Read Online Happy Birthday!: And Other Stories by Meghna Pant - Free Book Online

Tata was staring at her with a peculiar gentleness, like she was some kind of nourishment.
    Glad for his stubbornness, glad that at least someone knew what to do, she walked over to him, firm, smiling. He was picking up sushi rolls with his fingers, tossing them straight into his mouth, sipping white wine from a full glass. Danesh would never be caught indulging like this in someone else’s home, barely touching the food or drinks, to make it known to the host that he was there for nothing else save their company.
    â€˜So you must be planning to be very very happily married sometime in the future?’ Baman said, grinning, teeth bared.
    The possibility of a smile brushed Nadia’s lips. Baman Tata was disarming in a way that she hadn’t first recognized.
    â€˜I can only account for what I did in the past, and present, not in the future,’ Nadia replied, finding it a rather clever phrase.
    â€˜Do you talk to him about that, really talk about your past, future?’
    Nadia looked at him to see if he was still mocking her, but she saw a rare sincerity in his eyes, as if his question had been spawned from the slime of some long-nurtured realization.
    â€˜We communicate,’ she said evenly, not to betray her hurt at the truth.
    â€˜Shame,’ he said, in a way that made the word sound more shameful. ‘If I had the chance, I would listen to your voice all the time, hear every thought you have, every experience, till I could turn you inside out and nothing new would fall out.’
    Laughter flexed Nadia’s throat, as she envisioned Baman turning her inside out, as she did with Danesh’s trousers when checking for loose change.
    She leaned in and whispered shyly, ‘It’s my birthday today.’ She said it as if telling him that she loved him.
    â€˜That is wonderful! Now we can tell our grandchildren that we met on your birthday.’
    Nadia had such a fit of laughter that she nearly choked. She rarely laughed at Dolly’s or any of Danesh’s friends’ parties, for if she stepped out of their highly strung amiability, Danesh would want to leave.
    The more money he made, the less he laughed.
    And then Baman said, ‘I don’t understand why your husband would ever look at another woman.’ He said it so quietly that for a moment Nadia thought it was her own voice speaking. She looked into his eyes and realized that this was not random flirtation. He had not picked her out for her gold sari or pleasing looks. He thought that she was in the same boat as him. That she would help him piece together why his wife had abandoned him the way others abandon clothes. Empathize with why he’d become a Batata.
    â€˜Is that what you thought of your wife? That she would never look at another man?’ she said angrily.
    Baman started, shuffled his feet and took a long sip of his drink, so long that he emptied out the glass.
    â€˜Is that what men still expect of women?’ she continued. ‘That they’ll choose a man they no longer love over happiness? Wake up and look around you. Look at these women; they have choices.’
    â€˜And you?’ he asked softly. ‘Do you have a choice?’
    ~
    Nadia looked at Dolly; it was difficult not to spot her even from afar. She was standing alone, instructing one of her many servants. Dolly was taller than Nadia, but with narrower shoulders and hips, long legs and a stubborn chin. She wore pale green lenses, a surprising colour against her olive skin, and hard to look into. She held her head slightly lowered, slightly tilted, a wariness hardened and deliberate, her attitude indifferent but uncompromising, like a cat’s.
    Nadia could detect nothing of herself in Dolly.
    Odd choices are easier for men to make, her psychiatrist had said.
    â€˜Are you okay?’ Baman asked.
    No, she thought silently, she was not okay. She’d existed too cautiously within her marriage, Nadia had, as if there were