Gossip - 4

Saturdays were always Pi Parteii’s busiest day of the week. She was an accountant at the Department of Fisheries and worked five days a week. Even though all her sons were grown up and were able to take care of themselves it always looked like some disaster had struck their house and it was left to her to set everything right, and that meant a lot of running around on Saturday. It had been two weeks since Cecilia’s wedding, and the house was still a complete mess. Her three elder sons were as clueless, as hopeless as their father when it comes to household matters. Couldn’t even cook a single meal, didn’t even know how to operate the washing machine, and couldn’t be relied upon to do something as simple as sweeping the floors. Cecilia had helped with the cleaning and shopping, but now that she was married Pi Parteii would have to look for a maid again. It had been almost ten years since they’d last had a maid, and she dreaded the thought of some stranger coming and living with them. She’d heard enough stories about maids stealing and running off with the family’s valuables. Her husband, thickheaded as usual, had not seen the need for a maid. Did he think the house could run by itself? Trust men not to understand.

This morning she had got up at six, and after cooking the morning meal had set out for the Saturday morning market at Thakthing Bazar which was very crowded as usual. Some of the old women who were still carrying em, the traditional long conical hand woven basket, made moving very difficult. The narrow road was lined on both sides with vendors selling all kinds of vegetables, flowers, chicken, pork, beef, fish, makeup, secondhand clothes, bread and cakes; and she could see the blind man sitting at his usual spot singing a sad song about death.

She made her way to the corner where the doughnut lady always sits, and was not surprised to see Pi Hrangi there buying the doughnuts for her boy, Siama, who she heard was a big fan of the small little coconut doughnuts.

“Pi Hrang, you are early this morning,” she said cheerfully.

“Yes Parte, I like to do my shopping before it gets really crowded. I'm almost done now, I only have to buy some pork and then I can go home.”

“Let’s go together then. You always have the best judgment when it comes to buying meat,” Pi Parteii said, and started walking. They walked slowly, pausing every now and then to buy some vegetables, to say hello to neighbours and acquaintances, and looked at a few secondhand clothes.

“I am inviting Cecilia and Zotea for dinner on Monday. It’s Cecilia’s birthday, and her brothers wanted to celebrate,” Pi Parteii said, holding up a pair of garishly pink rubber slippers. The vendor had an amused look on her face, but on seeing that Pi Hrangi was watching her very closely, pretended to yawn.

“How is she coping at her new home? I was so worried about her, with so many people coming and going every day, and she is still just a baby,” Pi Hrangi said.

“She is not complaining, she said everyone is very good to her. But she still finds it hard to sleep at night; I think it’s the new bed, the new environment.”

“How is Zotea? Is he a good husband to her?”

“She said he’s very good to her, but she also said it gets a bit lonely during the day when he goes off to work.”

“Cecilia is very lucky getting a husband like him. Nice secure government job, a very active member of the church and community, doesn’t smoke or drink, and always very polite to elders.”

“I know, if it was anyone else we’d never have let her get married so soon. She’d always wanted to continue her studies but Zotea came along and suddenly all she wanted was to get married. And you know how her father is, saying yes to everything she asked for.”

They reached the meat vendors, and Pi Hrangi examined the pork carefully, asking the vendor a hundred questions before finally settling on a piece she liked. Pi Parteii immediately asked for the same.

“Parte, you must come for choir practice tomorrow. The Women’s Conference is coming up next month, and we need as many members as we could get. You know the young ladies would never come, they say it’s for old women.”

“I don’t know, Pi Hrang, you know I've never been good at singing.”

“Nonsense. I’ve sat beside you in church many times; I know you have a good voice.”

“Speaking of church, here comes the pastor,” Pi Parteii said,

The pastor was an elderly gentleman who looked as if he would be more at home working in the fields rather than preaching from the pulpit. He was wearing an old wrinkled shirt and a pair of faded old trousers. On his head he wore a khumbeu, the old men’s hat, and was carrying a polythene bag of chicken feed. You'd never have guessed he was a much learned man with an MA in Pastoral Theology from Cambridge.

“Good morning ladies, you look like you’ve been shopping for a while.”

“Good morning Pastor,” Pi Parteii said, “Are you done with your shopping?”

“Yes, actually this is my second trip; I forgot to buy the chicken feed the first time. I must be getting old.”

“Ha ha ha,” Pi Hrangi laughed dutifully, “Of course you are not old. I am the one who is old.”

“How is choir practice coming along? Are you ladies singing that favourite song of yours again?” the pastor said.

“It’s a surprise,” Pi Hrangi said, “This year we are coming out with something completely unexpected.”

“I guess that means we’ll just have to wait and see,” the pastor said, “I must be off then, my wife must be wondering why I took so long to buy a bag of chicken feed,” and he walked away.

“I heard the pastor’s daughter left her husband and came home. Can you believe that?” Pi Hrangi said, opening her purse to pay for the pork.

“Is that so? I thought she was a very God fearing religious woman, not the type to leave a husband of fifteen years.”

“They say her husband got some girl from his office pregnant, and she said she couldn’t live with him anymore,” Pi Hrangi said in a low voice, looking around to make sure no one had overheard her.

“That is so shameless of him,” Pi Parteii said in an equally low voice.

“I heard that he drinks a lot, and she’s been suffering quietly and overlooking his various affairs. This time he’s gone too far, getting someone pregnant,” Pi Hrangi said, “Parte, I must be going now, remember the choir practice is at four o’clock tomorrow evening.”

“I’ll try to come,” Pi Parteii said, and they went their separate ways.

Gossip - 3

The advantage of having a twin, Chris thought, was that you sometimes escape from sticky situations while your dearest twin brother gets caught, but again that could also work the other way round. Sometimes it feels weird looking at someone who looks exactly like you, well not completely like you but most people couldn’t tell. What irked him the most was people always saying how similar he and Charlie were, and he was fed up of having to always clarify who was who. How could they confuse him with Charlie? Look at him, lying on his bed, reading an X-Men comic book without a care in the world, while he, Christopher, even though he was younger by a good half an hour, had to think of his family’s welfare, had to live away from home and attend boring coaching classes so that he can hopefully become an IAS officer and take care of his parents in their old age. Their older brother Mazuala was a complete and utter waste of a human being, according to Chris. No job, no wife, no girlfriends, no ambition at all. What will he do when their parents were gone and everyone was left to fend for himself? Would he expect the twins to feed him and care for him? Charlie can do that if he wants to, but Christopher will not entertain such ideas. Look at Charlie now, he had closed his comic book and was opening the old family album, Cecilia’s album, to be precise; next thing you know he would say something about her.

“Do you know 16th is Cecilia’s birthday? “ Charlie said, as if on cue.

“Is it? I thought her birthday was somewhere in June. How old is she going to be? Nineteen? Twenty?”

Charlie slid out an old photo from its plastic pocket, looked at the date behind it, and said “It’s written here – Cecilia at 5 months, 16 September 1985. That means she would be twenty-two in a week.”

“I can’t believe it. Do you remember the day she was born? It was bright and sunny in the morning….”

“… and without a warning it suddenly poured. I don’t remember anything except that it rained,” Charlie said.

Chris took the album, and started taking out the photos one by one, making an untidy heap on the bed. “We were over at grandma’s place, and Ni Mateii was told to watch over us, I remember, and you cried because you wanted to go to the hospital, and Ni Mateii danced that funny dance and you laughed again,” he said.

“I don’t really remember.”

Chris got up, went to his parents’ bedroom, and came back with his arms full of old albums.

“Do you know that people born during a rainstorm never get hit by lightning?” he asked Charlie, who by now was back on his bed, reading his comic book again.

“Cecilia was always lucky,” Charlie said to his comic book.

“And that afternoon U Mama came home from school but nobody was at home, so he left his schoolbag near the door and went off to play. When he came home after dark completely wet and with a big hole in his school pants Dad didn’t say a thing, he was so happy to finally have a daughter. I bet if I had committed murder that day he would've just smiled and said “It’s all right.””

He made room for himself on the bed, pushing Charlie to the corner, and continued dislocating the photos from their albums. His intention was to rearrange every album, everything was so unorganized. What he would do was sort all the photos according to person, and then arrange them in chronological order. Look at this, his old album, and the first page was full of Mazuala’s school farewell party, a bunch of young boys in a classroom, “30 Nov 1992” written on the blackboard behind them. And on the second page, his parents on their wedding day, his dad with his long hair and moustache, and his mother with bangs that almost completely covered her eyes; he laughed out loud.

“What's so funny?” Charlie asked.

“Did you ever notice that Dad’s hair was longer than Mum’s on their wedding day?”

“What's so funny about that? It was the fashion back then, that’s all.”

“And look at Ni Mateii, she must have been just fifteen or so here.”

“Why are you at home tonight?” Charlie wanted to know, “By seven you are almost always out of the door, visiting one girl or the other.”

“It’s Monday night, and the girl I want to see will still be at church and she said she had to attend a committee afterwards. But tomorrow night she will be at home.”

“Who is this unfortunate girl, is it anyone I know?”

Chris collected all of Cecilia’s photos and was now arranging them in her official album.

“Marini from Mission Veng, works at Synod Press,” he said in reply to Charlie’s question.

“I know her; she is a member of Synod Choir, very decent, too good for a guy like you. But doesn’t she have a boyfriend, that guy from Ramhlun, the one with the red Pulsar bike?”

Chris put down the photos, snatched away Charlie’s comic book and threw it on the bed (Charlie didn’t even protest, the guy had no energy at all).

“How did you know so much about Marini?”

“She came to the wedding.”

“So? Did she even speak to you? If she did it was probably because she thought you were me.”

“She didn’t speak to me.”

Charlie sat up and tried to take back his comic book, but Chris quickly grabbed it and stuffed it inside his T-shirt. Charlie flopped back on the bed and stared at the ceiling.

“Then how did you know about her boyfriend and the colour of his bike?”Chris asked.

“Her family owns the building where U Siama’s shop is, and she goes there every month to collect the rent. They are good friends, U Siama and she.”

“I didn’t know U Siama knew any girls, “Chris laughed at his own joke, “But so what even if she has ten boyfriends? She said it’s okay to visit, so visit I will. Hey you and U Siama can come along; it will make the situation less awkward.” He pulled out the comic book and gave it to Charlie.

“I don’t think so. U Siama’s getting a new computer game from his friend tomorrow and we were planning to play it tomorrow night,” Charlie said, looking for the page where he was before he was rudely interrupted.

“Oh come on, you can play it any other night. You know very well my return ticket has been booked for the 24th of this month. I don’t have much time.”

“What’s the point in seeing her then? You will go back to Delhi and she will forget you, you are just wasting your time.”

“I like to think of it as an investment of my time; I will get good returns on it someday.”

“That I would love to see. Anyway, how did you know Marini?”

“I have my ways and means.”

Now it was Charlie’s turn to be curious. “Did she speak to you on the wedding day?”

“Sort of, she was with that friend of hers, Mimi, if you remember, but they left immediately after the service.”

“I heard Mimi was Zotea’s ex-girlfriend,” Charlie said rather passively.

“She is everybody’s ex-girlfriend. If that girl tries to come in between my sister and her husband she will have to answer to me. For that matter, if anybody tries to harm my sister in any way they’d better think long and hard, because I will not take it lightly, believe me.”

“Well, Cecilia’s got herself a husband now, one she is totally crazy about. And I'm sure Zotea can defend his castle very well.”

The album was almost done, and Chris was starting to get bored.

“Hey when will U Siama be done repairing your computer? I need to get online and get in touch with my coaching buddies.”

“He said another day or two, but you know that means a week. He is a very busy man, you know, and his assistant quit last week.” Charlie said.

Chris went over to Charlie’s closet, opened it and looked inside. It was total chaos; everything was stuffed together and wrinkled, and the empty cloth hangers made clanking sounds every time you made a slight movement. He wrinkled his nose in disgust and closed the door.

“Hey let’s go watch TV.”

“Dad is watching the local news. We’ll go a bit later.”

Chris went back to Cecilia’s album, and looked at her baby photos. She was a very cute baby, but it seemed she was forever wrapped in that yellow blanket. And here she was on her 5th birthday, wearing that princess dress which she refused to take off for three days. She was a very sweet and precocious child, and always got what she wanted.

“What do you think we should give Cecilia for her birthday? Is it still appropriate to give your married baby sister a birthday gift?” he said.

Charlie had finally finished his comic book and was now sitting at his table, trying to sketch the X-men characters from memory but he kept on getting stuck. He opened the comic book for reference. “I was thinking of giving her a hair straightening iron, you know her hair iron got burned on the wedding day,” he said.

Chris shook his head in disgust. “Oh come on don’t be boring! We’ll give her something exciting, something she’ll never forget. Hey how about condoms?”

“That is crude and inappropriate. She will be embarrassed having a brother like you.”

“I know! Let’s order for her one of those Oriflame perfumes,” Chris was all excited, new projects and new things always excited him.

“She might not like it,” Charlie said. He’d decided he would copy the whole comic book, change the dialogue completely, make them say something funny, and he would put it up on his wall. That meant he would have to take down his Calvin and Hobbes sketches, but he can always put them back up later.

“How about a nice dress, then?” Chris would not give up, he never gave up on anything.

“She has more clothes than any girl I know.”

“Is that so?” Chris was surprised that Charlie knew about girls and their clothes. “And how many girls do you know? Four? Five? Seven?”

“A thousand and one.”

“No, tell me, how many?”

“I live with fifty teenagers for the good part of the year, I know what people wear.”

“Ah yes, Sir Charlie, the fearsome hostel warden with his comic books and sketch books.”

“Make fun of me all you want, but those kids like me well enough.”

“Nail polish! We’ll give her nail polish in every colour, she will like it very much.”

“I still think the hair straightening iron is a good idea. I know someone who can give it to me very cheap, on his cost price no less. A very good bargain. It’s something Cecilia needs, and she will always remember it,” Charlie could be very adamant when he decided to.

“Look, let’s sleep on this tonight, tomorrow we’ll discuss it again,” Chris said. He pulled a chair over to the table and sat next to Charlie.

“Here, let me help you with that. I know the funniest dialogues ever.”

Gossip - 2

To an onlooker he might have looked like an old man. After all, he was over 70 years old, was retired, and devoted most of his time to the Upa Pawl, the elderly citizen's association, of which he was the secretary. But he didn’t think of himself as old at all. Agreed his hair was graying on all sides, he couldn’t walk as fast as he used to, had to struggle a bit to remember facts, all his children were grown up, and there were a bunch of grandchildren. But he was still the same person, still felt as good as he did in the 70’s. His eldest son who was posted in Kolasib had recently built a big house for him where he now lived with his wife and their youngest son. He willed himself not to think about where the money came from.

It was a very good house, three stories, big balconies on each floor, and three bedrooms on each floor. His divorced daughter and her two children lived on the topmost floor, and the ground floor was converted into a row of shops which gave him some income apart from his pension. Siama, his youngest son, well, he was thirty five years old now but still behaved like a twenty year old, and the old man secretly wondered if Siama was planning to stay unmarried the rest of his life. Siama was a good catch all right, not bad looking, owned a business selling and repairing computers, although the old man couldn’t still figure out what computers do. He thought about the girls Siama used to see, and realized they were all married now and with children; he wondered where they went wrong with this one.

“Siama-pa, did you remember to take home a piece of the wedding cake for Siama?”

That was his wife calling from the kitchen, a tiny sprightly woman, always fussing over her grown-up son, whom she still treated like a baby. “No wonder he never got married,” the old man thought, “who could measure up to his dear old mother?”

“Siama-pa, did you hear what I said?”

He still didn’t answer. Sometimes he wondered why he’d married her in the first place. She was a very talkative girl, always running after him and asking him endless questions. He guessed he’d married her just to shut her up, but no, she kept on talking, and had been talking for the last forty-five years.

“Oh you're such a useless old man, can’t even remember to take home a cake for your child. The poor boy spends all his waking hours in that shop of his, and you wouldn’t take the time to ask for a single piece of cake. Cecilia’s mother would have been very pleased to give you one; she has always looked on us as family ever since they moved into our neighbourhood.”

He was sick of hearing about Cecilia’s mother. It seems his wife had nothing to do but gossip all day with that neighbour of theirs. Cecilia was also the youngest child, a much pampered kid. The old man thought his wife and Cecilia’s mother were always engaged in a competition, “Who pampers her baby more” as he called it. Siama was much older than Cecilia, why, he was almost a man when Cecilia was born, but still their mothers compared them as if they had been born on the same day, at the same exact hour.

He went into the kitchen where his wife was making tea.

“Didn’t Cecilia look lovely today? Do you know her dress was made by one of the top tailors in Delhi?” his wife said without looking at him.

“You mean fashion designer.”

“Whatever. Her mother told me it cost thirty five thousand rupees, and Zotea’s family couldn’t pay for it, and it was Cecilia’s father who ended up paying for it. Not that he minded, but you know Zotea’s family had said they would pay for the wedding dress. But I'm not surprised. After all, Zotea’s mother is dying of cancer; all that hospital bills must have eaten up a huge chunk of their money.”

She handed him a cup of tea, and then opened the fridge and inspected the vegetables.

“Poor Pi Hlimi, she doesn’t deserve it. She has such good faith in the Lord. I’ll never understand why bad things happen to good people,” her husband said.

“Cecilia’s mother said the reason they got married so soon was because Pi Hlimi didn’t have much time, and did you see that Pi Hlimi sat throughout the ceremony and went straight home afterwards? I heard that the doctors said there was nothing more that could be done. That’s why they never go for checkups anymore.”

“We should pay her a visit after the wedding commotion settles down.”

“Yes we must do that.” She sat down beside him, and blew on her tea to cool it down. “We must also see how Cecilia is doing, how well she is adjusting. Poor child, barely twenty and all that responsibility thrust on her, taking care of a sick old woman, running a household, oh I'm not sure if her parents did the right thing, letting her go.”

“I wouldn’t worry about that. Zotea’s sisters are quite efficient, Cecilia wouldn’t have to do a thing except sit and look pretty.”

“They are efficient all right, but they are not, what do you say, normal? Did you know the elder sister is having an affair with her boss, a married man? And the other sister, never going to church, never going to any community do, never going anywhere, sometimes I think that one is not quite right in the head. And I hear she doesn’t have any friends either. “

“But Senteii is the one who always receives me whenever I visit Pi Hlimi, always making tea for all the visitors and always smiling although she never makes any small talk. Her family completely depends on her for all the cooking and cleaning, she runs the house very efficiently.”

The old woman left her unfinished tea, got up and opened her cupboard, measured out a cup of lentils and started cleaning it, removing the little stones and sticks.

“Siama-nu, did the newspaper man come today? I couldn’t find Vanglaini anywhere,” the old man said, rummaging through a stack of newspapers and magazines kept on the lowest shelf of the kitchen cupboard.

“Siama took it to his shop.”

“When will that boy subscribe to his own newspaper? Every time I want to read the newspaper it’s always at his shop. I didn’t know he was so interested in the news. I've never seen him read at home, all he ever does is hang around with teenagers and play computer games.”

He walked away, still grumbling, and changed into his work clothes - an old T-shirt splotched with paint, and one of Siama’s old track pants which his daughter had forbidden him to wear. (It’s not like you don’t have your own pants, she had said). But this one was comfortable, the elastic waist made movement easy, and the pockets were deep.

He had almost reached the door when his wife called out, “And where are you going, so dressed up?”

“I thought I’ll go and see how my tomatoes are doing.”

“Your tomatoes are fine. What did your doctor say about working outdoors?”

He went back to the kitchen.

“My doctor doesn’t know me as well as he thinks he does.”

“Oh yes he does. He said so yesterday.”

“And when did you find the time to speak to my doctor? I thought you were busy helping out Cecilia’s mother.”

“I met his wife, she told me he said you should not work outside so much, or else you’ll get sunstroke again.”

“Sunstroke? I wouldn’t worry about that. The temperature is only 25 degrees, it’s not like we are living in the equator or something. “

“In the where?”

“I mean Africa.”

“Why would I want to go and live in Africa? It’s so hot out there, and I hear they eat people.”

“Not anymore. They are much more civilized than you.”

“But it’s still hotter than Aizawl, isn’t it?

“My point exactly.”

He walked out of the door into the warm afternoon sun,and was surprised to feel a surge of happiness suddenly rising from somewhere inside him. Humming his favourite tune, with his hands tucked safely inside his pockets, he made his way towards the little patch of land on his backyard he called his garden.

Gossip - 1

“My feet hurt.”

“Well, I asked you to wear the red shoes but you insisted on the silver ones when you knew perfectly well they were going to hurt you.”

Mimi bent down, loosened a shoe strap and pushed her red painted toes as far out as they would go.

“But this pair goes very well with my bag.”

“Who cares about your bag,” Marini snorted. “Did you honestly think he’d be looking?”

“Who?”

“You know very well who.”

“I don’t. Seriously Mar, I don’t.”

“He only had eyes for his bride, as you might have observed.”

“You call that a bride? She looked like a Sunday School kid acting the part of an angel. Did you see her makeup? Too heavy for a girl her age. And did you see her fake smile?”

“Don’t tell me you are jealous.”

“Of course I am jealous.”

“I don’t understand you. You ditched him years ago and even went around for a while with his older brother, and now you're acting as if he’s the one leaving you and breaking your heart.”

“But my heart is broken.”

“I know. Your heart will break if your neighbor’s cat dies.”

“Why don’t you believe me? He was my first love, and you know what they say about first loves.”

“No, I don’t know what they say about first loves.”

“Well, it goes like this, they say no matter what happens to you in life, no matter how many boyfriends and husbands you have in life, you always…..”

“You know, Mim, sometimes you should think before you speak.”

“Stop calling me Mim. I hate it when you call me Mim. I hate it when anybody calls me Mim.”

“Tell me one good reason why.”

“It reminds me of him. He used to call me Vaimim.”

“Vaimim? Ha ha ha, that’s precious. Vaimim Vaimim….. Come to think of it, you look somewhat like the corn my mother used to buy when I was a kid, with your pointy chin and your silky hair that changes colour every fortnight. But when did he call you that? He’s always called you Mimi.”

“Oh it was a long time ago. I guess we were in class 4 or 5, we used to sit together in class, and I remember he once wrote Vaimim on all my notebooks and I reported him to Miss Malsawmi, and she made him erase everything. I made a face at him afterwards and he hit me on the head.”

“Precious memories.”

"And I still haven’t forgiven him for hitting me on the head.”

“And will you forgive his getting married?”

“Never. He’s betrayed me completely.”

“Stop the drama, will you? I saw you flirting with that cousin of his, what’s his name, RK-a?

“Yes, I also gave him my phone number.”

“I'm not surprised; you never were one to miss an opportunity.”

“But that doesn’t mean I've forgiven Zotea for leaving me and getting married to that girl, what's her name again?”

“Cecilia.”

“Phuh.. what a fake sounding name. Do you think she looks like a Cecilia? I think she looks like a …”

“Hold it, my phone’s ringing. Hello….”