“That was… emotional eating. The server crashed.”
At 8:15 AM, the family performed a miracle: they assembled at the dining table. For exactly nine minutes, no one looked at a screen. Akash slurped his paratha with pickle. Priya complained about the cucumbers. Ramesh lectured about the petrol prices. Savita sat last, eating the broken paratha pieces, refilling everyone’s water glass, and secretly checking that Priya had actually packed her geometry box.
Savita didn’t look up from grinding fresh coconut and coriander. “Tell that to your son. Maybe he’ll take the bus for once.” Big Ass Bhabhi Fucking In Doggy Style By Husban...
Akash was now on a Zoom call, muting and unmuting, pretending his background wasn’t a cluttered mandir shelf. “Yes, ma’am, the sprint is on track,” he said into his laptop, while frantically mouthing to Savita, “ Paratha ? With extra butter?”
She poured him the sweet, milky, cardamom-scented chai anyway. He drank it. He always did. The real energy arrived with a bang of a school bag. His sister, 16-year-old Priya, was in her final year of high school, and her life was a battlefield of textbooks and teenage drama. “That was… emotional eating
“What’s for tomorrow, Ma?” Priya asked, already half-asleep.
Savita had her own schedule. Monday was vegetable chopping day. She sat on a low plastic stool in the verandah, a steel bowl between her feet, and chopped bhindi with a curved, blunt knife that had been her mother’s. The servant, Sunita, arrived at noon to sweep and mop, and they exchanged gossip over a quick chai . Akash slurped his paratha with pickle
By 7:30 PM, the television blared a daily soap where a long-lost twin was about to reveal herself at a family wedding. Ramesh pretended to hate it but knew every character’s name. Savita ironed school uniforms while watching, never missing a dialogue. Dinner was late, as always. Simple: khichdi , yogurt, papad, and a spoonful of ghee. They sat on the floor of the dining room tonight—no reason, just because. The air was cooler. Somewhere, a temple bell rang.
This was 5:30 AM.
Akash put his phone away. “I’ll drive you.”
The chai was gone. The school van honked. Priya ran out, forgetting her water bottle. Savita sighed, wrapped it in a cloth, and ran after her, intercepting the van at the corner. The neighbors watched. This happened every Monday. The house fell into a different rhythm. Akash locked himself in his room, the tap-tap of his keyboard merging with the distant dhak-dhak of a pressure cooker from the neighbor’s kitchen. Ramesh went to the nearby park for his “walking group”—a bunch of retired men who mostly sat on a bench and solved the world’s problems.