After All This Time Read Online Free PDF Page B

like New Delhi. She tied her hair back and stuck her head out of the window for a while longer until she started finding it difficult to breathe. She closed the window and rested her head back. Just when she began contemplating jumping out of the car, to escape the silence, her mom spoke up.
    ‘Really cold here, isn’t it?’
    The one thing people talk about when they have nothing left to talk about—the weather.
It has come to this.
All Lavanya said was, ‘Yeah, it is quite cold.’
    ‘Though you are coming from New York, so this must not feel that cold to you.’
    ‘That’s true.’
    ‘Is it really cold there now?’ her mom turned back and asked.
    Lavanya thought back to the last week that she had spent walking around the city in the dead of the night, laden with overcoats and thick scarves wrapped around her neck. She had always ended up feeling hot and sweaty inside all the winter wear from walking so much. ‘Yes, it was really cold there.’
    Her mom nodded and turned halfway. She sat like that for a few moments, facing neither backwards nor ahead, maybe trying to think of something to say next, and then she turned forward, as if unable to think of anything.
    The silence enveloped them all once again. It had been too long since they had been around each other. Too long since they had shared each other’s company, spoken to each other, lived with each other . . . loved each other. They had forgotten how to simply
be
in each other’s presence.
    They had forgotten how to be a family.

    Seeing her family home as her father drove in through the front gate shocked Lavanya. She somehow remembered it being much bigger than it was. Perhaps she had reconstructed her memories to make them greater, grander, more magical than the truth. But she did not feel that she had lived away from home long enough to have a warped memory of it, nor had she been so young when she left to have imagined it to be something it was not.
    When she walked into the hall, all she could relate to was its basic structure, the shape and the general area. She remembered tall pillars and the chandelier, but everything else was new to her—the colour and texture of the walls, the tiny lights on the ceiling, the curtains, the vases, the centre table. She did not recognize any of that. Too much had changed.
    The threadbare brown sofa with elephants embroidered on it was missing, and had been replaced with what looked like a plush leather couch. The carpet, though, was the same that she had seen the last time she was home.
    As she went further inside, to the kitchen, the hallway, the bedrooms, she could swear they had been bigger back then. Somehow they had all grown smaller, over time, as if shrinking with age. Yet somehow, they seemed
younger
, more beautiful than ever. Lavanya was fascinated.
    She had not expected to feel happy on coming home. She had wanted to come here just as an escape from her ‘real’ life. But when she stepped inside her room, she actually smiled. The slight movement of those muscles felt almost alien to her face.
    ‘Lavi! Are you hungry? What do you want to eat?’ her mother called from the kitchen.
    Lavanya came back downstairs, only then realizing that she was starving; it was dinner time in New York. ‘What do we have?’
    Noticing the first glimmer of genuine interest in Lavanya, her mom felt relieved and somewhat excited. ‘Let’s see—I’ve made bhaji, I can heat up some pavs—’
    ‘Say no more, Mother!’ Lavanya raised her hand dramatically.
    Her mom laughed. ‘But I have also made chhole and samosas for you!’
    ‘I told you it was going to be a waste of time. You did not need to make anything else. Lavi loves pav-bhaji,’ her father interjected good-naturedly.
    ‘I know—you were right. You know your daughter very well—’
    ‘I will also have a samosa,’ Lavanya said quickly, cutting her mom off once again.
    It was followed by a brief silence.
    ‘I’ll heat one up for you. I wanted to cook all