Storm over the tea-cup

I
“The girl is too beautiful to be single.” I blurted out and immediately regretted it. “Oh! How could I say anything so unenlightened?” I ruefully asked myself. Just because a woman is beautiful, it does not mean she draws or desires to draw male attention to herself. “I am ashamed of you,” I heard an indignant voice in my head, chide me, “for letting the toxin of parochialism still persist in you.” Shamefacedly, I tried to change the subject matter. “Do you plan to have dinner in the canteen here or at home?” I asked.
“Well, let me finish my lunch first. I promise I shall ponder over your crucial questions as soon as I am done with it.” Anila replied with a grin. And at that moment, amidst the din of the canteen, I suddenly found myself imprisoned in a gaol of silence; it was the silence of her grin that derided me for once again failing to follow another of my lofty principles that I had ‘decided’ to practice. “No, no. Don’t make thoughtless comments about people ever again.” The indignant voice in my head spoke again.
II
Anila watched Padmasena as the latter’s face turned crimson and thought, “The foolish woman is too full of ideals and ethics for her own good!” Anila and Padmasena were in their office canteen having lunch and discussing about a colleague who had joined that very day. The girl was not merely beautiful; she was, in the words of Padmasena, feminine grace personified! Of Padmasena’s many irritable habits, the one that exasperated Anila the most, was her proclivity to praise people who caught her fancy in an exaggerated manner. But Anila could not laugh at Padmasena because there was something akin to unalloyed earnestness in almost everything she said which no one could be dismissive about, at least not on her face . Besides, the girl they were discussing about was actually very beautiful. Her name was Janvi and on her first day at work at the Düsseldorf Publishers, where she joined like Anila and Padmasena as an editor, she had been till lunch neither too gregarious nor utterly taciturn. “Hi!” she had said to them with a polite smile, “ I am Janvi and I am a Mumbaikar.” At lunch when Padmasena, unsociable and mostly solitary herself, asked her if she wanted to join them at the cafeteria, Janvi smiled politely again and said, “Ah, thanks. But I have brought my lunch from home. Remember, I told you I hail from the city.” At that moment, Janvi’s mobile phone began to ring and saying a succinct, “Please excuse me!” to Padmasena and Anila, she started to talk over the phone in a low voice, while they left for the cafeteria.
Anila was not too fond of her room-mate Padmasena-eccentric, incorrigibly idealistic and incapable of accepting or rejecting anything without critically analyzing it. She was self-avowedly in love with Philosophy and literary philosophers and once when she said that she could not have an extra helping of boiled vegetables because she felt that she was becoming gluttonous, Anila had wanted to hurl invectives at her of the worst kind. Presently, they reached the canteen and Anila was about to place an order when her companion said, “ Janvi is so well attired. Her trousers and blouse are both so classy.”
“Hmmm, yes,” Anila was laconic in her reply as she did not wish to afford to Padmasena another opportunity to begin singing paeans of their new colleague’s beauty. Then something happened that abated Padmasena’s excitement rather unexpectedly. Staring at the sky , she said, “The girl is too pretty to be single.” Within an iota of the next second, Padmasena blanched and flushed and her exceedingly expressive face looked woefully remorseful. Anyone unacquainted with Padmasena’s ways might have assumed that she has perhaps, suddenly fallen ill but Anila instantaneously figured that Padmasena looked so utterly guilt-ridden because she made a comment that was not based on ‘reasoning’ or ‘empirical evidence’.
It was one of those not-so-infrequent moments when the otherwise haughty and constantly philosophizing Padmasena was nervous; in an embarrassed tone, she diffidently asked, “ Do you plan to have dinner here in the canteen or at home?”
“Well, let me finish my lunch first. I promise I shall start to ponder over your question as soon as I am done with it.” Anila retorted and continued eating Paratha while Padmasena morosely stared at her glass of fruit juice. When they returned to their office ten minutes later, they found Janvi eating her lunch that comprised of Rotis and what seemed like Alu-bhindi. Padmasena awkwardly asked her,” Hey! Your lunch looks inviting”
“Would you care to have some of it?” Janvi asked with her now familiar smile.
“No, no!” Padmasena cried out, nodding her head vehemently. “I mean thank you but I have to, I am afraid, decline your kind offer as I have just had lunch. I only wanted to say that your food, by the virtue of being home-cooked, looks very mouth-watering! Ammm…you said you live in Goregaon, right? Now since it takes close to two hours to travel from that locality to this part of the city by road, your mother probably had to wake up very early in the morning to make this for you. It must have been quite a lot of hard work for her.”
“I am not sure if it was much of a hard work for mom as it is I who made these stuff for myself and for the twelve other people who form my family.” Janvi replied nonchalantly and then turning to Anila, said, “ Hey Anila, in case you are not too full why don’t you try the alu-bhindi? I have been told I make this dish very well.” Anila walked past Padmasena to Janvi’s cubicle while Padmasena stood in the middle of the room, staring incredulously at the wall opposite. A good minute elapsed before she uttered, “Omigosh! You really cooked all these before coming to work? Do you do this every day? God! Did you-do you-wake up at dawn, then?”
“Yes, I do.” Janvi’s reply was laconic, too engrossed as she was in munching a popaddum to be interested in chatting with Padmasena.
“But how do manage to do so much? I wake up at 8 in the morning and have never cooked for anyone at all.” Padmasena almost supplicated Janvi to reveal an amazing secret.
“It’s no big deal, really. I have been cooking since I was thirteen and in fact, girls in ouf family are expected to start familiarizing themselves to cooking once they turn ten.” Janvi said with an air of-what seemed to Anila to be-studied insouciance and once again turned to Anila to ask, “When did you join this place?” “Oh, I will complete three months here day after tomorrow, on the 16th.” Anila replied sweetly and cast a glance at Padmasena. She still stood with her mouth agape and her eyes wide open, as if entranced. “Poor, little fool,” she thought of Padmasena and felt a little pity for her. “ Who ever gets astonished to know that a woman can cook at 24?”
III
I could hear Janvi and Anila converse but I was too amazed and suddenly, ashamed after I discovered that Janvi woke up at some freakishly early hour to cook for her entire family and she yet managed to come to work on time, dressed in an impeccable manner. Back at home, in the distant frontier town of Itanagar, I never do so much as to make the morning tea for the old, loving couple I have for my parents. I was overwhelmed with affection for ma who never asked me to do any household chores, guilt at my ineptitude and a faint admiration for the girl I just met. Choked with emotions and also confused by them, I slowly walked back to my seat. After all, I could not keep staring at the office holiday list, struck to the wall behind Janvi’s cubicle all day, could I?