Another short story - Part 1

Deepa looks accusingly at her silver MotoRazr lying near the microwave.

She is cutting translucent skinned potatoes into small, symmetric pieces. Unevenness makes her uncomfortable. For her, cutting vegetables into right-sized pieces is the essential of good cooking. So, she does it herself before Rohit comes home.

She has experienced Rohit’s well intentioned help. He comes in unexpectedly, swinging his racket, his tennis whites spotless. It is these periods of activity that she is wary of. He won’t listen pretending that her irritation is invisible. He makes her sit on the sofa in front of the television and forbid her from helping him. He does it with a mock-serious expression, as if all this is an elaborate joke he has thought up while playing the last set with Mr. Marshall. And he proceeds to mangle the vegetables, leaving her with a loss of appetite.

Deepa had enjoyed these displays initially, when she had joined him in his condominium, a ‘jog-distance’ (as he put it) away from the tennis club he worked at – ‘The Marshall’s school of Tennis’ with ‘Special care for beginners’. She had found out that he was a tennis coach after marrying and coming to America.

Everything leading to their marriage had happened in a blurred rush. Rohit had come to her house with his parents. He was wearing a green Polo T-shirt, khaki trousers and brown Reebok sneakers. The neatly trimmed, side parted hairstyle and his frank, approvingly long look towards her had made up her mind. Not that her opposition would have made much difference against that heavy, gold-covered word which had been floating in the house for the past week in anticipation of this visit.
‘America’.
He had talked to her in English and she had noticed how he strained to hear her replies – contemplating, chewing and finally digesting her accent. She stayed at home for 7 more days before she got married and boarded her first flight.