22-10-2022, 10:05 AM
FrankanstienTheKount
the girl behind counter
I leaned over the pabangt of the balcony of my apartment on the fifteenth floor. The preparations for the
evening bhajan ritual had begun, I deduced from the escalating hum downstairs. The building watchman
was arranging gray Neelkamal chairs in a semi-circle between a sleek red Honda and a black Chevrolet
SUV. I looked back up at the jumble of skyscbangrs. Yardley Gardens was one of Mumbai’s plushest
townships that my family had recently relocated to from the humble cobwebs of Nashik. The westward
sun made me squint and I withdrew to my cushy C-backed bamboo swing, resuming the novel in my
hand. There are few things as relaxing as an evening breeze tickling you while you turn the delicious
pages of Adiga’s The White Tiger .
It was now nearing six and I could hear the boys playing football downstairs. In spite of wanting to join
them, I stubbornly clung on to my novel. I didn’t want to open my mouth and make a fool of myself. I
remembered reading ‘It is better to stay silent and be thought wise than open your mouth and be proven
foolish’. Or was it the other way round? Immaterial, I wasn’t leaving.
My tenth standard was to start in a few days’ time. You could say I was a little nervous. The relocation
was a little bit of, like they say, a ‘culture shock’ to me. My father had taken up a new job that offered
thrice the pay of the previous, along with a horde of benefits like company quarters at this place, a Tata
sedan and discount coupons at various dining joints. A personal pizza was no more to be shared by the
family. The visit to the restaurants no more meant a strict decorum of mere daal, a paneer subzi and roti. I
could unblinkingly order appetizers to overpriced Cokes without a warning eyebrow. Just the very
thought of them now made me hungry. I got up from the swing.
‘Ma, can I have some money? I want to go out, eat something,’ I shouted as I went inside the house.
‘Why do you want to go outside?’ The voice came from the living room. I spotted her knitting, red and
white yarn balls by her side. ‘Your grandmother has packed us some …’
‘Mom!’
‘These kids of today,’ she muttered without annoyance. She was quite jovial ever since we’d moved in.
And in spite of being the unwilling kitchen recluse that she was, she made me take a plate of parathas to
both our neighbours, without paying any heed to my ‘But what do I say to them?’ What happened next is
something I fervently hope that twenty years later I will look back and laugh at.
She set aside the half-finished scarf for my grandmother and fished her hand into her purse that hung by
the armrest of the couch. All the years we stayed with my grandparents in my native town, there was a
non-stop bickering between my mother and grandma. The day we left, I sneaked a look at my mother
crying in my grandma’s lap and the usually stoic lady that my grandma is, even she couldn’t hold back
the Ganges streaming down her eyes.
‘Don’t spend all of it,’ she said. A crisp hundred-rupee note, from which Gandhiji grinned at me.
The elevator doors opened to a shockingly electric environment. I mean, when you come to such a
colony, you expect people to be silent and, what’s the word, ‘sophisticated’ to the point of being
considered curt. But with the noise these kids made with their Ringa Ringa and catch and hopscotch and
whatnot, I almost felt like I was back in Nashik. I avoided eye contact and went to the main gate. The path
to the street was blocked by a team of sweaty T-shirts and delirious outcries of boys of my age and less
playing football.
the girl behind counter
I leaned over the pabangt of the balcony of my apartment on the fifteenth floor. The preparations for the
evening bhajan ritual had begun, I deduced from the escalating hum downstairs. The building watchman
was arranging gray Neelkamal chairs in a semi-circle between a sleek red Honda and a black Chevrolet
SUV. I looked back up at the jumble of skyscbangrs. Yardley Gardens was one of Mumbai’s plushest
townships that my family had recently relocated to from the humble cobwebs of Nashik. The westward
sun made me squint and I withdrew to my cushy C-backed bamboo swing, resuming the novel in my
hand. There are few things as relaxing as an evening breeze tickling you while you turn the delicious
pages of Adiga’s The White Tiger .
It was now nearing six and I could hear the boys playing football downstairs. In spite of wanting to join
them, I stubbornly clung on to my novel. I didn’t want to open my mouth and make a fool of myself. I
remembered reading ‘It is better to stay silent and be thought wise than open your mouth and be proven
foolish’. Or was it the other way round? Immaterial, I wasn’t leaving.
My tenth standard was to start in a few days’ time. You could say I was a little nervous. The relocation
was a little bit of, like they say, a ‘culture shock’ to me. My father had taken up a new job that offered
thrice the pay of the previous, along with a horde of benefits like company quarters at this place, a Tata
sedan and discount coupons at various dining joints. A personal pizza was no more to be shared by the
family. The visit to the restaurants no more meant a strict decorum of mere daal, a paneer subzi and roti. I
could unblinkingly order appetizers to overpriced Cokes without a warning eyebrow. Just the very
thought of them now made me hungry. I got up from the swing.
‘Ma, can I have some money? I want to go out, eat something,’ I shouted as I went inside the house.
‘Why do you want to go outside?’ The voice came from the living room. I spotted her knitting, red and
white yarn balls by her side. ‘Your grandmother has packed us some …’
‘Mom!’
‘These kids of today,’ she muttered without annoyance. She was quite jovial ever since we’d moved in.
And in spite of being the unwilling kitchen recluse that she was, she made me take a plate of parathas to
both our neighbours, without paying any heed to my ‘But what do I say to them?’ What happened next is
something I fervently hope that twenty years later I will look back and laugh at.
She set aside the half-finished scarf for my grandmother and fished her hand into her purse that hung by
the armrest of the couch. All the years we stayed with my grandparents in my native town, there was a
non-stop bickering between my mother and grandma. The day we left, I sneaked a look at my mother
crying in my grandma’s lap and the usually stoic lady that my grandma is, even she couldn’t hold back
the Ganges streaming down her eyes.
‘Don’t spend all of it,’ she said. A crisp hundred-rupee note, from which Gandhiji grinned at me.
The elevator doors opened to a shockingly electric environment. I mean, when you come to such a
colony, you expect people to be silent and, what’s the word, ‘sophisticated’ to the point of being
considered curt. But with the noise these kids made with their Ringa Ringa and catch and hopscotch and
whatnot, I almost felt like I was back in Nashik. I avoided eye contact and went to the main gate. The path
to the street was blocked by a team of sweaty T-shirts and delirious outcries of boys of my age and less
playing football.
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