Free Happy Birthday!: And Other Stories by Meghna Pant

adrak chai. A bigger, swankier flat in lieu of vacating, like the other residents—so he could build a 33-storey high-rise—or the streets. I’ve desperately searched for my old flat’s soul here, in this new flat whose ceiling I can touch, but all I find is my hollow reflection.
    â€˜Yuck, Mommy, look! A gecko,’ Choti yelps, pointing to the freshly painted living room wall. I turn around sternly, no idea what a gecko is, and fix my eyes on a light pink lizard. The pest control I’d done a week earlier has obviously had no impact.
    â€˜Choti, this is our friend Chameli. She has come to say hello,’ I say, my voice mock-childish, like one adopts when talking to a seven-year-old. Choti looks at me with her eyebrows raised, and I recoil in surprise. When has she learned to think for herself?
    I clear my throat to say that I’ll take their suitcases to the guest room. I can’t find my voice. I cough.
    â€˜Are you all right, Dad?’ Dipti asks, furrowing her perfectly shaped thin eyebrows.
    â€˜Fit as a fiddle-er on the roof,’ I say, an old joke between her and me. No, judging by the way her lips pinch together, it’s an old joke between Sheila and her, for their love of the same musical. I wish Sheila were here, so I didn’t have to steal her jokes or fumble for words with my daughter and granddaughter.
    I lift their wheeled suitcases and put them next to the new bed inside the second bedroom, which will finally be used. When I come back, Dipti is sitting on the edge of our old striped sofa with Choti on her lap. A bottle filled with pink tablets is lying open on the cushion next to them.
    Dipti strokes Choti’s hair and asks me, ‘Are you eating well? You’ve lost a lot of weight since I last saw you. Diabetes in control?’
    â€˜Yes,’ I answer, distracted by the maid—what’s-her-name—who is carrying two glasses of Coke towards us, rather than the three I’d told her to bring.
    â€˜Namaste, bibiji, baby,’ she says and I’m grateful for her follow-through of at least one instruction. I’ve hired her for the exact duration of Dipti’s stay: three weeks, and though I can barely afford a maid I don’t want Dipti, with her crisp American life, to wade through the deprivations of her childhood again.
    â€˜How is Udit, beta? He did not come?’ I ask Dipti, as she touches her lips to the Coke without sipping. They leave mauve lipstick marks on the glass.
    She looks down at the carpet, before levelling her eyes at me. ‘No, Dad. He’s busy, busy with work. He doesn’t get more than two weeks off, and you know how things are in New York.’
    I don’t know, having never been invited to what Dipti calls her ‘slice of lovely madness’. Udit too exists in my mind only as an attachment to Dipti. After all, I’ve met him only during his wedding with Dipti nine years ago and when he came for a visit four years later. That was his third time in India, he said, and he seemed uncomfortable here, stressing repeatedly that after his first trip to India—when he’d met Dipti at a client party—he hadn’t intended to come back. He didn’t attend Sheila’s funeral three years ago, using Choti as an excuse to stay put, and the next year Dipti came alone with Choti.
    At that time even my daughter booked a hotel room, saying that she didn’t want to stay in the place her mother had died. This was still the old flat then.
    â€˜It’s moving,’ Choti gasps and clutches her ladybug soft toy. The gecko, with its unblinking, soulless red eyes, dashes behind the white tube light, and Choti squeals. To distract her I take out a package that I’ve hidden under the sofa. It’s a gift that I bought from one of those new toy stores that looks like its passing through India on the way to some place nice. I wanted to buy Dipti something too, but my money can’t