On Roommates
The next day, Divya and I had lunch together in
office, something we rarely did. She had left home early in the morning and
wanted an early lunch, and she asked me to join her. She had news.
“I’m going to stay on for another month,” she
said. “There’s this project that’s just come in: the boss is very eager for me
to handle it. It will only be over in early January, so I’ve agreed to stay on till
then.”
“Are you okay with that?” I asked, looking up
from the delicious aloo parathas her
mom had packed for our lunch.
“Well, I did want to have a few weeks off,” she
said. “I was looking forward to spend some time with my parents before I go
away. But I’m taking time off anyway, after the wedding. I don’t know when I’ll
get a work permit and be able to work in the US. Plus… Samarth’s always been the
best of managers, I don’t want to let him down.”
“Well, your wedding’s on 23rd January,
right? So you’ll have enough time to prepare… But I think if you want more
time, you should get it. Don’t let them wear you down. You’ve given them enough
notice anyway.”
“It’s all right,” she shrugged. “I’ve agreed
already.”
I was a little annoyed at this way she had of
giving in, of changing decisions for no other reason than someone else’s
persistence.
I hadn’t had much luck finding a roommate so
far. I preferred having someone I knew and liked, but there had been no such
candidates yet. I had tried to persuade Kim to move in with me, but she
preferred staying in Delhi with her friends and near her boyfriend.
I was a little fussy about roommates. I had
lived away from home since I was eighteen: the first three years at college in
Guwahati, the next nearly-two at my b-school in Delhi, and the last seven
months working in Gurgaon. I had had many roommates in that time, and I had
realized how important your roommate was to your happiness. There was so much
potential for disagreement: money (spent on groceries or other shared items),
noise, light (when to turn it off or keep it on), cleanliness, sharing each
other’s things, late hours, visitors – and if the roommate had little sense of
boundary, you got unsolicited advice or opinions on your habits and your love
life.
The last few months had been relatively easier,
because Divya and I shared a flat, not a room, and both of us had somewhat kept
to ourselves, rarely sharing thoughts with or questioning each other.
But the best roommate I’d ever had had been
Rizvi, in the first year of b-school. She was never interfering or judgemental.
She never hinted that I should tidy my bed or my desk, though she had been meticulously
tidy herself. She never turned on the lights when I was sleeping, and never
insisted on talking when I wanted to be quiet. Her only problem was that she
smoked – but I liked her too much to even ask her to desist from smoking inside
my room. After some time, I had started sharing her cigarettes. They soothed me
after a long tiring day, and we used to sit together by the window, smoking and
talking.
Mrigank had resented my friendship with Rizvi.
They were in the same class, and I later suspected he was afraid she would
reveal too much of him to me. He claimed she was a ‘bad influence’ on me. I
remember telling him that I wanted a boyfriend, not a father. And he retorted
that if I’d had a father to begin
with, I would have grown up to be a better person.
There was no way I could forgive that, but I
was too proud to show him how much it hurt. I did not react at the time, but over
the next few weeks, I took malicious pleasure in making him jealous and
uncomfortable. When I finally told him I wanted to break up, he seemed
relieved.
Rizvi and I, on the contrary, had remained
friends. She got a job in Delhi, and visited me in the hostel every few weeks. Rizvi
had hit it off with Raghav too, and during our summer training, when Raghav and
I had been the only ones from our gang who had got internships in Delhi, the
three of us had frequently gone to the movies together. Since I moved to
Gurgaon, however, I had only met her twice, but she sometimes called to tell me
about her troubles with her boss, or about her latest boyfriend.
The early lunch left
me feeling hungry in the evening, and I pinged Divya to ask if she wanted to
join me in the cafeteria.
“I don’t have much
money,” she confessed when she met me. “I forgot to withdraw money on my way
here.”
My jaw dropped. “Oh,
my god. I’d forgotten I have barely any money left either. In my case, though –
I didn’t forget to withdraw it. I don’t have any left in my account.”
“Well, the salary
should come in tomorrow.” Divya spoke as if of a train coming into a station.
“But what do we do now?”
We dug into all
corners of our wallets, digging out coins and spare notes and pouring them onto
the table. At the end, we had two ten-rupee notes, one five-rupee coin and two two-rupee
coins from her, and one twenty-rupee note, one five-rupee note, three
five-rupee coins, a two-rupee coin and two one-rupee coins from me.
“That makes 71,” I
said. “It should be enough.”
I asked for a
chicken puff – twenty-five rupees – and Divya asked for a vegetarian burger,
which was twenty rupees. We poured ourselves tea from the machine.
“I wish they would
accept credit cards here,” whined Divya.
“I wish I had a credit card,” I
countered.
“Why don’t you?” she
asked.
“Well, I applied for
one last time the bank guy came, but he said I was below the income threshold,”
I said a little sheepishly.
“What rubbish!” said
Divya, getting worked up on my behalf. “That’s stupid. You know what, I’ll call
up my credit card people and refer you.”
“Never mind,” I
said. “That’ll be one more bill to pay, more statements to keep track of.”
“Yeah, but you get
rewards for spending. Plus, it’ll be easier to book tickets online. You just
talk to them and see. You can decide later.”
“Sure,” I said
without enthusiasm. Our food arrived and for a few moments neither of us spoke
a word.
7 comments:
baaaahhhh.. too short too short.. I want to keep reading :-(
Asha: Wait a week?
Hi Unmana,
Have been a silent reader all this while, this story is unfolding brilliantly, and I anxiously wait for Mondays to read it!!!!!!
You write amazingly well!!!!!
This chapter is too short :(
Waiting for the next one eagerly, please please make it nice and long.....
Oops, forgot to mention my name in the comment
Deepa
Agree with others .... too short :(
Another week wait uh ??
Deepa: I'm so glad you decided to delurk! Thank you very much for the kind words.
CA: Sorry to disappoint. I've been thinking of a way to make it up - if I can sneak time off my workday tomorrow.
Hi Unmana,
Have been following your "The Voices in My Head". Your writing is amazing. The first thing I read every monday is your blog.
Aparna
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