The chawl was so cramped that one could not just smell but also clearly make out what was cooking in another’s room. The cooker whistled three times. Chhaya turned one burner of the gas stove to a lower flame while also stirring the cauliflower potato curry, her husband’s favourite, on the other.
“Chhaya, have you finished the curry?” her friend and neighbour Meera yelled from her room. “The serial will start in two minutes.” Meera cleared the floor making space for Chhaya to join.
“You watch it, and tell me what happens,” Chhaya replied, wiping her wet hand with the end of her sari, and putting a spoon of salt in the curry. “He will come soon. I have to make the roti.”
“After twelve years, you are still a good wife,” Meera teased her. “I am keeping the volume high so you can hear it.”
The two neighbours had the habit of watching their favourite evening soap together. But today, Chhaya hadn’t got the time to cook earlier. She heard some dialogues that fell on her ear off and on, while the aroma of the curry and the dal filled the room. By the time, the soap was over, she had finished making the roti.
“Shri should be punished,” Meera scowled, coming into Chhaya’s room.
“Why? What happened?” Chhaya asked raising her eyebrows.
“Not your Shri. The one in the serial, I mean. With a nice wife like Janhavi at home, why does he keep looking around here and there?”
“Yeah true. But Janhavi should also understand. She has come back from an accident, isn’t it?”
“So what? If my husband looked around like that Shri, I would punch him right between his eyes,” Meera said, raising a fist.
Chhaya smiled at her. “It is just a serial. Such things don’t happen in real life.”
“I know but just telling you. Nice curry,” Meera inhaled the aroma. “You are an expert cook. Teach me how you do it, please. Did you add any special ingredient?”
“Ok, I will tell you tomorrow. Now, I am busy.”
“Yes, I know, I know. Preparing your husband’s dinner, no?” Meera giggled and stepped out.
After ten minutes, when her husband came back home from work, the first thing he asked her to make, after parking his two-wheeler and before going to the bathroom, was a cup of tea.
The small wall between their chawl and the four-storeyed residential apartment building next to it functioned as the parking area for the chawl’s two-wheelers and bicycles.
The small stretch in front of the wall was the only open area in the chawl. It was where children ran when bored in their houses, men loitered when troubled by their wives, and on rare occasions, older people walked after their meals. Chhaya’s house was the last one overlooking the small stretch.
When her husband Shripad came out of the bathroom, he went to the window that overlooked that stretch and the building in front. He lit the incense stick in front of the idol of God, sat on the chair, and opened the newspaper for a quick read. When he looked up from it and glanced outside, his eyes fell on a young woman drying her hair in the first-floor balcony of the building in front.
She had just finished her bath and the fragrance of her shampoo lilted through the air in the small distance between her balcony and Shripad’s window. With her neck tilted and her bare arm above it, she blew the dryer into her wet hair which flew. It gave her the appearance of a diva.
Shri fixed his gaze on her. From one level below her on the ground floor, he could see her feet emerging from her blue-green dress. For a moment, she noticed him stare at her. His brown eyes were bewitched by her cat-grey eyes. She was a decade or so younger. In the twilight, those eyes enthralled him even more. She looked away after a few seconds, but he didn’t.
He was mesmerised by her beauty, the one he could see and the one he couldn’t but was sure existed deep inside her. He remained silent, hearing his pounding heart and throbbing pulse.
It was Chhaya whose voice got him out of his reverie.
“Tea,” she said and placed a cup and saucer next to him on the windowpane.
He picked up the cup of tea without shifting his gaze from the woman and sipped it.
The woman turned her neck as she dried the other side of her long brown-black tresses. She lifted her arms above her head to part her hair. Shri remained unmoved, silent, beholding what he saw.
“I have made your favourite cauliflower potato curry,” Chhaya said while she wiped the dishes, getting them ready for dinner.
“Ok great,” Shri said, still sipping his tea with his attention still fixed on the balcony above.
“And I made rotis also in the evening today, so that they remain soft and warm,” she added.
He nodded without any response. Chhaya glanced at Shri. “Will you have dinner after tea?”
Shripad did not reply. Chhaya peered at him. He realised it. He turned his attention to the newspaper in a hurry.
“I am saying something. Did you hear? There is nothing new in the newspaper,” Chhaya yelled.
“Yes, yes.. I heard. The curry, I will eat it,” he said. He quickly finished his tea and folded the newspaper. The woman in the balcony had finished drying her hair. She had stepped back inside her apartment. Shripad went to the washbasin. Chhaya scrutinized him, head to toe, as he walked.
Chhaya went towards the window to check the newspaper. She peeked out of the window while picking the empty teacup and saucer. A needle of suspicion passed through her mind.
She took the teacup into the kitchen. She noticed that she had forgotten to put sugar in the tea. She emptied the last few drops left in the teacup into her mouth to confirm it.
She turned around to her husband. “Shri, did the tea have sugar?”
Shripad fumbled with the napkin in his hand and said, “Oh, yes, it was sweet. I was going to tell you.”
Chhaya stayed silent. She slammed the hot curry and roti on his plate and banged the lid on the vessels. Before she joined Shri for dinner, she walked towards the window and peeped outside.
She saw a young woman in a sleeveless blue nightgown hanging her wet towel on the windowsill of the balcony on the first-floor apartment stealing a glance at her and then turning away in a hurry.
***