by Vani Viswanathan
Sathya has an urgent errand to run and hopes that her trusty moped will see her through. Vani writes about Sathya’s afternoon.
Sathya looked at the watch on the wiry arm circling her stomach. 2:20 pm. The hand with the watch disappeared behind for a few seconds, and the child screeched, ‘Amma! It’s 2:20! Go faster, go faster!’
Sathya wanted to pluck the digital watch off Janani’s hand and fling it. She wanted to focus on navigating the moped through the tricky right turn to the subway, through the horrific junction that spilled in traffic from three different directions. ‘We’ll get there in time, don’t worry,’ Sathya told Janani, hoping her voice didn’t betray the very real possibility that they wouldn’t make it in time.
The afternoon had dawned with confusion. Her usual role was only to plait Janani’s hair and dress her up in the chudidhar and the dupatta around her waist, Bharatanatyam-student-style. Dropping Janani off at the centre for the 2:30 class was Sundar’s job, but Sundar had suddenly announced at one o’clock that he had a headache and didn’t want to step out in the afternoon heat.
So she’d hurried through serving the three kids lunch and getting Janani ready, and then rushed out with her at 2:10 pm to leave on the moped. Her heart sank when she saw the fuel indicator. The needle was nearly at Empty. Sundar had used the moped last. She was furious that he hadn’t bothered to refill the tank. Hoping that the reserve petrol would help her get to the dance class centre – nearly two kilometres away – she started the vehicle, waited for Janani to climb on, and tottered off for a few metres before stabilising.
It was only Janani’s second month in class and she was already terrified of the teacher, but they’d managed to get admission with great difficulty – the teacher was in much demand – and Sathya made sure the child attended class despite her weekly whimpering. Reaching late and getting yelled at by the teacher would certainly make it tougher to get Janani to continue.
The moped was a little old, but had been her trusty companion through several adventures over the last seven years. The three children had all ridden pillion on it as babies, and now the oldest one was so big that with him behind it was difficult for her to add one of the younger ones. She had used it to rush to vaccination appointments, school admission interviews, to Sundar’s office the day his manager was visiting and he forgot his tie, to her father’s aid when he fell in the garden, and her most cherished memory, when she got the chance to watch May Maadham by herself, an evening show at that! The ride back at night after the show had been quite the adventure, with the moped threatening to run out of petrol in the middle of a deserted road. But it was as if it knew, as if it were her friend – it literally stopped a few metres short of the nearest petrol pump and she had to only push it for a few minutes.
‘Will you be by my side today, too?’ Sathya silently asked today, as she looked at the needle edging dangerously close to the ‘E’ on the fuel indicator. The watch showed 2:26 pm, and she was still at least five minutes away. Her friend or not, the moped was ridiculously slow and she knew that speeding on Reserve made the vehicle sputter to a stop. She avoided listening to her daughter’s feeble gasps whenever she checked the watch every minute. Sathya carried on with steely determination, at 30 kilometres an hour, unmindful of the sweat on her tummy where her daughter’s hands encircled her, with increasing tightness.
The big, scary – and final – right turn to the centre finally arrived. Sathya stuck her right hand out and made a wobbly right turn, swerving to avoid a Kinetic Honda speeding from the other side. Its male rider yelled an expletive at her, and she spat angrily in his direction, shocking herself. He was baffled too, and triumphant, Sathya zoomed into the road – and the moped gave up. Caught unawares, Sathya furiously pedalled for a few seconds before she realised what had happened. Behind her, Janani burst into tears.
Sathya pedalled quickly to a corner under a tree, parked the moped, yanked the crying child off the vehicle and ran the hundred-odd metres to the centre carrying her daughter. They reached at 2:31; she pushed Janani into the room and panted as she drew the teacher’s attention to say that Janani had reached. Adrenaline coursing through her, she walked back to where the moped was, peeled off the handbag slung across her shoulder and hit the moped with it in a mad frenzy. After a few seconds, she pushed the moped down and kicked it violently a few times. A few passersby stared with mild shock.
She then sat on the moped, panting. She pulled out a water bottle from the front pocket and gulped some water, and then washed her face. Her heartbeat returned to normal in just a bit. She got up, slung the handbag around her, tied her saree pallu around her waist, and began to push the vehicle to the nearest petrol pump.
Vani Viswanathan writes fiction and non-fiction, and works on gender, sexuality and development communications in New Delhi. Her first dedicated foray into writing for the world was when she started a blog in 2005. Her writing typically focuses on the marvellous intricacies and laughable ironies in lives around her. She draws inspiration from cities she’s lived in or visited. Her writing can be accessed on www.vaniviswanathan.com.
