Total Siyapaa

NEHA SHARMA was smitten by the written word in the first grade, while reading the school prescribed ‘Peter and Jane’ series, and it didn’t take long to realize she preferred fiction to reality, something that holds true even today.

In the real world, Neha has dabbled with copywriting, editing, short fiction and lifestyle features. Neha lives in Mumbai, and is currently working on her first novel.

Sum of Two Wholes

Total Siyapaa

Neha Sharma

Table of Contents

Cover

About the Author

Title Page

one

two

three

four

five

six

seven

eight

nine

ten

eleven

twelve

thirteen

fourteen

fifteen

Copyright

one

“You promised I’d get a shot, Jenny.” Aasha’s voice was low and strained, barely audible above the continuous pounding of raindrops against the window panes. She stood with her back to her boss and her fists balled, at the other end of the cabin, which wasn’t really that far away considering only a bright yellow armchair stood between the two women. Still, Aasha felt it made a point.

The afternoon light was fading quickly into a dark spool cloaking the army of office blocks outside. Aasha followed the tiny dots of humanity rushing along the streets below, all under a canopy of opened umbrellas – the monotone of black artfully broken by pops of colour here and there. They moved as a unit to the rhythm of the rain: one-two-shuffle-quickstep-one-two. Aasha tried to count the mobile Londoners, much like she counted sheep as a child, in an effort to control her temper.

Aasha had been the first at the bureau to track the American spying scandal about two weeks ago. She had chased the international eavesdropping story from a snippet to a storm, much like the one gathered outside the window. A big story like this could turn her career around. It could be her ticket out of South Asia. She had worked on her own time, chasing lead after lead till she had enough information to share it with Jenny.

“What do you think, Jenny?” she had asked, pacing before Jenny’s small but sturdy teakwood desk. “It’s a story, right?”

“It is. It surely is. Listen, I’ll take this to the team.” Jenny pulled off her leopard print horn-rimmed glasses and set them on her head. Her green eyes that were locked on the story docket now focused on Aasha. There was a hint of pride in them, which in turn made Aasha flush. “And I promise if they run it, I’ll push for you. I know you want in on the Global News Team, and if this doesn’t get you there,” she waved the docket about, “well, I’ll be surprised.”

Those words had left Aasha’s mind aflutter. For the next two days she went about doing things in a slight daze. She tried to bump into Jenny around the office, but the woman only gave her a small smile and asked for some patience. To keep her mind occupied she made up tasks: she organized her files and cleaned out her hard drive; when she was done she rearranged her Kindle files. At home she took to cooking elaborate meals.

Aasha generally didn’t cook much: when she was at her flat, the fridge was always stocked with frozen lunches made by her mother – lunch boxes (usually old ice cream tubs) full of butter chicken, rajma, and kali dal, were a constant fixture in her freezer. Her usual culinary practices extended to microwaving home-cooked meals. On the weekends, during the holidays, and when the workload was minimal, she spent time at her parents’. On the off chance that she did need to cook, Aasha always went the whole mile, making everything from scratch.

She was in the middle of a Moroccan stew when the story broke. As waves of havoc were unleashed on this international broadcast, Jenny’s words came rushing back to her. Aasha poured herself a glass of red wine to calm her nerves and drained it in one go. The second glass she savoured, enjoying the rich dry nutty flavours as they hit the back of her throat.

“Jenny! I can’t believe this. Is this really happening?” she asked barely able to hold the phone still in her hand.

“It is. It is real,” Jenny’s quiet voice replied, “Let’s talk about it tomorrow OK? I’ll see you in my office at about ten in the morning.”

She had spent the rest of the evening clutching the wine glass, alternating between TV screen and window pane. Outside the overcast skies, the dark trench coats, and low-pulled hats, all perpetuated the espionage novel ambience, fuelling the story further; a story that Aasha helped uncover.

Aasha arrived at Jenny’s cabin well before time, twenty minutes early in fact. “She is in a meeting downstairs,” Ron, Jenny’s PA told her. “You can wait for her inside, but it might be a while.” Aasha didn’t mind. She made herself comfortable on the yellow chair, and reached out for a stack of magazines on the desk. She barely took in the words; her leg bobbed up and down continuously.

Jenny’s office was a lot like Jenny. There were no frills, no sentimental crap. Three big news stories were framed and put up on the wall, as was a Buddhist painting. On her table the only personal item was a photo frame with a toothless little girl in the arms of a doting dad, both grinning – Jenny’s daughter Sophie and partner Tim. On one side of her table sat a stack of magazines and newspapers. On the other was a vase with four lilies. That was it. Everything was clean and gleaming. Everything was ordered and organized.

“Aasha,” Jenny greeted her. When Aasha made to get up, Jenny waved her down. “Sit, sit.” Despite her five-inch heels supplementing her five-foot frame, people still towered over Jenny and she preferred talking to them sitting down.

“Sorry, I got held up a bit,” Jenny pulled her chair and settled down. When she made eye contact with Aasha it was with a hint of apology, “I’m afraid I have bad news, Aasha.” Jenny had been dreading this conversation and watching the light leave Aasha’s eyes made it worse. As Aasha got up and walked towards the window, Jenny tried to salvage the situation, “You’ll have to wait a little longer, but it will happen.”

When Aasha didn’t relent, Jenny continued, “I’ll keep pushing for you, Aasha, but till then you have to manage South Asia Hour. You’re very good at it, and you might even just like this next assignment.” Jenny held out a pink-purple folder for Aasha.

Aasha reached for the file, her shoulders slumped in defeat, “The Edinburg Music Festival?”

“The next big story,” Jenny added as a peace offering, “you’ll be on it. Let’s talk again when you get back from Edinburg, right?” Jenny swivelled around in her chair, making a slight squeaky sound in the process. She extended a perfectly manicured nail to the intercom button and issued an order. “Listen, Ron,” she began while her eyes remained fixed on Aasha, “put me down for a breakfast meeting with Aasha next week Monday. At the Orangery.”

And that had been it. Even as Aasha settled back down in her cubicle she wondered if there was an argument she left out, if there was a line of thought that would have finally convinced Jenny. She wondered if she’d given in too quickly. She picked up the itinerary docket she had dropped on the table – Edinburg Music Festival, her next destination, not 10 Downing Street, or the Home Office, but Edinburg Music Festival. If Jenny wanted her there, she’d have to go there, there was no way around it.

Aasha had been fourteen when she decided she was going to be an investigative journalist. “Papa, I’m going to be a reporter,” she had announced one evening over dinner. “Shabash, beta!” had been her father’s response, while her mother beamed on, serving a large helping of aaloo-gobi and promising to make her kheer later. “My daughter. Reporter. I like it!”

And once it was agreed upon, Aasha had approached it like a mathematical equation. She went about assembling all the parts, and that too with honours, till she got the desired result. The day she’d graduated from the London School of Journalism, her family was present in the crowd, proud and beaming, and being very Punjabi. They had whistled when she got on stage and her father’s voice could be heard ringing around the hall, “Most well done, beta! Most well done!”

“You should have brought a dhol, na,” she had complained sarcastically over the celebratory family dinner at Bangalore Express, her favourite Indian restaurant in London.

“Hain! Pehele bola hota, beta, toh we would have arranged for a dhol. Dhol kya, we would have arranged for a whole band-baja!”

“Haan bhai. Why not, why not?” her mother had chipped in while digging into her crab curry. “Our daughter. Reporter! I like it!”

When the BBC came calling with a job offer, the high-pitched phone calls to Mumbai, Delhi, and Amritsar could be heard across half of London.

“Our Aasha, biji, our Aasha will be on BBC!”

Word had spread quickly from aunt to uncle to cousin to aunt-in-law to great grandmother to the family priest to the ayah who once took care of her during a family trip to India. With each retelling, the family distributed mithai: her parents ran up and down their apartment block, going door to door with a box of sweets in their hand, much to the amusement of the predominantly Nigerian and Korean families living in the building; her relatives in India reached out to every passerby, yelling, “Ye lo! Our daughter will soon be on BBC! Aap bhi lo ji.”

Even though Aasha tried to downplay it all, she had been incredibly excited; she had secretly enjoyed the family’s excitement. Soon she’d be trudging through trenches, uncovering conspiracies and cover-ups; soon she’d change the world in her own little way as an investigative journalist.

Now when she thought back to those first few months, she realized her mistake. She should have held out for the right profile instead of signing up with the first option presented to her. If she had held back then, she’d be where she wanted to be now.

“Aasha, we’re thinking of putting your community knowledge to use on one of our new shows, South Asia Hour. Is that something you’d be interested in?”

“Yeah, why not? It’ll be a good learning curve. A good stepping stone.”

She figured this was the ‘paying her dues’ play. Once she proved her worth, they’d move her to the real news. Instead she proved to be so good at her role, she found herself running the entire segment in no time.

Her show aired every Thursday. Every week her parents rushed through their chores, particularly her mother, leaving enough time to dress up smart for the show. As soon as the title track of South Asia Hour – a typically dated composition of tablas and a sitar, started, Mr. and Mrs. Singh would pull the armchairs towards the TV, dragging them noisily against the flooring, leaving faint scratch marks resembling tiny razor nicks, and plant themselves in front of the box for the next hour, including the breaks.

This was the only time Mrs. Singh let go of the housework. Usually she’d watch movies or her TV shows (mostly on Zee TV) while shelling peas, or cleaning herbs, or cutting vegetables, but not during South Asia Hour. Similarly, her father would put on his reading glasses, fold away all distractions, including his cell phone – which he didn’t fold away but he did turn down the ringer to silent, to watch the show. No one was allowed to talk during the show – her brother bore many a thwacks for breaking that sacred rule; it was second only to the one where you got things thrown at you if you ‘made a ruckus’ when Tendulkar was in the 90s.

It always amused her how they’d insist on sitting right in front of the TV. “Arre, it is so that I can concentrate fully,” her father argued each time she bought it up. No amount of coaxing could get them to alter the arrangement. This is how they did it come rain or sun or Karva Chauth.

Each show received the same feedback, “It was too good, beta. First class show tha.” A little down the line as Aasha began to tire of her profile, she mentioned her frustrations to her parents. They were baffled.

“But, beta, you are working for the community. You are on TV and that too on BBC every week, what more do we need?”

Except it was always ‘camunity’ – they uttered the word as if in an incredible rush, each syllable meshed into the preceding one. Like if they didn’t get it out soon enough, a part of it would be left behind. It bothered her no end. When she was in school, she’d try to correct their diction, partly out of embarrassment and partly out of duty, but it never did any good. If anything their accent simply got worse with age. She figured it was time to give up.

“Why you want to work in a war zone, with bombs and terrorists, and all those terrible things when you can work right here, being so comfortable and so very safe?” her mother asked, a deep-set frown swallowing her entire forehead. “Besides,” she’d add, “This way all those eligible Punjabi boys and their mothers get to see you every week, looking so beautiful, and so smart; it’s so much better than a matrimonial agency ad or one of those marriage websites. This way they will come to us. And we will choose hain.”

Unfortunately for Aasha, and much to her mother’s joy, there were many of those Punjabi boys – more so Punjabi mothers, calling for Aasha. In those first six to eight months there was a flood of profiles awaiting their weekly Sunday lunches. Jia, her sister, always laughed the hardest; she loved ripping open the letters, reading them out loud around the table and dissolving into fits midway through. Aasha found the letters, some dabbed with a bit of attar, others carrying a hint of rose water, equally ridiculous. But every now and then her mother got serious about one of the matches – ooh, look how handsome this fellow is, and a doctor too! Or, hai, so nice-looking na, Aasha, and look he has such a big house in Cardiff. When such pests popped up, Aasha promptly went out and found a short-term fling to ward off any unnecessary drama. The conversation that followed was typical:

“Are you with someone, Aasha?” she would ask without fail. “Who is this boy? Bring him home. We must meet him.”

“It’s still very new, Ma. I like him very much, but I am not bringing him home yet. I don’t want to scare him off so quickly.”

“What is there to scare? It is simply a meeting, where are we asking him to marry you on the spot? If you are seeing someone, we should know if he is a good person, isn’t it?” her mother had stopped abruptly mid-conversation as a revelation lit up the insides of her mind. Aasha could sense the worry ooze into every part of her body, turning the conversation from carefree to tense. “He isn’t Gora is he, Aasha?” she’s asked as her face lost more colour, ironically making her look as gora as a ghost, “or Gujarati?”

“It doesn’t matter, Ma, you are not meeting him right now. If it gets serious, I promise I’ll bring him home, no matter who he is – Gora or Gujarati!”‘

“Arre, shubh, shubh bol, Aasha, shubh, shubh bol!” she’d mutter.

As Aasha went through the music festival docket, she made a mental note of all the related paraphernalia – dates, train tickets, hotel booking confirmation, festival and artiste profiles. She flipped back to look at the dates. She had a nagging feeling she was missing something, but what?

It took about an hour for her to realize why the dates were significant. Her mother had specifically requested she come over for dinner on Friday. On Friday, day after tomorrow, the day she was heading to Edinburg. Fantastic. This was going to be a brutal call but Aasha believed in ripping off the Band-Aid. She picked her Galaxy S4 and hit speed dial #2 and waited for the Raghupati Raghava Raja Ram ringtone.

Her mother answered on the fourth ring. “Haan, beta, bol. I’m at the market. There is so much preparations to be done for Friday’s dinner na, that’s why. It’s all very busy busy. You tell.”

“Hi, Ma,” she began after taking a deep breath. “Accha, I called to say I won’t be able to make it on Friday. I have a new assignment; aaj hi mila. I have to be in Edinburg for a few days and my train is on Friday, in the morning.”

“Hai Rabba! No, no, Aasha, you can’t do this to me! Friday dinner is so very important. You cancel your train ticket. Cancel it!”

“What are you saying, Ma? I can’t cancel it. It’s work. Waise, what is the deal with Friday? What’s happening on Friday?”

“Aasha! How will I save face now? This is impossible,” her mother cried into the phone. “What will Mrs. Sodhi think? And her poor son. He is coming all the way from Berlin just to see you. What will I tell them? This is not done, Aasha!”

“Wait up, Ma! Who is this Mrs. Sodhi and why is her son coming from wherever to see me?” Aasha felt the day’s frustration rise up again. Never before had her mother tried to ambush her so blatantly.

“From Berlin, beta. Don’t be upset now. It is all for your own good,” she retorted in that stubborn mother-knows-best way that Aasha hated so very much. “The boy is an investment banker. So handsome, Aasha, so handsome. And very rich too. Our Vimla Aunty from the third floor is his mother’s childhood friend. She only mentioned him to me and you to her. It will be a very good match, Aasha. Very good, even your father is happy.”

“But I am not happy, Ma! I don’t want you calling random men to meet me!”

“Random kidhar, beta? I told you na Vimla Aunty is knowing him so well since he was wearing diapers. She is giving full guarantee about his character. What more do we need?”

“Ma, I am at work right now and I can’t talk about this rubbish. We’ll talk in the evening. But rest assured I will not be around on Friday. Enjoy your dinner with Mrs. Sodhi and her son.” Aasha spat out into the phone. She knew this was the worst possible approach to take – this would only encourage her mother to indulge in some rona-dhona, something she enjoyed very much.

Aasha didn’t call her mother till the following day, when she felt a little calmer. “You are not setting me up with anyone, Ma. Bas.”

“But why? Are you seeing someone? No, na? Then what’s the harm? You never know, you might like the boy.”

It was on impulse that Aasha blurted, “But I am, Ma; I am seeing someone right now.”

“You are?” her mother’s tone was robust with the confidence of someone who knows a bluff when she hears it, “What’s his name? Where did you meet him? Bolo?”

Aasha could feel her feet getting sucked into this quicksand of lies. There was nowhere else to go but down. “His name is Roger. He is a journalist and I met him through work.”

“Roger?” her mother sounded shell-shocked, “Gora?”

“Yes, Ma. He is really nice.”

He was. Or he had been. Aasha had really been smitten by him, enough to still feel a slight heaviness over their break-up two weeks ago. Roger was a freelance journalist, a real investigative journalist – the kind that went down to the trenches and wrote five thousand scathing words about it.

She had fallen for him fast and hard. For his light green eyes that danced with mischief and passion, sometimes at the same time. For his deep, carefree laugh. For his surprisingly soft dark brown curls. For that ever-present five o’clock shadow he wore – the scruff made him a damn good kisser too; his kisses were just the right amount of soft and rough. For a while she was convinced they’d make it all the way to the mandap.

Ironically she had imagined this exact conversation with her mother, and she thought about the inevitable meet-the-parents dinner that would follow. Roger at one end, her parents, her siblings, her niece, and daduji on the other. It would have been just as cruel as lighting firecrackers next to a sleeping puppy. The scenarios that played out in her head were so terrifying that when Roger did eventually call it off, she had been a tiny bit relieved despite the heartbreak.

“When are you bringing him home then? If it is serious, we must meet him,” her mother tried to rally around. “Of course, I’ll have to come up with some story for Mrs. Sodhi. She will be angry, but what to do now?”

“I’ll figure it out after I am back from Edinburg, Ma.”

Roger and Aasha had lasted almost eight months, her longest relationship since high school. She still missed him from time to time. For example, he’d have loved this music festival gig. But he was probably saving a village from a bunch of bloodthirsty militia men somewhere in Sudan right now. Or maybe he had moved on to battle an apocalyptic storm with a banana leaf in the Philippines. She was sure she’d read about it.

That was what drove the wedge between them in the first place.

“You have a great life here, Aasha; you have way more than the world gives most. What are you complaining about so much?”

It had ticked her off so badly she was spluttering for words. She tried to count to ten to curb the red-hot rage flowing through her but she only made it to four.

“Please don’t lecture me, Roger. I am not complaining about my life. I am complaining about my job – because I know I can do better, enough to make a difference.

Besides, you’re one to talk Mr. One-foot-out-of-the-door. Every time you get bored of the good life, of the London pubs, of central heating, and modern plumbing, you run back out to the ‘world’. You run off to your prize-winning stories.

Well each time you do that, I am still stuck here, covering a Bhangra-Rap off or some such atrocity.”

They broke up five days and multiples fights later.

He left for the Sudan soon after.

But her mother didn’t need to know that, not for another four-five months at least.

Kings Cross Station was teeming with weekend traffic; people were scurrying off in multiple directions like army of ants before the winter, with great haste and purpose. She wondered if Jeff, her cameraman/man Friday/out-and-out magician, was already on the train. Aasha was sure Jeff was over the moon with this assignment.

The Edinburg Music Festival was showcasing a record number of South Asian artistes this year, which is why Aasha was on assignment. She’d be interviewing the artistes, the organizer and the fans for a special segment for South Asia Hour. It actually sounded like fun. Besides she had met some of the acts before, in previous interviews, and seeing them again would be enjoyable, she thought as she scrambled on to the train looking for her seat.

“Oi! About time!” Jeff called out as he shifted inwards towards the window seat. During one of their earliest assignments, Aasha had casually mentioned her preference for the aisle seat. Since then Jeff always slid in without complain or comment, despite his gangly frame. She loved him for it.