Did You Get Your Period?

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

"Good to know, good to know! Do you remember how both these girls had cried on one occasion when I came here? They both refused to go to school." Nani asks, laughing.

"Oh, yes! It was such a nuisance for me to convince them both that you wouldn't disappear once they came back from school." Seema says, but the words said lightly have the opposite effect. It hangs heavily in the air and Shruti can feel warm tears forming in her eyes. The heaviness of a secret that twenty-year-old shoulders are not made to carry making her feel utterly exhausted even after a long night's rest.

Nani doesn't say a word but she notices the tension. The girls had always shared a warm relationship with their mother but now it seemed so brittle, so forced. It was almost as though they were uncomfortable to be in the same room as their mother. Seema too seemed very uneasy about speaking to the girls. Nani clucks her tongue and then in an attempt to change the topic says, "Well, I'll be cooking you all Shahi Paneer for dinner! I know how much you girls love it."

"That would be lovely! We've all been dying for some good Shahi Paneer." Shruti says.

"It's true," Seema admits with a smile.

"Haven't you been cooking much?" Nani asks Seema.

"No, not really. I come back home so very late. The girls do most of the cooking. Except on Sundays." Seema says, feeling a bit guilty. Though it had been years and her daughters were both technically adults, she still felt guilty about lapsing on what was considered by society 'the motherly duties'. It was still, after all these years, difficult to find the balance between her profession and motherhood.

"I'm sure the girls don't mind helping out," Nani says, placing a warm hand over her daughter's.

"Of course not. We understand she's busy." Shruti says, diplomatically whereas at the same time Shweta says, "Oh, not at all. I love cooking!"

"Well, if that's the case, you'd have to let me taste some of your dishes," Nani says.

"Of course! The only ardent critique I've had so far is Dadi. But then again, she's got a problem about everything!" Shweta says, chuckling.

All of them burst out laughing at Shweta's forthright words.

"Don't you have to go to school, Shweta?" Shruti asks, her senses kicking in after a while.

"There are only thirty minutes left for you to get ready." She exclaims.

"Oh my god," Shweta says, looking at the wall clock shaped like an elephant. And in her hurry, she tramples over Shruti's feet who gives a squeak of protest.

She throws on her school uniform hurriedly and spends the next fifteen minutes trying to decide how best to frame her face with her short hair. Having never been excessively girly; the entire procedure confuses her more than it eases her. It's only when Shruti walks in to find her with her hair bunched up on the top in a desperate attempt to emulate a five-minute tutorial that she throws her hands up in the air.

"Why on Earth is your hair looking like you're trying to go to a cosplay?" She asks, raising an eyebrow and surveying Shweta's disastrous attempt at styling her hair. "And aren't you getting late for school?"

"There are no classes today. It's the inter-school basketball tournament." She grumbles, pulling her hair down.

"Oh, yes I remember. But did they ask you to be the school mascot?" Shruti says, helping Shweta take the bobby pins out of her hair.

"I just wanted to look good, okay!" She says, exasperatedly.

"Got your eyes on someone on the team?" Shruti asks and then the realization dawns upon her and she gets a glint in her eyes. "Oh, your little boyfriend is on the team now, is he?"