Press pause, please

“More coffee?,” the lady with bright blue hair asks, interrupting the rush of thoughts that had wrapped me so tightly that I had started to give into their quagmire. 

I nod, and she smiles. Did I smile back? 

You spend too much time wondering if you are polite enough, Lekha had said when I asked her if I had apologized properly when a stranger bumped into me and his bag fell on the ground. Did he apologise? She had asked, looking straight ahead at the big banner of a clothing brand advertisement. 

Lekha never looked at people when she called out something. Not that she felt guilty but because she didn’t want them to see the sympathy that she had for them at that moment. Empathy feels good; sympathy, on the other hand, can make someone feel lowered and she had learned that the hard way. That day, we walked in silence until we reached the café; my arm wrapped around hers. I had known the woman for 20 years, more than half of my life so silence was our way of letting the others’ opinions breathe without necessarily accepting it. 

“Hi, sorry, lost track of time.” Her voice hadn’t changed even a bit in four years. After an awkward attempt at hugging and ordering another cup of coffee and garlic bread, I let out a sigh.

“So, it’s been a while. Glad you called though,” I say, searching her face for regrets.

“Honestly, I wasn’t sure. But lately, I have been taking more risks than usual,” she says with a laugh that felt too heavy to be one. 

“People do change then." A callback to Lekha’s stubborn view of life. People can pretend to change but their core always betrays them.

She smiles, raising her left eyebrow ever so slightly that if I hadn’t been trying to figure out her expressions, I would have missed it. “How’s Aloo? And Dhruv?”

“Aloo is good, but age is catching up. Has a bit of trouble walking up and down the stairs, sleeps most of the day, and continues to find the energy to scare the life out of visitors with his constant barking. Dhruv is doing well but also ageing, I guess,” she laughs. This wasn’t as heavy as the one before. 

“You know that we have just started our 40s, right? Old is still a good ten years away at least,” I say, more to myself than to her. With the world hell-bent on putting you in a box, you find any random moment to show your defiance. 

The coffee arrives with some cheesy garlic bread. Reflexively, I open my mouth to say, “It’s okay,” but Lekha doesn’t say anything. The Lekha I knew would have instantly put her hand up and softly but firmly said, “We ordered plain garlic bread.” She always knew how to get what she deserved from the world, regardless of how uncomfortable it made her. Did time take away that spark that I envied for so long?

“How is Aunty?” I hear her ask.

“Good, she’s busy being a grandmother so everything else has taken a bit of a backseat,” I try to not sound whiny, but I rarely succeed at that. 

“You miss her,” she says very matter-of-factly. I nod, as subtly as possible, like a whisper that could dissolve into silence. 

When Lekha and I had begun to drift away, Ma had sensed it before I could tell her. “Now, you call me when there’s a problem,” she had said. “Last time that happened you were 19.” The sudden change in priorities would have left a mark on Ma too. I often wondered, did she miss me? Did I leave her behind? 

I shake my head, just to find a way out of those thoughts. Lekha looks up and smiles. “How’s your headspace?”

“Moody as always. But dealing with it. Yours?”

“Not so great. I constantly feel like I’m on timer so trying to do as many things as possible. But all I really want to do is to pause, be still and hold myself,” she says, not breaking eye contact with the coffee. 

“What’s making you feel like you are on a timer?”

The group of friends at the next table suddenly start clapping. You can’t miss the varied “Congratulations.” The staff joins in the cake cutting; the girl cuts the cake and takes the first bite. We both turn to each other and smile; it’s what we do too. At least when we are celebrating something, can we please think about ourselves first? Lekha’s voice echoes in my mind.

“So, what’s making you feel that way?”

“Life. The more I want to hold it, the more it slips away.”

And before I reply, she suddenly says, “Do you still have that hourglass? The purple one that Gayatri had given you.” I nod; it must be somewhere. “I would keep turning it upside down, almost as if I didn’t want to believe time was running out. Before the sand completely fell, I would turn it,” she says. 

“Does it feel like that now?”

“Kind of. Time is such.”

I have been dreading this question but had to ask. “So, what made you call me after so long?”

“Will you laugh if I said, time?” she asks with a smile that I don’t recognize. 

“Time heals everything?”

“More like regrets about lost time,” she says. Lekha has never regretted anything. Not when she ruined the ending of the masterpiece of my favourite mystery author or decided to break up with her boyfriend of three years because of a gut feeling or rejected her dream job because of the hustle culture they promoted. But now there are parts of her that I am not familiar with. Someone or something has led to these waves of change and I have lost the anchor to navigate her seas. 

“I wanted to ask, do you want to go on a trip together? I read about these Sulphur pools around Muscat. Apparently, you have to talk to a specific guide about how to get there and stuff but I can figure that out. What do you think?” She is already taking out her phone to show the photos. 

“Limca, we haven’t even caught up or spoken about why we drifted apart. Isn’t this a bit hurried?” As a look of surprise spreads on her face, I realise I used my name for her. Somehow, that is one thing that didn’t feel unfamiliar. 

“What do you want to talk about?” She puts both the phone and her pen down. She had been writing or doodling in a small notebook.

“I am not understanding. I feel like I’m missing something.” I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off. 

“It’s been five years. People are bound to change a bit.”

“Four,” I correct her. 

Silence engulfs us suddenly. “Going to the washroom,” she says. Her small notebook lies next to her coffee. What was she writing? Was it her opinions about me? Conversation topics? That would be hilarious. Something, maybe the sinking sense of unfamiliarity, makes me open it. 

done

ordered coffee and garlic bread

aloo dhruv

aunty

why the call

muscat-sulphur pools

I turn the page.

check

put food and water for aloo

turn off gas

turn off geyser

take meds (see page 4)

take house key

take phone

take wallet

call uber/ola

for Third Wave Café

Leher, just in case

Leher. My name. She had to write down my name. My Ajji used to make lists like these. By the time she died, she used to think of me as her daughter and Ma as her sister. My existence had been erased by her mind. But she was 72, Limca is 41. 

I put the book back near her coffee and take out my phone to open Google. There are so many questions that I don’t want the answer to. 

“So, where were we?” She sits back before the search results appear. “I was showing you the Sulphur pools.”

“Is there anything you want to tell me?”

“No, not right now,” she says, picking up her phone, ready to dive into those pools. 

But my mind had taken me back to a particular morning. “Do you remember the time we went on the Skandagiri trek to catch the sunrise?” As soon as the words leave my mouth, I immediately realize shouldn’t have framed it that way. 

She looks up, a slow smile easing her furrowed brows and says, “When you peed in a bottle because you read about a woman getting a bad infection after peeing in the wild.” I sigh, relieved, as she laughs. 

“At least I didn’t try to hold it until we reached the peak and then couldn’t find the ‘right place’ and panicked," I retort.

“Ey! Don’t. That took away half of the joy of seeing that beautiful sunrise.” She rolls her eyes, most ridiculously. When she rolls her eyes, her head fully participates and also goes back.

 “It is one of my safe places. Whenever I feel like the world is getting too chaotic or overwhelming, I think of that moment,” I tell her, almost as a whisper. I see her reach for her notebook.

“I wanted pause time then,” I continue. “But you said…”

She takes over. “Well, at this moment, until further notice, we have all the time in the world.”