Her husband’s hair was largely the source of his happiness and, as Rhea was beginning to realise, the source of her dissatisfaction. Though he was thirtysix, Mathew’s thick hair conveyed a youthful air of irrepressibleness. Combined with the enormous warmth he turned on as soon as he left their home, it was no surprise to anyone that Mathew was a success at work. Only Rhea found it hard to compose her face whenever she had to respond appropriately to his fans. She bumped into his admirers among strangers, his large family and the hordes of her own family she was still discovering in the three years since they’d moved from Delhi to Ernakulam.
Rhea looked up grumpily from her pillow to figure out what he was saying. It was close to midnight and they had been lying side-by-side for a couple hours, but she had forgotten that he was in the room.
She took her headphones out and, distracted by the inky sheen and volume of his hair, failed to understand his intentions. ‘I’ve got rid of all the junk apps and myphone is so fast now. Here, give me yours.’ Mathew tried to prise the phone out of her hand. She wanted to punch him. When he looked surprised at her resistance, she gave in and he was soon trawling through her apps, laughing and uninstalling. ‘Oho, two different apps to remind you to drink water. Why don’t you just drink water when you are thirsty? Three different apps to track your periods, Rhea, man.’ She closed her eyes, took a deep breath and took her phone back.
‘I will delete them.’
‘You should! Start the new year with a clean inbox and clean phone. You can certainly delete that meditation app. I don’t think I have ever seen you use it.’
Rhea grunted and turned her back to him, put her headphones back on and closed her eyes. A friend visiting from Delhi had recommended Chill. Nayantara had lain on Rhea’s couch, raving about it. Nayantara was perfect from her pale pink toenails to her blue-dipped hair. Rhea had subscribed to Chill while Nayantara was still mid-rave about the calm the app had bought to her life. Then she had forgotten all about it.
In the way that he occasionally did, and almost always in matters of money, Mathew became fixated on the meditation app.
The next morning. ‘It’s called Chill but it costs Rs 4,000 a year. That’s not so chill, alle?’ Rhea didn’t disagree. Since they had moved to Ernakulam, she had lost her life, her friends and the ease of her quasi-mothertongue Hindi, but all that would have been bearable ifMathew wasn’t suddenly earning three times what she earned. They now rarely thought for two minutes before buying anything, but if ever they did, it was when Mathew commented about something she had bought in her admittedly thoughtless way.
After work that evening, when Rhea was soaking dried fruit and nuts in rum and looking up her mother’s Christmas-cake recipe, she remembered that conversation about the app and was annoyed afresh. When did she ever ask him what he was spending his money on? She ground her teeth, caught herself at it and stuffed a great handful of the chopped apricots in her mouth. She wiped her hands on her jeans. Then she thought, as she did at least once a day, that Mathew would never do such a thing. Her parents admired how neat he was and occasionally sighed regretfully that she still wasn’t.
She switched from the recipe back to her Korean show and was about to prop her phone against the maida dabba when she got a notification from Chill. ‘Coping with self-esteem issues with trips to the fridge?’ She was startled and amused. Algorithms had got cute. So cute that she could imagine the phone had heard her grind her teeth and gulp down those rummy apricots. I Spy with My Digital Eye.
She clicked on the notification and a sweet little pastel animated fridge offered to talk her out of emotional eating.
‘Hello, Chill, got ESP?’ The sound of her own voice didn’t startle her anymore. She had become afull-fledged talker to self in their fifteenth-floor apartment. Mathew loved to tell his friends back home that even the mosquitoes took the lift to their flat. She felt much more cut-off here than in their crumbling, ridiculously expensive Delhi rental which didn’t even have the ‘fa’ of ‘facilities’.
She abandoned the cake prep and wandered into her beautiful sea-green living room. All their visitors looked at her messy, frizzy hair, looked at the living room and immediately complimented Mathew for it. Surely it must be his elegant eye that created this soothing beauty.
Rhea sat down and put on her headphones to try the guided meditation the cartoon fridge had offered. She was startled by the pure gold of the man’s voice in her ears. She sat up. ‘Gently close your eyes. Allow your mind to wander like a puppy. Watch it, don’t scold it. In time we will teach the puppy to sit down. We will teach the puppy to sit again and again, but today is not that day.’
The voice in her ear reminded her of one perfect winter afternoon when she and a college friend had lay about in Lodhi gardens. They had been slightly drunk and the grass slightly damp, but they had sunglasses on and several layers of shawls. Rhea remembered feeling like she would have been quite content to die that moment. Today is not that day.
Excerpted with permission from the story 'Mindful' from the book 'The Women who forgot to invent facebook and other Stories' by Nisha susan, published by Context. This book is available on Amazon.in for Rs 399.
Today is the day. She is here. And I am in bookstores everywhere. Buy me. Buy us :) #TheWomenWhoForgotToInventFacebook pic.twitter.com/TAQZcdQstC
— Nisha Susan (@chasingiamb) August 10, 2020