Arranged Divorce

Kavita, the Firebolt

The sun had already colored most of the Stamford sky orange by the time Kavita got dressed. On looking at her bright phone screen, she let out a curse and threw her coat and tie on her left arm, put a scrunchie on her left wrist, dabbed a deep shade of brown on her lips, picked up her phone, flung her bag onto her shoulder and was almost ready to go when she turned around and started rummaging through the apartment looking for something.

There was stress owed to her knowing that she will be marked 'late' in the attendance register, yet again. Just like her daughter, the 7-year-old who is frequently cited as her reason for being regularly unpunctual. On finding what was so important that she had plundered the place for it, she put her feet inside the pair of shoes that were lying on the floor and dashed out of the apartment.

The door took its time closing and she was halfway across the hall when her neighbor, an Indian lady in her 50s, eyed it suspiciously. Sairaah waved at her to hurry from inside the lift, with a backpack and lunch in hand.

Ugh, not today Mrs. Khanna, she thought and smiled at her. "I forgot to lock it again, how silly am I?" she exclaimed loudly for the lady to listen and rushed back to the apartment. It took her another two minutes to find the keys and lock the door.

Once in the lift, she opened her chatbox and typed. I had to lock the door, Mrs. Khanna was out again. You have the keys?

Yes. Came the reply instantly.

Upon reaching the ground floor; the little girl hurried over to the wall where the mailboxes were. She opened their designated box and collected the mails while her mother came around with the car.

It had become their ritual for the past year since Sairaah could make out the words. Like a morning exercise, the girl recited what was written on three envelopes from the bank, one from her previous employer, a couple for magazine subscriptions, all these without any difficulty. Kavita was sure her daughter was going to turn out to be the intelligent Indian kid, mostly because she had the genes for it, at least half of them.

Then she held out an envelope, looking at it with confusion, trying to enunciate, but in vain. There, talk of the devil. Kavita was convinced that this other half of her genes could drag her to the street life and starve her to death. Everything that she had done starting from the day she heard about the pregnancy, had been to keep that from happening. She looked at the road, ensured no one was around, and took a look at it.

"It says 'realtor', remember we were talking about shifting into a bigger house?" Kavita told her. She nodded and put it in the important pile.

Five minutes later when they reached in front of the school, Sairaah jumped out of the car instantly and started running. Once the girl was inside, her mother shed the responsible driver look and drove off like she was racing a car in a virtual reality game, only slowing down when she reached the parking lot.

With a dozen items on her arms and shoes still untied, she made her way to the building that read MARZ advertising and Co. Once inside, she greeted the receptionist and quickly waved at people in the open workspace on the way to her office. Anna, the intern handed her two cups of Indian Chai and placed on the table the reports that she had to go over. She picked up the first cup and spent the next fifteen minutes preparing for a presentation that her team had spent five days to make and one to revise.

They called her Firebolt here, mostly because on her first Halloween appearance at the office she had turned up with a broom in hand and a sticker on her black dress that said 'FIREBOLT'. But it stuck because everyone she worked with spoke about her speed and efficiency.

The AV room had already been set up for the meeting, Anna nervously waved at her to come over. With the second cup of tea in her hand, she went inside to find out that they had new clients today. She smiled at them, knowing that by the end of this presentation they wouldn't know what hit them.