Bomb Cyclone

We were a family of stubborn people with a false sense of pride, but today I had to swallow it all and call my sister for help. She hadn’t spoken to me in twelve months despite living merely fifteen miles away.

I was in Bellevue and we were hit by a bomb cyclone – wind speeds too high to categorise it a storm and too low to name it a hurricane – and there was a power outage since the previous evening. I thought I could order in, and that the lights would be back the next morning. The next morning came and there was no power. No power meant I couldn’t work because I had a remote job and needed wifi and charge for my laptop. I had an induction cooktop, so it also meant no food. At least I lived on the first floor, so no elevators were no problem. I plugged my phone into the power bank and checked on the ETA for the lights coming back. The electrical utility website showed TBD.

Shit, I cursed. Because I knew I had to call my sister Kavya. Everyone I knew was affected. Kavya lived in Lynnwood and I had checked her zip code on the website. She had power. I started my battery-operated coffee machine and added liberal amounts of cocoa and coffee before starting it up. With tremulous hands I searched for her number and called. She picked up on the sixth ring and I was surprised. When she didn’t speak, I came straight to the point, afraid that she would hang up, yet again.

‘Kavya, I have a power outage, can I come stay at your place till this is over?’ After a pause, she spoke.

‘Yes, Divya.’

‘Thanks, I promise it’s just…’

Kavya had already hung up on me.

I felt there was a bomb cyclone brewing within me – feelings not high enough for an outburst but not low enough to just hold inside me. I decided I would give myself time till 4 pm to make up my mind about freezing at home without the heater or facing my sister. In any case, I decided it would be the last time I would visit her or ask her for a favour. I had tried enough and there was nothing more to be done. I had lost Ma too.

I opened my banking app and looked at my measly bank balance of five hundred dollars. As if revisiting it was going to magically increase the amount. My salary would get credited in a week’s time but it would all have to go towards the credit card bills that were flooding my mailbox. I looked at the unopened packages from online shops piling up near the door and got up to get ready for the day. But before that, I set out to throw all the unused fruits, vegetables and dairy from my fridge and freezer.

The cold shower on a cold winter morning was enough to jolt me out of my daze but I still needed a place with wifi if I wanted to work. I couldn’t afford to ask for a leave only a week after joining the new job. I decided to walk down a block to a Starbucks. After battling a long queue at Starbucks, I ordered a cappuccino and roasted red pepper egg bites and found a place with a charging point to sit.

As I sat there reading my emails, I wondered if she had a boyfriend. She was single when we had last spoken and nothing on her Instagram gave me the impression that had changed. I had painfully stalked her every post, comment, like, share and story on multiple social media sites. I knew how she was doing. I didn’t need to ask her. A shiver ran down me – I was afraid of the answer. As if on cue, a family of four walked in – a mother, a father and their two daughters who looked to be between ages five and eight and were dressed alike. It reminded me of our birthdays, when Ma used to dress Kavya and me in similar frilly dresses. I used to love it but Ma stopped doing it after Kavya cut up her birthday dress into pieces when she was ten. Was it because she hated being dressed the same as me, or was it because she was angry at me and Ma?

I was her shadow – abandoned by our father when I was eight and she was ten, attended the same school and college in Mumbai, placed in the same software development company in Hyderabad when I was twenty-one, and moved to the States four years later via an intra company transfer – she to San Francisco, I to Seattle. We lost our mother last year when I was thirty. It was like my life was a snow-shovelled path. She shovelled and I walked – two years after she did. Or was it her trying to escape from me and me not letting her?

*

At eight o’clock, I parked my car in Kavya’s driveway and walked to the door to ring the bell. I could hear my heartbeat drum loud in my ears. The flowers – roses and periwinkle – that were in bloom last year were now drooping. The grass had turned a diseased yellow. I looked away as Kavya opened the door. I said hi, and tried to smile. She said hi, and took a step back to allow me to enter. The house looked the same as when I left there in tears, last year on a cold November night. Her house had no pictures, not even hers. She believed in minimalist furniture and decor. Only a painting of two flowers – a rose and a periwinkle – hung above the burning fireplace. The rug under the light brown coffee table had worn off a little and needed replacement. She told me there was takeout in the fridge and that she was going to watch some tv in her bedroom before dozing off. Did this mean she was talking to me again? What caused this sudden change? There were so many questions I wanted to ask but I didn’t want to push her away. Instead, I thanked her and helped myself to the Chinese takeout from my favourite restaurant. Her kitchen was spotless. Next to the cooktop, there was the blue vase that Ma had made for Kavya on her fourteenth birthday.

*

The next morning, I woke up at six, unable to sleep properly the previous night. Even though I had no energy to get up I didn’t want to lie in bed drifting in and out of sleep any longer. I decided the best thing would be to get some caffeine in my system and got going. I was working on my laptop at the dining table when she walked into the kitchen. I asked her if she wanted any coffee. She drank chai now, she said. When I got up to make chai, she shook her head. Told me she wasn’t in the mood for it. When she didn’t say anything further, I asked her if she wanted me to cook anything for lunch that she could carry to work. She usually bought lunch at the office cafeteria, she said. I asked her if she wanted me to make anything for dinner then. She said she would bring something on the way back. She walked into the kitchen and poured herself cold milk and cereal. I grimaced but let it go. She looked into my eyes while she gulped down spoonsful. You hated cold breakfast, I wanted to shout at her but didn’t. I didn’t know what she hated anymore. I picked up my laptop and went to work in the living room, leaving her alone. I figured that if she didn’t want me around, I should make myself scarce. My thoughts wandered to our childhood when we used to share a room. My space was always messy with clothes and posters strewn all over the place while her side of the room was as sanitary and organised and minimalist as a hospital bed. She used to complain to our parents about how it disturbed her that I did not keep the place as clean as she did. Ma ignored her because Ma was more like me – she was a painter and her room was always filled with paints and canvas and clothes strewn all over, just like mine. Our Dad hated it but he hated confrontations even more. Maybe that’s why Dad and Ma started sleeping in different bedrooms towards the end?

Half an hour later, I was startled by her presence, not knowing if it was because I was engrossed in the document that I was reading or because she had silently snuck up next to me. The sound of the spoon clinking against a cup made me aware of her presence. How long had Kavya been standing behind me? Sorry, I didn’t mean to make you jump, she said. It’s just that I thought I saw the logo of Refresh on your screen, she continued. I knew where she was going with this. I had no energy to talk to her about it, but I knew she would not let it go. So I told her I joined them last week. Weren’t you with TechReform? You haven’t updated your LinkedIn. I left them a couple months ago, I responded. I hoped this would get her off my back. She nodded and pursed her lips, and took a sip from the mug. It reminded me of Ma from when she used to chide Kavya for not studying. I wondered what she was drinking in that mug.

*

In the evening I was invited to dinner by an acquaintance – a friend of a friend from Seattle. I texted Kavya that I was going out for dinner and got ready. An hour later, she hadn’t responded. My friend, Deepti, who lived in Kirkland, also had no electricity and had moved temporarily to Lynnwood, to her cousin’s place. She picked me up from Kavya’s. If you wanted a map of the area, we were looking at a triangle, with Lynnwood at the northern tip, and Kirkland and Seattle forming two other points. Bellevue, where I lived, was situated just south of Kirkland. Bellevue was an expensive place to rent in, but my office was at walking distance so I could live temporarily without using my unreliable second-hand car that I only used sparingly.

A woman in her twenties asked me my name. She was called Kristine. She asked me where I was from. She looked at me strangely and I realised she was waiting for me to respond. I told her I wasn’t sure where I was from and excused myself.

*

It was just after ten o’clock when Deepti dropped me at my sister’s place after dinner. The house was as I had left it – lights turned off and heater turned on. I changed into my winter pajamas and sweatshirt and logged into my Netflix on her tv while I waited for her. It recommended that I continue watching the second episode of Hoarders. I was about to press continue when I heard light footsteps and the click of the key.

‘Hi, how was your day?’

‘Good,’ she replied and headed up the stairs to her bedroom but I blocked her way so she had no choice but to face me. She raised her eyebrows with a questioning look.

‘Why won’t you talk to me?’

‘I am talking to you.’

When I just glared at her, she sighed and spoke.

‘Look, I don’t have the strength to get into this right now. I have had a long day at work.’

‘No, you have to. Dad left us when I was eight and now Ma’s gone too. You are the only family I have and you refuse to speak with me. Why?’

‘I don’t know. I am just angry. Now can I please just go to sleep? I am tired.’ She said the word ‘tired’ so softly that I thought I misheard.

‘No, we cannot. I want to talk.’

She retraced her steps and left the house. I stood there watching her go.

*

I found myself looking at another restless night. I didn’t know where she had gone off to, maybe she did have a boyfriend that I hadn’t found on her socials. It was 2 am when I finally gave up on sleep and found my way to the kitchen. I kept calling her every half hour but it went straight to voicemail. Her only text had come at midnight asking me to go to sleep. I found some milk and a pan to heat it up. When I was looking for a bottle of turmeric, I found some papers stashed away at the back of a shelf like they were hidden from prying eyes.

There were four papers, each with a different version of our Ma’s kadhi recipe.

As I nursed the turmeric milk at the dining table, I pondered over our conversation. I had expected Kavya to shout at me about what was bothering her. That after twelve months, she would have finally pinpointed the source of her anger. I had needed her to get it over with so I did what I did best, confronted her just like I had done all those months ago when she refused to speak to me after Ma’s death. I had had twelve months of time to go crazy about it. I was so angry at her but I called. She wouldn’t pick up the phone, or pick up and hang up. And last November when I came to her place, she refused to open the door. What I knew was that Kavya and Ma weren’t talking to each other for a week before Ma passed away and neither of them would tell me what it was about.

*

The next day I took a leave from work day and made kadhi. I tempered the spices and added the mixture of water, curd and gram flour. And heated it on a low flame till I had the required consistency and aroma. I added salt to it and covered it up. The mixture of gram flour and turmeric had given the curry a creamy yellow colour and it smelled full of flavour from all the spices I had added. It smelled of home.

Kavya was working from home. I knocked on her bedroom door and told her that I had made kadhi rice for lunch. She looked at me with wide eyes but recovered her stoic expression. She nodded and said she would be there in a few minutes.

*

Kavya ate a spoon of the kadhi with rice and her eyes shone with sparkled tears that she blinked away furiously.

‘She wanted me to get married.’

‘Ma, right? I know that. And you didn’t want to, because you didn’t want kids and hadn’t found the right person. You told me you didn’t know how to tell her,’ I spoke and realised I spoke too much and I hoped she wouldn’t go back into her shell. I was relieved when she nodded.

‘Except I told her.’

‘Is that why you fought?’

‘Maybe.’

‘What do you mean by maybe?’ I asked but she wouldn’t tell me.

‘So you don’t know what she said to me?’

‘No, I don’t. Don’t you remember? I kept asking her to call you and I kept asking you to call her. But neither of you would budge.’

She looked at me with a creased forehead and glistening tears like I had just punched her. She didn’t talk any more and I knew the conversation was over.

I got a notification on my phone and told her I had got an email saying that electricity would be back at my apartment building the next day. She nodded and cleared away the dishes.

*

I had another restless night after our conversation. I replayed it over and over in my head and was more sure than ever that she felt guilty and angry at herself rather than at me. It was seven am and sunlight was slowly starting to creep in. I tiptoed my way to the kitchen and knelt down to search through her cabinets for more recipes. A cabinet door was jammed and made a loud noise when I wrenched it open. I waited for a few minutes to make sure Kavya wasn’t coming down. I started moving the pots and pans, and could see another set of papers. I was about to reach for it when I heard a throat clearing. I banged the door shut and got up in a panic. And that’s when it happened – I struck the blue vase and it came crashing down near my feet.

She looked at me and then at my feet. I froze, I didn’t know what to do. Nothing I could say could wipe away the hurt on her face. I attempted a series of sorries but she only stared at the broken blue.

‘Get out of the house.’

I packed my bag feeling guilty and sad. She was gathering the pieces when I went to say bye. She didn’t look in my direction but I could see the tears streaming down her face. I went closer to help her clean up, but she held up her hand. I retraced my steps and filled a glass of water for her. She didn’t resist, and drank it down in a gulp. She nodded in my direction and I knew it was my cue to leave.

As I was getting in my car, I heard a ping from my phone. I cleared a notification of a promotional sale on Amazon and drove off. I wanted to kick myself for being so clumsy. I had made so much progress only to be setback by this.

I had driven a couple of miles when my phone rang and Kavya’s name flashed on the screen. I clicked on the green icon and her voice boomed in my car.

‘Divya, I cut my finger. It’s bad.’

‘Don’t worry, I’ll be there.’

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