s on boil and I just remembered I hadn’t bought the ginger for the rajma. How foolish of me, no?

 Lila had smiled politely.

Bang.

“There was this white plain sweet…”

 Lila tuned her out. The day had been bad enough without Mrs. Mehta at her door. She didn’t send her away either. She had stood politely smiling, her mind on other things. The non-stop bailing about this and that had continued for another 10 minutes. Now, if the pot was really on boil how could she be expending her time the way she was right then. And finally, when Lila could take no more she had politely reminded Mrs. Mehta of the pot on boil and whether she shouldn’t be going.

Mrs. Mehta would stall, unsure if she shouldn’t be staying nervous eyes flitting into the far about corners of her house looking for something. Lila knew that the Mehtas increasingly wondered what all the thrashing and crashing was about. She wondered if they secretly didn’t gossip about Ramesh hitting her and about their marital bliss being all phony. Her visits had become remarkably frequent, each time her eyes searching for, God knows what, as if unhappy marriages had ‘UNHAPPY’ posters on the walls. In reality, her marriage had seemed that more of late- unhappy. Not like the bold red letters that advertised UNION BANK at Nariman Point. But like, subtle little colors that had washed away at the littlest rain in the tiny tea shop on Market road in West Borivali. Hadn’t Ramesh and Lila hung out there numerous times before they had called the shots at marriage? How many times had Ramesh pledged to never let anything or anyone else get in between them ever. And yet, here was proof of his changing yearnings. Was it the first of many?

Another bang. This time a little less fervent.

Lila looked away from the open window where the curtains with their bold embroidery, gold with green creepers were ruffling in the wind. It looked like they were trying hard at something. Like trying hard to cling on and not to be blown away, from where they couldn’t hold out any longer.

A dragging sound.

Lila remembered how Redaan would pace about endlessly on the corridors and seemed disturbed. Like he couldn’t take out whatever was killing him inside and neither fight back. Like someone was blowing a trumpet inside his head in full swing… she would think when she watched him suffer this way. Ramesh had tried consoling him, bought him his favorite snacks from the store, taken him for long walks….and when that had failed he even tried long drives by night. Nothing they could comprehend seemed to ease his pain.

 During those moments he would take up a frenzied thrashing about. He would lie on the floor one moment in crippling pain and in the next he would find a corner either next to his bed or in the corner beside Ramesh’s table.

Lila took all this in from a distance during those first initial months. She hadn’t really been party to the decision, had she? She had just given in so she wouldn’t lose Ramesh to it. That was what Ramesh had wanted badly, and she had chosen to give him that. That was what she had thought marriage would be like, had she? And mom and dad had begged and pleaded to think about her decision. But, she had stood firm. She had only wanted Ramesh- to be his. But now, well things hadn’t turned out as she had imagined. Things were different. But, then, was it?

Just then someone had rushed upstairs and knocked repeatedly and violently on the door. Lila had slowly stood up, tired. She had borrowed a rag lying next to the balcony garden and moped up all the blood on the floor. Redaan lay whining in the centre of it all. She cast him a pitiful look. Whatever she had done, it couldn’t be rectified. She could not still see why Ramesh wanted him so badly over her. Maybe her motherly instincts hadn’t kicked in yet. There were little pieces of glass still stuck to his torso and she shuddered at the thought of having to remove more of them. They were too little to be even seen and she had just misplaced her glasses the other day. Until another one could be bought….

The banging had got louder.  This time she had feared that whoever it was on the other side might just break down the door. She had gently risen to her feet and threaded those steps to the door cautiously. Whatever was to come now could not be stalled anymore.

She had slid the latch and opened the door warily.

Ramesh.

She sighed. He had stormed into the room. He had known how much Lila had hated Redaan. He had known that whatever had happened couldn’t be anything good. Ramesh gradually took in everything in his vision. Redaan’s bleeding head, his curled up whining figure on the floor, the blood everywhere on the floor, and finally the knife had slowly registered on his mind, but the horror was quick to get to his face.

His mouth fell open.

Just then someone else too had rushed in. Lila stood there apologetically and partly defiantly. If that was the way Ramesh would know, so be it. She was tired from all the pretending.

Lila had gently bent down and picked up the knife. Somewhere in spite of her disapproval and strict abhorrence she had come to care for Redaan. All that banging and heart wrenching silent misery Redaan felt had gotten through to touch some place deep inside her. She just couldn’t wait to see him torture himself to death. Not when he had cut himself up so badly against the French doors and was bleeding to death. How could she wait for Ramesh to show and up and care for him all the while feigning indifference. The flat did not allow pets. True, but she wouldn’t let that stupid rule take an innocent life, and a miserable one at that.

She had walked back to where Redaan lay. She gently wiped his head with a clean wet mop and changed the bloody patches she had earlier tied him up in.

Ramesh had then suddenly moved like he had just returned from wherever he had gone for those few transfixed minutes. The man standing next to him clubbed, also seemed to have been released from whatever spell he had been under.

Ramesh had slowly walked towards the kitchen. The man, which Lila had then recognized as the neighbor from four floors down on the left flat, spoke urgently and in hushed tones with Ramesh. He simply nodded. Lila couldn’t guess if he had just been asked to move out or was being offered solidarity. He then wiped his hands on the kitchen towel and picking up something that Lila couldn’t see he had walked towards Redaan who was still whining on the floor. Whether from pain or the internal bruises Lila hadn’t been able to decide.

Ramesh came to kneel beside Redaan and Lila standing up had moved away. He gently stroked Redaan and nuzzled his ears. After a couple of moments, Redaan gently pulled himself together enough to lick the bone Ramesh had put towards him. In one swift brief moment then, Lila had known.

Throwing the scarf that lay on the chair back she had walked out.

Tired, now she sat pensively stirring her coffee. Over the years, the place itself had changed, from the time she had come there the first time with Ramesh. Starbucks had then just opened in Bombay and like everything else, Mumbai not Bombay she reminded herself, had openly received Starbucks into its heart. The photographs on the wall had changed and even the counter had raised its standards to ‘Yours’, as the sign in front of her read. But, the coffee cup with its classic Starbucks logo had remained.  Like that random moment she had that afternoon, which reminded her of what had made her stay rooted in her decision all those years back.  In these times, she was reminded of all that had mattered, then.  She raised the cup to her mouth and drained its last contents and walked out.

For her, marriage had changed many things. She sure wanted some things to change back to what could have been. But, Ramesh, wasn’t one of them.