Free Stories for Chip by Nisi Shawl Page A

only some six months hence, after Chandini had slowly but surely begun to count herself sister to my other two darling girls, Lakshmi and Parvati, that I let myself worry about trivialities such as an unwanted glass desk.
    I will be blunt. There is something unpleasant about being able to see one’s lower limbs as one works. There is such a thing as too much clarity. My missus had found this claim amusing but had to admit I was right after trying it for herself. Strangely enough, I enjoyed watching her work at the glass desk.
    This amorous detail is an instance of the desk’s inauspiciousness. That morning, had I not been thinking about the missus, missing her, looking forward to picking her up at the airport in the evening and the long chit-chat we would have thereafter, had I been paying attention to detaching the laptop’s cord from the power socket, I would not have knocked the back of my head sharply against the desk’s glass edge.
    I must have cried out because Chandini came running into the room. What is it, younger-father, she cried, what is it? Her fright brought me to my senses. Does it hurt badly, she asked, and I said jovially: No, no, I just banged my head and finally calculus makes sense.
    â€œYou should get rid of the desk,” she said, smiling. “It’s a useless burden.”
    â€œYes, first chance I get.”
    I bit my tongue only later. She had been seeking reassurance, and fool that I was, I’d flubbed the opportunity. I fired off a worried email to the missus who responded almost immediately. Single line, all caps: RE LAX, CHANDINI KNOWS SHE IS NOT A WRITING DESK.
    I was less sanguine. A life can change in a look, a word, a gesture. Later, after making sure my girls were safely on the school bus, I set off for Somaiya College. Each day I take the harbor line from Dadar to Vidyavihar, and this morning, as with other mornings, the platform was crowded with the same set of familiar faces. Everyone had their favorite positions on the platform. Mine was to stand under the large railway clock. When the train reaches the platform, some of the younger, less-experienced office-goers lose their nerve and begin darting up and down the platform, trying to spot a relatively empty compartment. This makes professionals like me smile. Our friends are already holding places for us inside the train, just as we’ll hold places for others further down the line. The secret to a comfortable journey, in commuter trains as well as in life, is having people look out for you. In any case, I enjoy the few minutes’ wait.
    As a mathematics professor, it hadn’t escaped my attention that there were many nice mathematical problems waiting to be solved in this act of rearrangement, but it also hadn’t escaped my attention I wasn’t going to be the one cracking them. For instance, everyone knows it isn’t surprising to spot a familiar face in a crowd of mostly familiar faces. But how do we spot a particular familiar face in a crowd of familiar faces? That is what happened. In the crowd of faces milling to catch the morning train, I spotted Martin-sir, my wife’s old mentor and former Honorable Justice of the Bombay High court, now a resident of Nagpur. Martin-sir had made time in his very busy schedule to officiate at our civil marriage, a gracious act for which I will be eternally grateful.
    The old gentleman had seen me as well, because a smile lit up his noble face. It had been several years since we’d last met, but he seemed to be exactly the same. We exchanged pleasantries and when I inquired about his well-being and that of his family, he told me that families, like gardens, were always in a state of becoming. His ghostly tone left me nonplussed. Was Nagpur very cold this time of the year, I queried. Martin-sir laughed, punched my shoulder jovially and said, Damn it lad, it’s a wonder you managed to lasso that wife of yours. He promised to come for dinner, his