Short Story: Maternity Leave

Rajeev wanted to sit down for a while and get some rest, but Kiyan didn’t give him a chance. To be honest, Carla had been running after little Kiyan since morning and he had no right to complain.

‘Kiyan, don’t go there. You’ll fall into the water.’ Rajeev picked up Kiyan and carried him back to the top of the steps of the beautiful Santa Maria della Salute where Carla was sitting. The moment he put him down next to Carla, Kiyan started to slowly and carefully climb down the steps. Rajeev watched with wry amusement. Kiyan took a while to get to the bottom, after which he ran towards to the pier.

‘Don’t go near the water!’ Rajeev pointlessly admonished Kiyan as he ran after him. It was so easy for that boy to fall into the water, or if he didn’t jump in, that is. And there was no getting away from the water in Venice. It was everywhere.

‘Shall we head back?’ he shouted to Carla from below as he dragged Kiyan away from the water’s edge once more.

Carla looked at her watch and said, ‘No. We have plenty of time.’ The she added with a laugh, ‘don’t be so restless.’

She was right. It was only nine thirty. The vaporetto would take them from Salute to Rialto in less than fifteen minutes. The walk to their hotel on the Calle de la Fava was less than five minutes. Unless Kiyan insisted on walking rather than be carried, in which event, it would take them ten or fifteen minutes. The return trip from their hotel to Rialto would be painful with their big suitcases since there was a small bridge to cross and carrying the big suitcase up those steps would take time. The vaporetto ride from the Rialto to Ferrovia was only another ten minutes and the Santa Lucia train station was right across the Ferrovia pier. Their train to Rome was at quarter past twelve. He couldn’t help being restless. He was always restless. Not that his restlessness was a bad thing. He wouldn’t have set up Chipmunks and made such a success of it if he was the type to sit on a fat arse and watch the world go by.

Rajeev relaxed his grip on Kiyan’s shoulders a bit. Instantly Kiyan tried to break free. Rajeev reluctantly carried him back to the bottom of the steps saying, ‘When Kiyan grows up, Kiyan will learn to swim and then Daddy will let Kiyan play close to the water.’

‘Why don’t you go inside and take a look?’ Rajeev encouraged Carla. Ultimately she would want to see the inside of the church, even though they had seen half a dozen churches in the three days they had been in Venice. Might as well get over the viewing so that they could go back to the hotel, Rajeev thought. Carla got up to go inside.

‘Kiyan, do you want to go inside the church with Mummy?’

‘No, he doesn’t. He hates the indoors, even that of a beautiful church,’ Carla brushed aside a few strands of hair from her freckled face as she spoke. It was very warm and Carla had her sweater off and tied around her waist, which made her look plumper than she actually was.

Rajeev did not press the argument. Carla was right, though it wouldn’t have hurt Kiyan to see the inside of a church.

At that moment, Rajeev’s mobile rang. Or rather it vibrated inside his pocket. As he fished it out, he yelled, ‘Carla, hold on. I need to take this call. It’s the office. Kiyan, here, go to Mummy, Daddy needs to talk to someone’

Carla’s face puffed up in annoyance, but Rajeev ignored it. If he worked for the bloody NHS, he too would keep his mobile switched off while he was on holiday.

As he suspected, it was the office.

‘Hello!’ He bellowed into his phone as Carla came down the steps and took hold of Kiyan.

It turned out to be Linda. ‘Raj, I’m sorry to trouble you when you are on holiday. Do you have a couple of minutes?’’

Yes, of course. He definitely had a couple of minutes. He owned the business, didn’t he?’

‘Today morning Jessie interviewed all three candidates Charlie had short-listed. She says she is fine with them all.’

‘Good. Let Charlie take the call. He’s going to be the direct supervisor, isn’t he? Have you asked him whom he wants to hire?’

‘Yes, I did.’ Linda paused for a second.

‘That’s brilliant! Good.’ Rajeev never hesitated in lavishing praise, which didn’t cost him a penny.

‘And what did Charlie have to say?’ Rajeev prompted Linda who was actually the office administrator. She doubled as the HR manager when situations like this one arose. Which wasn’t very often. With a staff of less than twenty, it didn’t really make sense to have a HR manager in addition to the administrator.

Charlie said he likes Toni the most. That’s Toni with an ‘i' and not a ‘y.’

‘Hmmm. If he has made up his mind, then I have nothing further to add.’

‘Raj, I think you should interview those three candidates before we make an offer. You are the best judge of people I’ve ever known.’

Linda, the born flatterer! However, he was definitely a better judge of people than either Jessie or Charlie. Jessie was strictly a hard-nosed accountant with an unbelievable inability to look beyond numbers, whilst Charlie was a statistician who was determined to miss the woods for the trees.

‘No, no. There’s no need for me to interview anyone. I don’t want to poke my finger in every pie. Charlie is perfectly capable of deciding on his own. In any event, I’m not back for another 4 days.

‘Hmmm. Aaaaah. Well….’

‘Have I missed something?’

‘Well….’

‘Go on, I’m all ears.’ `Since Linda could not see his face, Rajeev did not have to smile.

Linda seemed to sense that Rajeev was getting impatient and her tone became crisper. ‘This is actually none of my business, but ….’

‘It doesn’t matter. I’d still like to know what you have to say.’ If it was none of her business, Linda ought to shut up. At times like this, Rajeev did think he had taken employee empowerment too far. In addition to giving all employees stock options, Rajeev had decentralised decision making to a remarkable extent. Everyone was encouraged to speak his or her mind. All of which helped in keeping employee turnover low though the pay at Chipmunks wasn’t anything great.

‘I met Toni briefly when she came for her first interview. She’s very pleasant and she comes across as a very energetic person with a positive outlook. In fact I liked her a lot.’

‘So what’s the problem?’ Rajeev was getting irritated with Linda. He looked around and realised that Carla and Kiyan were not to be seen. Carla must have gone inside the church with Kiyan in tow. Which wasn’t a bad thing, Rajeev thought as he smiled to himself.

‘Toni said she hasn’t ever been on sick leave exceeding a day at a time. And she has been working for almost six years from the time she graduated.’

‘That’s good for us, isn’t it? Too many people take sickies these days.’

‘Toni hasn’t even taken any long leave.’

‘What long leave?’

‘Like maternity leave.’

‘That’s good as well, isn’t it? Oh….. I didn’t realise…’

‘She has been married for 2 years now. She’s almost thirty. She’s bound to start thinking of … you know.’

‘Ha! I see! So, she’s married?’

‘Yes she is. Her husband is a journalist. He works for …’

‘Did you discuss this with Jessie or Charlie?’

‘With Jessie yes. The moment she said she liked all three, I asked her and ..’

‘What did she say?’ Rajeev needlessly prompted Linda.

‘She agrees with me. It’s just a matter of time before Toni goes on ML.’

‘Why is she leaving her current job? From what I know, you aren’t eligible for Maternity Leave until you complete a year at your job.’

‘She was made redundant two months ago. She used to work for Jeremys. They’ve been having huge layoffs at Jeremys you know…’

‘Yes I know Linda.’ Jeremys was the biggest player in market research and Rajeev knew as much about Jeremys as he knew about his own business. ‘I didn’t know Toni was from Jeremys.’

‘Yes she is and ……………..’

‘Why don’t you ask Jessie to have a word with Charlie?’

‘Jessie wants to, but she wanted me to check with you first.’ So it was Jessie’s idea after all. Trust Linda to make it sound as if it was hers. Jessie would know if a woman was planning to get pregnant, wouldn’t she? She had two teenagers, one doing his A levels and the other tackling her GCSE.

‘And please ask Jessie to call me this evening after she’s had a word with Charlie.’ Charlie would have to be handled with caution Rajeev thought as he walked up the steps to the church to join Carla and Kiyan. Though it was almost two years since he persuaded Charlie to leave his job with one of the largest market research firms and join Chipmunks, Charlie had yet to come to terms with the fact that he was now with a very small outfit. One that could not afford to have an employee on Maternity Leave for a year.

Carla and Rajeev had one of their routine arguments on the train to Rome, which was almost empty.

‘You needn’t have booked a ticket for Kiyan,’ Rajeev mildly suggested.

‘What if the train was full and we had to have him on our laps for the entire five hours?’

‘On a weekday? Come on Carla! You know better than that!’

‘It’s only fifty Euros.’

‘It’s not a question of money.’

‘Next time we travel, you should do the bookings.’

‘When I was here last year, it was exactly the same. Charlie was with me and we had a whole coach to ourselves.’

‘I’m sure you had fun,’ Carla remarked sarcastically.

‘With Charlie? Yeah, from the time we got on the train at Milan till we got to Rome, he talked non-stop about work. Such riveting stuff it was.’

‘You could have come here with Charlie once again. You both could have kept your mobiles on Loud and discussed work non-stop.’

‘Honey, I didn’t mean to…………….’ They kissed and made up. Things would have become even better if Kiyan who was skipping up and down the aisles till then hadn’t stopped and come over to sit between them.

‘Let’s take a taxi to the hotel,’ Rajeev said when they reached Rome.

‘No, let’s take the Metro to Cornelia. We can take a taxi from there.’

‘Why didn’t you book a hotel close to a metro station?’ Rajeev asked mildly before adding, ‘it doesn’t matter. You know Rome better than I do.’

‘No, I think you know it better. You come here so often on business. My last visit was four years ago!’

‘But you spent three months here during your gap year!’ Rajeev said as he picked up a struggling Kiyan. ‘Kiyan, I’ll have to carry you buddy. If you are to walk, we’ll never get to the Metro platform.’

Carla inhaled heavily and said, ‘I hope it hasn’t changed. Each time I come back here, I am scared that it has changed and each time it has been the same.’

‘You had fun here, didn’t you?’

‘Yes I did,’ Carla said with a sparkle in her eyes that hinted at a world into which Rajeev would never have access.

‘Kiyan, do you like Roma?’ Rajeev asked Kiyan who resolutely ignored the question and continued to fiddle with the buttons on his shirt.

As they stood on an escalator that took them underground to the Metro, Rajeev asked Carla, ‘is it Line A or B?’

‘Line A, towards Battistini. It’s the stop just before Battistini.’

Rajeev’s mobile shuddered once and was still. ‘Damn,’ Rajeev said as he took his mobile out of his pocket and looked at it. ‘Out of range.’

‘Do you want to go back and return the call?’ Carla asked with extra sweetness.

‘No, of course not. Whoever it is can wait.’

‘Was it the office?’ Carla wanted to know.

‘Yes, it was,’ Rajeev conceded with a wry smile. ‘Must be Jessie. There is something slightly important going on. Otherwise I wouldn’t be so concerned.’ Might as well explain to Carla, Rajeev thought. Otherwise, there was a very good chance of Carla sulking and ruining their holiday.

‘What’s going on? An unhappy client?’

‘I’ll explain once we are inside the Metro,’ Rajeev said as they walked towards the platform wading through a bunch of office-goers returning home. The Metro was crowded and they had to push themselves in. A young girl got up and offered her seat to Rajeev seeing that he had Kiyan in his arms. Rajeev smiled his thanks and nodded towards Carla who took Kiyan from him and sat down on the proffered seat. Rajeev pushed himself to where Carla had been standing and placed his arm with an air of proprietorship on the large suitcase that Carla had been dragging behind her. It was only at Baldo degli Ubaldi that Rajeev got a place to sit, a good three seats away from Carla and Kiyan. Within a few minutes, they were at Cornelia and they got off the Metro.

They found a taxi and the taxi driver agreed that he would only charge them by the meter for the trip to their hotel at the Aurelia Antica. However, within a minute of the taxi moving off, he shook his head and said ‘Signore, this place. Very far. Fifteen Euros.’

Rajeev looked at Carla who shrugged her shoulders. `Si, Si’ Rajeev told the driver who gave Rajeev an approving nod and stepped on the accelerator.

Carla turned to him and asked, ‘tell me, what’s going on in the office?’

‘It’s a bit complicated. I would like to know what you think as well. Why don’t I tell you what it is over dinner?’

‘So that you can call back your office now?’ Carla did not seem to be angry, only resigned.

‘Well, once Jessie leaves office it is tough to talk to her. She has two kids you know.’

Carla was silent and Rajeev took it as consent. He quickly dialled Jessie on her mobile.

‘Jessie? Some one called me from office. I thought it might be you.’

‘Yes, it was me,’ Jessie said. ‘I had a word with Charlie.’

‘And?’

‘He was under the impression that if we hire Toni and Toni goes on ML, we will hire a temp to provide maternity cover!’

‘I hope you disabused him of that fantastic notion. Did you remind him that if we were to spend 20K on maternity cover, his bonus would take a hit?’

‘I did actually. It took me a while, but he finally saw sense.’

‘Thank God. I am sure that of the three he short-listed, at least one is unlikely to go on Maternity Leave in the near future.’

‘The other two are men.’

‘Did he tell you which of the two he likes?’

‘Yes, he did. It’s …’

‘Please ask him to email the name to Linda copying us both. His email should explain that his chosen candidate is better than Toni and the other chap for X, Y, Z reasons. And please ask Linda to prepare the offer letter.’

Jessie was silent for a few seconds. Then she said, ‘Charlie actually wanted to know why we didn’t weed Toni out at the initial stages! Can you believe that?’

‘Charlie is really wet behind the ears. If the Equal Opportunities Commission gets to know that we don’t interview married women likely to take ML, we’ll be in shit. I guess Charlie has never heard of the Equal Opportunities Commission.’

‘He can’t see beyond his data and various ways of analysing it!’

‘It’s not that I have anything against hiring women or giving them maternity benefits, it’s just that Chipmunks is just a start-up and we can’t afford to have employees go on ML.’

‘I know Raj! I know! For God’s sake, I am a woman.’

‘Once we are bigger, and I know that we are destined to become bigger and bigger, once we cross critical mass, we will stop doing things like this. We’ll be as generous with benefits as any of the big players.’

‘Raj, you don’t have to feel so guilty. Even the big players do their best to avoid hiring women who are likely to go on ML. I remember after I announced that I was planning to take Maternity Leave for the second time, and at that time I used to work for _______________, my boss made my life so miserable. He would have fired me if he could have done it. And after I came back from ML, he kept giving me such crappy work, I was forced to quit and go to ______________.’

‘Chipmunks will be different, once it is bigger,‘ Raj declared fervently. ‘Listen Jessie, thanks for this. You take care. Okay?’

‘Bye Raj. You have fun. Give Kiyan a hug from me. And please say Hello to Carla’

Rajeev quickly dumped the mobile into his pocket and looked at Carla’s face to see if she was annoyed with him. Carla was staring out of the window with a blank face.

‘We ought to do a Super Duper dinner today. When in Roma, eat like a Roman.’

‘They don’t have vomitoriams these days.’

‘Carla!’

‘I was just joking. The restaurants here are so much better than in London.’

‘Where should we go? You are the Rome expert.’

‘Do you remember the restaurant we went to at Ottaviano? Shall we go there?’

There was no time to say more since the taxi slowed down and they realised that they had arrived at their hotel.

As the taxi driver helped Rajeev take the suitcase out of the boot, he said with a smile, ‘three Euros for luggage.’

Rajeev looked at Carla who was busy preventing Kiyan from running away. Not a single hotel employee could be seen outside the hotel who might have helped Rajeev. With a smile and a shrug, Rajeev said, ‘okay. Si.’

They had a good room with a view of the hotel’s swimming pool. As they changed out of their travel stained clothes, Rajeev told Carla, ‘we were on the verge of making a job offer to someone. That’s for Charlie’s team. Then we decided not to.’

‘Why?’

Because she’s around thirty, has been married for two years and is likely to start thinking of a family.’

‘You don’t want to hire someone who might go on maternity leave within a year of being hired?’

‘Yes,’ Rajeev said simply and waited for Carla to explode. She didn’t. Instead she smiled and said, ‘I’m so glad I work for the NHS. If I were in the private sector, we might not have had Kiyan.’

‘That’s ridiculous. Even if you had to quit your job, we would have managed on my income!’

‘I don’t have the energy to go to Ottaviano for dinner? Can’t we find something close by?’ Rajeev was relieved at the change of topic. Carla did look tired.

They ended up going to a restaurant that was just outside the hotel. As they ordered starters and their main course, Rajeev said, ‘I’m famished. I will go for a secondi after this.’

‘Raj, don’t get carried away. You need to lose weight.’ Which was a bit rich coming from Carla, Rajeev thought. She was still good looking, though. Rajeev looked at Carla for a second time for reassurance. Yes, she wasn’t bad looking.

The waiter brought them the Frascati wine Rajeev had chosen along with a plate of Panini. He opened the bottle and poured a little wine into Rajeev’s glass. Rajeev drank it slowly with a serious look on his face and nodded at the waiter who quickly filled his glass and then Carla’s.

‘What happens if you say you don’t like the wine you ordered?’ Carla asked and laughed.

‘We need to keep up appearances honey. What’s life without a bit of charade? Do you like it?’

Carla sipped her wine and said ‘it’s good, though I would have preferred a Chianti any day.’

‘Come on now! We can’t order a Tuscan wine in Rome! When we go to Florence, you can have a Chianti! Frascati is supposed to be the best among Latium wines.’

‘Fine! Let’s keep up the charade. This wine is amazing. Splendid! Are you happy now?’ Carla laughed at her own joke.

Rajeev looked around and said, ‘look at these Italians. They spend two or three hours over dinner almost every day. An entire bottle of wine, starters, two main courses and a dessert. How do they manage to look so fit?’

‘I don’t think they eat much breakfast or lunch. They exercise a lot and they eat their dinner slowly. A siesta in the afternoon, a slow dinner over two or three hours.’

‘You are not angry with me, are you darling?’ Raj asked. ‘About what I told you?’

‘No honey. Of course not. I understand perfectly well. You can’t afford to have people on maternity! Not when Chipmunks is just taking off!’

They drank the wine in silence. Out of the blue, Carla asked, ‘do you think we’ll have another child?’

Rajeev looked at Kiyan who was strapped into a child seat and was busy playing with the plastic baby cutlery placed in front of him.

‘We should, shouldn’t we? I’m sure the NHS will survive even if you go on maternity leave once more.’

‘Kiyan, would you like to have a brother or sister to play with?’ Carla asked Kiyan who carefully considered the question and went back to playing with his red plastic spoon and fork.

Before Carla could repeat her question, the waiter re-appeared with their starters.

Short Story: Down The Ski Slopes In Switzerland

As soon as Rashmi and I finalised our plans to tour Europe, I thought of Manjunath. However, when I told Rashmi that I planned to contact Manjunath, or Manja as we friends called him, and ask him for advice, I was greeted with stony silence. Rashmi has a habit of forming strong likes and dislikes with regard to all my friends after meeting them just once. I think Rashmi had met Manja twice before and thought he was pompous and irritating. I however had little choice since unfortunately Manja is the only friend I have who is extremely familiar with Europe. And so I emailed Manja and told him of our plans to visit England, France and Switzerland. I had a long list of questions. What was the best airline to travel to London, which hotels should we stay in, what places should we visit, what should we do while over etc.

If all of this gives you the impression that Manja lives in Europe, you are dead wrong. Manja lives in Delhi. We both went to St. Joseph’s in Bangalore, after which our paths diverged. Manja went to Delhi for his higher studies, while I never left Bangalore. And Manja continues to live in Delhi, indulging in a business which he describes to all and sundry as “import-export”. I’ve never really understood what Manja’s “import-export” means, except that it allows Manja to travel overseas, mainly to Europe, as often as he wants and, if his letters and emails are to be believed, lead a very luxurious lifestyle.

Manja replied to my email after a week’s delay. He was currently in Germany attending the Hanover trade fair. During the time we planned to be in Europe, he would be in Switzerland at a place called Interlaken. If during our time in Switzerland we happened to pass through Interlaken, which he was sure we would, we could meet up, he told me in his reply.

‘I don’t particularly want to meet Manja,’ Rashmi declared after reading Manja’s email. The travel advice Manja emailed me was so much in keeping with Manja’s character. Travel on a European Airline if you want to eat genuine European food in the air. Stay in Hotels ABC and XYZ and MNO if you want a comfortable stay. Manja must have guessed what we were planning to do for he added, in any event, and for God’s sake, don’t try to save a few francs or pence by staying in some third rate B&B – you’ll find so many of them on the internet. And finally avoid those Indian package tours which promise you Pooris in Paris and Indian company wherever you go. What’s the point of travelling to Europe if you want to eat Indian food and spend time with other Indians?

I saw the point which Manja was making, but Rashmi didn’t. Both Rashmi and I are vegetarians and from our limited experience know that western vegetarian food is the most tasteless thing in the world. Usually consisting of just boiled or steamed vegetables, bland and lacking even salt, there was no way we could survive on something like that for two weeks. What was the guarantee that Swiss Air’s or British Airways’ vegetarian option would not be bland and tasteless? Rashmi wanted to know. As for staying in Hotels ABC and XYZ and MNO, I soon found out that they were exorbitantly expensive. If I too were in the ‘export-import’ business like Manja, I might have been able to stay in those hotels. In any event, there was no guarantee that those posh hotels offered decent Indian food, if not good Kannanda ootta. No, we did not expect to get bissi belle bath in Bournemouth, and Bern, but we did want edible vegetarian food wherever we went.

To cut a long story short, we travelled by Jet Airways to London and spent a week in England and Scotland. The Eurostar took us from St. Pancras station to Paris and we spent a week in France, after which a cheap Easyjet flight took us to Geneva. After two days in Geneva and Laussanne, we made our way to Interlaken where Manja had told us we could find him.

Interlaken has two train stations, Manja had warned me in his email. Manja’s hotel, the Beau Rivage, was very close to Interlaken Ost. However, we got off at Interlaken West, the next stop, which was closer to the Oberland Chalet, where we were booked into. In the evening sunlight, the snow clad Alps dominated the skyline whichever direction we looked. A five minute walk along the main thoroughfare took us to the Oberland Chalet. We checked into our room, which was comfortable, but not luxurious, and took a short nap. It was totally dark when we woke up and made our way in the bitter winter cold to the Beau Rivage.

As soon as we entered the lobby of the Beau Rivage, Rashmi cribbed yet again, ‘why do we have to come here to see him? Why couldn’t he come to our hotel?’

’Aw! Come on! Don’t be petty,’ I told Rashmi. ‘Manja knows Switzerland like the back of his hand. He might tell us something useful.’

‘Just because he has more money and stays in a hotel that is more expensive, doesn’t mean we ought to …’

‘Drop it Rashmi,’ I said. There was hardly any time to say more as we got off the lift and reached Manja’s room. Manja looked as if he was getting ready to go out somewhere.

‘Srikanth! You son of a gun! You finally made it here,’ he said shaking me warmly by the hand. Rashmi got a polite smile. He then sat us down in his opulent room and made us recount our experiences in the last two weeks.

‘So, did you manage to find decent Oota in France?’

‘Not really,’ I admitted. ‘France is very beautiful and Paris even more so, but French food is not really suitable for vegetarians.’

‘They don’t seem to understand that vegetarians would not want to eat eggs or fish,’ Rashmi complained. ‘We could not find an Indian restaurant a couple of times and we had so much trouble eating at the French restaurant we went to.’

Manja laughed aloud. ‘When in Rome, live as the Romans do. That’s what I do,’ he told us patronisingly. ‘The Schnitzels here are worth dying for. Never mind, you’ll find the Shalimar on the other side of the road serving decent Indian food.’

‘Tell me, why did you decide to travel during winter?’

Rashmi and I looked at each other sheepishly. ‘We wanted to see some snow,’ I admitted. We had seen some snow in Scotland and in France, but not enough. Even in Geneva, there wasn’t much snow.

‘There hasn’t been much show this winter,’ Manja told us. ‘There was a fair amount of snow in December, but January and February have been devoid of flurries.’

I noticed a pair of large shiny boots in a corner of Manja’s room. ‘What are they?’ I asked Manja.

‘My ski boots,’ he told me with a smug smile. ‘Do you plan to do any skiing?’ he asked us.

‘I won’t mind giving it a try,’ I told him.

‘Neither would I,’ Rashmi said gaily.

‘How many days have you budgeted for Interlaken?’ he asked us.

‘Two days. But we need a day for the Jungfraujoch. That’s leaves another day for skiing. Can we ski here at Interlaken?’

‘No, you need to go to either Grundenwald or Murren for that. Go to one of these places, find a ski school, get a good instructor, hire the equipment – don’t buy it, and you are all set.’

‘How much will it cost?’ I asked.

‘Around seventy five francs per hour for an instructor. Around sixty francs a day for the ski boots and poles. Add fifteen francs if you haven’t got any waterproof trousers.’

And then Manja added, ‘since you are beginners, make sure you find a good instructor. There is more ice than snow on the ground. The chances of slipping and falling are very high.’ I had a feeling that maybe we wouldn’t do much skiing.

We decided that we would all go to the Shalimar for dinner. I was a little upset that Manja did not offer us the use of his skiing equipment. Over dinner I asked him, ‘are you skiing tomorrow?’

‘I am. Two of my business associates from Brazil are going to be around and I am planning to take them skiing. The rules are the same everywhere old chap! One needs to entertain and make friends to stay afloat in business! If they weren’t coming over, I could have taken you both with me to Grundenwald and shown you the ropes.’

I gave a wistful smile and opened the menu.

‘Something to drink sir?’ the South Asian waiter asked me. I think he was Pakistani, but I didn’t ask.

‘You should have some Feldschlösschen,’ Manja advised us. ‘That’s the local brew.’

‘I don’t drink,’ Rashmi told him upfront. I decided to have a pint of Feldschlösschen. It was the least I could do after the long lecture Manja gave us about trying the local cuisine.

‘Two pints of Feldschlösschen,’ Manja ordered.

‘A diet coke for me, Rashmi said.

‘Any starters?’ the waiter asked when he got us the drinks after five minutes.

‘No,’ I said. Rashmi shook her head. But Manja had other plans.

‘Let’s have some samosas,’ he suggested.

‘Why not? Let’s have some samosas,’ I concurred.

‘A plate of poppadams and samosas,’ Manja told the waiter.

‘Would you like to order the main course as well?’

Manja ordered a lamb madras, a chicken rogan josh and some salad to go with his rice.

‘The prawns here are very nice. You ought to try them,’ he told us.

‘Thanks, but no thanks,’ Rashmi replied.

‘I think I’ll have them. A plate of prawns. They are tiger prawns, aren’t they?’

Of course they were tiger prawns. I fumed a bit internally. If only Manja had ordered some vegetarian food, we could have shared it with him. One look at Rashmi’s face and I knew that she was also angry. But I knew Manja. He was not selfish, only thoughtless, though many people would not see much difference between the two.

I sipped the Feldschlösschen, which was quite nice. ‘I usually drink Fosters,’ I told Manja in case he thought I had never drunk foreign beer. ‘That’s an Australian beer,’ I added.

‘My dear chap, Fosters is marketed as an Australian beer. But nobody drinks it in Australia.’ You had to hand it to Manja for his ability to deflate a person.

Once we started to eat, things became fun. Manja regaled us with stories of his exploits. He worked hard and played even harder.

‘Do you know what the Englishman said on the twenty first of December?’

Rashmi and I looked at each other. No, we did not know. Then I asked, ‘isn’t that the winter solstice?’

‘Yes, but what did the Englishman say? He said, Ah! The shortest day in the year. And what did the Frenchie dude have to say?’

No, we did not know the answer.

‘The longest night in the year!’

Rashmi and I chuckled politely.

‘There’s this Belgian partnership I do business with. The people who run it are all Flemish, but most of their customers are Walloons in Brussels. You should see the contempt they have for the Walloons. It’s so funny.’

‘Who are Walloons?’ Rashmi wanted to know.

‘They are French speakers living in Belgium. You’ll find them in Brussels and in the southern part. The northern part, Flanders, is composed of Flemish speakers.’

‘I didn’t know there was a language called Flemish,’ I said.

‘It’s actually a dialect of Dutch.’

‘I see.’

‘And Dutch is actually a dialect of German.’

‘Seriously? I didn’t know that.’

‘It’s true, but don’t ever say that to the Dutch!’

We laughed a lot and even Rashmi enjoyed herself. There’s no substitute for a good friend when you are in a faraway land, I thought to myself.

After we had dessert, Manja called for the bill. It came to eighty five francs. If only Manja didn’t order so many meat dishes, I wouldn’t have to pay forty francs for dinner, I angrily thought as I picked up the bill. I waited for Manja to ask me how much the bill was for, but Manja gave me the sort of beaming look a proud father would give a son, when the son takes the father out after receiving his first pay check. I was shocked. I was trapped. I held the bill in my hand and could not put it down. I slowly fished out my wallet and took out my credit card. Until the waiter arrived with the device that took my pin number, I kept hoping that Manja would offer to chip in.

As we walked back to the Oberland Chalet, Rashmi turned towards me and asked me angrily, ‘are you happy now? If only we hadn’t gone to meet him, we could have saved at least fifty francs. If he has so much money, he could have paid for all three of us, couldn’t he?’

I did not dispute Rashmi’s logic. If Manja didn’t want to take us skiing, that was fine. But to order so many dishes which we could not share and make us pay for it all was … so disgusting.

‘Honey, I owe you one. This is my fault. I made an error in judgement,’ I told Rashmi not wanting to quarrel with her during our last week in Europe.

‘It’s not really your fault. I’m just angry with the situation.’ I wouldn’t want to say more other than that it took me two days of utmost charm and guile to get a smile back on Rashmi’s face. By that time we had spent a day at Jungfraujoch, covered Basel and reached Zurich. The next day we would take the train back to Geneva and catch an Easyjet flight to London, from where Jet Airways would fly us home. Rashmi and I had enjoyed our European tour a lot, but we were actually looking forward to being back in Bangalore. True, these days there are Indian restaurants all over the world, but these restaurants serve food which is tailored to the western palate. I guess it is as much authentic Indian as the food in my favourite Chinese joint on M.G.Road is authentic Chinese.

Rashmi and I bought tons of souvenirs for ourselves and gifts for our families and friends. We were deciding on a cuckoo clock at a shop in Zurich when Manja called up on my mobile phone. As usual, he came straight to the point.

‘Dude, I need your help. I’ve had an accident.’

I was immediately concerned. ‘What sort of accident?’ I asked.

‘A skiing accident.’

‘Are you alright?’ This made Rashmi curious and she pressed close to me so as to hear the conversation.

‘I’ve twisted my left ankle badly. Some bruises on my arms. Bedridden. But I’ll survive.’ Manja sounded like a martyr. I was irritated, but I could not hang up on a friend who just had an accident, even if I was paying through my nose for answering a call on my roaming Indian mobile.

‘Can you move about?’

‘No, I can’t. Listen, I need a favour.’

Tell me.’

‘Your train will pass through Interlaken when you travel to Geneva tomorrow, won’t it?’

‘I guess it will.’ Rashmi took a deep breath and waved her hand in front of my face before I could commit to anything.

‘Can you get off at Interlaken and …..’

‘And what?’

‘I am going back to London in a week’s time. And from there to India after a week in London. I have a lot of stuff to carry back. Can you please take some of my stuff with you? I will be coming to Bangalore in a couple of months’ time and I shall take it off you then. I just won’t be able to take it all back with me in my current state.’ A note of pleading had crept into Manja’s voice. I looked at Rashmi who shrugged her shoulders. I had no choice but to agree, after all the man had hurt himself skiing.

The thought of meeting Manja once again ruined the rest of the day for us. Neither of us wanted to meet him, but we couldn’t turn our backs on a wounded fellow-countryman. It was with an acute degree of discontent in our hearts that we broke our journey at Interlaken Ost and walked over to the Beau Rivage.

Manja was sitting on his bed, propped up with pillows.

‘How did it happen?’ I asked him.

Manja plunged into a detailed description of his accident. He had taken his Brazilian business associates to Grundenwald for what was supposed to be an idyllic day of skiing. They had taken the ski lifts to the top of the slope and started to come down. There had been no fresh snow for the past three weeks and the snow already on the ground had melted in the sun and then turned to ice. As they came down, Manja unfortunately happened to slide into a treacherous slab of ice which caused him to fly a few feet into the air and crash down.

Rashmi and I made appropriate noises of sympathy, but we had decided in advance that we wouldn’t spend too much time with Manja.

‘How did you get back to the hotel?’

‘Those Brazilians carried me to a taxi and brought me back!’

After a moment’s silence, I asked him. ‘So, what do you want us to carry to London for you?’

‘Not much,’ Manja said. ‘Just that bag with my ski boots,’ he pointed to the bag, ‘and that suitcase, which has a few clothes in it.’

I tried to lift the bag and the suitcase. They were both very heavy.

‘Manja, I doubt if Easyjet or Jet Airways will allow us to carry so much stuff with us,’ I protested. We have our own luggage.’

‘Of course, they will,’ Manja asserted, only to add, ‘I forgot, you must be travelling economy, right?’

I wanted to hit Manja on the face, but desisted. After all, he was hurt and unable to move.

‘Easyjet has only economy,’ Rashmi interjected.

‘Oh I don’t know. I never travel on such cheap airlines.’

I did not reply.

‘Tell you what. Take them with you. If either of those airlines makes a fuss, pay the excess charge. We can square up things when we meet next.’

Like hell I was going to do that. As if I hadn’t wasted money on account of Manja before!’

No, Manja. Sorry. I am not a stupid fool. You did me in once a few days ago and I will not let you do that again. I wish I could have said that, but I didn’t. Instead, I meekly nodded my head and avoided looking at Rashmi even though I could feel her eyes drilling into my back.

We picked up Manja’s stuff and walked out. As we came out of the lift into the lobby, the receptionist stopped us.

‘Do you stay in this hotel?’ she asked us in English which had a very heavy German accent. I don’t blame her for stopping us since Rashmi and I had walked into the hotel with three pieces of luggage between us and we were now walking out with five!

I explained. ‘No, we don’t stay here, but our friend Mr. Manjunath stays in Room 6112 on the sixth floor. We are carrying back some of Mr. Manjunath’s stuff back to India for him since he has had an accident and has twisted his ankle. He cannot …’

The receptionist started to dial a number.

‘Mr. Manjoonat?’

After checking my story with typical Swiss efficiency, she gave us a smile.

‘Mr. Manjoonat just confirmed what you said. I hope you have a pleasant journey.’

We walked on until the receptionist shouted a warning after us. ‘Please be very careful when you step out of the hotel. There may be ice on the steps and you may slip and fall. That’s how Mr. Manjoonat hurt himself the other day.’

A Redundant Banker’s Wife

A banker has just been made redundant. He takes his young and pretty wife (whom he married at a time when big bonuses were taken for granted) to a cheap pizza joint for dinner and asks her, ‘honey, you still love me, don't you?’

‘Of course, I do. I will always love you. And I will miss you too.’

Short Story: Happy Birthday

Unlike most other people on this planet, Charu’s birthday occurs only once every four years. That’s right, Charu is one of those few mortals whose birthdays fall on the twenty ninth of February. Charu grew up in a chawl in Lower Parel, right next to Phoenix Mills where her father worked. As for many other chawl-dwellers, Charu’s birthday was not a day of joyous abandon rounded off with drinking and dancing at the neighbourhood discotheque.

However Charu’s father was very fond of his eldest daughter and on her birthday, he would bring back a box of laddoos or jelebis when he came home from work. Charu’s mother would prepare something nice, may be some puran polis and some aamti which they would distribute among their neighbours. They say it’s the thought that counts and this was perfectly true in Charu’s household. Without spending too much money, Charu’s parents made a big fuss when Charu or any of her three other siblings had their birthdays. In Charu’s case, if it was not a leap year, the first of March was celebrated as her birthday.

‘Why don’t we celebrate it on the twenty eighth instead of the first?’ an impatient Charu once asked her parents.

‘Because my sweet little girl, you were not yet born on the twenty eighth,’ Charu’s mother sensibly told her. ‘So, it’s better to celebrate your birthday on the first of March, a day after you were born.’

Things did not change as Charu grew older, until she was married off to Paresh, a lowly clerk in Mantralaya. Paresh did not share Charu’s parents’ attitude to birthdays.

‘I don’t believe in celebrating birthdays,’ Paresh told her within a few days of getting married. He did not add ‘do you?’ to the end of his sentence. Charu did not have the guts to contradict him, which to him was confirmation that she too hated the decadent habit of celebrating birthdays.

‘I think the last time I celebrated my birthday was when I was ten years old and Papa bought me a Five Star bar for the occasion. What’s the point of celebrating an addition to one’s age?’ he asked Charu even though they were both very young and the addition of a year would not have aged them greatly. That conversation set the tone for the rest of their married life.

A few months after their wedding, Paresh’s birthday arrived. Charu gently reminded him of the event the previous day. Before she could even suggest a celebration, he turned on her ferociously and asked her, ‘so what if it’s my birthday?’

It took three whole years after their wedding for a leap year to arrive. By that time, Charu knew that Paresh would not even remember that it was her birthday. She turned out to be wrong.

‘Today is your birthday, isn’t it?’ Paresh asked her while she served him breakfast and lapsed into his habitual silence. Charu dumbly nodded her head and bit her lower lip. As soon as Paresh went off to work, she locked herself in the toilet and burst into tears. It wouldn’t have been so bad if Paresh had forgotten her birthday. But to remember it, to mention it and to not even wish her a happy birthday! He might as well have stabbed her and then rubbed salt into the wound. If only she were still with her parents, they would have …. Oh! What was the point?

Except for his attitude to birthdays, Paresh was a good husband. He did not talk much, believing it to be a waste of energy, when a frown, a smile or a hand gesture would suffice. Charu had never been a talkative girl, but after her marriage, she became even less so. Paresh continued to take note of Charu’s birthday whenever it actually arrived every leap year, though he never wished her, let alone get her a gift. Charu soon taught herself to not feel hurt, succeeding every alternate leap year.

This lifestyle continued even after Charu and Paresh moved out of Paresh’s parents’ house in Girgaum and bought a small flat at Virar. By that time Paresh had experienced twelve more birthdays, and Charu three more, but none of the fifteen birthdays had been celebrated.

They had two children, a boy and a girl. Initially their birthdays were also ignored and the children were too young to object, but after they started school, Paresh and Charu had no choice but to do something, albeit on a small scale. They would buy some sweets and the birthday boy or birthday girl would distribute them among their neighbours and school friends. As the children became older, their birthday festivities became more expensive. New clothes were demanded for birthdays, even though they always bought clothes for Diwali. Paresh would turn up his nose at the cakes, sweets and clothes, but still do the children’s bidding with a grumble.

The children did well at school and fulfilled their parent’s dreams, the son growing up to be an engineer and the daughter, a doctor. After the daughter got married and went off to Madras, she started celebrating her birthday and her husband’s in style. Two years later, Charu’s son got married and birthday celebrations became much bigger. The son blindly obeyed his wife, who came from a rich family that believed birthday celebrations ought to be lavish. The son and daughter-in-law lived in a posh modern flat at Kandivli and Paresh and Charu would go over for the birthday parties.

The arrival of one grandchild after another meant Charu got to attend at least one birthday party every two months. When the daughter and her husband moved back to Mumbai from Chennai with their two daughters, the parties only got bigger.

Despite all this, neither Paresh not Charu celebrated their birthdays. The son and daughter implicitly believed that, just like their father, their mother did not want to celebrate her birthday. Charu was tempted to tell her children that she too wanted a birthday party. Yes, she would like to cut one of those huge birthday cakes with white sugar on top, when people around her clapped. Or buy new clothes for her birthday. But Charu was too shy to tell anyone all that.

One day when Paresh and Charu were visiting their son and daughter-in-law, the daughter-in-law remarked, ‘I have a friend whose birthday falls on the twenty ninth of February.’

‘Mother’s birthday is on the twenty ninth,’ Charu’s son said.

‘Maaji, I know you hate celebrating your birthday. But I do wish you’d agree to celebrate it just once,’ the daughter-in-law said.

Paresh smirked. There was silence.

‘And this year, I will be sixty,’ Charu softly said. Indeed, not only was it a leap year, it was also to be her sixtieth birthday.

‘Why don’t we celebrate your birthday this year?’ Charu’s daughter-in-law asked.

Charu hesitated and said ‘No, don’t bother’ in a faltering voice, that was almost a sob. Her daughter-in-law gave her a strange look, but said nothing more.

On her birthday, Charu woke up as usual and went about her chores. She sighed once. She was now sixty. Soon she would be dead. If only she could muster the courage to ask for a birthday party before she left this world!

At around ten in the morning, as she was chopping vegetables in the kitchen, the bell rang.

‘Birthday girl, answer the door,’ Paresh told her, looking up from his newspaper for a second.

It was as if a storm had been unleashed. If Paresh had forgotten her birthday, it wouldn’t have mattered. But to remember it and not even wish her a Happy Birthday! The sheer cruelty of it all! At that moment Charu hated Paresh more than anything else in the world. She wanted to hurt him as he had hurt her all those years. With tear filled angry eyes, Charu looked at Paresh and then at the sharp kitchen knife in her right hand. Without further ado, she stabbed Paresh in his neck with the knife. Since she was standing to his side, she managed to sever his carotid artery. A jet of blood spurted out. Paresh grunted once and dropped his head to the table. It was obvious that he was dead. Charu put the knife down on the table next to Paresh and sat down on a chair. Her body was trembling, but there was no regret. What should she do now? As Charu tried to compose herself, she realised that whoever was at the door was ringing the bell furiously. Who could it be? Nobody was expected at this hour. Charu wiped the blood off her arms and saree, went to the door and opened it.

“Happy Birthday To You”, her children and grandchildren sang in a chorus. They came crowding into the hall. Her daughter-in-law had a huge cake in her hands. Her son-in-law carried a brown bag from Bombay Stores with a nine-yard long Paithani saree in it.

‘Where’s Papa?’ her son demanded? ‘When we suggested to him that you might like to celebrate your birthday, he said he was sure you did. He said he had been a complete fool .. and he’s just realised and …. He regrets it so much and …. Never mind, never mind. He’s planning to apologise for not celebrating your birthday all these years.’ He walked over to the kitchen to look for his father as his wife set the cake on the table.

Short Story: Eyes and Ears Lie

Paula was irritated with her interpreter. Given a choice, she would have fired her hours ago and found someone else – someone who had a better sense of the situation and could get her the correct answers that were eluding her. She was almost sure that the interpreter was lying to her. Yes, intentionally lying to her! She must be in the government’s pay.

All around her, the crowds swarmed past, Paula and her photographer the only icons of honesty and truth in what was obviously a false setting. Paula was prepared for a lot of squalor and poverty, for intense resentment and seething anger. However, the yellow blocks of flats, each ten storeys tall, were not particularly grimy or dirty or even filled with frustrated and unemployed people, if one went by third world standards. The whole thing was a scam, Paula was sure, and it was just a matter of tapping the right vein and uncovering it.

‘Is there anything else you want to ask this woman?’ the interpreter asked Paula. It seemed the interpreter, a woman in her late thirties, sensed Paula’s frustration with her, since she kept increasing her distance from Paula. When they had started out in the morning, Paula could smell her deo-spray. As the day wore on and Paula became more and more frustrated, the interpreter increased the distance between them, till Paula could no longer smell the cheap scent, unless she intentionally moved close to the interpreter.

‘Yes. I don’t believe you’ve translated her right. Can you please repeat what she just said?’

The interpreter took a deep breath. ‘This woman says that she is happier after she moved to Navayuga. Her eldest son has been given a job at the factory, her second son takes the shuttle bus to the Big City everyday and her youngest son and daughter go to school.’

‘Did her son and daughter go to school when they lived in the slum?’

‘No they didn’t.’

‘Please ask her the question. I don’t want you to answer me.’ Paula flared at the interpreter.

The interpreter’s eyes glared for a moment, after which she grit her teeth and spoke to the woman who now had a puzzled look on her face.

‘She says they didn’t go to school when they lived in the slum.’

‘And what does her husband do?’

The question was translated. ‘He used to operate a lathe and make leather soles. He has set up his lathe on the terrace of the building they live in. Every resident is allotted a space on the terrace of their flat and electricity is supplied there.’

John took another picture of the woman in her faded red saree, her lips and teeth stained with betel juice, as she stood on the footpath in the bright sunshine.

Paula wanted to tell John to stop taking pictures of the woman. Why couldn’t John show some more sense?

‘How long did her family live in the slum?’

The question was put to the woman. Oh! She was born there. So was her husband. Ever since she could remember, she had lived in that slum. And now she has a spanking new five hundred square feet flat to live in. Paula was convinced the woman was lying. Most probably her family was well-to-do and they managed to have that flat allotted to them with a hefty bribe. Everyone knew how governments dispensed favours in this country.

‘Let’s move on,’ Paula announced and trudged forward slowly without bothering to find out if John and the interpreter were keeping pace with her. In the distance, she espied a smartly dressed girl crossing the road. Paula increased her pace, pausing only to turn around and look at John and the interpreter for a second. John had worked with her for many years and he immediately start to walk faster. It took the interpreter a few seconds to get the cue and then she too started to walk fast. Paula managed to waylay the smart girl who had a very expensive handbag with her. This was obviously not a person who had relocated from that slum!

‘Do you have a few minutes? Can I ask you a question? I am a journalist from the Globe Trotter.’ With luck the girl would respond in English and give the game away. The girl didn’t seem to understand and Paula repeated her question.

‘Yes of course,’ she responded. Paula’s heart beat faster. By that time the useless interpreter caught up with her.

‘Whereabouts do you live? Close by?’

The girl gave her a blank look and Paula had to repeat her question. She didn’t really mind. Many Indians found her Australian accent difficult to understand.

‘No, I don’t live here. I live within the Big City.’

Paula was disappointed.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘I work for the company which built these buildings. I’m doing a survey here.’ Paula perked up. This could turn out to be useful.

‘Are the people happy after the government moved them here?’ Paula asked. Dumped them here was more like it. Paula had reported on poverty and various poverty alleviation schemes all over the world. She had seen poverty in all its multi-coloured hues and dimensions, from starving children in Ethiopia to illegal immigrants living off the streets in Los Angeles. Paula knew what was likely to work and what wouldn’t. She had declared the state government’s scheme to be harebrained immediately after it was announced. To improve one of Asia’s biggest slums, you don’t demolish it and hand over the land to property developers, even if it is prime real estate. Which was what the state government had done.

If you want to improve the slum, give power and water to its residents! Give the slum dwellers ownership of the land they occupy! Paula had demanded in her column. What will the people do once they are put in their new hygienic surroundings? Starve? The slum provides the people with their livelihood. It houses thousands of small workshops and factories and other commercial enterprises. Take away the people from their slum and they will starve in their clean new surroundings!

‘Yes, they are. Very happy. Everyone said the government would never implement its plans. But for once, the state government managed to do it.’

‘I see. Thank you very much.’ Paula moved on. The girl was obviously someone with a vested interest. If only she could find a slum dweller who was cheated of his flat and forced to live on the pavements! However, the idiotic interpreter seemed to be incapable of understanding what Paula wanted.

Paula wondered if she should explain her dilemma to John. No, she decided against it. John was a wonderful photographer and very good at his job. But nobody had accused John of having a reporter’s instincts. This was Paula’s first visit to the Big City and Navayuga after the people had been moved here. Should she go to the cement factory? The state government had persuaded a private business group to build a cement factory near Navayuga. Five thousand jobs had been created.

The government claimed that ninety five percent of the factory jobs had been given to the residents of Navayuga. If she went to the factory she might find that the workers there were not necessarily people who had been moved from the slum, or even lived in Navayuga. Paula looked at her watch. It was three in the afternoon. There was so little time left. This was supposed to be a very brief trip, a stopover actually as she travelled back to Geneva from Colombo. She had to be at the airport by ten in the night for her flight back to Geneva.

There were so many things she could do to expose the government’s charade. A fleet of thirty new buses were supposed to provide a round-the-clock shuttle bus service between Navayuga and Big City so that those who wanted to, could travel to the Big City and work there. She could go to the Navayuga bus station and find out how efficient the service was. No, there was no need to do that. It was unlikely to be any better than the public transport in any Indian city. The government had claimed that Navayuga would be a spanking new township on the outskirts of Big City with schools, parks, libraries and playgrounds. Paula smiled to herself. She had seen the unfinished library and the mound of dirt which was to become a park.

A lot of money must have been invested in getting favourable media reviews. This time the government has done a good job, the relocation of the slum dwellers from the slum in the heart of Big City to Navayuga has been a big success, the reports claimed with alarming regularity. They ought to know better! It was so funny. The people were bound to see through such stories!

They found a man hurrying somewhere and asked him the same questions. ‘Can’t you see for yourself?’ the man told their interpreter. ‘This time the government managed to get it right.’ It seemed to be an Orwellian nightmare, with everyone seeming to have bought the government’s story.

‘I know what we should do,’ Paula told John and the interpreter. Actually she was speaking to herself. ‘We should go back to Big City and talk to people living on the pavements. I’m sure many of those evicted from the slum can be found on those pavements.’

‘But this time the government did it right,’ the interpreter objected. ‘Every one who lived in the slum has been moved here. And nobody else could get a flat at Navayuga, even if they were willing to pay a bribe. Everyone is surprised at how well things have been done.’

Paula lost her temper. ‘Why don’t you go back to the agency and tell them I do not require your services anymore? They can send an invoice to the Globe Trotter for the whole day, but I don’t need you to be with me any more. Please go.’

The interpreter hesitated for a second and then walked away.

‘But Paula, how on earth will you manage to talk to the people living on the pavements?’ John asked Paula.

‘Oh don’t worry. There are so many people in Big City who speak good English. I’ll find someone who can help. In any event, I know exactly what those people will have to say.