Memento The Teacher’s Common Room door opens to a surprise for Jaanvi, a pleasant one at that. The 20 X 20 feet room, known mostly for an insipid silence amid the vibrant din of the campus, gloomy tube-lights, antique ceiling fans, mammoth bookshelves along the walls, empty chairs and desks with books and notebooks scattered on them most of the day, while their occupants, the teachers, would be engaged in delivering classroom sessions, now looks packed with people – senior students, colleagues and support staff. Often synonymous with inactivity, except for tea-sipping, cookies-munching, lesson-planning, assignment-checking tit-bits of conversation spells among colleagues, this room is now buzzing with movement and activity. Jaanvi’s colleagues and students, mostly known faces, are engrossed in candid, enthusiastic group chats, as if they have met one another after ages. The room has been decorated with balloons and streamers, freshly lit with white CFL bulbs. The congregation

Cursed The doctor’s appointment was at 2:00 PM. Nisim told Jaanvi that he would be home by noon. It was five past one, and he was still not back. Nisim was great, the way he was, except for being late for household needs. Jaanvi had been vocal about it, right from the time she had moved in to the Bhattacharya household. She never wanted Nisim to change because of her. She would never want to. But she definitely wanted him to be a bit more responsible towards their household needs. He managed to be on time on some occasions, but then he would mostly be in a hurry. The doctor’s personal assistant categorically asked them to be on time while confirming the appointment. They were late by ten minutes the previous month, and the doctor had refused to see her outright. It was only after a lot of requests that he had agreed, that too, reminding every two minutes during the check-up that he was getting late for a C-section surgery at City Heart Nursing Home.Now, every passing minute

Worldly Wise One morning, when Nishant was barely three months old, Papa and Mummy came to see him. Jaanvi opened the door to them, but was in a fix whether to let them in. Ma called them in. She not only called them in, but offered them to sit and also brought Nishant to them. Papa held Nishant in his hands for a while and then gave him to Mummy. The next moment, both of them were in tears, crying like children.Jaanvi was sulking within. Those tears didn’t mean anything to her. She was living in a strange, robotic world. A world which looked perfectly normal from outside, but whose insides burnt like hell every moment. She waited for Papa and Mummy’s collective weeping to come to an end and their tears to dry up, while Ma excused herself to the kitchen to make tea for them.When Papa and Mummy’s sobs mellowed down they kept looking at Jaanvi. Perhaps in anticipation that she would say something. She didn’t. Rather, she didn’t want to. Mummy’s curse had muted her.Ma enter

Beyond Binaries The ninth and the tenth days have been the busiest in terms of visitors. These were mostly repeat-visitors, who were doing a little more than paying just courtesy visits. Relatives, friends, and Ma’s close aides in her office. So, whatever means I tried to keep myself aloof, I had to come out more often than the previous three days. Thankfully, the what-happened-to-her questions had gone down significantly by then. These visitors wanted to help us in whatever way possible. My friend Rajib wanted to take an entire week off from work, but I said it would be fine if he made himself available on the eleventh and the twelfth days. I think he didn’t quite like the idea. What was he up to? Be by my side, like Ranjita was by Jahnobi’s. It would be rude to tell him or for that matter, anybody of those visitor, that they could be of greatest help to me, only if they let me be on my own.I missed Biswa though. He is in a remote village in the bordering areas of Rajasthan

Missed Turns Nineteen days ago, I was greeted here, in the same airport, with the concerned and impatient voice of Jahnobi over the phone, “Have you reached?” Junali’s full and wide smile and the whiskey-dipped lines written for her transformed into a maze of eerily quiet corridors in in the main building of Gauhati Medical College Hospital. Every minute counted during my hunt for the single occupancy cabin where my mother was admitted. Even after a running-around for about ten minutes, following the directions of the old man sitting at the May I Help You counter, I was, kind of, lost in the maze of alleys, corridors, staircases and closed rooms in that mammoth building. “Yeah, reached, but kind of lost. Where’s the cabin?” I asked her. I wasn’t sure whether Jahnobi expected an assurance of my presence, or if she was just reminding me of the urgency – every moment can be the last moment“Just ask someone which is Ruplekha Baideu’s room. People know that she’s here.” I could