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Waking up to Whatsapp

163 messages. That was absurd even by our standards. I agree that we were a group of incurably crazy forty-four- year-olds, but 163?

I had taken a Trika 0.5 last night and had undone the effect by watching Killer Instinct on Netflix, so it was quite obvious that I was one of the last ones to enter the conversation.

Vani would probably be unable to attend the reunion. Her mother-in-law’s knees were bad. Vani’s MIL’s knees were probably Chinese. They were a persistent problem, a thorn in the bush. It would be so unfair if she missed it. it was our twenty-fifth year after all.

I checked the other WhatsApp messages. The usual ones.

My ENT doctor had written that my profile picture was cute. Of course, I knew it was cute. Couldn’t he use a better word like breathtaking or surreal? But then he had done his MBBS and not studied English Literature, so I guess it was all right. I appreciated his loyalty. He had been expressing his admiration ever since I got my left ear cleaned by him.

Admiration for my Olay-ed face of course, not my left ear. I shot a quick thank you to the libidinous doctor and good morning messages to the usual ones. I couldn’t wait to burst into the group chat.

Vani, can I drop my entire month’s dose of Trika 0.5 at your place? You can give it to your mother-in-law with her turmeric milk or aloe vera juice, I typed.

No answer. Then Kirti wrote, do that Nandu. Give her enough to last until our 50th reunion.

I couldn’t agree more. It was really fortunate that Vani’s MIL had two knees. If she had more, then Vani would remain in a permanent lockdown. There were other suggestions of course, like Rheuma Oil, homeopathic and organic massage oils and painkiller injections. But somehow Vani was still silent. Had her MIL read our messages, I wondered.

There was a genuine problem about what we were going to wear. It would have to be loose, but not loose enough to make us look like talking yaks; tight, but not tight enough to prompt our chauffeurs to mentally count our bulges when we got down from the car. It had to be bright, expensive and classy. We had to be careful that we had never posted Facebook or Instagram pictures in the same dress. It would obviously have to be branded and show a bit of our legs. That was not for our satisfaction, but in grateful acknowledgement of the Urban Company services that we had availed. We were a conscientious lot of women who always gave due credit to people who made us feel good.

Thankfully, there were few.

Even after 200 odd messages, nobody could decide what to wear. Tanisha said philosophically, girls let’s just go with the flow. Let time decide for us. I doubted whether time would be able to manage all of us and make us presentable by six o’clock.

Sangeeta would be late. She was stuck at work somewhere on the outskirts of Kolkata. Anushua would come straight from the hospital. Malini, Shreya, Rajshri and Aparna had flown down specially for the occasion. The excitement was palpable.

I skipped through the messages, read some of them and waited for Vani to confirm if she still needed the Trika. I could wait no longer. I asked Durga to bring my tea and eagerly dialled Kirti.

“Nandu, I was just going to call you.” She always said that even if I was sure that she was fast asleep or in the middle of a bath. Of course, what she meant was that she was dying to talk to me. There was some kind of a transmitter between us that conveyed this feeling of desperation, that was strangely, always mutual.

“I know, Kirti, I’m late. Had Trika last night and then watched Netflix.”

“You will never learn,” said Kirti.

She was right. I would never learn things that I didn’t want to learn, like mathematics or cooking. My mind was programmed to resist everything that I thought was dispensable. Sleeping early or waking up before mid-day, were definitely not the favourite activities on my list. “How mean of Vani’s mother-in-law,” I said. Usually, a comment like this was enough to initiate the talk show called Kirti. She would approach the problem from all possible angles and offer the most innovative solutions. At the end of the conversation, however, we would be right back where we had started off.

“Nandu, the problem is not with her MIL’s legs, but—”

“Knees,” I interrupted.

“Yes, whatever,” said Kirti. “Today it’s her knees, tomorrow it will be her eyes or something else. It’s Vani’s fault really. She has to understand that she is not a nurse but a human being.”