Conversation at a Family Function

‘Fuck you,’ I said as I reached for the last jalebi on my plate.

‘How dare you!’ my mother muttered under her breath.

We were at my younger sister’s wedding, at a farmhouse in the outskirts of the city. The venue was decked with uncountable flowers, lit by a dazzle of gaudy lights and looked like a motion picture on jewellery. My parents had blown a lifetime of savings for the occasion. I wanted to vomit.

‘You haven’t told . . .’

‘Arey, Smita, the food is amazing!’ my father’s maternal uncle’s cousin—an asshole through and through—interrupted what I’d known would be one of the first questions my mother would ask.

You haven’t told anyone, have you?

I had. The father knew. I handed my plate to a nearby waiter and asked him to get me some whisky. As she spoke to the asshole, my mother did not show even a trace of the storm my revelation had probably spawned in her stomach She even laughed at something he said.

If there’s something I wish I’d inherited from my mother, it is this: The Ability to Pretend Everything Is Okay Even Though the Shit May Be Dripping from the Roof. As for the asshole, I would have stabbed him with the fork he was eating chicken pakoras with if I had had my way. Fortunately, someone called him, and he excused himself.

‘. . . anyone else, have you?’ my mother finished her question as soon as he left. I marvelled at how quickly she had changed her tone. From saccharine to cutting, within the space of a sentence.

‘Raj,’ I fired the bastard’s name like it was a bullet.

It hit its mark. My mother’s face fell, albeit briefly. Composing herself, she declared, ‘We’ll get it aborted this weekend.’

‘Not really. What we’ll do is to get you a fucking counsellor.’ A woman passing by heard me say that, I think, for the bitch turned and looked at us suspiciously for a microsecond before turning back to the hideous girl she was speaking to. I didn’t know either of them. My parents had squandered bank accounts to please people who mattered as little as the cigarette stubs my mom flicked in dust bins around our home day and night.

The waiter got my whisky. I still wanted to vomit.

‘Mallika, listen to me.’ My mother held my hand and looked into my eyes. She had spent lacs on the make-up that made her look tolerable, just this once. I smiled and held her gaze. ‘You are going to get it aborted, you know why? I’m not going to let you make the same mistake I made thirty years ago.’

It took me a moment to register that. She nodded ever so faintly when she saw the disbelief in my eyes.

I ran for the washroom.