Keeping in Touch by Anjali Joseph

Author:Anjali Joseph
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC019000, FIC027020, FIC105030
Publisher: Scribe Publications Pty Ltd
Published: 2022-05-31T00:00:00+00:00

‘Keteki,’ said Mark the next afternoon, ‘let’s finish up now. I’m going for a walk, do you want to come? Or are you going to Ved’s?’

‘Not today,’ Keteki said. ‘There are some problems with the Lucifer, he’s talking to the CEO about it. Maybe Ved will have to go to India, so they can figure out what to do about the launch.’

Mark nodded. ‘Walk?’ he suggested.

They left the apartment building, crossed the main road, turned down a side lane, and were soon in streets of tall, Dutch-looking houses, unforgiving with their regularly spaced windows like eyes. Keteki thought of Uzan Bazar, the tiny countrified lanes leading to the river, a woman outside her house in winter, burning paper at the side of the road and the scent of smoke in the chilly air.

‘How’s everything?’ Mark said. ‘You seem a little glum. How’s it going with Ved?’

‘I don’t know,’ Keteki said. She heard the unhappiness in her own voice and felt startled. ‘He’s … I … maybe I seem less interesting to him now that I’m actually here. We have a good time, a lot of the time, just talking, or making dinner, or something really simple.’

‘That sounds positive,’ Mark said.

‘Yes,’ Keteki said. ‘I can’t make it out. I feel like I’m suspended, waiting for him to do something, but maybe it’s just that I normally avoid getting anywhere near as close as this to any kind of—’ She waved her hand. They crossed another road and turned.

Mark smiled. ‘Relationship may be the word you’re looking for.’

‘When I was in the yoga ashram … I was telling you about it the other night,’ Keteki began.

‘It sounds like a wonderful experience.’

‘It was strange, but when I was there, I had so much time to sift through things. Difficult things from the past and even to think about what I really want to do … with my life.’ She laughed. ‘That sounds very earnest, but I think I want to start taking some things seriously. Even a relationship, starting something of my own, the textile project I was talking about, working with a few weavers. I’ve never wanted to get involved in structure, or take responsibility for something before.’

They passed large, forbidding mansion blocks like prisons.

‘The idea of a relationship basically fills me with dread,’ said Keteki. ‘Like in the cartoons, you know, when they’re chasing someone, and they go over a cliff and there’s this moment of just hanging there, looking down. Roadrunner. Who’s the one who chases Roadrunner?’

Mark laughed. ‘Yosemite Sam.’

‘Oh no, I didn’t mean him. Isn’t there another one? I can’t be a little redneck fur trapper, that’s a bit much.’

‘Wile E. Coyote?’

Keteki laughed. ‘Yes. That’s such a great name. In Assam, there are stories about a character called Teton Tamuli. He’s continually trying to con other people, but often ends up doing things that turn out worse for him. I guess I don’t want to be Teton Tamuli any more, I don’t want to keep trying to win just by trying to be cunning.

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