| Nilanjana Dey | April 2025 | Short Story |
She cannot find it anywhere.
Sanchayi has spent the last half hour upending the cupboard, looking for her old grey t-shirt. Her current one feels a tad too tight and scratches the nape of her neck. Even now she feels an itch grow in intensity and decides to endure it till the very last second, distracting herself with the ongoing phone conversation and chewing a disgustingly soft, sweet guava. When the itch reaches critical mass, she hurriedly stuffs the piece of fruit between her teeth, freeing her hand to vehemently claw at the offending patch of skin. The plate with the rest of the fruit is too far away.
“Do you want me to talk to them first?” Shubh asks. “Maybe set some context.”
“You didn’t just say that!”
“What?” Shubh protests. “It might help.”
Now with the piece of guava back in her hand, she weighs her options. She could pop it in and get it over with or keep holding it till she really has to make a decision. “I’ll tell them soon” she sighs, and lobs the piece of fruit out of the window to her left. It crosses the grille and drops into the overgrown patch that lines the back of their house, a rare clean shot. Maybe there will be a guava tree next time she comes home. That’s one decision done. As for telling her parents, Sanchayi does not know how soon ‘soon’ is.
“What’s cooking today?” Shubh changes the subject to a happier, or at least neutral topic.
“A lot. How do you have time for this call?”
“Work from home. It’s been raining.”
“Did you take my grey t-shirt? The one with Stack to the Future written on it?”
“Eh! Why you looking for that rag?”
“It’s hot here.” Shubh’s laptop chimes in the background, the sound spilling into her room and making Sanchayi feel short of breath. “Was that a Teams ping?”
“Yeah. Gotta go, bye.”
Ignoring the pile of clothes on the bed, Sanchayi takes refuge in her phone. Two new pings in quick succession accost her. Face flushed, palms clammy, she pulls down the notification bar. An email from HR, she’ll open that later. A message from that guy in Research asking if she is free for coffee. She types out a viable excuse. What else is there to do but avoid? Emails from work still feel like a fight or flight moment and apart from her brother and HR, nobody knows about what she’s done, not even her colleagues. Her parents think she is home for a quick break but there is no return ticket. Telling them means confronting that peculiar mix of pity and disappointment on her father’s face. And the inevitable “why” which she is still not sure how to explain. Maybe she should have let her brother set some context after all. That’s what they had done growing up, bat for each other when it came to convincing parents of their grand schemes and flights of passion. Had those finally come crashing around her? Should she have just sat the exams to become a government employee? They didn’t use Teams, did they?
The contents of the cupboard need to be put back in order and Sanchayi fills her time with Marie Kondo’s “Does this spark joy?” interrogation of her old clothes—still no sign of the grey t-shirt. With a crack of irritation now etched on her forehead, she pulls out some files and albums from the last shelf in hopes of finding her prize lodged at the back somewhere.
What slips out instead is a stack of certificates and report cards from school. Singing, dancing, debate, quiz – she shuffles through a few. Keeping them aside Sanchayi lies down on the floor and rolls once to be on her stomach. Hand splayed to the sides, any energy to conclude the task at hand is now evaporating out of her. The old red-oxide flooring is cool on her cheek, maybe she’ll just stay here.
Her mother floats into the room, exclaiming at her lying on the ground. Then scurries from point to point, picking up a towel here, straightening a cushion there, asking her to finish the guavas.
I don’t like them. But you love guava, mother argues. Yes, but not the soft overripe ones, they smell. Eat na, your father bought them for you, mother cajoles. Ok, she mumbles.
“Have you seen my grey t-shirt?” she asks.
“I think I gave it away to the maid.” her mother says, already floating out of her room and down the corridor.
Sanchayi continues to lie on the floor. Some flies find the plate of guava.
***
The girl is always dressed in indigo blue.
This much she knows for sure, at least that’s what she thinks.
Flat blue skies. Or maybe dotted with clouds. Warm, hot even. It is always bright. And it is always green around her. Tall grass that looks soft and inviting, maybe swaying in a slight breeze, sunlight glinting off their thin blades. Or maybe a forest clearing, flat green patch surrounded by dark green trees and even darker, denser greens beyond.
The exact nature of the greenery she never remembers, the actual facts slipping out of reach the harder she tries to recall. The dream’s details are replaced by a mish mash of specifics patched together from the flotsam of trips, hikes, images, and passage from stories swimming around in her subconscious.
It is always calm, comforting. The girl is resting, or the breeze is blowing. Sometimes there are soft waves. Or flowing water. Then a sharp jerk breaks through it all. A slow-moving dark sludge spreads across the scene. Or a squeeze of ink dropped into a glass of clear water, blooming and ballooning and taking up space.
At least that is the impression she is left with once she is awake. Maybe the details are something else entirely. But these are the best words she has found to make sense of how it feels, and they have stuck.
*
Sanchayi had woken up with slightly different versions of the same dream for months now. The fan was switched off and her round-neck t-shirt was damp and sweaty. Venturing out of her room, she had stepped into the bustle of a household that had been awake for a few hours already. Her mother was finishing up her daily puja, murmuring gratitudes and seeking anticipatory forgiveness from the gods as she went from room to room waving her agarbatti in circles, wrapped in a soft cotton sari. The occasional clang of utensils from the kitchen announced the presence of the maid hard at work, the one who’d switched off the fan while sweeping her room and never turned it back on.
While brushing her teeth, she had decided to look for her old, oversize grey t-shirt to wear at night.
***
At lunch, mother heaps her plate with steaming white rice. In deep breaths, Sanchayi inhales the slightly sweet fragrance. Folding up her legs criss-cross on the chair, she feels a warmth that has nothing to do with the rice. With a quick look at the dishes on the table, she sections off the first portion of rice, waiting for her ladle-full of dal. She can’t recall the last time she had two hot lunches, or just two hot meals in a row. Been months, probably years. The microwaved rice and dal in the cafeteria was a practical compromise, that’s what professionals do. Then came the quick salad infront of her laptop, the working lunches, which were eventually replaced by a cup of lukewarm coffee between urgent Teams calls. Maybe hot lunches like these and the afternoon naps that mother forced her to take during school years were the secret to earning all those certificates in all those extracurriculars. What if, like the glowing medallion or the golden bird that held the witch’s power in her grandmother’s stories, the secret to her childhood brilliance was food and sleep? Could it be? Could be.
“Ah, all your favourites ha?”, father says, helping himself to some vegetables.
She gives him her best ‘I appreciate the effort but I will decline a conversation at this point’ smile that she has perfected over the past few years. She has used it with colleagues walking up to her for small talk, on dates with guys who were really into self-improvement and ‘creating jobs’. She wishes to focus on the rediscovered joy of a hot meal.
“More rice?” mother asks, with a loaded serving spoon already hovering over her plate.
“No…no, quite full”
“C’mon, I know you need some more,” mother asserts, serving spoon now dangerously close to the plate.
“No….”
“It’s just a little more…”, father joins in.
By the time Sanchayi opens her eyes after a deep breath to rein in a scream, her plate already has a second helping of rice and fish curry.
“Why do you always do this?”, Sanchayi asks, eyes glued to her plate. The rice and curry become blurry. She swallows hard.
“A mother always knows na…”, one of her parents responds.
It’s said in the same sickly sweet tone as the overripe guavas. The ones she didn’t want to eat but did anyway, some of them at least.
She pushes away her plate and it goes sliding across the table. A tinny rings out as it hits her mother’s plate at a tangent, like a carrom striker, before it falls to the floor with a bigger clang. Rice explodes on the floor and there’s a red curry stained blob on the wall. What is wrong with you, someone exclaims.
Yes, what was wrong with her? It took a few all-nighters but things got done in the end, they even won awards for some of those campaigns. Her clients were happy because she went above and beyond for them. The two new designers on her team said she was the best manager they ever had. And she loved being the best. But the ‘no’s she wanted to say – to the client who wanted things done yesterday, to the team mate who wanted more time to finish a deliverable, to the college friend who wanted to catch up over the weekend – were piling up at the back of her throat, choking her. She had started taking longer to open her eyes every morning. The thuds of her heartbeat before joining a call had gotten louder in her ears. And when they had informed her of the promotion to head the entire design team, the feeble embers powering her facade finally went out. She had resigned in response to the promotion email and booked a train home.
“Your food is getting cold,” her father says, already walking away from the table with his empty plate.
“Hmm…?” Sanchayi looks up briefly from her plate-pushing daydream, before going back to slowly chewing the next morsel. Her fingers on autopilot, deftly separating fish bones from flesh.
An hour later, eyes closed, Sanchayi purposefully feels her clothes stick to her body, forcing her mind to focus on the discomfort. Chiming in alongside the sweat is another itch growing at the back of her neck. Squeezing her eyelids tight, she wills her hand to stay by her side, denying herself relief. She couldn’t scream at her mother, couldn’t really push her plate across the table. In fact, she’d just helped her put away the leftovers and clear the table while exchanging gossip about aunts and cousins. But the rage needed somewhere to go and if self was the only person she could dare attack, so be it. Like the time she’d sat across from the table with a colleague and kept eating the spicy peanut chutney as her ears grew hot, eyes watered, and nose ran. All while dabbing a tissue across her face and recounting her latest frustrating client call.
***
As she walks up and down the lane, the evening breeze that ushers in the monsoon in this part of the world soothes Sanchayi. It helps slow down her heart rate, her breaths now come easier than when she’d woken up from her sweaty nap. The same way she has woken up for several months now – a tug at her insides, a sluggish dread blooming, chest heavy, still sleepy but unable to go back to sleep. It had started when she’d tried to take a post-lunch nap on a weekend instead of the usual doom scrolling, after an especially gruelling work week. The curtains were drawn, the AC on, and her phone on silent; her bed had felt cozy and she was drifting. She didn’t know how long she’d slept before waking up with a jerk and looking around the dark room in panic. Nothing. She checked her phone, no notifications. But her heart was going, fast and rhythmic, like the train as it crosses the bridge over the river on the way to her hometown. Try as she might, she hadn’t been able to sleep a wink after that and such a waste too, because her bed was still cozy. That’s how it has been for every nap since.
But it’s been some time now and the exhaustion of the rude awakening has passed. Sanchayi finds herself humming an old Bengali song as she walks. Something about travelling birds forgetting their way home on a quiet evening. Bubbling up from the recesses like a time travelling earworm, this melody is one of her childhood favourites, from a time when she wrote and recited amateur poems, practiced her kathak after school, and loved to argue passionately against the motion. Now standing on the culvert that joins her lane to the main road, she watches two guys share a cigarette in front of Neel Kaku’s shop, the corner general store that’s always had a timeless weather-beaten look about it. Aunties on foot and kids on bicycles cross the culvert and get swallowed up by bluish darkness of the lane. She thinks she recognizes a few of them as they pass her under the streetlight, neighbours for years, their faces lined with fresh wrinkles similar to mother’s. But she hasn’t been home that frequently over the last decade, and nobody recognizes her. No words are exchanged, no practiced smiles deployed. Nothing is demanded of her, nothing delivered.
Back home, father is in the kitchen frying mocha’r (banana flower) chops for a tea-time snack. The song of travelling birds losing their way is still playing, only this time it’s outside her head, on bluetooth speakers and in the voice of one of her father’s favourite artists. Should she make something of this coincidence, Sanchayi wonders. Intercutting the lyrics is the sizzle of hot oil, the ringing of the tiny puja bell, the smell of incense, and the taste of dry sawdust in her mouth. The neutral embrace of the evening walk is replaced with things and people that expect her participation now. Under the bright white tube light of their living room, sitting across from a plate of mocha’r chop and a cup of milky tea that has been made for her even though she said she didn’t want it, there is work to be done.
A deep breath. “I have…”
“You remember Ratul?” her father asks, picking up his second chop. “These turned out good right?”
“Yes….ve..”
“So he was transferred to Australia a few months ago,” her father reported. “And his parents left just last week. I think they will stay with him for sometime”
“Hmm…” Sanchayi bites her tongue.
“You remember Ratul na,” her mother now chimes in. “He used to come asking for your class notes every year, was a class below you.”
“Haa, I remem….”
“Ahh. I am just waiting for when our daughter will have us over at her home in a foreign country.” her father comments, now settled back on the sofa and focussed on his tea.
Sanchayi smiles again, feeling it not reach her eyes. She realizes that she will not be able to make words like ‘break’ and ‘stress’ go up against her parents’ hopes and dreams, and come out unscathed. Not today.
“Maybe you can make nimki tomorrow?,” she says in response.
“She is asking you”, her parents both point at each other and burst out laughing.
As expected, the suggestion sends father down the path of planning tomorrow’s tea time. He is already talking about some recipe he saw on Facebook, his flight of fancy for a foreign-settled daughter temporarily redirected. This is followed by a flurry of action – the picking up of empty tea cups, remembering to buy maida, exclaiming that it’s time to get started on dinner – that builds up and dissipates around Sanchayi. Left alone in the now quiet living room, she picks up her phone and pulls down the notifications tab once again. The email from HR demands attention, action. But all she can manage is to stare at it, while the tea gets cold and her second mocha’r chop turns lifeless.
***
The silence at the dinner table feels like a ticking time bomb, ready to explode at the most innocuous words from mother or father. Though Sanchayi suspects that for them it is a rather companionable silence. Maybe mother is thinking about her flowers and the maid who’s on leave tomorrow. Maybe father is thinking of what vegetables to get from the market next morning, possibly hoping to get his hands on a vibrant green bunch of spinach. She smiles just a tiny bit at the thought of fresh produce being akin to treasure for him. And then frowns, wondering if that’s all she can imagine about her parents’ inner worlds. She tries, but can’t think of anything more substantial that could be playing on their minds.
“Is it not good?”
“Huh?” Sanchayi looks up from her plate confused for a bit. “No, no….this is good.”
“Want some more?” mother asks, her face hopeful.
Sanchayi looks at the bowl of dry fish chutney, only about a spoonful remains. She knows her mother wishes for someone to finish it so the leftovers don’t roll into tomorrow. For a brief moment her mind clears of everything, pushed aside by a sudden bright yellow yearning for some unspecified future in which managing containers of leftovers in the fridge is her biggest concern. That feels doable, like something she can handle well. The feeling disintegrates as quickly as it had materialized but the respite she felt leaves a lingering trace.
“Yes,” says Sanchayi, deciding to make mother’s life easier tonight in this one small way.
Picking up the bowl she proceeds to put some rice in, mix it with the chutney, and relish the sharp tangy fire that hits her tongue.
“Have it now, when you can,” father says, smiling at Sanchayi.
“Take some with you next week,” adds mother helpfully.
Sanchayi keeps her eyes firmly down, on the bowl in front of her. Her ears are warm, the t-shirt tag itches again, she picks up the bottle for a gulp of water. Spills some.
“Too smelly for the neighbours,” she finally croaks out.
***
Looking around her room, hands on hips, Sanchayi tries hard to think where else mother could have stored her old clothes. She is holding out hope because mother said maybe she has given it away. But maybe not. Deciding to check inside the bed storage she pulls the mattress off her bed and carefully leans it up against the wall. Doing this on a full stomach is not a great idea and yet she persists. Stretched out, soft and airy with years of wear, she needs to feel the comfort of the grey t-shirt on her skin and the desire will not let go of her. And so she lifts the wooden lid of the bed box with a big heave.
The girl is dressed in indigo blue. The sky, the greens, maybe even flowing water. There is a wind. The girl’s hair flies. There is rest. At the centre appears a yellow glow, blooming, ballooning, it takes up space. It brightens till it bleaches the scene. But it isn’t harsh somehow. It cradles her, softly.
Sanchayi wakes up in the hospital.
“She was lying there clutching her stomach….yeah, yeah.” mother is exclaiming into her phone. “Appendicitis they said…” Mother turns and sees her awake.“Yeah, I’ll call later, she’s just woken up.”
Father walks in just then with some tablets from the pharmacy. He tells her what happened, gives her two tablets, pats her head and says it’s nothing and that she’ll be going home tomorrow. The usual calm counterpoint to mother’s general storm.
His phone rings and he walks out to take the call.
He is wearing a faded grey t-shirt with the words “Stack to the Future” cracking and peeling at the back.
She’s got another week before she has to say anything, Sanchayi calculates.
_________________________
With a Bachelors in Economics and Masters in Mass Communication, Nilanjana is a marketing strategist specialising in brand storytelling for B2B firms. She caught the reading bug early, immersing herself in the stories of people and places worlds apart from her. In 2021, she self-published “The Chamomile Notes”, a collection of slice-of-life stories that unfold in the everyday. She currently lives in Goa, spends her time working freelance, writing short stories, and feeding the wildlife.
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Feature image by Litsie González via Unsplash
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