Life Switch by Madhuri Banerjee

Author:Madhuri Banerjee
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Random House India Private Limited
Published: 2023-02-02T00:00:00+00:00

Twenty-one

Nandita

How Not to Be a Loser

Later, I wouldn’t remember that time as the night I helped a woman give birth. Or as the night I didn’t switch my life back and how everything changed. I would remember the one and half hours I was stuck in traffic while Ranjana screamed and shouted, making her driver try to cut red lights to get to the hospital.

But Mumbai traffic would not budge if you weren’t in an ambulance. I cursed myself again for not calling one. ‘It would have taken an hour to get to us anyway,’ Ranjana reminded me.

‘You know we can go to any hospital, why go so far?’ I asked.

Ranjana stared at me as if she would chew my head off, ‘Have you ever given birth? No, na? Then shut up. You only go to the doctor you’re comfortable with. Do you want a stranger to see your girl parts? No, na? Then shut up.’

‘Okay, then,’ I said, as I looked out of the window at the car next to us.

At first, Ranjana played some songs from her playlist. But her battery soon died, so she took out her power bank to charge it. Ranjana’s pain intensified sporadically, she started chatting with me.

‘So tell me about you, Nandita.’ Ranjana asked. ‘Distract me.’

I went blank. The only thing that came into my head was the opening song of a Dharma movie. My life felt as dramatic and vapid.

‘Come on. You’ve got to have something. Who is this guy who Shivani met?’ Ranjana asked me with a wink. ‘Lover, husband, what?’

‘No one.’ I answered. Seeing Mark that night had brought back all those feelings I’d had when I was at university with him.

‘No one?’

‘He’s Mark. My ex.’

‘Aha.’

‘There’s no aha. There’s nothing really.’

‘Of course there is.’

I started to protest and recalled the night when I had fumbled and had looked at Mark, and he reached out to embrace me. I said, ‘Maybe there still is. I don’t know. Why do exes come back into our lives? Is it some unsolved stuff? Unresolved energy perhaps?’

‘Listen to me, girl …’ Ranjana started as she clutched her belly. ‘Fucking an ex might be a good way to get revenge on your spouse, but it will only leave you disgusted with yourself.’ Ranjana breathed deeply.

‘But—’ I started to speak but Ranjana cut me off.

‘Don’t make excuses to have an affair. Tell your husband what you like. What you want. What you need. And if he refuses to give it, have the courage to walk out. And then be with the man you want to be with. See if your boyfriend wants you then. Most men just want to have sex with a married women because it needs no accountability or responsibility.’

I took a moment to grasp this. Had I told Abhay everything I wanted? Did I just keep quiet and sulk every time he didn’t want to go to a play? Didn’t I just go along with his plans with friends but resent him afterwards? Before I could respond, another contraction hit her.

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