The Last Call

Tau ji: How are you, beta?

Shreya: Fine. How are you? So difficult to connect to India…

T: Never mind. At least I can see you, sitting there in America! What more could I ask for?

Silence.

T: So, how are you, beta? And your job?

S: Fine. Our company has paid for our shots. I had my second one yesterday. I am fine so far…

Silence.

S: So, how are you?

T: How else can I be? Fine, of course. Think of God when I go to bed—and get up every morning like a clock. We are getting everything: vegetables, milk, fruits… I never cared much for roaming around. Particularly after my brother—your father—died. But let me not talk about that. Give me your news.

S: My company is opening a new office in Alberta. I may get the chance to head it.

T: You mean Alberta? The same place? Don’t tell me you are going to join there…

S: Tau ji, please don’t start again.

T: If I don’t, who else will knock some sense into your head? Okay, you meet someone on a holiday and now you go back to the same town just to… Don’t tell me you have been seeing this lumberjack?

S: Please don’t call him that. Peter has a furniture business. He is not a woodcutter. And even if he was, so what?

T: Don’t get so excited. Marriage is not child’s play. You know nothing about his family. He is a divorcee. Do you know why he got divorced?

S: HE DID NOT GET DIVORCED. They just legally separated. They were incompatible.

T: Okay, so that is what he has told you—and you believed him just like that?

S: Don’t act so holier-than-thou. Don’t you find a thousand worse things in our own extended family? What about Ramesh uncle?

T: What about him?

S: Didn’t he have ten affairs in the village—and get killed for that very reason? What about your own uncle? Why did he live in the village, away from his family?

T: STOP! Don’t talk about what you do not know, what you do not understand. Why do you have to start this fight every time you phone me?

S: You phoned me, not I. It is you who started about Peter. And let me tell you, even if I had stayed in India, I would never marry in our community. Men in our caste are rotten.

T: STOP now. Don’t forget the man who brought you up single-handedly was from the same caste. But…

He pauses.

How can I complain? He was my brother—totally reckless and crazy—and you have taken after him.

Silence.

T: But listen, beta. I don’t mind your wearing jeans, smoking, drinking and going to late-night parties. But marriage is a different thing. I myself would like to come and bless you on that occasion. And imagine—I will end up blessing a man from nowhere. You tell me he was raised in a home. A foundling. And to make matters worse, he sells furniture.

Beat.

Okay, okay, he is an IKEA dealer. But… then he is a divorcee and old enough to be your father. Is he not thirty years older than you?

S: Who says so? Only TEN—TEN—years my senior. But why would you listen to me? You made life hell for my late father, and now you will make sure that I can’t live in peace half a globe away from you.

She is now furious.

Don’t you ever think of coming here to bless me—or my cat. I have had enough of you!

She exits.

T: alone on screen

Oh, oh… Why did I say such bad things to her? What came over me? Why can’t I remember that she is in America, that she is thirty-three and knows the world better than me?

He looks at the empty screen.

Oh my God. When will I change?

He exits.

The screen goes blank.

A week later, Shreya’s Zoom call rings. Tau ji does not connect.

S: to herself

God knows what has happened to him. He lives alone. Never took the vaccine. Even if he is dead, for weeks no one may get to know…

She pauses.

Oh, why did I shout and scream at him last time? Why did I fall for his tricks and start fighting? Why couldn’t I just keep mum?

She looks at the screen.

Will I not get a chance to say goodbye to him?

Blackout.