Diwali, 2022

When you’re young and world is still full of wonder and things to explore and places to be, and the prospect of a job has no relation to the drudgery of a nine to five…you expect your life will turn out remarkably well. Life, untouched by life. Preserved in resin. A marvel.

One day, you’re playing with a teddy bear and having a tea party with all your dolls, and the next thing you know, you’re thirty-two. Divorced. Cities away from your parents’ home, looking at a skyline with no hope on the horizon, thirty thousand feet in the air. Wondering if this was how life was supposed to be, or if you did something wrong along the way.

Ankita sighed as she leaned against the airplane window. She was going back to Agra, to her parents’ home for Diwali. A year back, the seat next to her would’ve been Parag’s. But Parag was in Gujarat. Surat, a place she had had to uproot her life to move to, and over the course of two blissful years, learn to call home. She didn’t mind having to move in with him. She loved Parag. She loved him when he tied the mangalsutra around her neck at their wedding, his face luminous by firelight. She loved him when he sang, when they danced. Even when he stumbled. Even when he shouted, and she shouted back. A part of her loved him even when he filed for divorce.

Maybe she wouldn’t be so uncomfortable if they’d separated because he cheated on her, or fell in love with another woman. If he’d given her a more socially acceptable reason to leave. What point was the right point to decide that the bickering was unbearable? Didn’t marriage mean sticking it through the hard times, even if it meant staying unhappy for a while? They’d fought and yelled at each other till they ran out of things to say, and decided that the quiet was simply for the better. By God, she tried her best to save them. She knew he did, too. At the end, it wasn’t the brewing storm that killed their marriage. It was the unbearable silence before it, and the wreckage it left after. She loved him…but it wasn’t enough.

She gently patted Nitya’s back as the baby shifted slightly in her embrace, kicking her small leg against Ankita’s handbag. Nitya was eleven months old. She had Ankita’s doe-like eyes, and Parag’s beautiful, olive complexion, and the smallest little grabby-grabby hands they’d ever seen. Before she came along, Ankita hadn’t known the surprising grip a baby had.

The weather outside the window was worsening by the minute, and a rumble rattled the cabin. She saw an old lady grip her husband’s hand in the row ahead of her. He put his other hand on top of hers, whispering, “Waheguru.” God.

Ankita shut her eyes tightly and took a quick, quaky breath. What hurt the most was the fact that little Nitya would have to grow up in a broken home. They’d opted to co-parent. She knew they’d make a good team. Even if her mother and father in law hated her. Either Parag or Ankita would have to move geographically closer to the other. But for now, she needed distance. She needed some time away. She wanted to be with her parents, and her baby, and finally have a good day after so long. No more sadness. In four hours, it would be Diwali. And she’d be home by then, in beautifully lit Agra.

Nitya looked up at her with big, clear eyes. Whoever manufactured babies once the parents put in the request and did the needful, must sprinkle stardust in their eyes and maybe with the finest paintbrush, draw little swirlies on their sweet little heads. And give them the loudest pipes. Because Nitya was hungry and awake, and it was everybody’s problem now.

Ankita rocked her as she fed, and the little boombox calmed down. She looked out of the window, at the city below aglow with fairy lights and earthen lamps and sparklers, at faces possibly lit up equally bright by festivity. And she suddenly felt small. She blinked away her tears as she bowed her head to kiss the baby’s cheek. It was going to be okay. It was going to be Diwali day soon, and they would be okay. She’d always wanted her baby to grow up with a big family that loved her unconditionally, with both sets of grandparents, and uncles and aunts and great uncles and great aunts and cousins. Lots of cousins who would all get together over summer break and play till sundown. She exhaled loudly. For now, Nitya would be so so loved by the one set of grandparents who didn’t hate her mother, and—

“Attention, ladies and gentlemen. Due to the rapidly worsening weather conditions ahead, we have been forced to re-route for everybody’s safety. We might face mild turbulence here and there for a brief while, but not to worry; we shall land at the nearest airport in Udaipur in approximately two hours. We regret the inconvenience and thank you for your cooperation. Over.” A crackle of static.

All the passengers collectively groaned and broke into chatter. Storm clouds were beginning to gather outside. It wasn’t supposed to be stormy. Not tonight. The seatbelt lights flashed on. Ankita couldn’t take it anymore. She covered her mouth with her hand and broke into a quivering mess.

Her erratic heaving disturbed Nitya, who immediately started to wail. Ankita tried to shush her, but as both mother and daughter sat crying, one swallowing her cries and the other projecting her voice across the cabin, people began to look at them. No matter how small Ankita tried to make herself, she never stopped feeling everybody’s eyes on her. God, could everyone please just stop staring and—

The man sitting in front of her turned around. He wore a red turban and had a flowing white beard with wrinkled skin painted by the sun. His eyes were beginning to grey around the edges, and he looked with much-needed kindness at them through his thin, black frames. “Daughter, if you need some help, we could hold this little doll here. I have a granddaughter, too.”

His wife smiled at Ankita and extended her arms to hold Nitya. Ankita sobbed with gratitude as she handed over Nitya, mumbling teary little thank-yous. The lady beamed at the crying baby as she held her close, her body moving gently with the rhythm of the lullaby she sang. The turbaned man gently rubbed Nitya’s feet, making silly expressions.

Nitya slowly stopped crying. Then she broke into giggles and grabbed a fistful of his snowy beard. He didn’t mind. He didn’t mind at all.

Hearing the baby giggle, a young boy of around ten popped up from the adjacent row, standing up on his knees on his seat. “Mumma, baby!” he hurriedly tapped his mother’s shoulder, who smiled at him and told him he was once just as small. He gave a sigh of disbelief and slid down his seat. Then with pitter-patter steps, he went toward the couple holding the baby, eyeing the flight attendants to make sure they didn’t ask him to sit down.

Two very curious sets of eyes met, one that had seen merely ten years’ worth of the world, and the other that was all of eleven months. With a sharp exhale, the little boy looked at the old lady. “Could I shake his hand?”

She looked at Nitya for permission and then nodded to the boy. “She’s a girl, sweetheart. But yes, go ahead. Very gently.”

Nitya was more than happy to meet him and instantly chuckled. The boy chuckled too. “Her hands are so smaalllllll!”

The plane shook a little as a flash of lightning sizzled through the sky. The boy’s mother got up to retrieve him, but as soon as she came close to the aisle, Nitya uttered a loud cry. “Bah!” she yelled, extending her arms to the lady.

By now, almost everybody on the plane was looking at this most curious exchange among strangers, bonded by one very sociable baby. Everybody was smiling. Then the flight attendants came with a stuffed toy for her, and of course, Nitya was more interested in their Air Blue badges.

Bit by bit, the entire cabin seemed to have fallen in love with the baby: how she giggled, how she cooed, how she sprung from arms to arms and bounced back to Ankita every once in a while.

Ankita looked at Nitya and the man in the red turban, and how he became her grandfather. At the lady who sang her lullabies and stories like a grandmother and the boy who became her cousin. Her aunts were fun air hostesses who showed her the assortment of packaged foods on the trolleys they pushed, and her uncles were the men who told a wide-eyed her the worrisome state of the government, sitting in seats F1, G1, and H1.

The flight continued on its way to Udaipur, its cabin full of a baby’s laughter and a family of strangers who adored her.

Then one middle-aged woman, coming from her nephew’s place in Ahmedabad, realised that the lot of them wouldn’t be home in time for Diwali. So, she got up from her seat, opened the overhead cabins, and pulled down a canvas bag. She smiled at the flight attendants as she unzipped the bag and pulled out a big box of sweets. “Happy Diwali,” she said, opening it to reveal round sweetcakes.

And just like that, over a matter of ten minutes, the cabin was bustling with people unzipping the sweets and food they had, and sharing it with every other passenger, wishing with a warm hug a very happy Diwali. When they got on the flight that day, or when the flight was re-routed, none of them could have guessed that this Diwali celebration would turn out to be one to remember.

The red-turbaned man turned to face Ankita, and extending a sweetmeat toward her, he said in Punjabi, “Puttar, sab theek ho jana hai. Tu chinta na kar.” Child, everything will be okay. Don’t you worry.

Ankita welled up as she nodded, the lump in her throat beginning to ache. Nitya was back in her arms, tired from socialising.

She heard Nitya snore: a tiny little kitten purring against her chest. Maybe things would turn around and start looking up. The world seemed unfair at times, but the universe had a way of sending some love when it was needed. When you’ve been too strong for too long and the storms don’t seem to cease, life finds a way to surprise you.

The turbaned man’s voice broke her train of thought.

“Hun mittha kha vi lae!” he said gleefully, holding the burfi to her lips. At least have this sweetmeat now!

She laughed through her tears as she ate the burfi, beaming from ear to ear. She wiped her eyes with the back of the sleeves of her sweater.

“Happy Diwali,” she said, her heart brimming with gratitude.