My mother and the landlord (Slow burn, long read)

[deepangshu]

Bro please don't make it too slow.

[byteson]

Waiting for the next update. Liked how Anjali is coming around to her son sexually staring at her.

[Sankamithira]

Incest story?

[Max Duncun]

sunny says my eyes want to see ..but i know i am not a man like Az. how it resonate with Maa.?ad saab yet.

[deepangshu]

Don't make it a incest story, please ?

[Authorsunny]

Chapter 28 – Thursday
4 December 2025 – Thursday

The alarm on my phone went off at the usual time. I put my hand on it before the second ring.

The room was still dim. The grill held that first grey light that always came before the real morning. The tube light was off. The night bulb near the bathroom was off too. The fan moved the same tired air it had moved all night.

Ma was still asleep.

She lay on her side of the bed, turned a little toward the wall. The grey satin nighty had twisted in her sleep. It sat high on one thigh and had slipped off the far shoulder. Her hair was open on the pillow. The gold chain had gathered in the hollow of her throat. The silver bracelet was still on her wrist. One foot had come out from under the sheet. 

I did not wake her.

Yesterday had been long. The tailor shop. The market. The pav bhaji. The talk about the Taj. The messages she had sent in the dark before her breathing changed. I let her sleep.

I took my clothes and went to the bathroom. I closed the door as far as the weak latch allowed. The space was the same small rectangle it had always been. I bathed quickly. The water was neither hot nor cold. I shaved. I brushed. I wrapped the towel around my waist and came out.

She was already awake.

She was sitting on the edge of the bed, both feet on the floor, yawning into the back of her hand. The nighty had been pulled back onto her shoulder, but not carefully. Her hair was flattened on one side. The screen of her phone was black in her other hand. She pressed the side button once. Nothing. She pressed it longer. Still nothing.

“You’re already up, beta?” she said. Her voice was still rough with sleep. “My alarm didn’t ring, I suppose. This stupid phone battery. Dead again. Sorry. I’ll make tea quickly. Two minutes.”

She stood and went to the kitchen corner. The payal found its sound on the tile. The curtain rings slid. I heard the stove click and the steel vessel settle on the flame.

From the kitchen she spoke again, without turning.

“Beta, since it’s late already… is yesterday’s dinner all right for the tiffin? Anyway we didn’t eat last night.”

“It’s all right Ma,” I said.

I started getting ready. The formal pants first. Then the undershirt. My cream shirt from yesterday was on the chair, already worn once, but she had not ironed a fresh one because she had been asleep. I then plugged the iron, and it heated slowly. I ran it over the shirt while the tea boiled.

She brought two steel glasses to the table. She sat opposite the chair I would take. I finished the collar, put the shirt on, and sat.

For a few seconds neither of us spoke.

The tea was strong. Less sugar. The way she always made it. Outside, a vendor had already started calling. A scooter went down the lane. The loose wooden leg of her chair made its small sound when she shifted.

She looked at her dead phone, then at the white charger block on my side of the table.

“This phone has made my life difficult, Sunny,” she said. “The battery doesn’t even last two hours. Even when I am not using it, it dies. How will this work? I think I will have to buy a new one. You know these things better than I do. Please look at a phone for me. I don’t want anything expensive. Something cheap that will just do the work. We can break a small FD and buy it.”

I nodded.

Then I said, “But why don’t you tell Azad Sahab directly? There will be no need to break any FD. He can buy…”

She cut it with a look. Not a shout. The correcting look. The same look she used when I spoke like a boy who had understood only half the room.

“You don’t get it, Sunny.” She kept her voice low. “Azad Sahab gives. I don’t ask him for specific things. The rent. The bike. The gifts. He does those on his own. I have said no many times. He doesn’t like it when I say no. And he already does enough for us. If I start going to him for every small thing now, how will that look?”

She turned the glass in her hands.

“That is why I still pay the rent,” she said. “Even if it is only seven thousand. He can refuse it as much as he wants. There is a thing called self-respect, beta. If a man is doing something for you, that does not mean you start asking him for everything.”

I nodded.

The silence came back for a few seconds. She drank. I drank. 

Then she asked, “Has your salary come yet?”

“No,” I said. “Mostly it will come on Monday.”

“Do you have any loose cash in your account?”

“Why?”

“First tell me. Yes or no. And if yes, then how much.”

I looked at the tea.

“Around seven or eight thousand at most,” I said. “But I can’t use it for the rent. Otherwise I will have nothing for the next few days.”

She nodded, as if she had already expected that number.

“I am not asking for the rent,” she said. “I may need some money today. I don’t want to ask Azad Sahab to pay. He has already arranged the parlour today. When the salary comes, you can give me a smaller share this month. Right now my account is almost empty. So I may need something beta.”

She wiped the edge of the table with her fingers even though there was nothing there.

“All these things cost a lot,” she said. “Big people. Big parties. When you try to fit where you don’t belong, you have to spend a little. I don’t shop much. After your father died, we didn’t even attend functions properly. So after a long time, you have to buy everything new, and it costs. Azad Sahab has handled most of it. Even then, like I said, I can’t ask him for every small payment.”

“It’s all right,” I said. “Tell me if you need anything. I’ll transfer.”

She nodded. She smiled, small and tired and pleased in the old way, the way she used to smile when I agreed to something before she had to repeat it.

She finished her tea and stood. She went to the small mirror near the washbasin and looked at her face. She turned her head a little and checked her eyebrows with two fingers.

“Today will be busy again,” she said to the glass. “Parlour. Then the trial at Mukesh ji’s.”

“What time is the parlour?” I asked.

“Around ten-thirty.”

“Where is it?”

“The new branch near the church. Enrich or something.”

She said the name. I had heard it. The chain had boards across the city. Medium to premium. The kind of place that put white towels on everything and charged for the quiet. She would not have walked into that shop on a parlour receptionist’s money. She would not have walked into it on my salary either, not without counting twice.

“What will they do?” I asked.

I asked it like a son asking a schedule. In my head the question was not only a schedule. I wanted to know how far the list went. Whether she would say it. 

She was casual.

“Simple things,” she said. “Eyebrows. Facial. Underarms. What else. Azad Sahab has already booked a package there.”

She did not add more. She did not hide more. The rest stayed in the package, unnamed.

“Mukesh ji messaged,” she said. “He said come after three for the trial.”

She looked at me in the glass.

“Let me know if it's possible for you to come by around three, if not, that is also fine, I will manage..”

“I’ll try Maa,” I said. “I’ll ask Sinha sir and let you know.”

I picked up the tiffin from the table. Only one box. Yesterday’s sabzi and the remaining rotis. No second carrier.

“No tiffin for Ammi today?” I asked.

“Their maid is back,” she said. “Azad Sahab told me there is no need from today.”

She paused. The disappointment came into her face before she arranged it.

“It’s better,” she said. “Anyway Ammi didn’t like the food from my hand enough. Even that dry chicken I made with so much effort. She said it was not as spicy as it could have been.”

“It’s all right Ma” I said. “Some people never know how to appreciate others. They only find mistakes. You did your part.”

She looked at the stove, then at me.

“But Azad Sahab also doesn't understand at times,” she said.

She did not finish the sentence. She did not need to. The rest of it sat in the pause. He had said something about the spice. He had said something about the box. The disappointment was not only Ammi’s.

“Anyway,” she said, straighter now. “You must be getting late. You should leave. Message when you reach.”

“I will Ma.”

I took the bag and the helmet. At the door I looked back once. The grey nighty had already turned toward the kitchen again. She was collecting the glasses. The dead phone was still on the table.

I went down the stairs.

The bike was in its usual place. I secured the tiffin, put the helmet on, and started the engine. 

The ride was the ordinary ride. I kept the speed moderate. I messaged her from the basement of the office building before I took the lift.

Reached.

She replied after a minute. Good. Eat the tiffin. I’ll leave by ten.

I swiped my card on the fourth floor. The lobby had the usual morning sound. Bags on desks. Laptops opening. Someone asking if the coffee machine had been filled.

Rohan looked up when I sat.

“Standup at ten-fifteen,” he said. “Sinha sir’s cabin. Don’t be late. He’s in that mood.”

I put the bag down and opened the laptop. The module from yesterday was still in the shared folder. Comments were waiting. I had planned to check them after the standup. Then I saw the calendar invite. 10:15. Cabin. The whole cluster.

At ten-twelve we walked in.

Sinha sir was already seated. He had a printed sheet in front of him and the shared deck on the screen. Vikram came in behind us. Sameer from the adjacent group stood near the glass because there were not enough chairs. Sinha sir did not waste time on good mornings.

“New timelines,” he said. “The client signed the revised dates last evening...”

He went through the dates one by one. The voice was level. It did not need to rise. In client week his level voice was enough.

“Work will double for a few days,” he said. “Speed up. Keep an open eye for mistakes. We cannot afford any….”

He assigned the work.

Rohan got the integration piece. Vikram got the revised reports. I got a low-priority module that two seniors had already run through. Final touch-ups. Comments. A clean pass before it went into the larger deck.

It was not a big piece. On another day I might have felt the smallness of it. Today I did not. Nair ma’am’s sentence from yesterday was still in the chest. I chose you by realising your potential. Don’t prove me wrong.

I went back to my desk. I put the phone in the drawer. I closed the last-seen habit with the drawer. I opened the module.

For the first hour the house stayed out.

That surprised me more than the work did. The kitchen voice from yesterday morning tried to come in once. Six o’clock. Black saree. Wired bra. I let the line of code take the chair instead. I read the module the way I should have read the sheet on Friday. Slowly. Then again. Then from the bottom.

The two seniors had checked it. That was true. They had checked the logic. They had not sat with the source data long enough. In a side table that fed one chart, a filter was still pointing at the old date range. The numbers looked clean because the old range was clean. Against the new timeline they were wrong. Not loudly wrong. Quietly wrong. The kind of wrong that survives two reviews because nobody expects a low-priority module to carry a hole.

I corrected it. I wrote the note in plain language. I attached the old filter and the new one. I sent the mail to Sinha sir before I could talk myself out of sending it.

Then I took the small pending tickets that had been sitting in my queue since the leave. Two of them were simple. One needed a short retest. I finished all three before lunch.

At twelve-forty the mail from Sinha sir came back.

Seen. Good catch. Keep this standard.

One line. No extra praise. In his language that line was praise.

I sat back. For a few seconds the fourth floor felt exactly like a fourth floor. Desks. AC. The east windows. The sound of someone laughing near the pantry. The house was still in Andheri. It had not climbed the lift with me. I had not known I could do that today.

Lunch was at the pantry table near the window. Rohan had already opened his box. Vikram had gone down to the food court. Sameer pulled a chair and sat with a packet of rolls.

Rohan spoke first, the way he spoke when he had a thing he was not supposed to say and was going to say it anyway.

“Guys, I have news!,” he said. “There is a rumour that Menon sir has resigned. His notice period will also be waived off. He is joining some other company..that means, senior level reshuffling is on the table. Be ready for new HOD guys...”

Sameer raised his eyebrows.

“Menon sir? Seriously? He was a good man yaar. Why did he even resign? Fuck, again will have to make up with the new HOD now.”

Rohan added “Yeah, and just imagine, if he goes, then someone from the middle will move up.”

Sameer grinned.

“Maybe that’s why Sinha sir has become like this. Strict. Workaholic. No-nonsense. Maybe he wants to be the next super boss.”

I tore a piece of roti. The sabzi from last night was drier in the afternoon, but it was still the jeera she had put on.

“If Menon sir is actually going,” I said, “the next two weeks will be ugly. Everyone will try to look useful.”

The talk did not go much further. Someone from accounts came to heat food. Rohan closed the subject the way office people close subjects that are still only rumour. We ate. We threw the paper plates. We went back.

At my desk I took the phone out of the drawer.

The time on the screen was one-thirty.

Ma's last seen 10:21 a.m.

Then nothing.

She would have reached the parlour by then. Or she would have been in a chair with her phone in a locker. Or she would have put it on charge again because the battery had already died once this morning.

I called.

It rang. It kept ringing. It died into the tone that means the phone is on and the person is not picking.

I typed.

“Done with parlour? How is it going?”

Two minutes later the reply came.

“Parlour only, beta. Phone was on charging. Pedicure going on.”

Before I could type anything, a photo arrived.

I opened it.

The book has a way of staying on cloth. This photo asked for the same time.

A white towel. Her left foot on the rest. The skin wet, clean, a little shining under the parlour light. A girl’s hands holding the heel. Soft hands. Professional. The kind that do this fifty times a day and still know where to press. Four nails already painted black. The thumb still bare. The silver payal taken off and lying at the edge of the towel like an ordinary object that did not know what it was doing in that light.

I knew those feet.

I had seen them on our bathroom floor. I had seen them on the stairs. I had fastened that same payal on those same ankles one night and told myself I was only helping. In this photo they did not look like the feet of a woman who had stood in a hotel reception for years. They looked cared for. Younger. The black polish made the shape of the toes cleaner. The wet skin made the arch look longer.

I felt it immediately.

Not a slow heat. A direct one. In the middle of a fourth-floor office, with Rohan’s chair two feet away and Vikram’s screen glowing over the partition, I sat with my mother’s foot in my hand in a photograph and went hard inside formal pants.

I locked the phone.

I unlocked it again.

Another photo arrived before I had written a word.

Both feet this time. Nails fully done. Black. Fresh. The towel under them still white. No payal in this one. Only the feet, side by side, the polish catching the light, the skin looking soft enough that a person who did not know her age would not have put forty-seven on them.

Then her messages. Fast. The way she typed when she was pleased and had forgotten the size of the room at the other end.

“How is it looking? Did this after a long long time. But anyway, it costs a lot. Good that I don’t do it often. But black looks good, no, beta? Tomorrow it should match. The girl is saying the feet look younger than the age. Haha. These girls and their talk.”

“Anyway. Will you come, or should I take an auto to Mukesh?”

I put the phone face down.

I drank water from the bottle on the desk. The water did not do much. I waited until I could sit without arranging the shirt over the belt.

Then I typed.

“Yes Ma, the girl is right indeed. It looks nice. About Mukesh, I am yet to ask Sinha sir about leaving early. I will ask him after lunch and tell you.”

“Ok beta. Ask and tell. Mukesh said come after three-thirty.”

“Sure Ma.”

I kept the phone aside.

The urge to go and take her to the tailor came back stronger than it had been at breakfast. It was not only help. I knew that. I had known it last night when I offered. I wanted to see the blouse on her. The deep V. The sequin cups. The open back. I wanted to sit on that stool again and watch Mukesh’s mirror do the work the house curtain had been doing for weeks. It was cheap. It was still the thought that sat in the chair with me.

I tried to return to a ticket. The ticket was small. My attention was not.

At two-twenty Sinha sir came back from lunch. I saw him through the glass of his cabin. If I did not ask now there would be no asking. Three-thirty at Mukesh’s would not wait for a man who was still sitting at a desk gathering courage.

At two-thirty I stood up.

Sinha sir’s cabin glass was half frosted. Two shapes inside. I knocked.

He looked up and waved me in.

Nair ma’am was in the chair opposite him.

I had not seen her since morning. She must have come late, or she had been on the other side of the floor. She was in a black saree. The pallu was pinned at the shoulder with a small brooch. The blouse was closed at the throat and still fitted in the way formal blouses fit when a woman has decided the cloth should do some of the talking. Gold at the ears. The lemon-iron smell was already in the air-conditioning.

For one stupid second the mind did the rhyme.

Black. Tomorrow black.

This black was a different language. Office black. Closed throat. Brooch. A woman who walked into cabins knowing the cloth would be read. My head still put both blacks on the same hook.

Sinha sir was smiling. That itself was unusual in client week.

“Come in, Sunny,” he said. “We were talking about you only.”

He turned the screen a fraction toward Nair ma'am.

“This is the difference,” he said. “Most of them scroll. He stopped and closed the hole before the client could put a finger in it. This is why the hiring was clean.”

He looked at her.

“You did a great job, Mrs. Nair. You have a good eye for young talent.”

Nair ma’am smiled at him. They were more or less of the same experience. No senior-junior in the way juniors used those words. They called each other by surnames.

Then she looked at me.

Not a long look. Long enough. The eyes were pleased in a professional way that a person in my chest was already busy translating into something else. She remembered the interview. She had told me yesterday also. Don’t prove her wrong.

The smile stayed in the eyes a second after the mouth.

She looked at me from top to bottom. A quick scan. Shirt. Belt. Face. I did not understand whether it was only HR habit or something else. I felt looked at. That was all I could name.

“Great job, Sunny,” she said. “You have very good learning skills. So much good work and appreciation in so little time. Wonderful. Come. Sit. Sit. Sinha is not easy to impress in client week.”

She touched her hair after she said it. The same small movement from yesterday. A strand tucked behind the ear.

“I’m fine standing, ma’am,” I said.

Sinha sir nodded.

“Absolutely. He is a great asset to the team. He can fit anywhere, you know. He is so flexible.”

I nodded because that was what a person did when two seniors were placing sentences on him in a glass cabin.

Nair ma’am asked, “Why are you here? Something to say?”

“Sir,” I said, and I looked at Sinha sir because the ask was his to grant. “If I could leave by three today. Family thing.”

Nair ma’am’s eyebrows moved a little.

“Any urgency? All good?”

“Yes, ma’am. All good. I have to take my mother to the market.”

I said the truth because I could not come up with a cleaner excuse in time. Market was not a lie. Mukesh ji’s shop sat above a market. The blouse was the rest of the truth and I left that part in my mouth.

“I have already completed the module,” I said. “I also closed two tickets. I can come early tomorrow if required.”

Sinha sir opened his mouth.

Nair ma’am spoke first.

“But Sunny, I have a meeting scheduled at five today with Mike sir. I want you there along with your other two batchmates. I am going to introduce you all to him. Didn’t you get the email? You know how busy Mike is otherwise. It’s a good opportunity for you to get exposure to that level of management. Not many in this office get to meet the CEO this early in their career.”

I had not opened the email. It would have been sitting in the inbox under the module thread. I felt the mistake in my neck.

Sinha sir leaned back.

“Yes, Sunny. Family can wait. Don’t lose this opportunity. You never know what things can click where in the corporate world.”

Mike sir.

The name sat in the cabin the way certain names sit. CEO of the Mumbai unit. There were seniors on this floor who had not met him yet. There had been a story last month about a manager who waited three weeks for a fifteen-minute slot and then got moved. Nair ma’am was offering a seat in that room because she had chosen me in an interview and was still watching the choosing.

I could not say no.

I showed the face that office rooms require. Interest. Gratitude. A nod that looks like excitement even when the chest is doing something else.

“All right, sir. All right, ma’am. I’ll be there.”

“Good,” Nair ma’am said. “Five o’clock. Reach the upper floor by four forty-five only.”

“Sure ma'am.” I smiled and stepped out.

The corridor felt colder after the cabin. I typed to Ma before Nair ma’am came out.

“Sorry Ma. Can't come. Something urgent came up in office..”

The blue tick came almost at once.

“I told you also. I will manage. No issues beta. Focus on work.”

That was the mother-voice. Practical. No guilt placed on the glass. It should have helped. It did not.

I went back to the desk and sat down in front of a screen I did not see.

I had been an excellent employee for one morning. I had closed a hole two seniors had missed. I had put the phone in a drawer and kept it there. Then two photographs of her feet had come into the pantry hour, and the rest of the day had leaned back toward Andheri.

I would not see the blouse.

Mukesh ji would see it. The mirrors would see it. Azad Sahab had already seen the saree. Tomorrow a hotel full of people who did not know our 10-by-12 would see the finished thing. I would see it only later, if I saw it at all, in a photograph or in the way she would walk back into our room on Friday.

I knew why I had wanted to go. I did not dress it up. It was cheap. That was how the mind worked now. A son offering a half-day so he could sit on a stool and watch his mother put on a blouse another man had choosed and paid for.

I opened a file because a closed file looks like a man who is not working. I did not do useful work inside it.

The afternoon moved.

Rohan asked something about a shared API. I answered from memory. Vikram went to the printer. Sameer sent a message in the team group about the five o’clock meeting. So the mail had reached them. I opened it then. Meeting with Mike sir. 5:00 p.m. Nair, HR. Three names from our joining batch. Venue: upper floor cabin.

At four-forty-five I started moving to the upper floor towards CEO's cabin. 

Ashish and I took the lift with Priya from the other cluster, the third name on the list. Ashish checked his shirt in the steel wall. Priya put her phone on silent.

Mike sir’s cabin was at the end of the upper corridor. Glass on two sides. A long table. A view of the metro line in the distance. A woman from his office asked us to wait two minutes. Then Nair ma’am came from the other hall and took us in.

Mike sir stood up when we entered. That itself was a kind of warmth people talked about later. He was in a white shirt, sleeves rolled once. No jacket. He shook hands with each of us and said our names as if he had read them five minutes earlier and intended to keep them.

“Sit,” he said. “This is not an interrogation. Mrs. Nair wanted me to see the new people before the year gets noisier.”

We sat.

He spoke about the organisation the way men at that floor speak when they want to sound open. Career paths. Internal movement. He said he was open to ideas from younger people. He used the words gen Z once, smiling, as if he knew how it sounded and used it anyway. He asked Ashish what he had worked on before joining. He asked Priya about the ticket volume this week. He asked me what I had learned fastest since coming in.

I said the client work. I said you learn faster when the date on the slide is real. He nodded once.

Then Nair ma’am spoke.

She praised our work in our respective pieces. She did it cleanly. No extra sugar. She named the module catch without making it a speech. Mike sir looked at her while she spoke.

“She’s been exceptional this quarter,” he said, still looking at her. “HR looks easy from outside. It is not. She has held six hiring cycles and the policy mess after the last exit without making it a circus. That is not common.”

Nair ma’am smiled. She did not look shy. She looked like a person who knew the value of a sentence like that in a room like this.

“Thank you, Mike,” she said. First name. Easy. “The team makes it possible. These three also. Fresh eyes. They don’t carry the old shortcuts yet.”

The talk moved.

It moved, after a while, off us and onto her other work. A campus drive she had closed. A grievance case she had settled before it became a mail chain. The way she had handled a manager who wanted an exception that would have broken a rule. Mike sir laughed at one of those. She laughed with him. She touched her hair once. She leaned a little on the table when she made a point.

It was not open. It was not a scene. It was the kind of extra warmth some people carry into rooms where chairs are being watched. Menon sir’s name was not said. The empty chair above Sinha sir was not named. Still the air had that shape. A woman from HR, already liked by the Mumbai head, already being given extra minutes in a meeting that could have ended after the introductions. A reader sitting far from this cabin would have seen the pitch even if nobody in the room used the word.

I sat with my hands on my knees and tried to look like a man who was grateful to be there.

My phone buzzed in my pocket.

I could not take it out. Not in that cabin. Not while Mike sir was still talking.

It buzzed again a minute later. I let it die.

The meeting closed the way those meetings close. Mike sir stood. He said he was available if we had ideas that were not only complaints. He shook hands again. Nair ma’am thanked him. He thanked her back, a second longer than he had thanked us.

In the corridor she stopped the three of us.

“You did well,” she said. “Don’t waste a room like that by going back to your desks and becoming small again. Mike remembers faces. That’s enough for today.”

She left toward the lift lobby. Ashish let out a breath he had been holding. Priya checked the time.

It was already six.

I took the phone out.

Two missed calls. Both Ma.

Then the messages.

“Sorry, beta. Are you in a meeting? Actually I wanted to make a payment. Please message me when you get free. I am waiting.”

The last line was five minutes old.

I felt the sorry sit in the throat. I had cut her twice. She had been standing somewhere with a machine waiting for a scan, and I had been sitting in a glass cabin listening to HR sentences.

I typed.

“Free now. Send the QR. And the amount.”

The QR came.

Then the number.

“2870.”

I looked at it longer than a man looks at a UPI screen.

Two thousand eight hundred and seventy. On a day when I had told her I had seven or eight thousand for the next few days. On a day when rent was still sitting in the month and salary was promised for Monday. I had no clean way to ask why in the middle of a basement corridor. She had asked in the morning. I had said I would transfer.

I scanned.

The vendor name appeared.

Belleza Glow.

I thought of a cosmetics shop. Creams. A counter. Something extra after the parlour. The name did not say Mukesh ji. It did not say tailor. It did not say Taj. It said a shop that sold shine.

I paid.

I sent the screenshot.

She replied almost at once.

“Received. Thank you, beta.”

That was all.

I walked toward the basement with the helmet in my hand.

Three pictures that did not belong in one head moved with me down the stairs. A white towel and black nails. A black pallu pin in a glass cabin. A QR that looked like a cosmetics shop.

I had been an excellent employee for one day. A mail that Sinha sir had noticed. A cabin with Mike sir. Nair ma’am saying learning skills and potential and don’t become small again. That was what I was carrying as motivation. That was the clean part of the day.

The other part was still in Andheri. A trial I had not seen. A payment I had not asked about. A woman who had typed fast from a parlour chair and then waited outside a shop with a QR.

I put the helmet on.

I started the bike.

I hit the road.

[Hot mom lover]

Will Sunny see his mother wearing a sexy saree and blouse? And will Sunny's mother drink alcohol for the first time at that party, and return home drunk? I am eagerly waiting to find out what happens next.

[Aragon]

The spark of the story is missed..!!!

[Cxer]

It sure is a slow burn

[deepangshu]

Getting too slow.

[Hot mom lover]

When you first started writing the story, you used to give much larger and more frequent updates every day. Why are the updates getting so much smaller and less frequent as time goes on? I'm eagerly waiting for your next update.

[Paty@123]

Good update only thing very slow, and run the story also

[Authorsunny]

Chapter 28 – Thursday
4 December 2025 – Thursday evening

The strip where the white sedan stands was empty.

I saw that first, before I saw her.

I turned the bike into the compound a little after six-forty. The watchman was on his chair with tea. A child ran past with a college bag that was too big for him. The third-floor window of our flat was dark. For one second the old fear came back — that she was still at Mukesh ji’s, or already downstairs, or already gone somewhere the sedan would have told me if it had been there.

Then I saw the auto.

It stopped near the gate just as I was taking the helmet off. The flap lifted. Ma stepped down with her weight on one foot, then the other. Three bags. One in the right hand. Two hanging from the left wrist. She paid the driver without looking at the lane. Then she turned and saw the bike, and then she saw me.

“You’re early,” she said. “I thought you would come after seven.”

“Meeting ended. I came straight.”

I took the heavier bags from her wrist before she could argue. One was thick paper with gold lettering — yesterday’s saree-house bag, used again. One was a vegetable bag, onions and tomatoes pressing the plastic. The third was smaller, black and white, stiff at the bottom. Belleza Glow. The same name that had come on my phone forty minutes ago above the number 2,870.

She did not explain the bags.

The parlour had done more than a pedicure.

Her face looked smaller and cleaner at the same time. The eyebrows were shaped. Not thin. Just finished. The extra hair at the edges was gone. The upper lip was smooth in a way it had not been in the morning. A facial had left a light shine on her cheeks. And the hair — she had cut it. Not short. Not a big city cut. Only the ends and a little around the face, so the open hair sat closer to her jaw and made her look younger than the woman who had yawned on our bed at eight in the morning. If a stranger had seen her on that stair under the yellow light, forty-seven would not have been the first number.

The payal sounded on the steps. The black nails from the afternoon photo showed when she lifted her foot. I knew those feet now in two versions. The wet towel version. This dusty-stair version. 

“You are staring at my face,” she said without turning.

“You look different.”

“That is what a parlour is for.” There was a small smile in the voice. “Four hours, beta. I thought I would be done by two. They kept adding things because the package was already paid.”

We reached the door. She found the key. The flat received us with the same tube-light yellow it always used when nobody had been home to switch things on. 

She dropped her small handbag on the bed and stretched both arms once, the way she had started doing more often. The kameez she had worn for the day was a simple navy one. After four hours in a chair it looked tired. She did not. That was the strange part.

“Put the vegetable bag on the kitchen counter,” she said. “The other two — here. I’ll keep them in the almirah.”

I did what she said. The Belleza bag sat on the bed next to the gold-lettered one. I looked at them longer than a son looks at shopping. She saw it and did not offer an inventory.

“First wash your face,” she said. “Then we’ll talk. I am also dying for water.”

She drank two glasses at the kitchen counter without stopping. When she kept the glass down she pressed her lower back with two fingers, the same place she had pressed on Tuesday, then took the hand away as if the muscle had no right to speak on a day like this.

I washed. When I came out she was standing at the small mirror again, turning her face left and right.

“So,” I said. “The parlour.”

“Yes, Azad Sahab booked a full package. I didn’t even know half the names. Facial. Eyebrows. Upper lip. Underarms. Pedicure. Then they said the hair was looking dry, so they did a cut and a small treatment. I told them not to make it too short. Still they took more than I thought. I went in by 10:30 and came out almost by 2:30.”

She touched the new line of her hair near her cheek.

She glanced at me in the glass. The glance was quick. Then she went to the bed and picked up both paper bags.

“How was visit at Mukesh ji?” I asked.

“After the parlour I took an auto straight there. He was waiting. Trial took time. Then I came to the market.”

She put both bags on the upper shelf, behind the hanging blouses, not fully hidden, only placed. Then she took out an old black blouse. Cotton. The colour had gone a little dull near the seams. The neck was a round house neck. The sleeves were ordinary. Next to the idea of sequin cups and a deep V it looked like a blouse that had already finished its life.

She held it up against herself and made a face.

“The new one came out fine,” she said. “Fitting is fine. Mukesh ji was happy. He made me wear it twice and checked the straps and the back. But I don’t think I can wear it tomorrow.”

She kept the old blouse against her chest and looked down at it as if the cloth would give her a better answer.

“It is too deep. I shouldn't have listened to him that day. I should have ask him to keep measurements conservative. But anyway” she said. “Too revealing. How can I wear that in front of so many people? Wearing it at home, or for Azad—”

She stopped.

The name had come out clean. Then she heard it.

She smiled. A small, caught smile. Then she made a hush sound with her mouth, the way she used to when I said something too loud in a bus.

“I mean,” she said, “I can’t go like that in front of a hundred people. I am thinking of wearing this black one itself.”

She shook the old cotton blouse once. Even she did not like it. The colour was weaker. The finishing was weaker. Against a net saree that Mukesh ji had treated like a serious piece, this blouse would sit like a lid on a plate that did not want a lid.

“I don’t have any option left now,” she said, and then she giggled, as if the sentence was both a problem and a joke she had already accepted.

“But this black blouse would not suit the saree Ma. It will spoil the look.” I said.

She looked at me over the old blouse.

“Yeah I know, but then…huhh..it's too confusing. I will see tomorrow what to do now. I am already tired of trying it again and again. Not anymore. Mukesh ji made me turn so many times I felt I was standing there for a function already. Enough for today.”

She folded the old black blouse and kept it on the chair, ready, as if tomorrow might still go that way.

Then she opened the small steel box where she kept jewellery.

The next half hour was only that. 

Then she said while trying the jhumkas. “Beta, I don’t feel like cooking tonight. Can you order something from outside?”

“Ok Ma.”

I opened the app. The choices in our lane were the usual ones. I ordered two simple thalis from a place that would not take an hour. The bill came to a little over four hundred. I stared at the number before I paid. In the morning I had seven or eight thousand. Then 2,870 had gone to Belleza Glow. Now four hundred more. Monday was still Monday. I paid anyway. A house still had to eat.

She heard the confirmation sound and nodded, satisfied, as if food arriving from a phone was a small kindness she could accept without a speech.

“I am going to wash this parlour off my neck at least,” she said. “They put so much cream. I feel sticky.”

She stood, picked up her phone, and went toward the bathroom.

She did not take the bags.

The curtain rings slid. The door did not close fully. It never did. Water started.

I sat on the chair for five seconds and told myself not to.

Then I stood.

The Belleza bag was on the upper shelf, half behind a folded nighty. I took it down with two fingers. The paper was thick. Inside, under a thin sheet of white tissue, there was a box. Not a cream box. A smaller, flatter box with a clear lid.

I lifted the tissue.

A bra.

Satin. Black. Wired. The cups were full and shaped, the kind that lift and hold instead of only covering. The underwire was visible through the satin like a quiet line. A small tag was still clipped to the strap. The number on it sat very close to the number I had paid on a basement corridor while Nair ma’am’s meeting was still in my legs.

I felt the heat in my face before I felt anything else.

She had asked me for money because she did not want to ask him for small payments. She had said big people, big parties, you have to spend a little. She had said her account was empty. I had transferred 2,870 because the good son transfers.

The wired bra he had asked for yesterday morning.

If it hurts, it hurts.

The punishment.

Funded from my account. On a week when salary had not come.

I put the lid back. I put the tissue back. I put the bag on the shelf the way it had been sitting. My hands were not as steady as the bag needed them to be.

The other bag was still there. Yesterday’s gold-lettered bag. The blouse.

I opened it only enough to see.

White paper. Proper wrapping. Folded edges. No loose cloth. If I took the paper off I would not get it back the way it was packed. Not before she turned the tap off. I let the bag close.

From the bathroom the water kept running. I sat down on the chair and looked at the old cotton blouse on the other chair. She had said she might wear that tomorrow. She had said the new one was too deep. She had almost said she could wear the new one at home, or for him. Then she had bought the bra he wanted and paid for it with the money she had asked from me in a soft voice over tea.

The tap stopped.

I picked up my phone and looked at the Zomato status as if the rider’s location was the only thing in the room.

She came out in the old peach nighty. Hair still in the new cut, a little damp at the ends from the splash she had given her face. No bra under the nighty. I knew that the way I had started knowing it. She had left the day’s clothes in the basket. The navy kameez. The rest.

She went to the jewellery box again and closed it. Then she sat on the bed and looked at her nails. Hands and feet both. Black. Tomorrow’s colour.

“I still think the old blouse is safer,” she said, as if the conversation had not stopped. “If I wear the new one and someone from his circle looks too much, I will be the one sitting there thinking about my own neck the whole evening. I don’t want that.”

“Then wear the old one Ma. Why are you stressing so much about it? Comfort matters more.”

“Yes, but then as you also said, the saree will look incomplete. That is the problem.”

She smiled at her own problem and shook her head.

The doorbell rang. The food. We sat opposite each other.

For a few minutes we only ate.

The thali was ordinary. Hot. A little oily. After a day of parlour chairs and glass cabins it tasted like a decision that did not need a speech. The new hair kept falling near her cheek. She tucked it once. The gold chain moved.

At eight-thirty her phone rang.

She looked at the screen and her face changed in the small way it now changed for one number.

“Beta, you eat,” she said. “I’ll take this.”

She did not go far. There is no far in this flat. She walked to the kitchen corner and stood near the fridge, the curtain half drawn, as if a curtain could make a call private.

I kept my spoon in the plate and listened.

“Yes,” she said. The voice had already gone softer. “Just now. We are eating. Outside food. I didn’t cook tonight.”

A pause.

“The parlour was long. Four hours. They did everything. Yes, the hair also. A little cut. You will see tomorrow.”

She laughed. Low. The private one.

“Don’t start,” she said. “I am in the kitchen. He is outside only.”

Another pause. I heard the shape of his voice, not the words. Then she spoke again, clearer.

“About the blouse. Mukesh ji said it is sitting well. I tried it. I don’t know, Azad Sahab. It is too deep. In front of so many people… I was thinking I will wear my old black one.”

The other side did not like that. I could tell from the way her shoulders tightened.

“He sent you a photo?” she said. “Mukesh ji sent you a photo?”

She listened.

Then she smiled in spite of herself, the smile she tries to keep out of her mouth and fails.

“You should not say that,” she said. “Hot. What kind of word is that for a blouse. It is an anniversary party, not… all right. All right. You don’t find anything wrong. I heard you. You are saying I have to wear it. I am not fighting. I am only telling you how I felt when I saw myself.”

She turned her face toward the fridge wall.

“The straps are thin. The back is open. You know what you asked for. Mukesh ji did exactly that. That is why I am saying—”

A short sound from her throat. Not quite a giggle. Then the giggle came.

“You have an answer for everything,” she said. “Same as him. Both of you decided the cloth before I stood in it.”

She listened again. I knew the next subject before she named it. Yesterday morning had already named it.

“The bra,” she said.

Her voice became careful.

“I couldn’t find the one I liked.”

Even from the chair I heard that it was a lie. The carefulness gave it away. She had found it. It was on our shelf in a Belleza box. She had made me pay for it. She was standing ten feet from it and telling him she had not found it.

The other side got angry. His voice rose again.

She spoke fast.

“Don’t get angry, Azad Sahab. Listen. I bought it today. I bought it. I didn’t tell you because I wanted it to be tomorrow. A small surprise. That is all.”

A pause. Then she smiled. I heard the smile.

“Yes. Wired. The one you said. Satin. Don’t ask me if it hurts already. I have not even worn it properly yet. Tomorrow. You will see.”

She lowered her voice after that, but the flat is small.

“Don’t say such things when I am at home,” she said. 

Then his voice changed again. I could not hear the question. I heard her answer.

“Sunny is here only. Eating. He came from office and helped with the bags.”

She glanced toward the curtain, toward me, as if checking that the name had landed.

“He has become very supportive these days, Azad Sahab. Truly. He didn’t make a face about the parlour. He even said he would take me to Mukesh ji. Office didn’t allow it, that is different. But he asked. He transferred money also when I needed it in the evening. He didn’t question. Very understanding boy. Anyone else would have made his mother feel small by now.”

I sat with a spoon in a thali and listened to my own good name being sent down the phone to the man who called me the boy.

Azad Sahab said something. She laughed a little, then not.

“Why do you call him that,” she said. “He has a name.”

A pause.

“Useful? What kind of question is that. He is my son. He is working. He is running his office. That is also a kind of use.”

She listened.

Then she said, quieter, “You think he only knows studies and tech. That he has no knowledge of the world. He is only twenty-one, Azad Sahab. The world teaches slowly.”

Another pause. Her fingers were on the edge of the counter. I could see that much through the thin cloth.

“Then you teach him,” she said.

The sentence came out with a small smile in it. Almost a tease. Almost something else.

“You teach him the world, no? Since you think he doesn’t know it. As if you are—”

She stopped before the word father. I still heard the shape of it. She covered it with a cough of a laugh.

“Don’t twist my words,” she said. “I am only saying, if you have so many opinions about him, say them to his face someday. Not only on the phone with me.”

His reply made her go still for a second. Then she made the hush sound again.

"He’s a quick learner. He mentioned yesterday that his bosses praised him, too. I know he’s not very outgoing or talkative, but that’s just how he is," she said.

Then a long pause and nodding for few seconds followed.

“Yes, yes. I will be ready by five. You said five-fifteen. I remember.”

She listened.

“I know it is a big room. I know I have to look like I belong there. That is why the saree. That is why all this. You don’t have to remind me every time Azad Sahab.”

A longer pause. His voice dropped. I heard only the tone. The kind of tone that does not belong on a kitchen call if a son is eating ten feet away.

She turned her face fully to the wall.

“Azad… not now. I said not now. Tomorrow you can say whatever you want. Right now I am standing in my kitchen.”

She bit her lip. I saw that. Then she smiled at the fridge, as if the fridge had said something funny.

“I will wear it,” she said. “The blouse. The other thing also. I already told you I bought it. Stop repeating the punishment word. I am not a child, please.”

A last small laugh.

“Yes. I will message when I sleep. Eat something.”

She ended the call.

For a second she stayed in the kitchen with the phone against her chest, collecting the mother-voice from wherever she had put it. Then she came out.

Her cheeks had colour. The new hair made the colour look cleaner.

“Beta, you haven't finished yet?,” she said. 

“That was long.”

“It was Azad sahab, he was asking about tomorrow. Time. Clothes. All that.”

She sat down and took a bite as if the last ten minutes had been about a gas bill.

“He asked about you also,” she said.

“I heard my name.”

She looked at me over the plate. Not guilty. Checking.

“I told him you have been supportive. That is the truth. Why are you making that face. A mother is allowed to say a good thing about her son.”

“He doesn’t even call me by my name Ma.”

She was quiet for a second.

“He has his way of speaking,” she said. “You should not collect every word and keep it. Tomorrow is a big day. Let the night be light.”

The instruction was gentle. It was still an instruction.

We finished the dinner and then I switched off the main light.

The night bulb near the bathroom was enough. I lay on my side. She lay on hers. The double bed gave us the same small distance it had given us for years. The new hair on the pillow looked darker in this light. The peach nighty rose and fell with her breath. The black nails were a small wet shine when she moved her foot once under the sheet.

I stared at the ceiling.

The day sat there in the wrong order.

A module catch. Mike sir’s cabin. Nair ma’am in a black saree with a closed throat. A QR named Belleza Glow. An auto at the gate. A younger face on the stairs. An old blouse held up like a shield. A sentence that had almost said for Azad. A satin wired bra in a box I had paid for. A kitchen voice telling a man she had bought his punishment as a surprise. My name turned into the boy. The world I was supposed to learn. Dhiraj sir’s function tomorrow. Five-fifteen.

[saka1981]

I honestly can’t handle the twists you keep putting at the end of every update, so I decided to wait until six episodes were posted and then read them all together. I finally did that.

Until then, I thought Wednesday’s update would mainly be about Azad and Anjali’s relationship developing. But instead, so many other things have happened—sarees, blouses, beauty parlour visits, and so on.

In the last update, Anjali still didn’t give up on Sunny, that’s true. But when it comes to lust, we still haven’t been shown how Anjali is going to change or react.

And when is Sunny finally going to tell his mother everything he has been thinking about? For example, something like, “Do you really need to spend ₹2,800 to buy a bra?” ?

I honestly don’t know when Sunny is going to come out of his shell, or whether he is going to kneel before Azad and give in.

You’ve said this is a slow-burn story, but the last five updates have been *reallyyyyy* tooooo sloooooooow. It feels like the same things are being repeated again and again. ?

[Paty@123]

Good update, plz little faster running of story is required, I request the writer not to make the story incest or voyour,above I left to your own discriation sir

[Leo Arya]

Now it's time to spice up bro... Waiting for tomorrow evening!!!

[deepangshu]

Brother continuous repeatation of the same stuff is making a well built up story boring. Hope u are seeing the replies .

[Aragon]

Congratulations for the 1 lakh views... You truly deserve this!!!

[Milf Destroyer]

Brother continuous repeatation of the same stuff is making a well built up story boring. Hope u are seeing the replies .

Seems something spicy is about to happen who knows in Taj instead of Azad the main business man might enjoy with her or maybe a threesome let's see and as a suggestion bigger updates are better

[Paty@123]

When is going tobe the next update plz