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Paati ... Somu Thatha said you were here ...’

      She looked around the roof terrace, her face flushed. Shaku cleared her throat.

      ‘Kids! Nina, Alisha! Let’s go down. It’s very hot up here; come and have some tender coconut water.’

      The two girls ran out in front of their aunt, who followed them down the stairs.

      ‘Go slowly!’ Kummi Paati heard her call out. ‘If you fall down, you’ll break your heads!’

      Shaku’s voice trailed off into the distance and Kummi Paati looked up at the young girl. Sanjana lived with her parents in the flat right above Kummi Paati. She was what Kummi Paati considered a nice young girl. None of this partying and drinking, or going out late at night. Not, she thought, that such behaviour was considered wrong nowadays. Things had changed. She had never allowed her children to drink or go out late at night, but these were different times.

      She wondered, though, if her children had done these things anyway. She had always speculated about what they got up to when they slept over at their friends’ houses ... and really, if they were going to do such things, wouldn’t it have been better for her to know about it?

      Her thoughts were interrupted by Sanjana.

      ‘Kummi Paati, I need your help. Please.’

      ‘Of course, kanna,’ she said. ‘What happened?’

      Sanjana sighed, clearly unsure of where to begin. Then she plunged in.

      ‘Kummi Paati, you have to convince my father to let me go to Pune.’

      ‘To Pune? Why? What’s in Pune?’

      ‘I’ve got admission into S P Jain, Kummi Paati.’

      S P Jain was a highly prestigious institute for management studies.

      ‘I wrote the entrance exam this year ... I never expected to get in. But then I got called for the interview. Dad didn’t want me to go for it, actually, but I went in the morning before work one day. And then last week, I heard from them ... I got in, Kummi Paati!’

      Kummi Paati smiled broadly.

      ‘Congratulations, ma, that is very, very good news! Your parents must be so –’

      She broke off, remembering what Sanjana had said earlier.

      ‘No, Kummi Paati, they aren’t. Dad says he doesn’t want me to go. He says – he says he wants to start looking for a husband for me.’

      ‘Hmm,’ Kummi Paati said. ‘But he can find you a husband after you study also.’

      ‘I told him that, but he says boys’ families don’t want a girl who has studied so much. He wants me to learn how to cook over the next two years rather than do my MBA.’

      Kummi Paati frowned.

      ‘But he never had a problem when you wanted to work. Why suddenly?’

      ‘I asked him that, and he said he wanted to give me some time to do what I wanted before I settled down. But he never told me that I have three years to do what I wanted, after which he was going to turn me into a glorified servant and marry me off!’

      Kummi Paati wondered for a moment if that is what people thought of her as – a glorified servant. But then, what else could she have done but cook and manage the household? That was what women of her generation did. And she supposed it was kind of like being a servant. Her work was never really done. Even now, at the age of sixty-five, she woke at 6 am to commence the kitchen work. Her husband had started to reduce his office hours. He spoke of retiring in a few years. But that was not an option for her, was it? She didn’t have that kind of job.

      Still, if that’s all she was, why ask for her advice at all?

      ‘I need your help, Kummi Paati. People listen to you. If you tell him I should go, he will listen to you.’

      People did listen to her, she thought. Perhaps it was the years of experience. But no, Neela, her best friend, was two years older than her and no one asked for her advice. No one asked Somu Thatha either. So perhaps she was more than a glorified servant. Perhaps she was a ... an advice giver? A problem solver? Or maybe people considered her a busybody instead. She wasn’t sure.

      She looked up to see Sanjana looking at her hopefully, expectantly. Suddenly, whatever name you gave this role that she played ceased to matter. All that mattered was this young girl who needed her help.

      ‘Well, let’s see what I can do. Give me a few days. I’ll speak to him.’

       * * *

      It was two days before the vadams were dry enough to give her a reason to visit her upstairs neighbours. It was a plausible enough excuse to stop by – older ladies like herself would often share around homemade food items. This would then allow for the start of a gentle conversation, perhaps some coffee – a pleasant enough way to pass the time when one had time to kill.

      Sanjana’s father, Kumar, would likely tell her the news himself. He was that kind of man. Every time she visited him, he would mention the most recent purchase he had made – a new fridge or home appliance – or tell her about his latest work achievements – a promotion, occasionally, or a situation where he had got the better of a colleague. Most of the time, she had noticed, this was a junior colleague.

      She tapped on the wrought-iron door of the apartment. All the apartments had two doors – a solid wooden one and one made of wrought-iron bars and covered with a flyscreen. Most people left the wooden door open in the morning and evening, when neighbours were likely to drop by. So much easier to see who was visiting than using the tiny peephole that was too high for most ladies to reach anyway.

      ‘Come in, come in, Kummi Paati,’ Mrs Kumar said. ‘Sit down. You haven’t dropped by for some days now. Your grandchildren must be keeping you busy!’

      ‘Oh yes, they are. Very active girls, both of them, and they keep asking me to cook this or that.’

      She produced the dried vadams.

      ‘That’s actually why I dropped by. I made some vadam at home the other day and thought you might like some.’

      ‘So nice of you, Kummi Paati! It’s been a while since I had your homemade vadam. Kumar will be so happy when I tell him.’

      Kummi Paati inclined her head by way of accepting the compliment.

      ‘Will you have coffee?’

      Kummi Paati settled into her chair.

      ‘Maybe just half a cup,’ she said.

      Mrs Kumar bustled off to the kitchen and Kummi Paati heard her calling out to her husband on the way. A few minutes later, he came out of his room wearing a t-shirt and lungi, a colourful cotton cloth that men wore wrapped around their waist.

      Kumar was a man of average height and more than average girth. His thick, black, wavy hair was heavily oiled and slicked down, even after work hours. When he spoke, his voice was deep and loud – and he spoke a lot. Kummi Paati could often hear him from her flat below.

      ‘Ah, Kummi Paati, you’ve come with your special vadam! Karuna,’ he called out to his wife, ‘are you making coffee?’

      ‘Yes, yes, and I am making some for you as well,’ she said.

      ‘Good, good,’ he said, sitting down in a sofa opposite Kummi Paati. Like in most Indian households, the sofa had an additional cloth draped over the top to prevent hair oil stains from marking the sofa permanently. In this case, Kummi Paati thought, it was a worthwhile investment.

      ‘So what news?’ Kummi Paati asked.

      Kumar cleared his throat and looked away briefly.

      ‘Oh, no news, no news,’ he said. ‘You tell me! How long are your grandchildren here for?’

      ‘Another few weeks,’ Kummi

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