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3

Prose

An Upper-Middle Class Morning

Suhani Timbadia

Rekha has been waking up at twenty three minutes past seven, for the last two thousand six hundred and four days. There is a nice ring to seven twenty three, or at least, she likes to believe it is a magical time. Magic. The mad man's folly. The child's indulgence. Rekha's favourite drug. She had realised early on that magic was as, if not more important, than the water she drank from that steel tumbler, to stay alive. She longed to drink water from that glass cup someday. Maybe it's breakability made it beautiful. The rich loved such metaphors. They probably haven't read Darwin. She didn't care, she just wanted to drink from it someday, it would taste better, she was sure of it. In India, class is much like water. It seeps into everything. Elements of the periodic table, textile materials, bedsheets, class politics doesn't spare anyone in this country. In her village, everyone thought money can buy class, her included. It was when she started working at the Mehta house that she realised that class was an extremely complex function. She thought of it as a polynomial, with money and caste having the highest order, but followed closely by skin colour, language, mannerisms, dressing, food habits and almost everything under the sun. A lot of cosmic forces came together to predict your class. She prances through a sunflower meadow in her mind, she can almost feel the wind hit her face. She turns on the gas. reaching for the tea with one hand and closing the refrigerator door with her foot, she takes in a long breath of the morning air. The house is completely silent. She only has a few minutes before they slowly start to wake up. These few minutes are her favourite part of each day. she stares outside the window. a pigeon sits on the same window beside her, gurgling. They both take in each other's presence, gauge the chances of danger, and once done with survival, they get on with living. She hums a tune her dad used to sing to her when she was three. memories. long lost relatives. Sometimes, they show up and it is a pleasant surprise. other times, overbearing and nauseating and almost always overstaying their welcome. The pigeon took off suddenly to a nearby tree. Three waiting babies cried for their mother. Magic. The house starts to wake up. It's time. The grandmother wakes up first, silently waiting at the table for her tea to be served. She understands. Understands the importance of those few minutes in the morning before she too falls into the moulds created for her. She sips on her tea. that first sip of the morning. Her day will soon begin. The daughter walks out of her room then, barely making sense of mortality as she tries to push her sleep away. She opens the refrigerator, pours a cup of black coffee and settles in the swing with a book. You watch her sip that coffee and lose herself. Or regain herself. Something like that. Who knows what she keeps reading all the time? She doesn't engage with anyone, people seem to make her uncomfortable.

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