Meet Me In the Middle Read online

  To Neethi and Akshara

  Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

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  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  Acknowledgements

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Copyright

  1

  Anu was thirty years old. She had been married for six years and was the mother of a four-year-old. She quite enjoyed being married to her childhood friend Sanju and being a mother to Vicky. She equally loved the breaks she got from being a wife and mother, thanks to Sanju’s travel and her parents’ free babysitting services. Anu was a kindergarten teacher in the same school that her son went to. She loved her job too. The principal, who was her mother’s childhood friend, compensated for Anu’s underpay with less work.

  Anu was born, brought up, and married into an old, predominantly Kannada suburb of Bangalore, called Vijaynagar. She could have lived in New York, London, Sydney, or even some remote African country because suitable grooms from Vijaynagar were all over the globe. But she loved living in Vijaynagar. Its middle-class living and easy-thinking mode suited her fine. Too much of anything—wealth, intelligence or success—made Anu uncomfortable. Those who possessed too much of these things failed to understand someone like her whose twin missions in life were to stay happy and not work too hard.

  That morning, Anu had an issue that had put a bit of a dampener on her spirits. To discuss that matter, she had taken a day-off from school to eat breakfast with her best friend, Shwetha.

  ‘Sanju was acting totally weird yesterday.’ Anu took a sip of her coffee. Sanju, a techie like everyone else in Bangalore, was currently in California on a short-term assignment.

  ‘How so?’ frowned Shwetha, with her glasses all steamed up from coffee.

  ‘For starters, he hadn’t shaved in two days.’ Anu dipped a crisply fried Vada into a bowl of hot Sambar, pushing the plate of Idlis towards Shwetha.

  ‘Oh, that is very worrisome.’ Shwetha nodded, pushing the Idlis out of the way. ‘Why steam the batter into an Idli, when you can fry it into a Vada?’

  ‘Because Idli takes the guilt out of eating Vada. Now stay with me. See, we had a video call last night and Sanju said the house was filthy. He also said I eat too much junk food.’ Anu shoved more Vada into her mouth.

  Shwetha pursed her lips. ‘Though it is true, I can’t imagine Sanju saying something like that to you. That is very shocking.’

  ‘Hey, my house is untidy, not filthy. If you see pee-stains on the bed, it is filthy. If you see underwear on the bed, it is just untidy.’ Anu shrugged. ‘Coming back to Sanju, something is wrong if he said such ruthless words. Is he having an affair?’ She asked Shwetha the question that had gnawed at her all night.

  Shwetha disagreed immediately. ‘Sanju thinks you are way above his league. Misconception, but that is what he thinks. So, he won’t cheat on you.’ She added as an afterthought. ‘Also, if a man is having an affair, he is nicer to the wife.’

  Anu nodded. ‘True. And, he would shave too. Sanju is not the cheating type. Is he dying of some disease, then?’ Worry had now crept into Anu’s voice.

  ‘Hmm. Hypothetically, what do you prefer? Him cheating on you or dying of a disease?’ Shwetha asked curiously.

  ‘Dying.’ Anu was confident of her answer. Well, only momentarily. ‘No … I don’t want him dead. If he is cheating on me, I can always make him grovel for my mercy.’

  ‘Which is worse than death for him. Now, how was he with Vicky? Also, why didn’t you ask him?’ Shwetha got into an investigative mode.

  ‘Vicky was asleep when he called. And of course, I asked him. You know Sanju. Mr Opaque. He said it was just work.’ Anu beckoned to the waiter for the bill.

  ‘That is a lie. Sanju belongs to a creed that gets energized by work.’ Shwetha dismissed it immediately.

  ‘I know, right? Good that you agree with me. I will have to nag an answer out of him.’ Anu drained the last sip of her coffee, paid the bill, and got up to leave. ‘I have to go now. First to the library, then to pick up Vicky from school.’

  ‘I got to run too. Keep me posted. But don’t get your knickers in a bunch. Worry doesn’t suit you.’

  Anu and Shwetha went back a decade. In a multi-national bank where Anu worked briefly as a receptionist, Shwetha was a junior officer. She was fresh off her MCom with a gold medal, and Anu her BA in first class. At first, Shwetha had ignored Anu steadfastly. But Anu hadn’t given up. She had brought her coffee, shared her lunch, extended tickets to movies. Finally what worked was Anu having helped Shwetha pick an outfit for a flashy wedding she had to attend. Why had Anu jumped through hoops to become Shwetha’s friend? Anu honestly didn’t know the right answer. Maybe she found Shwetha’s Sameer kind of no-nonsense attitude very appealing, or because she felt Shwetha could use a friend with a sense of fashion. Besides, apart from Anu, Shwetha was the only one at the bank who read. When Anu saw a reader, she always got a bit overexcited.

  Shwetha, as she had admitted later, had thought Anu was an attention-seeking pretty face and she stayed away from those kinds on principle. But soon, again according to Shwetha, their mutual distaste for the office coffee and the boss had made her bond with Anu.

  Anu felt better having spoken to Shwetha. She was not the type to bottle things up. Hurrying up the familiar steps to the library with the musky smell of old books, Anu took a deep breath and waved to the librarian. She had been going to that library for at least fifteen years now. The library had witnessed her transition from reading Enid Blyton to Harry Potter to John Grisham.

  That was where she and Sanju had their first real conversation—where she had mumbled and he had stuttered. Smiling quickly at a few known faces, Anu got busy rummaging through the shelves. She had to find the twentieth book in the Stephanie Plum series. She had been able to find all parts up to the nineteenth and beyond the twenty-first, but not the twentieth. As her search intensified, so did the beeps and dings of a video game. A kid with a mobile! If she could suffer through the boredom of entertaining her son with toys, so should other mothers.

  Anu tapped on the shoulder of the woman next to the child. ‘Can you put your son’s mobile on silent?’

  The woman, with her face buried into a book, replied, ‘I would if he were mine.’

  Tendering an apology, feeling sheepish, Anu went back to her search. Two minutes later, the kid hugged the same woman. ‘Mumma, the phone is not working.’

  What an ingenious liar! While Anu gawked, the woman smirked, fixed the phone, and moved to a different aisle.

  Anu went up to the librarian and whispered. ‘Can you throw that lying woman out?’

  The librarian shook his head. ‘No, ma’am. But you can take this.’ He pushed a brand new Leanne Moriarty towards her, with a conspiratorial smile. ‘This had been reserved for her.’

  Anu was happy with that sweet revenge. Billing her books, she started to the door. The kid had had now moved on to emanating thuds and crash sounds from the phone. Anu stopped. She had to save the world from that auditory assault. Walking up to the
kid, Anu took his phone, turned it off, and left it on a top-shelf. Before he could recover and scream, or smack her cold, Anu handed him a miniature dinosaur she had bought for Vicky. ‘Here, play with this.’

  Anu felt delighted when she looked at the time. She still had good two hours before she needed to pick Vicky. She could spend this time on her bed with the book—could life get any better than that? Well, it could—if you throw in a bag of potato chips to the mix. The Hot Chips shops in every nook and cranny of Bangalore might be a weight watcher’s nightmare, but they were Anu’s delight.

  Walking towards the car, Vicky told her how he had made a clay robot that his friend said looked like a cockroach, but how it really didn’t. Just as Anu began unlocking the car, Vicky spotted McDonald’s, ‘Mumma, I am hungry.’

  But Anu had a perfect afternoon meal planned for the two of them. Vicky was going to be served the chapati and curry the cook had made the previous night. He was a growing boy who needed his nutrition. Meanwhile, she was going to set herself up with a honey cake and aalu bun she had planned to pick up from the bakery on the way home.

  But Vicky went on a repeat mode. ‘I want burrr-ger. I want burrr-ger.’

  Anu relented. She could have the burger now and the cake later.

  ‘Mumma, look, Padma aunty!’ Vicky’s delighted squeal made Anu freeze. That was Sanju’s aunt, who made no attempts to conceal her dislike for Anu. It seemed that Anu’s perfect day had come to a halt.

  ‘Vicky!’ Padma aunty planted a slobbery kiss on Vicky’s cheek, which he duly wiped away. ‘Where are you going?’

  Oh, no! Anu groaned inwardly. She was not ready for Padma aunty’s lecture on how evil fast food was. So Anu quickly intercepted Vicky’s truth with her instant lie. ‘To buy some fruits, aunty.’ Waving her hands in a random direction, Anu added. ‘From that organic store. You know how bad fertilizers are.’

  ‘But that is not an organic store. That is a fertilizer store.’ Padma aunty raised the glasses on her hawk-like nose. Anu was tempted to shove her to the side and run.

  ‘No … Mumma. No fruits. We will eat burgers.’ Vicky! Stop!

  Padma aunty’s eyes narrowed, and nostrils flared. ‘Anu, you must know better than to feed Vicky such harmful foods. You can make tasty and healthy burgers from millets at home.’

  Argh! Millet burgers! Even the thought made Anu’s stomach churn. But she nodded in agreement to get out of there as fast as she could. ‘Yes, yes, aunty. I will take the recipe from you.’ Anu had to find a way to get rid of Padma aunty. Luckily, the woman removed herself from the scene, citing bank work. Phew, between McD and Padma aunty—the winner was, for a change, McD!

  After having the ‘burr-ger’, Vicky fell asleep in the old Santro stuck in the narrow streets of Mudalpalya. It was one of the clogged arterial roads that connected Vijaynagar to the rest of Bangalore. But you would know that only if you, like Anu, lived in Vijaynagar.

  When she neared the Iyengar Bakery, a place that smelled of bread, butter, and belly fat, there was no parking anywhere within a hundred yards. But in Bangalore food was sacred; to buy it, it was okay to stop the vehicle anywhere, even right on someone’s toes. Bearing with the horns blaring at her, Anu double-parked her car and honked. The owner, who looked like an oversized version of the buns he sold, was Anu’s classmate before he failed the seventh standard. Catching her eye, he waved at her with delight and sent his boy to take the order.

  Soon equipped with two honey cakes and two aalu buns, Anu felt pleased. Her heart thudded in excitement thinking of the sweet combination of her bed, the cake, and the book. But Anu’s joy turned out to be very short-lived. Just as she got inside her car, there was a rap on the window. When Anu rolled down the window, staring right down at her was a traffic policeman.

  ‘What, madam? You look educated, and you obstruct traffic like this? Give me your license and registration.’

  Anu prayed to every god she knew for the documents to be in the glove compartment; she had no idea what the car registration even looked like. Anu harboured an aversion to papers of any kind. Managing to find a folder, Anu handed it to the man who had decided to zero-in on her, ignoring a thousand other more worthy traffic offenders.

  ‘Are you joking, madam? These are receipts from hotels.’ The policeman growled but went through the papers intently. ‘You must be very rich.’

  Oh, shoot. Sanju must have been saving them for reimbursement. Now this man was going to ask her for a hefty bribe. Usually, the traffic police looked at her battered Santro and let her go with only a fifty or hundred rupees. Anu now pretended to look for the documents in her handbag, though it never contained anything other than money and chapstick. Then a voice alerted her.

  ‘She is my niece, and she is a good driver. I say you let her off with a warning.’ Anu pinched herself. Padma aunty! Was the woman stalking her? More shockingly, was she defending Anu’s honour? While Anu struggled to recover from those multiple shocks, she heard Padma aunty continue sternly. ‘Look at the child in the backseat. You must have compassion.’

  The policeman, who was twice the size of that frail woman, looked bewildered. Barely finding his voice, he managed to mumble. ‘I am letting her go for you, Ajji. Tell her—’

  Padma aunty cut him off. ‘I am not your grandmother for you to call me Ajji. Now, go. Catch real thieves.’ It didn’t matter to her that traffic police didn’t catch thieves.

  ‘Anu, you just had burgers, and now you are buying the bakery stuff?’ Anu looked at Padma aunty dumbfounded. Was unhealthy eating a bigger crime than not having official papers? Sometimes all a girl needs is a tub of ice cream and a packet of chips to perk her up.

  ‘Sorry, aunty. I will give this away to the maid.’ Anu offered quickly, though she fully intended to consume it entirely by herself.

  ‘Hand it to me. I will give it to our maid.’ Padma aunty fixed a scary stare on Anu. Before she knew it, Anu’s bag of joy was whisked away by a bony hand. Those were the times she called that woman Padzilla in her head. Luckily, Padma aunty was leaving on a trip to Europe soon. Such peace!

  Even if her afternoon was a lost cause, her night was not. She was going to her mother’s house for an overnighter and have a beer with Sameer.

  2

  Tring, triiing.

  ‘Oh no … Oh, no …’ Anu muttered to herself, scrambling for the phone to see the time. Why didn’t she wear a watch for heaven’s sake! It was ten minutes past five! She was late for her yoga class. It had to be Radha, her cook-cum-nanny, at the door. Why hadn’t she set an alarm before napping?

  Extricating herself from Vicky’s tiny arms curled around her, Anu tumbled out of bed. The doorbell had now stopped ringing, which made her sprint to the door. She couldn’t miss Radha! When she opened the door, Radha was standing right there waiting. God bless her!

  ‘I was afraid you left, Radha,’ Anu panted tying her hair up in a knot. There was not a minute to even wear her new pants—which was a bummer because she had bought two pairs of them recently paying full price. If she now bolted like Usain Bolt, she had a chance to make it to the class. She could not miss the class after all the burgers and finger chips she had scarfed down in the afternoon. For that matter, Anu never missed the class, though even after a year, she was just average at even the basic poses. Some in the class could bend as if they had no bones, but Anu had no qualms sitting in Sukhasana and simply watching them. She was not great at it but she loved it, and she loved her teacher.

  Anu’s tryst with Yoga had started quite accidentally. Two years after Vicky was born, when her Lee Cooper jeans still rode up only to her knees, Anu, like any smart phone user worth her salt, had started researching on YouTube—for ways to lose ten kilograms in one day. Well, she was may be just five kilograms overweight, but didn’t hurt to lose more, did it?

  Sweaty and vigorous workouts like jogging or gymming were not to Anu’s liking. She was not big into dieting either. What was life without eating what you liked? Then YouTube had th
rown the word Keto diet at her repeatedly and it sounded good. All you can eat is fat! But unfortunately, that didn’t work for her either. All that butter, cheese and paneer had got her South Indian gut into a tizzy.

  On one lazy YouTube-browsing day, Anu misspelt ‘Keto’ as ‘Keno’ and stumbled upon a waif-like woman bending her body aesthetically while explaining the poses in a beautiful accent. Video after video of the Keno woman, along with hundred other perfectly toned Yoginis (including Shilpa Shetty with a wide grin) propounding Yoga had left Anu mesmerized. And she had begun right away, pulling up Keno on the Smart TV screen. After a week of practising with Keno on YouTube, Anu asked Shwetha to video her poses. To Anu’s horror, she was like an antonym to Keno. Keno’s Triangle pose was Anu’s Slouched duck. Keno’s Lotus bend was Anu’s topple-to-the-ground pose. Shwetha’s uncontrolled laughter had not help the matter. Shwetha still had the video just as a way to blackmail Anu someday.

  Giving up on YouTube tutoring, Anu joined a class. A guru was what she needed. Someone who gently corrected her and made her body supple and toned, like Keno’s. But, the forty-something lithe instructor turned out to be a monster in a white kurta. He shamed people in the most ingenious ways if their bodies did not bend to his will. A few examples of his insults being: ‘You can audition for the role a hunchback’; or, ‘Your arms are so jiggly, they can double as wings.’ His favourite for Anu was, ‘I said touch your toes, not look at them.’ Anu still shuddered at the thought of him. She had stuck on for three months. But after yet again being reprimanded for not holding the toes with her teeth and rubbing the face on the ground, or some such impossible thing, she had quit. He was ruining her zen instead of adding to it.

  But Anu hadn’t given up her hunt for a gently-correcting-guru. She tried another place, but here the instructor made them meditate more and bend less. Anu ended up dozing off through the entire class. After that, there were a few more disappointments. One, where the entire class was a thousand Surya Namaskaras, another, mostly talks on Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras.

  Then, at last, her prayers were answered! A year ago, this extremely gentle woman, Supriyaji, had moved into their apartment complex and sent out an email about starting classes. Anu was the first one to visit her. And, it was love at first sight. Supriyaji was oh-so-perfect. Anu’s dream gently-correcting-guru. Anu felt like Buddha inside and Keno outside after the class.