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

[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.