Bang! the coconut

Reena hated to call up Yatharth while he was in office. Somewhere, she had drawn a boundary between work and home. For Reena it was like, she were at office. But today she decided it was best to call him up. Yatharth would return the next week from his UK trip. And Amma's growing concern for have you been eating right, and 'coconut nahi khaya beta' had consequently filled the fridge with skimmed milk, flavored yogurts, strawberries, kiwis, oranges and a coconut.

She wondered how to break this one open. She took the wine opener and dug the needle into one of the three eyes of the nut. Hard nut to crack! But after some minutes of patience and perspiration she was successful. Coconut water sprouted, and she drained it in a glass. It was nothing like the dhaab water, that she had been raised upon back home in Calcutta (now Kolkata). But it would do and she gulped down the semi transparent liquid in one breath.

Later when she went to an Indian shop which sold, 'garam masala' and 'papad' she asked the lady behind the counter if she could break the coconut. Reena offered to come another day to collect the nut! The lady behind the counter must have considered a real nut. She came outside and hit the coconut on a pole. Bang! and it broke into two. Reena was happy like a child. Even bought some masalas she did not need. With her bag filled with basmati rice, toor daal, sambhar masala and dhaniya powder, she perched the coconut on top.

Like when you start a new venture, be it marriage or an inauguration of a new shop, or birth, she had always seen her father break the coconut before the deity. Today it felt auspicious somehow, when the coconut broke into two on the pole outside the shop.

She wanted to narrate the whole nutty affair to Yatharth. Sometimes it is so hard to contain few things to yourself. You just need to talk in one breath, and then laugh or giggle. These were few things that Reena had come to value. It was rare for her to talk to someone in her own tongue. She dialled Yatharth.

'Sweets!"

'Yes, everything is fine?' Her phone calls in office were out of ordinary.

'yeps, I just bought a coconut, and used the wine opener and drained its water, and took it to the Indian shop and the lady....

'Honey, I am in a meeting right now. We will talk later ok? I will call you once I reach the hotel."

Reena hung up. And felt silly. What was there to tell him really, a coconut... how she had managed to break it. And that she was still wondering how to scrape the white flesh out of it. Was just all this that defined her life, frozen peas and coconuts! Her eyes began to sting as tears welled up.

She curled up in sofa like a little kid. And then few minutes later she was crying and home sick.