Dil Beparwah | ✔

four

||CHAPTER 4||
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┊V A R U N┊

I couldn't be bothered by the minuscule task of making myself the perfect cup of tea Monday morning- whatever was left of it anyway. I knew it way way past the time considered apt for morning walks when the bright sun rays hit me square on my face.

Why were the curtains open again?

The answer became clear when a strain in my neck made me want to stretch my muscles- my arm knocking off the ashtray from the coffee table. I did not want to look at the mess it made on the carpet. Sleeping on the couch was always a bad idea. In any case, that crossed off trying to make my bed off the list.

Yawning, I got up, walking toward the small balcony to get myself some Vitamin D. Housing in Bombay was not for the weak hearted and my Gujarati land lady and neighbor, Mrs. Parmar was not a kind lady. Well, she wasn't cruel either, but she definitely did not harbour neighbourly feelings for me.

"Kem chho Baa!" I waved at her, flaunting whatever little Gujarati I had picked up on, "Badda saru?". Sitting on her swing in her small porch that she had decorated with a bunch of potted plants, the sixty-something year old woman was sipping her morning tea. Her late husband had been a friend of my... grandfather's, and that had been the only reason why she had rented out the first floor of her tenement to me.

From the expression that contorted her face, I knew that I wasn't the good in her morning. She looked away, grimacing, "Faari thi aa shirt periya wagar aawi gyo modu uthaine."

I was pretty sure she had commented something about me sunbathing without a shirt on, but the only thing I was focusing on at the moment was the bone china kettle on the small table in front of her and the cup of piping hot tea in her hand. "Chaay ki badi khushboo aa rahi hai. Aapne banayi hai?"

In spite of having spent more than a decade in Bombay, her Gujarati accent had not seen a decline."Kyu deekra, daaroo se mann nai bhara?"

I could only grin back. "Daaru aapke saath peeyunga, toh zarur mann bhar jayega. Filhaal chaay se shuruat kare?"

"Modhu toh kaatar ni jem chale je chhokora nu! Koi sharam-viram nathi!" She chided, launching into full blown Gujarati. Still, no clue what curses I was being renamed with, but hey, Baa was cute and I was going to go downstairs and pour myself a cup of tea and probably grab some undheyo for breakfast.

The shrill ringing of my phone caught my attention, interrupting the lovely conversation. Promising Baa my company, I strode back into the drawing room to answer.

"The sun's been up only for a few hours, don't you people crave a break?" I joked, of course. It was Gaurish, one of the over-enthusiastic junior employees. He was supposed to work even when he was fast asleep. Reporters don't sleep anyway.

"The big one, actually. And this one is huge."

Sure sounded like it. I raised my left arm, sniffing my arm-pit to gauge if a shower was required before I hauled my asš back to work. "I'm listening."

"I got some lead on the Mukherjee-Jaiswal merger," Gaurish said. It was the newest merger-deal in the interior business that had been acquiring a lot of attention, the same one Mihir had been queasy about. "Our next issue is going to be wrecking a lot of homes."

The deodorant had to do for today.