02 | Bibbidy - Bobbidy - Boo!
GLITTER IN THE AIR, FLOATING THROUGH THE APARTMENT — A SYLPH WITH WINGS, ’TWAS MARINE BLUE AND PINK. On its own it would’ve been powerless, but with otherwise human mediums too all it contributed to the world was a pinch of mischief and goodness.
Sometimes Ira would reverse a burnt pot of milk. A tear of a fabric. A missed rickshaw needed in the eleventh hour. She had heard of a bridge collapsing moments after a bus sped past it, held together by someone’s ability to notice the tiniest of crevices. Sometimes it was the internet working in no tower zones to send an acute message across the globe.
It was impossible for magic to be morally evil, it was just how the norms of it worked. Humans were perfectly capable of cataclysm on their own. A better name for human mediums was witches, and if it were a man, he was called a he-witch.
Ira smiled, lopsided with a curious gaze, as it gave just a touch of wonder to everything humdrum. Everything in her apartment was alive, sometimes in a literal sense, but on a regular day too anyone could tell the inhabitant was one of the few. Some called them charlatans, some believed, but anyway they were all harmless. A witch could have a divine patron spiritually, but mortally they made little difference . . . unless the butterfly or ripple effect were to be strategised with.
Nevertheless, someone else could worry about it. Ira was preoccupied ruminating on a way to outsmart it for now, since she did not have world domination to plan. She could hardly stand a whole day of public exposure — imagine having minions to engage all the time!
“If you don’t halt the passive aggressiveness, I’m not heeding you,” she mumbled, distractedly chewing on the back of her pen. Shirt half unbuttoned, sleeves rolled up, and belt unbuckled but unremoved, Dr. Ira Kaushik slouched on her chair with the ancient exhaustion of an academic who was now mistaking one phonetic sign for another, and forgetting bars and emphasis every so often. Dr. D’Silva from her undergrad years would have failed her and made a sharp dry jest of it before the whole batch. None would’ve laughed, but it’d sting the entire time. He was never ill-meaning, which would’ve festered it further.
Insulted by his ghost lingering in her own mind’s eye, she glimpsed sheepishly at Maya from her periphery. The latter seemed thoroughly at home, moonlight spilled on silk, leafing through a book of Greek and Roman myths from Ira’s mini library while sipping on mint mojito. Her jet black leather jacket rested with Ira’s formal blazer.
Then a marker’s lid flew across the room and something screeched, just mildly so.
The dialogue on the whiteboard read, “I’m not messing with your mind. Go, eat some real food. You have to stand the world, and me. Snacks don’t count.”
How very helpful, darling spirit.
So she petulantly marched to the kitchen, begrudgingly put the soyabean rice and raita in her plate even though she would love every morsel of it and had for the past two decades, served Maya some and brought it to the hall room again. She wouldn’t have, if the rumble of her stomach hadn’t threatened to embarrass her and the bridge of her nose didn’t sting, too aware of the clips of her powered glasses out of the blue, the air biting.
Maya sprang to life from her previous esoteric meditation and received her share with much enthusiasm.
One would think the professor from the fashion department would have magazines to author and model in, conduct lectures while looking like the textbook definition of chic, occupy her atelier for hours designing clothes with no functional use (“For the aesthetic of it, my girl. Not everything has to be practical.”) — and Maya did, she did have places to be. However, lounging around alongside Ira in her enchanted apartment was much preferable.
Maya’s spidey senses tingled, light brown eyes darting between the white board and its owner. She raised her spoon. “What’s it raving about now?”
“My . . . dishonesty. Or so it says. You know how much it cares about the moral compass of its medium.”
Sagely nod. That checks out. “What did you do?”
Ira made a face, teetering over the edge of a very gooey puddle with the cheek of a gremlin.
Maya deadpanned, setting her plate aside. “Girl.”
Oh, so she was on her back too now.
“Eat. Or I’m telling Aunt Yashoda.”
Maya picked her property back really slowly, gaze narrowed, muttering exasperatedly about socially half sequestered unscrupulous witches she’d befriended long ago without wholly knowing their questionable daily life. “Blackmailer.”
Maya was no witch. That superhuman part of her brain had been scratched in her past life. Now she was into no divine shenanigans, at least for a while.
Ira lackadaisically chewed, legs stretched before her and sight beyond the palladian windows, steadied over the monsoon clouds reigning Vadodara’s skies. Her mother was down there in the bakery cafe they’d inaugurated not three summers ago, and it being Saturday, Agastya (or Oggy as she called him, that tom cat) was assisting her with it along with the teenagers who worked there part time. The Daily Drizzle was a small, cosy place with brown interiors and aureate lamps — the aroma of fresh loaves of bread and whipped cream scenting its ambience. Much of the young adult crowd flocked there due to Nutan’s sweetness and the tranquility the bakery cafe housed.
Maya crossed her limbs, leaning ahead. The weakest of sunlight caught her wheatish skin, dark golden and ethereal, as her pulchritudinous curls held their spring. To Ira, she’d been an inspiration to write — about unexpected arrivals and their magnanimity. “Tell me what happens if you don’t eat like the magic says,” she inquired. Ira had disobeyed the force, and she would, they behaved like a bickering old couple. Why then, had she now obliged with no ifs and buts?
The witch did that clumsy shake of her head again, the kind she did when she dodged around an uneasy topic of discourse. “I’ll let you know later.” She swallowed, downing half a glass of water.
“Sure, but only if you wish to,” said Maya gently, her protective concern and suspicion weathering into more trust. There was enough chaos in the world already, they didn’t need to add to the other’s.
A warm smile bloomed on Ira’s milky countenance as she briefly inclined her head to the side.
If the lunch hadn’t dispersed the cloud of disorientation from her eyes, Ira wouldn’t have turned to glare at her brother with Medusa-level vexation. Face splitting into the grin of a Cheshire cat with the beard on his face making him resemble a balding coconut, Agastya welcomed her with the usual sibling rituals, uncaring of the public situation, even as the bakery cafe employees muffled their giggles at the monkey business. From the reception, Nutan waved at the girls.
“Hi, Maya Didi! Your bronze eyeshadow looks really pretty.” Agastya stood to his height again as he was crouching half-way before, 5’8 feet of unseriousness around 25 years old, two fingers gesturing at his own eyelids. The other hand held a laptop, while headphones hung around his nape.
Maya returned his ridiculous amusement, “Why, thank you.” -then smacked Ira on the arm with some remembrance- “See, you didn’t catch I got a new palette. He did. Such a sweet boy. Ira, do you even love me anymore?”
The said woman, unimpressed, peered into her book again. Jean-Paul Sartre stared back, lecturing about how humans exist first and must then actively define their own meaning, their purpose. She nodded imperceptibly. Would the humanist Sartre believe some of his beloved humans chose to be defined by annoyance for the sake of it?
‘Yes, the same way he believes some choose to be wet blankets. Like yourself,’ was the prompt thought. Now her own mind was being positioned against herself. No one was on her side.
Belatedly, she caught on that it had been the notorious sylph.
“Of course he’d be noticing make-up now. You didn’t tell me you have a girlfriend you are serious about, tom cat.” The ripple effect had led to Ira remembering this new piece of information brought to her the previous eventide, and smacking Oggy on the back of his head with the speed and steadfastness of light, dutiful and righteous. He unnecessarily fell back on the free chair between them with a theatrical wince.
“It’s not my fault you don’t get out of your apartment other than your office hours.” Agastya impishly shrugged, as his elder sister slid a plate of peeled lychees in his direction. His face immediately lit up, voltage skyrocketing, as he put one in his mouth. On the leftmost side, his friends had gathered around alongside Rishika, the one yet to be introduced to Ira alone amongst the family, while their father patiently established rapport with the youngsters.
Gautam Kaushik always had been a social butterfly. It didn’t matter which age group he was introduced to, he had the ability to mingle well. His sixties had made him somewhat closed off and cranky, so if Ira’s pattern recognition was without fault, it was only Rishika he was judging to determine if she and Agastya would fit the ideal couple image youngsters must embody to keep the culture pristine and preserved (Ira could not decrypt what that meant, neither could Agastya, since most of what Gautam claimed to cherish were colonial notions masquerading as traditions, not Hindu in spirit). But he knew his son — a spitting image of his own personality in many ways, and that was enough.
With a modicum of a jumpscare, Ira found herself being the observation subject of her father. Rishika maneuvered her way to Nutan with a new recipe in hand; Agastya followed.
“Wouldn’t marry before you do, that boy.”
Well Mom, it’s a bit of a sad situation here, because guess who refuses to perform under pressure?
Ira, who, long before would’ve torn her gaze away and escaped, did not even move a muscle.
Only two people remained in the room. Gautam and Ira. Gunpowder and Match.
Victor Frankenstein and his creature.
