Tewari & Sons, 23, Chandni Chowk

Chapter 8: Matters of the Heart (Part 2)

"Maaf kar de, Khushi, usko nahin bulana chahiya tha na," Renu Bhabhi said. Arnav seemed to be on a rather serious call, considering the time of the night that it was and Khushi had decided to check on Bhabhi, to see what was taking so long with the chai. Turns out the gas cylinder had got over and Khushi had entered the kitchen to see Bhabhi trying to negotiate with the cylinder but with no avail. How very inconvenient that they had to run out of cooking gas exactly when someone was home and that too right on New Year's eve. If she were the superstitious sort she would consider this as foreshadowing for what the rest of the year was going to be like. Them struggling and tugging and pulling at things. But thankfully she was not the particularly superstitious sort. There were enough problems in their life without the added burden of planet alignments and stars.

"Lagta hai faulty piece hai," Renu Bhabhi remarked, finally giving up. Khushi shook her head and asked Bhabhi to move. She had a lot of practice with this. Rolling out empty cylinders, pulling the seal of a new cylinder with her hands and rolling back the new one in place of the old. Even at Gupta Mithai, it was she who did this and not Baba. Though Maa, her more conservative parent, did not care for the fact that her husband was making their daughter perform what she believed to be unfeminine tasks. But Baba did not care for this notion, and neither did Khushi.

"Champion ko aata hai, jhat se ho jaata hai us se," Baba would always says. With some pride even. Khushi had on a number of occasions even helped some of the other vendors on Chandni Chowk with this much to Maa's chagrin.

But not today, Khushi's palms were hurting and they also smelt vile and poisonous by now. Bhabhi even bought their largest kitchen knife to somehow use that as a tool, but that didn't help either. And to make matters worse, the whole exercise was so noisy that they were probably going to end up waking up their neighbours, or at the very least Aarav.

"Need some help, Khushi?"

Of course, he would show up here. She knew that. It was only a matter of time, she thought. Bet he was annoyed that these two idiotic women were unable to even make him a cup of chai. He was probably looking at her struggling with the cylinder and thinking what kind of poor-people hell he was in the middle of.

"No, we will manage. Why don't you sit down in the hall, I will be there in a minute."

She knew that her pointed comment would be construed as rude perhaps, but she did not care. She did not want anyone to know about her struggles. Even if it was just with a knob of a cooking-gas cylinder. Especially she did not want to see him struggle. She just wanted to be done with this night as quickly as possible.

"You are pulling it too hard, you just need to snap the metal at the bottom."

Great. He won't go and he was now giving her advice on how to go about this. Like he would know anything about this. Maybe she could get the old hot plate they had somewhere and use that for now. This can be fixed after Arnav leaves. She stood up.

"Bhabhi, woh electric hot plate nikaal do. Chai toh us mein bhi ban jayega."

"Acha," Renu Bhabhi looked at her doubtfully. The hot-plate was an old one and Khushi remembered that Maa had used it once a really long time ago, much before Renu Bhabhi's time. For all she knew, it might not work now, or worse, cause a short-circuit and plunge all of Chandni Chowk into darkness. That is all she would need to truly make this night memorable.

"If you don't mind, I can try... main koshish karoon... Bhabhi."

"Agar problem nahin toh, please kar dijiye."

Clearly Renu Bhabhi was making all the decisions for the night. And Khushi did notice how Arnav decided to address his Bhabhi instead of asking her. She had not even made formal introductions and he had caught on. On the one hand Khushi was annoyed that she needed a man to fix the current problem at hand. It was annoying because she had been able to perform this task a thousand times before. At the same time, it was disconcerting that the boy who was embarrassed to be seen with her because he was so conscious about their class differences was today comfortable enough in her space, taking charge, as if he did things like this all the time. And sure enough, one gentle tug and he managed to unhinge the metal and get their kitchen fires burning.