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

over and went to sleep. If she opened her eyes during the night, he was there, looking at her through the darkness that was never really black but diluted by the stubborn light of the city. Knowing she was safe, she’d drift back into another wretched sleep, his presence a gentle rope that kept her from falling too far.
    Nadia looked at Danesh, who turned to face her for the first time that night. It seemed as if he was suddenly standing a long distance away. She considered the gap and whether it was wise to cross it.
    Then he was by her side, smelling of cigarettes, of other people.
    He leaned over and whispered, ‘Happy birthday, my love.’

THE GECKO ON THE WALL
    I stare in confusion at Dipti and Choti standing outside my front door until Dipti says, ‘Hi Papa,’ carrying me into the centrefolds of our relationship.
    â€˜Hello beta,’ I reply, straightening my back like a superintendent on duty.
    I smile to let it be known that I’m happy to see them.
    â€˜How’ve you been?’ Dipti continues in a tired tone, wafting in with the smell of the neighbour’s curry that, for the first time, curls my nose. She crosses the threshold with her leather suitcases, her clothes buttered by fabric softener and a beefiness that visits, as she does, every second year from America. Immediately, my living room—a luxury in Mumbai—becomes smaller.
    â€˜Hi Nanu!’ says Choti, the little one. She flings her arms around my waist with such force that I stumble backward, almost slipping on my dead wife’s rug. In my old house with the grainy floors the rug was a solid thing, but this shiny new house with its slick flooring has made it dangerous, an accident waiting to happen. I catch my balance at the same moment that my eyes fall on my granddaughter’s face, and I’m falling again. Choti looks so much like Sheila—her features that of a child, but the same triangular face, the black-bean eyes held close together, hair sprouting from the rim of the face as if her scalp is not large enough.
    â€˜Ashirwad, Choti,’ I say, patting Choti’s head and inching away at the same time, so that my intimacies remain prudent and unassertive, causing no one harm. ‘Your hands go round my waist now, eh?’
    â€˜Dad,’ Dipti interrupts, abandoning the sweet softness of Papa. She is scanning the apartment and I wait for her verdict. ‘This new place is swanky. Look at the cream pillars, the false ceiling and—wow—French windows!’ She walks to the balcony, ‘And the view! We can see the pool. No more looking into the Guptas’ toilet.’
    I don’t mention that paying for that pool’s maintenance shaves off a third of my pension money.
    Choti and I follow Dipti as she strolls around the house, picking up things, casually dropping them back.
    â€˜Looks like our family is finally moving up, huh Dad?’ she says, and then adds softly, ‘Maa would have loved this.’
    She wouldn’t have, I silently say to myself. Unlike Dipti, Sheila hated the cosmetic, the ornamental. We had that in common.
    The sound of Dipti’s stilettos ricocheting off the floor stops as she turns to me and says, ‘Three bedrooms? What do you do with so many?’
    â€˜Enjoy them,’ I lie. For before this I’ve only ever lived in my father’s home, which belonged to his grandfather, our treasured legacy from Mumbai’s disappearing spaces. In the body of a hundred-year-old, the flat was—as Dipti never failed to mention—dowdy. Yet, I saw myself in it as though it was a mirror; my identity bound to its lime mortar walls from which paint constantly dripped, the rusting iron-framed windows and the cockroaches that scurried around each morning as the house came to life.
    I continue to live there though it no longer exists, its body destroyed by that builder with the toothy smile who offered me two choices over a cup of