Shape of an Apostrophe by Uttama Kirit Patel

Author:Uttama Kirit Patel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Profile Books
Published: 2025-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

‘The baby is kicking,’ Meenakshi tells Ishaan. ‘And you, how was the trip?’

Father and son answer like teenagers: ‘Good.’

‘What did you do?’

‘Nothing much,’ Ishaan’s father says.

‘So next year you needn’t bother attending the International Conference on Diamond and Carbon Materials,’ Meenakshi says.

Only Ishaan shows surprise at this boast of knowledge. Her husband gifts her a fridge magnet, a pack of resin dogs standing guard in front of a dilapidated castle.

‘What’s been happening around here?’ Ishaan asks, frowning at his phone.

Meenakshi can’t possibly divulge: videos of orca orgies and daredevil acts of defiance by her daughter-in-law. Lina cut her hair. Cut. God help them all, she’s going to blind that baby.

‘Nothing new, Ishu,’ Meenakshi says.

‘Where is Lina?’ her husband asks.

‘She’ll be late today,’ Ishaan says. ‘She’s presenting to the Board.’

Meenakshi broke the State Board records in Maths. Meenakshi Bajaj written in such pretty cursive letters on the certificate. Her mother had squinted at the paper and put it on the kitchen counter. By the time Meenakshi came back from changing out of her uniform, a ring of moong dal had been stamped on the certificate, the rear end of her mother’s cooking pot. She is lucky. She learnt early what little value such things have.

‘Delicious, Mom,’ Ishaan says at dinner, kind-hearted boy.

‘Mmm,’ her husband assents. He has not eaten Sindhi food in five days. Praise comes easy. Your white chocolate laddus are simply the best, the Fabulous say. Those napkins, M, how do you transform them into such regal birds? What wonderful combinations, they say of her starfruit kheer and plum-pistachio choux. Come on, cloudheads, follow the instructions. The recipe is as clear as Cartier. Meenakshi has no knack, adds no extra ingredients of love. She reads, measures, counts, sets the temperature, calculates to perfection. A mathematician, not Martha Stewart.

Lina interrupts dessert by flinging her child on the dining table, a sonogram which lands face up between the malai kulfi and a glass of Johnnie Walker. The picture resembles a phantom of Meenakshi’s deceased brother; which one, no way of knowing. Fortunately her mother was spared such images of the boys she lost.

‘You had another appointment today?’ Ishaan asks his wife. He wipes a water droplet off the sonogram and stands. ‘Why didn’t you say? I would have gone with you.’

‘You were on a flight,’ Lina says.

‘I’ve been home since morning,’ Ishaan says. ‘How early was the scan?’

‘Let me see,’ Ishaan’s father says.

Nobody questions what happened with the Board. Lina fancies herself a Very Important Professional with her big job at a big company in her big office, as if housewifery was slavery. Now see who cares about her interview? No one. Ishaan hands his father the ultrasound image and follows Lina out of the dining room.

‘They must stop acting childish,’ Meenakshi says, ‘with a child of their own on the way.’

Meenakshi corrected her husband once when they first married. A mistake he’d made in his accounts. She pointed out the error and he turned his head slowly, right to left, left to right.

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