When everyone had left, Disha secretly checked the wallet she had given to her son again.
She counted the money, and reconfirmed that the amount was two hundred rupees lesser than what she had given him. She dabbled around in the drawer of the wardrobe. She found a few pencils, crayons, and some paper. There were newspaper cuttings of a sportsperson that Disha didn’t recognise. Some files. Some crumpled t-shirts. Some books.
She wiped the sweat on her forehead. She could hear her heart palpitate. She did not find the missing two hundred rupees. Visions of spoilt brats smoking, and drinking passed her troubled mind.
Her son was, otherwise, quite a nice lad. But one never knows what happens when they hit teenage, she told herself. The world is full of distractions. The company can be bad. The environment wasn’t as safe as it used to be when she grew up. She knew that. Access had grown by leaps and bounds.
Then there were girls. The girls of today haven’t remained the way they used to be, she reminded herself. Her mind went back to the permissions she had to seek in advance from her parents, mother mostly, before even going for a cinema. Fathers were not even in the picture.
But the world had changed. Girls had changed and so had the parents of girls. And she knew boys can be boys, after all. Unlike her time, there were lots of options today that a misguided teenager could use two hundred rupees for. She felt her lips quivering at the thought. She sat down on her son’s bed and switched on the fan. She drew a deep breath and straightened her posture.
Disha resolved that she wasn’t going to let things get out of her hand, till it is too late. Before her boy takes any wrong step, she had to intervene. She had read horror stories of boys and girls from well-to-do families doing abhorrent things in schools. It was all in the papers. She wasn’t going to let her son fall prey to them. Money can wreak havoc on kids.
“Kids nowadays have a problem of plenty,” her friend had told her when they had a telephone chat last week.
“Yeah, with all these devices, internet, pocket money and what not, we have to be extra careful,” Disha said in agreement.
“You are still lucky. You have a boy. I am worried for my girl,” her friend said.
Disha didn’t quite agree at that time, but she had stayed silent. At least you can control girls, she thought. You can tell them don’t do this, don’t go there, don’t wear that, she felt. But with boys, you can’t do much. They are out of your control. Girls at least confide with mothers. Boys don’t even talk.
“But I am not letting this happen to me and my child,” Disha resolved. She pulled herself up and focused again on the wallet in the drawer. The two hundred rupees were, still, missing. Why hadn’t he told her about them? It was time for her to try and find out what they had been spent on. If he didn’t tell her, she had to find out on her own. She didn’t like asking him anything. Her son didn’t like being asked anything. The parents of her generation had to meet a new standard.
His wardrobe and the study table were in a mess. She decided to start from there. She first set them right. In the process, she rummaged through some of his clothes and books.
The clothes were all dishevelled. “When will this boy learn to keep clothes properly,” she complained in her mind. Then she set his wardrobe right.
Some of the books had names of his friends and some had funny faces scribbled. “When will this boy pay attention in class?” she thought, and put a palm on her forehead, stealing a smiling glance at the funny faces. She couldn’t deny that some of them were really funny.
She didn’t let herself get distracted and arranged the books in order. She checked each of them quickly as she placed them. She didn’t find anything suspicious in the books.
The bed was next. She checked it thoroughly. For a moment, she felt like there were some notes below the pillow. But they were some postcards. She saw them and placed them back.
She picked up his phone lying on the bed. She checked his phone and found that it was locked. She didn’t know the password. That set an alarm in her head. “Why does he need to lock his phone?” she pondered impatiently, raising her eyebrows. “What does he want to hide from his mother?” she thought to herself. Her imagination and her worries didn’t have any limits.
She fiddled with the phone but didn’t know what she was looking for. Whatever it was, she wasn’t finding it. She glanced at the clock and realised that Sid will be back soon. She paced down the living room with tight lips, waiting for him to come.
Sid went straight to his room when he came home.
“How is everything in such perfect order?” he mused at first glance. He saw his study table first, then the wardrobe. His eyes fell on his bed next. All of them were set right, as good as new.
“It’s mom again,” he reckoned. “Why does she keep doing this?” he crunched his mouth. A revolting frown of rebellion appeared on his brows and forehead. “Has she found out about the missing two hundred rupees?” he wondered, raising one eyebrow.
“Come here for snacks,” Disha yelled from the kitchen.
Sid didn’t pay attention. He wasn’t very hungry. “Besides, she will just ask me for a report on what I did all day now,” he mused. “I am not a kid. Why doesn’t she trust me more?” he pondered stretching his lower lip in a pout and pulling his hair alone with both his hands.
“Sid, come here I said,” Disha howled meanwhile. “The food will get cold,” she shouted.
For a moment, Sid thought of stepping out. He stood in front of the mirror on his cupboard and made a grimace. “What a pain!” he mumbled to himself. “I can’t even tell her that I have eaten,” he murmured under his breath. “She will start her investigation and cross examination again. No point,” he concluded speaking to himself.
As he turned around from the mirror to step out of his room, his eye caught sight of a brown mark on his shirt. He looked at that mark closely. He decided that he couldn’t take a chance of stepping out now. She would find out when she saw that mark. And her unending questions would begin.
He rushed into his bathroom at once and removed his shirt.
“I am having a bath. I am sticky due to my games class today,” he yelled after closing the door.
Behind the door, Sid spent the next ten minutes washing his shirt. The brown mark on his shirt had to go off. Otherwise she would check the shirt even in the washing machine. It looked like a cigarette mark. He knew she would suspect that’s where the two hundred rupees went.
“Avoidable, simply avoidable,” he thought and scrubbed his shirt harder.
“No use telling her the real reason. She would not have allowed it anyway,” he convinced himself. “That’s why I don’t ask. And now she won’t believe in any case,” he fumed at himself while scrubbing the brown mark.
“Go away, brown mark,” he muttered. It finally went away, and the shirt was spotless again.
After coming out, he changed, and dropped the shirt in the washing machine surreptitiously placing it at the bottom and went out to have his snacks.
“How was your school day?” she probed.
“Usual,” he answered.
“What did you do?”
“Nothing much.”
“Classes?”
“As per timetable.”
“Ate?”
“Yes, lunch box.”
“Friend’s?”
“No. Mine.”
“Went anywhere?”
“No.”
“And after school?”
“Home.”
After the snacks, he came back to his room and picked his phone. Disha followed him.
“Why do you lock your phone?” she confronted him.
“Mom, you fiddled with my phone?” he fumed.
“No, I just saw you had a password.”
Sid kept the phone away and gave her a glare. Disha looked away at his phone.
The photos of the chocolate brownie with ice cream that Sid had treated his friends to, during their escape after bunking the last class in school awaited him on his phone.
Disha worried about the missing two hundred rupees as she walked to her room. She heard Sid’s laughter from the adjacent room. She wondered if she had missed something else.
***
A Bad Bargain is also part of Melange.