It’s hard to make plans with Smita and ensure she sticks to them. You could tell her, “Majnu ka Tilla, 4 pm,” and still expect to be called...
It’s hard to make plans with Smita and ensure she sticks to them. You could tell her, “Majnu ka Tilla, 4 pm,” and still expect to be called sometime before schedule and hear whingeing to the tune of: “Actually, mother will be deeply worried if I get too late coming home, didi. Can we do X or Y or Z place, and maybe 3 o’clock instead?”
You grumble and you gripe and, most often, exchange a flurry of petulant words (that you tell yourself you’re permitted after a nearly four-year-long friendship), but you agree. And you meet at a point where she feels, well, safe(r).
Plans with Smita hinge on a fulcrum of variables – how “safe” or “dangerous” a certain cafe, metro terminal or local watering hole feels to her; whether a certain item of food served by an unsuspecting bearer will potentially trigger a memory or elicit a sob; and whether she can return home by sundown or before her parents chastise her for being “out” – whichever comes first.
I’ve asked her a number of times, to let me talk to her parents; to urge them to understand if she needs to go out; or to loosen the safety net they’ve...
