“Mami?” Jyoti knocked on the door of her aunt’s house. Listened. Nothing inside.
“Mami? Mina?” No answer.
She tried the door. It opened – unlocked, unbarred. “Mami? Are you in?” She cautiously poked her head inside, letting her eyes adjust to the dark interior.
“Yes, yes -” The voice came from behind her. Blinking in the afternoon light, Mina was adjusting her saree, “Sorry, Just realized I needed to get in a good shit before we went. Let me get my bag.”
“Ah,” Jyoti tried to mask her disappointment.
~
The walk to the bus stop wasn’t a long one – twenty minutes – yet they had certainly missed the first afternoon bus. But…
As they waited, sitting a stone’s throw from the intersection, Jyoti tried to recount every little thing over the past month that had worried her – starting with her health. That bit was important, as she was returning to the clinic for a checkup. She was very obviously pregnant at this point. While the four children before had been … planned, sort of, in that she raised each one a bit before having another, number five had done it’s work to remind her that blessings didn’t have to be pleasant.
She then went to worrying aloud about little Dhanya, and the trouble she might get into while Kshitij worked on the house. To Kayam getting recruited by Maoists. To Virika and Usha being taken by Maoists. To hindu riots. To things Mina hadn’t even heard on the radio or seen in the paper.
Mina tried to calm her down. But she wasn’t. And… There. On the horizon. Bus. Time for the big gun.
“If your so scared, put on a bindi.”
Jyoti’s hands, starting to flail, immediately dropped. “I will not-“
“I still put one on sometimes when I head into town sometimes – like after they raided the BB-“
“I will not misrepresent myself or God like-“
“Oh look, here’s the bus. You see if anyone wants to come with us, I’ll talk to the driver.”
After disgorging it’s pack of children, It took a moment for Mina to convince the driver to let them on, but the logic that the clinic was close to the route and the family was already paying bus fees for three was sound. With that, Mina, Jyoti, and a suddenly determined Usha quickly found empty seats, and the bus continued on it’s circuit.
~
Of course, the clinic was crowded, the afternoon only getting closer to an end, so as expected, Mina and Usha were booted out of the tiny reception room before they had a chance to sit.
Expected? Like Usha had hoped.
The two wandered down the street, not trying to talk over the noise of cars and motorbikes wizzing by. Some shops were open fronts in dilapidated brick buildings, others slightly refurbished structures covered in glass windows and ads.
It was in front of one of these large glass windows that Usha stopped. “Did you ever think you should get a phone to call mesho?”
“You Uddyam writes me letters. Usually.” Mina had gotten used to Jyoti and her kids calling her by the wrong title – hearing her husband called but the right one still rubbed her the wrong way. She should be khala.
“But you don’t get to talk to him. And that’s important.”
Mina sighed, “I did not have much success with your uncle’s cordless phone when he tried to get me to use it.”
“Oh… perhaps it just was not the right one. I can help you,” in a quieter place, Usha might have realized the greedy tone of her voice. Here, she did not – she merely pulled her aunt closer to the window, peering in, “That one is Android. If it says Indus it’s android too. It’s on pretty much everyone’s phone but you gotta get a ’15’ to be secure. That one is iPhone. There supposed to be nice, but really expensive. They make their own phones. The others…”
Trying to see what her niece was pointing at, Mina lifted up her glasses and pressed against the glass. App Stores. Ok, those were for the apps she heard advertised. Email – ah Sardari could send those letters directly- but that might not be a good thing. Internet. Yes, everybody had to have their website. Uddyam had talked about putting his films on a website. They had gotten fairly tiny, compared to corded phones – and so few buttons was… she got distracted by the animations playing on their screens.
Erk.
Her face was stuck to the glass. She really needed to stop –
Of course Mina couldn’t see Usha, her face suction-cupped to the glass like this. She couldn’t hear Usha anymore, either – and the din wasn’t any louder. She could feel the girl trying to grab hold of her waist to pull her free.
The thing she should have done at this point, upon later reflection, was breathe out as hard as she could, in hopes of popping free easily. What Mina actually did was try and collect her breath to warn Usha to stop.
Usha, in full panic mode, frantically pulled. She lifted her aunt’s feet off the ground, but the woman’s midsection merely stretched as she pulled back. Mina’s saree, less malleable than she was, pulled off her shoulder and dropped to the sidewalk, leaving nothing to hide the distended length of skin that was her midsection.
Usha would have kept going except a slightly more elegantly extended arm grabbed her by the chin and pulled her back close. A finger – wait – raised up so close the girl could barely see it; now forced to pay attention, saw her aunt’s free hand reach around to pry the face off the glass like a spatula.
A hoarse cough, and Mina’s nose popped back into the third dimension, her glasses seeming to fall into place on their own.
The grip was moved from jaw to shoulder. And, while the odd pedestrian and whatever storekeepers in open storefronts watched, the woman first gathered her saree to loosely fling over her shoulder – covering up the fact that there was nothing where her midsection should be when she stood up – then did her best job at making it look like she was gathering up a coil of fabric around her free arm. She then proceeded to march Usha – who was in fact supporting half her weight – into the nearest shadowed alley to be had.
~
“Child…” Mina wasn’t looking Usha in the face. She was half sat, half propped up against the wall – checking first to make sure her saree was undamaged, and than that Usha’s action hadn’t left any stretch marks in visible places. “Panic is a killer.” One she cleared herself on both counts, her body easily reformed into the shape it had been when they had stepped off the bus. She took a few deep breaths. centering herself, then stood up to fix her saree.
“I’m sorry, Mami,” and yeah, it was pretty easy for Usha to admit she had messed up that whole situation. She slumped.
Mina brought her close for a quick hug. A quick, normal hug.
“But you know-” The girl pulled towards her aunts ear, “You can also post videos online anonymously.”
Mina let Usha draw back to arms length, hands still resting on her shoulders. Frowned.
“I’m listening.”
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