Post-tea

Sheela Aunty boarded the bus promptly at two o’clock for her afternoon outing. Some snacks packed into her steel tiffin box, she was all set for an afternoon of peace. She would have come out in the morning, but her son in the US had thought it an opportune time to engage his mother in a two-hour conversation on easy cooking for students abroad.

‘I gave you the Meenakshi Ammal books,’ she told him on the phone with more patience than she felt. “You said you’d manage and refused to set foot in the kitchen when I asked you to learn.’

‘Yes, well, I know, but I thought cooking was easy!’

Sheela Aunty smirked. Of course it was easy, but she wasn’t going to let Ashwin off the hook so easily.

‘Won’t you come on Skype now, please, and show me how to make rasam?’

Sheela Aunty reeled off some instructions as she finished her own cooking. ‘This will do. You don’t need to watch a video to learn how to make rasam.’

But Ashwin was a chip off the old block and had inherited her stubbornness. So it was that Sheela Aunty found herself dragged into a demonstration on making rasam, unwillingly preparing a small quantity for herself and her husband, when she had hoped to keep lunch very simple with just some dal and curry. However, she was brisk and efficient, and wrapping up at noon, sat down for lunch with her husband.

‘What are you doing this afternoon?’

‘Temple. Sanjay is singing there. You?’

‘I’m going to Chepauk to watch the Ranji Trophy match.’

Uncle’s eyes widened. ‘Alone?’

Aunty raised an eyebrow.

‘No, I mean, don’t you want company?’

She raised another eyebrow.

‘Won’t it get boring, sitting there all by yourself?’

‘There will be other spectators.’

‘But you won’t know any of them!’

‘Why do I need someone’s family history when all we want to do is talk cricket?’

‘Won’t it get awkward?’

‘But that is the point!’ Aunty grinned. ‘I want to take the bus all by myself, sit down among strangers, watch the match, drink some Coke, and make small talk with people who don’t know me. There is such fun in encounters with people you’ll never see again!’

Uncle stared. He was not the social kind, nor did he really pay much attention to the world at large.

‘Don’t you ever look back at odd snatches of conversations with strangers, or a kind act someone did for you? Remember how that young girl with the blue hair saved you a seat at the Music Academy? Or how that tall boy just managed to get me an autograph of Faf Du Plessis, shoving my book into the team bus?’

Aunty’s eyes glittered like she was eighteen again and tasting the joys of grown-up living for the first time. Uncle knew he wouldn’t understand. He had been resigning himself to the prospect of giving up his concert to go sit on some hard concrete with his wife in the sun, and now he smiled to himself.

‘Off you go, then, I’ll take care of the dishes!’

And so it was that one o’clock found Aunty on the bus to Chepauk.