“Sunny, don’t keep the sweet biscuits with the salty biscuits, they get soft,” Perpetual shouted from the kitchen.
“Really?” Sunita replied from the living room.
“Ya, my mummy used to always keep them separately,” she said, standing over the counter separating sweet bakery biscuits and Cream Crackers into two large stainless steel dabbas. She kept one of them under the counter where it would be difficult for bad knees to have it picked up and placed the other on the table.
“You got another dabba? Or I’ll climb and get from the cupboard? Nana?” The sun was pouring into the kitchen, it lit the room orange. At five o’clock every evening, the light reflected its season.
“No, no. I got. I put them in already.” Perpetual walked into the living room and sat on the sofa beside Sunita’s supine form. She caught her granddaughter’s feet, which the girl had bent to her chest to make space for the woman, and placed them on her lap. She held Sunita’s toes and rocked them back and forth in the breeze of an electric fan, which was brought out every May when the humidity stretched itself too comfortably through the house.
“Besides, your papa will open the dabba and only pick up the sweet biscuits. We’ve got to keep them separately.”
Sunita snorted, “I’ll get more of the nicer Cream Crackers for him.”
Perpetual shared her dark complexion with her husband, and growing up together, their friends called them mud. Much like the ground they played on, their skin in the sun glowed with a brilliant red hue. It looked as rich as thick red mud, and when it rained, as fresh as the ground when it broke and loosened with heavy drops.
Even now, ripened with age, their skin was lined like cracked earth. ‘Mud’ resembled them more than nana and papa, Sunita thought whenever she called them that.
The living room was elongated from the front door to the window where the sun barely made it past the sofa in the middle. An electric lamp flickered red in the dark corner of the room. Above it was a print of the Sacred Heart. Its gold frame competed with the paint emerging from Jesus’ heart and head. The hues surrounding the altar told her it was time for tea, and there was nothing to do at this hour but have it.
“I’ll make tea? I don’t think papa is going to get up anytime soon,” Sunita said.
“No, no. Let him get up and make it. He should get used to working in the garden, can’t get tired so easily, and sleep all day. If he fires the gardener, he’s going to replace the man himself,” Perpetual said. “Okay, Sunny, go make tea. I won’t get sleep if I have it later.”
Sunita put down her phone and walked into the glorious light of the kitchen. Perpetual got up and walked to the room where Arnold laid in deep sleep. She opened the door, switched on the lights, and walked away.
In the kitchen, Sunita looked out at the terrace of their flat. In a forsaken suburb in Mumbai, theirs was the first of five floors. The awkward structuring of the building pushed their balcony further away from the road it faced and left the roof of the lobby partially empty. Minor construction turned the balcony into what can be called a terrace since it was open to the sky. But the new wall was never painted, and the bare concrete couldn’t even shy away from passers-by.
The weekend was quiet, and a young Sunita felt lost in its silence. She stood in the kitchen, still looking out into the small space, breathing lightly and not making tea.
The terrace was filled with small trees and shrubs potted in anything that could hold them. A large pukar in an old commode, red aglaonemas in shallow drums, areca palms in black plastic pots hidden in wooden barrels, were placed across a floor of broken tiles. Plants were bought only if they could replace old ones because the space couldn’t afford new additions. Once too grown, plants were uprooted and given away, and new things grew from the old mud in pots.
This garden was an entity, almost the backdrop to Sunita’s childhood. Most of her memories were placed in the middle of this space. But she couldn’t recall any of them, standing in the kitchen staring right at it. The garden was still playing its role, too present for it to be reminisced about.
“Sunny, tea make no,” Perpetual walked in, waiting for her husband to follow her into the kitchen.
“Can’t let me sleep five minutes also,” Arnold’s voice reached the kitchen before he did.
“What five minutes, papa. You’ve been asleep since three. You’re not going to get sleep tonight.”
“Ya, already he barely sleeps at night,” Perpetual added in.
“Then let me sleep now!” He shouted to no one in particular.
In a while the three were seated in silence, staring off into different corners of the garden outside, drinking tea under the fan.
“Why did you fire the gardener?” Sunita asked.
Blowing on his tea to cool it, Arnold took a long sip before he spoke, “I didn’t fire him from his job. I gave him a firing, and then he didn’t come the next morning.”
“If you yell at him then, of course, he’ll leave and not come,” Perpetual countered. “Now you only sit and do my gardening.”
“Yes, but why did you yell at him?” Sunita perpetuated.
Arnold hobbled over to the counter and slowly bent his knees as low as it took him, picked up the dabba with the sweet biscuits and brought it back to the table. “Because the man clogged the drain with dried leaves again. How many times to tell him. When I was washing the terrace, it flooded.”
“Who is asking you to wash the terrace? He’s doing that, and he’s not flooding it like you.” Perpetual let him take a biscuit before she shut the box and pushed it closer to Sunita.
“Because he is not washing it properly,” Arnold said and turned his eyes to Sunita, raising his eyebrows and chin towards the biscuit box.
“No!” she laughed, “You already ate enough.”
“Okay fine. Now you do his work in the morning and your watering in the evening also. And then sleep in between the full day,” Perpetual said, opening the box with the Cream Crackers and handing a few to Arnold. “Take these.You can’t keep eating bakery biscuits. They’re only full of sugar.”
“These are dry,” he retorted.
“Rubbish, not the ones that Sunny gets. You like these, they’re from…,” she looked at Sunita.
“One shop close to my office. They get it directly from the factory, so I think they’re fresher,” she lied.
As they sipped their tea in silence, Sunita spoke, “I’ll be your gardener, nana. You pay me. It’ll be so much calmer to just garden and not take so much tension about work.”
“Seven thousand a month would be calmer?” Perpetual said.
She noted Sunita’s silence and responded, “That’s just how much labour makes. Seven is supposed to be a fair amount.”
“Only in this universe.”
“You don’t worry about work and money. We will take care of your salary. It’s our guarantee to you,” Arnold announced, his voice bolder than usual.
Sunita felt ashamed of her complaint and looked away, staring in the direction of the garden.
She knew what Arnold meant. Perpetual and Arnold ran their house from the rent of a second flat. Its rent was the assurance of a decent life after Arnold’s retirement a few years ago. They had worked and saved far too much to pay off the loan for this second house. It was leased but also finally it was theirs. Many times, Sunita had overheard them speak of it as if it belonged to her, calling it ‘Sunny’s flat’.
The words echoed in her mind but it sounded wrong. The rent would make for a decent income, she thought. She could quit her day job and could turn gardener. Looking out into the terrace, her thoughts played out in front of her. But seven thousand was the only amount in her calculations that felt earned.
Before her thoughts concluded into a response, Arnold got up to collect empty teacups.
Perpetual continued immediately after Arnold. “Yes, baby, you don’t worry about anything. What salary and work you’re worried about. Papa and I got everything for you only,” she laughed. “So much tension you take.”
There was a bowl of green mangoes and limes left on the table waiting to be diced and thrown into two pickles, one sweet, the other sour and spicy. Sunita made circles in the dust settled next to it.
The sun had moved lower. Arnold placed the cups in the sink and walked back to the bedroom to get his chappals. It was time to water the plants. After a few moments’ hesitations, Sunita ran after him. She poked her head into the room, covering most of her face with the door, and said, “Papa, don’t do anything about my salary. You both don’t do anything.”
Arnold, amused, asked, “What not to do?”
“You know, old mud!” she retorted and walked away hurriedly, unsure if she made her point.
“Who are you calling old? I’m seasoned!” Arnold bellowed back at his granddaughter.
She walked back to the living room and picked up her phone to order the Cream Crackers shipped from somewhere else in the world.
hues and words 