The Whiffs of Homecoming…
M.K.Aaref
The rancid smell of the freezer hits him so hard it fells like he just got punched. Three days of on-site marketing research and this is what he comes home to. He needs to talk to his miserly landlord. No, he should kill that bugger-all. He has complained over and over about the faulty fuse-box, it short-circuits every time there is a power outrage and then it needs fiddling and wire patching before things start working again. The smell, geeez, he almost loses his lunch, and who the hell will clean out the fridge now??? The Bua, spoilt matron as she is will flatly refuse or give such a hue and cry, he will leave it alone. He is starving. The harrowing journey from up north to the zonal office and then home has been one bone shattering experience of bad roads, car troubles, and hot humid weather with no AC. He has been looking forward to a shower, some left-over curries with some boiled rice and get a decent night’s sleep.
Zaber has been having a terrible week. After visiting various outlaying areas, he finds that at least three new companies have penetrated the market, with a price range that would definitely give his bosses a big headache. And a headache it has been… big, major one……his boss screams at him for not keeping up with market intelligence, and not putting forward a strategy to block these upstarts to show up in their doorsteps. Zaree has been giving ultimatums from Dhaka over the phone. She makes it sound like there are suitors taking numbers for a chance to proposition her and she needs to be rescued by him. Zab and Zarr, that what their friends call them. Zab knows the routine by now. Zar’s mother is not unfavorable towards Zab, but she has held out for better ‘prospects’, as she calls it, and now there has been a few proposals; one a Ph.D. from North Dakota, settled and ‘established’ over there. The other is a well known doctor who is also a faculty member of one of the better private medical colleges. The latter is a ‘Bilaat Ferot’, after just getting his MRCP with flying colours. All Zaber has to offer is his bachelors in business from one of the top-most local business schools, a reasonably well paid job with a cash-rich multinational, even though it means being out in the boonies for another few years without any prospect of being posted in Dhaka anytime soon. Those two have been going out for seven years now, ever since their O’level times, but the strains of a long distance relationship has become from a crack to a canyon. Zar is now doing her MBA, giving her the freedom of the student lifestyle even now. That means waking up late, taking naps during the day and staying up late doing assignments and bugging the hell out of Zaber till almost dawn sometimes. He does not mind initially, with hours spent on the mobile phone stuck to his ears and the wires of the recharger dangling, but his work had been suffering and he puts a stop to it. He switches on the phone, and there will be at least 5 or 10 SMSs waiting. The first ones are all lovey-dovey and as the night progresses, they show increasing irritability and frustration for not being able to talk to him. Zar’s mom, the cunning conniving bitch that she is, has let it be known that it is unthinkable that her precious only daughter who is about to have a master’s degree under no circumstances should marry anyone with just a bachelors. He has applied last year to his alma-mater for an MBA, but shows up for the admission tests totally unprepared. His own family still doesn’t miss the chance to rub it in and Zara’s…, well, it is just like giving them the prefect excuse on a silver platter.
He manages to find two eggs left on a bowl in the pantry. The Bua must have left it there for his breakfast, to be prepared in the morning. The Bua has offered to stay in the house when he is out doing his surveys, but he is paranoid about having her stay over. Not that she has any fascination about his IPod or his laptop or the stereo for that matter, but he knows that she has an immense curiosity about his personal belongings. And there is the small matter of his mom’s foods disappearing from the fridge. On top of that, this is such a small town. Word gets around, even where there is nothing to go around to begin with. Well, if she was around, at least she could have told the landlord to fix the fuse box and there would be a supper of some sorts waiting, instead of this hellish odour emanating from the ice-compartment and that seems to have permeated the entire pantry as soon as he opened it’s door. He cracks the eggs, puts some salt and whisks it with the wooden ladle, finds a frying pot, puts some oil and pours in the mixture. There is a letter waiting pushed underneath the front door from one of those universities he has applied again. Shit, the viva-voce for the MBA programme is on next Wednesday. That day he has to address the district managers of his northern distributors and put the fear of god in them if they want to retain their distributorships.
The mobile rings, and its Mom from Dhaka. Zaber always dreads these calls at this time of the night. It means that after all the chores of the day have been completed, mom has finished his prayers, dad is watching TV or rather dozing in front of it, and now she can contemplate at peace about her kids and their future. Only that she is not at peace with Zaber and his sibling. After the customary inquiry about food consumption, it is about his health, and then the emotional blackmail begins. Why are our moms so pre-occupied with our eating, he always wonders. Inevitably, the conversation veers towards the ‘settling’. His job outside Dhaka is not something she is happy with. Can he get a transfer? What about marriage? She has been given yet another picture of a pretty girl. His sister wants to marry this guy she doesn’t like and him not being home, she is listless and the sister needs some guidance from his older brother. Yatty yatty yatty……
The eggs get burned. Now he really has to starve or go out in that yucky corner shop for some roti and curry. His stomachs revolts last time he is there. Telling mom that he has to hang up is not a viable option either. The water works will begin in their silent relentless flow towards the hell of motherhood and dad will call the next day to reprimand him for upsetting his mom. The never ending saga of passive involuntary appeasement continues….Patience, patience…….whatever virtue there is to this characteristics is yet to materialize….He finally gets off by explaining the ordeal of the day and hangs up.
An SMS arrives. The Dhaka boss is coming and staying over for the presentation. Fine. The MBA viva voice just gets the final nail in its coffin. Instead of theoretical strategies of marketing, he now has to do an actual one now. Instead of vying for an “A”, he has to vie for his survival and hopefully get in the good books of the boss so that he can include him in his Dhaka team. Enough of this small town living… And who needs an MBA anyway? It’s just a piece of paper to increase his marketability, more for the future in-laws than anything.
Another SMS. Its Zaree. SHE IS GETTING ENGAGED TOMORROW. There are a few seconds of hiatus where he doesn’t know how to react. So he just stands in the middle of the room, staring at the screen of the mobile. He is not even going to dignify the message with a response. After so many years, it has come down to a single text message. He will not even enquire who the lucky fellow is. That explains the phone call two days back from Nabil, their common friend, that he should make an effort to sit with her face to face and resolve their issues once and for all. So he knows as well. Is that him by any chance? Judas. I hope not. I most certainly hope not.
He starts smiling. He is not sure why though. He is feeling very light-headed all of a sudden. The return of the prodigal son to Dhaka is not eminent after all it seems. He will miss Zarr, but not in a desperate way. He hasn’t felt like that about her for some time now. Oh well. Need some food. NOW.
He takes out a tissue, covers his nose and throws open the freezer door again. Better get it aired out for the Bua tomorrow. He has to be nice and diplomatic with the landlord now. He also makes a mental note to buy some incense sticks on his way back to offset the smell of the kitchen. Now, the decision of the moment …roti with vegeies or roti with a meat curry…..
The rancid smell of the freezer hits him so hard it fells like he just got punched. Three days of on-site marketing research and this is what he comes home to. He needs to talk to his miserly landlord. No, he should kill that bugger-all. He has complained over and over about the faulty fuse-box, it short-circuits every time there is a power outrage and then it needs fiddling and wire patching before things start working again. The smell, geeez, he almost loses his lunch, and who the hell will clean out the fridge now??? The Bua, spoilt matron as she is will flatly refuse or give such a hue and cry, he will leave it alone. He is starving. The harrowing journey from up north to the zonal office and then home has been one bone shattering experience of bad roads, car troubles, and hot humid weather with no AC. He has been looking forward to a shower, some left-over curries with some boiled rice and get a decent night’s sleep.
Zaber has been having a terrible week. After visiting various outlaying areas, he finds that at least three new companies have penetrated the market, with a price range that would definitely give his bosses a big headache. And a headache it has been… big, major one……his boss screams at him for not keeping up with market intelligence, and not putting forward a strategy to block these upstarts to show up in their doorsteps. Zaree has been giving ultimatums from Dhaka over the phone. She makes it sound like there are suitors taking numbers for a chance to proposition her and she needs to be rescued by him. Zab and Zarr, that what their friends call them. Zab knows the routine by now. Zar’s mother is not unfavorable towards Zab, but she has held out for better ‘prospects’, as she calls it, and now there has been a few proposals; one a Ph.D. from North Dakota, settled and ‘established’ over there. The other is a well known doctor who is also a faculty member of one of the better private medical colleges. The latter is a ‘Bilaat Ferot’, after just getting his MRCP with flying colours. All Zaber has to offer is his bachelors in business from one of the top-most local business schools, a reasonably well paid job with a cash-rich multinational, even though it means being out in the boonies for another few years without any prospect of being posted in Dhaka anytime soon. Those two have been going out for seven years now, ever since their O’level times, but the strains of a long distance relationship has become from a crack to a canyon. Zar is now doing her MBA, giving her the freedom of the student lifestyle even now. That means waking up late, taking naps during the day and staying up late doing assignments and bugging the hell out of Zaber till almost dawn sometimes. He does not mind initially, with hours spent on the mobile phone stuck to his ears and the wires of the recharger dangling, but his work had been suffering and he puts a stop to it. He switches on the phone, and there will be at least 5 or 10 SMSs waiting. The first ones are all lovey-dovey and as the night progresses, they show increasing irritability and frustration for not being able to talk to him. Zar’s mom, the cunning conniving bitch that she is, has let it be known that it is unthinkable that her precious only daughter who is about to have a master’s degree under no circumstances should marry anyone with just a bachelors. He has applied last year to his alma-mater for an MBA, but shows up for the admission tests totally unprepared. His own family still doesn’t miss the chance to rub it in and Zara’s…, well, it is just like giving them the prefect excuse on a silver platter.
He manages to find two eggs left on a bowl in the pantry. The Bua must have left it there for his breakfast, to be prepared in the morning. The Bua has offered to stay in the house when he is out doing his surveys, but he is paranoid about having her stay over. Not that she has any fascination about his IPod or his laptop or the stereo for that matter, but he knows that she has an immense curiosity about his personal belongings. And there is the small matter of his mom’s foods disappearing from the fridge. On top of that, this is such a small town. Word gets around, even where there is nothing to go around to begin with. Well, if she was around, at least she could have told the landlord to fix the fuse box and there would be a supper of some sorts waiting, instead of this hellish odour emanating from the ice-compartment and that seems to have permeated the entire pantry as soon as he opened it’s door. He cracks the eggs, puts some salt and whisks it with the wooden ladle, finds a frying pot, puts some oil and pours in the mixture. There is a letter waiting pushed underneath the front door from one of those universities he has applied again. Shit, the viva-voce for the MBA programme is on next Wednesday. That day he has to address the district managers of his northern distributors and put the fear of god in them if they want to retain their distributorships.
The mobile rings, and its Mom from Dhaka. Zaber always dreads these calls at this time of the night. It means that after all the chores of the day have been completed, mom has finished his prayers, dad is watching TV or rather dozing in front of it, and now she can contemplate at peace about her kids and their future. Only that she is not at peace with Zaber and his sibling. After the customary inquiry about food consumption, it is about his health, and then the emotional blackmail begins. Why are our moms so pre-occupied with our eating, he always wonders. Inevitably, the conversation veers towards the ‘settling’. His job outside Dhaka is not something she is happy with. Can he get a transfer? What about marriage? She has been given yet another picture of a pretty girl. His sister wants to marry this guy she doesn’t like and him not being home, she is listless and the sister needs some guidance from his older brother. Yatty yatty yatty……
The eggs get burned. Now he really has to starve or go out in that yucky corner shop for some roti and curry. His stomachs revolts last time he is there. Telling mom that he has to hang up is not a viable option either. The water works will begin in their silent relentless flow towards the hell of motherhood and dad will call the next day to reprimand him for upsetting his mom. The never ending saga of passive involuntary appeasement continues….Patience, patience…….whatever virtue there is to this characteristics is yet to materialize….He finally gets off by explaining the ordeal of the day and hangs up.
An SMS arrives. The Dhaka boss is coming and staying over for the presentation. Fine. The MBA viva voice just gets the final nail in its coffin. Instead of theoretical strategies of marketing, he now has to do an actual one now. Instead of vying for an “A”, he has to vie for his survival and hopefully get in the good books of the boss so that he can include him in his Dhaka team. Enough of this small town living… And who needs an MBA anyway? It’s just a piece of paper to increase his marketability, more for the future in-laws than anything.
Another SMS. Its Zaree. SHE IS GETTING ENGAGED TOMORROW. There are a few seconds of hiatus where he doesn’t know how to react. So he just stands in the middle of the room, staring at the screen of the mobile. He is not even going to dignify the message with a response. After so many years, it has come down to a single text message. He will not even enquire who the lucky fellow is. That explains the phone call two days back from Nabil, their common friend, that he should make an effort to sit with her face to face and resolve their issues once and for all. So he knows as well. Is that him by any chance? Judas. I hope not. I most certainly hope not.
He starts smiling. He is not sure why though. He is feeling very light-headed all of a sudden. The return of the prodigal son to Dhaka is not eminent after all it seems. He will miss Zarr, but not in a desperate way. He hasn’t felt like that about her for some time now. Oh well. Need some food. NOW.
He takes out a tissue, covers his nose and throws open the freezer door again. Better get it aired out for the Bua tomorrow. He has to be nice and diplomatic with the landlord now. He also makes a mental note to buy some incense sticks on his way back to offset the smell of the kitchen. Now, the decision of the moment …roti with vegeies or roti with a meat curry…..
Comments