Islands in a Stream

There was a couple already seated at the café as I walked in. I was not expecting customers an hour before opening. The government has its ways, and a rather garbled and breathless call from my regional boss was to get to the shop immediately.

The light was low, and I didn’t know who they were until the woman turned around. I almost tripped as I rushed in. She was my wife. Still is. But why here and now? Our eyes met, and I noticed her lips pursed as she fought the inkling of a smile. She just stood up abruptly, and stepped to one side, hands behind her back, eyes forward. I looked over to her accomplice, a short, squat gentleman and much older. He barely acknowledged my existence, continuing to peer at what looked like our purchase ledger.

“Inspection”, she then muttered in my direction. As if to break the ice or give me a hint. As I paused to take her in again, it occurred to me that this, after all was the Health Inspector. For reasons best known to these Small Gods, deigning us with a presence at 8 AM, the shift crew barely into their aprons.

I put on a smile for her, but she had already looked away. Well, it seems they both agree I'm not worth a nod or smile.

The Inspector remained seated, feasting his eyes over a table strewn with bound volumes, file folders carrying our logo, and at least one framed inspection certificate pulled from the back kitchen. I am sure he scared my crew enough to pull off all these. He did not bother to return my introduction or my greeting, as I pulled up in a chair across him. This was coming, for we were informed he would be looking up franchisees in the area. But a walk-in well before opening hour was not expected. 
I typically don’t turn up until 11, and the guys on the early shift were at a loss handling anything other than coffee. I would have preferred a small fire.

I was surprised I didn’t recognize her sooner. Isn’t that odd, the way we sense another’s presence, instinctively knitting together the happy shapes we have come to love and caress. Yet over time, these instincts come stapled with a sea of memories. I would know her from a moving silhouette, just by the way her chin may drop while looking away. That unmistakable glance down and to her side, as if checking her profile on an imaginary mirror. She just did that, while I’m sure dragging her eyes away from me. Lingering but only for a moment, then the bevel gear smoothly let her face line up ahead. She always hated that metaphor, especially the part about gears in her head. Also, inopportune; first time I tried that line, she woke up from a nap with a crick of the neck, and then promptly blamed me.

Those were good times, of a sort. In that life, I serviced industrial equipment for a living. She tried her hand at all that could keep things moving along. Tuition for kids in the neighborhood, office assistant at the local Cooperative Bank. You know, whatever helped make ends meet. It was not easy loving and living in Mumbai, not for those who had known better of both elsewhere. It is a city that trims your time and space, and as the grind starts getting to you, you realize there is little use of either. Only a matter of time, before the Island City makes islands of each other.

It used to be a point of mild argument as whose idea was it to move to the city. In a sense, still unresolved. Before long the point of order ceased to even be mildly amusing. As we moved jobs, rentals, neighborhoods and luck, it became the cancer that ate away at whatever constituted ‘us’. We never had illusions of the high life, the city provided enough to get by, just never enough to cash-in and leave.

Now I realize why I didn’t recognize her sooner. She was in her Civil Defence attire, a dark khaki saree and blouse combination. More resembling the mud she had to scrub off after directing early morning monsoon traffic. Would have been a poorly received wisecrack, if I had ever tossed it her way. But by the time she started dressing up for this part-time Government job, we were well past speaking to each other. I had started spending the better part of the week in the northern suburbs, at work and away, while she eventually moved in with her elder sister. We had no children, and that was the only blessing.

We hadn’t spoken in like forever.

It is a recent addition to a Health Inspector’s team, this man or woman in uniform. It was never the norm, not until recently. Rumor has it, a small hotelier decided to ease one such pesky inspector into a vat of sambhar. Stale, of course, and thankfully cold, saving a life.
Coffee Shops are not rough trade for the Public Health department, so only the lady civil guard.

I have been managing this place for a few months now. It is a steady pay and a steady place of work. There was a charm to working the skills I learnt at the Polytechnic, and all those years honing them. Not to mention the travel. I would have stories to tell around my itinerant lifestyle, of far flung factories and their boilers, and the sorry characters that ruled over them, to a warm-hearted audience of one. Busy chopping veggies, or packing for the next day, ready with a laugh, egging me to tell more. Now that I live alone, and work here, I wonder what I saw in all that travel. Or maybe it is just that there are no more stories to share.

The shift supervisor hovered with a cup of coffee. The Inspector would have a muffin. Another muffin, to be precise. For he’s been on this steady diet, apparent to me from the row of empty spaces encroaching on the display. My assistant’s “Madam, would you like…” was immediately cut off with a hum and nod of her head. Eyes blinking all the while. Her way of turning down something with overt politeness. Ran in her family, she used to say with some pride. She insisted that refusing food, or at least making the effort to, was good manners, while I happily tucked in whenever we visited as family.  It always triggered a back and forth of ‘why-you-eat-so-much’ and ‘why-not’ all the way back to our one-room apartment, until we kissed each other to silence.

She did not seem to have had anything since walking in here. Not even a bottle of water. Now the Inspector would have no more, as he magnanimously waved away a croissant being presented by the thoughtful supervisor. The visit might just be ending. I stared at the super, hoping to convey merely via facial muscles, that he had to stop feeding the trough since no one pays for all this. 

Pushing aside the last folder, the Inspector was up and about. He would have a report in good time, and there was a campus franchise nearby he had to raid before ten. All this spoken in a monotone, to no one in particular. He marched to the doors. Yet a thousand worth of inventory was gone, and yet there was the supervisor, looking over the counter hoping to take another order.

She had already turned and begun to make a beeline to the doors. It was then I noticed the white stitched-on mark on her left shoulder, a single inverted ‘V’. She never told me she had been promoted. The doors chimed as they stepped out.

This would have been quite a story too, had I someone to tell this to.