She is sure he is going to be very happy with her today. She just knows it. As she looks around their 2-bedroom apartment, she feels life couldn’t get any better. Everything is in its place, tidy. The kids have done their homework, have had milk, have come back from playing and are watching TV. She is waiting for him, with tea.
In fact, she thought, the day itself had started well. For starters, she had woken up ten minutes before her usual of 5.45 am. Then, the kids had crawled out of bed as soon as she had pulled up the blinds in their room. So they had ended up reaching school well in time. The school was a stone’s throw away so she had been walking them for the past four years that they had been in that city. Not to forget that she fetched them too but that’s understood, isn’t it?
After that, she vaguely remembers humming to herself as she had unloaded the washing machine to take the laundry to the drying area dedicated to her block of flats, fixing her husband’s breakfast, running to their bedroom when he couldn’t find the socks he needed and tidying up after him as he polished off his first meal of the day and left for work.
Then, she was on her own. After a good 3 hours of running around like a headless chicken. She had fixed her own breakfast and had sat down to eat with the radio tuned in to her favourite morning show and made a mental note _ which she edited a few times _ of what she needed to cook for the next two meals.
That her kitchen had an open plan was a blessing for her. It meant she could cook while keeping an eye on the current soaps on TV. Two solid hours in the kitchen and she knew she had done herself proud. She had fixed the lunch _ a typical North Indian meal of roti, rice, dal, 2 vegetables and salad. And she had prepared the sauce for pasta for dinner. Not to forget the cleaning up that needed to be done.
She could have taken a shower and then sat down with her book. However, she had soon remembered she needed to get a loaf of bread if she planned to serve garlic bread with pasta. No problems, she told herself, the supermarket was right across the road from where they lived.
Another half an hour gone, and she was back, with a loaf of bread and the excruciating pain in her left heel that she had been experiencing on and off. But what’s a little pain if that brings smiles on the faces of your loved ones, she had told herself.
She couldn’t sit down with her book, not yet. The laundry had to be brought back, folded, and put in place. That done, she remembered she had promised to darn some socks of his. Once at it, she also remembered she needed to darn some other kiddy clothes too.
Not one with nimble fingers, by the time she was done, she realized it was close to lunch time. She had just about enough time to serve his lunch and put it in the microwave before having her own and rushing off to school.
She met him at the door. She smiled at him and got a “hmm” in response. “Still at his office in his head, isn’t he?” she told herself as she limped down the stairs. “Never mind, he will be fine by evening,” she tried convincing herself.
And here she is, a long day later, waiting for him in anticipation. She hears his key turn in the lock and seconds later sees him walk in. She grins at him; he doesn’t see her and stomps in instead to plonk his bag on one of the chairs. She waits for him, with tea, hoping to spend some time together in their balcony, hoping to exchange stories of how their respective days went. He comes out; dressed in the kurta-pyjama she had laid out for him.
She smiles again, and he says, probably his first words since morning: “How come you gave me tea in a different mug today? Did you break those other ones?”
And she knows then, that today isn’t any different. It wasn’t, to begin with. It is the end of just another day in a thankless job. Or is it the beginning of another?
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