#21Days

Day 15

8.30 am

Rohit has just left for the hospital. I've decided to stay back home today. I'm tired after Rohit's birthday celebrations. I also want to sort through and clean the cupboards and drawers in the house. Especially the drawers. 

I start with the accent cabinet, right next to our main door. That's our catch-all zone. There are a lot of knick-knacks that have piled into these drawers. I need to sort through them, the bills - to keep and shred, the pens - working and not working, pieces of paper - to keep and shred, and random items that don't have a home anywhere else. As I begin cleaning the drawers, I come across my old broken phone. I pick it up in my hands and turn it around. It fell on concrete floor and the screen smashed to smithereens. I turn it around, and fondly run my hand over it. A small piece of glass from the cracked screen comes dislodged and tries to penetrate the glabrous on my palm. I use the tip of my index finger's nail to dislodge the shard and place the phone back in the drawer.

"Am I speaking with Mrs. Sippy?" It was an odd call. The caller said it was urgent which is why my assistant had interrupted the shot to hand me my phone.

If I was annoyed with him for having answered my phone, I let it be for now. The formal tone of the person on the other end of the phone surprised me. I momentarily took it off my ear to check the phone number. The call was coming from Rohit's cellphone and yet it wasn't his voice.

I'd been having a bad day. I was irritated and edgy and actress Sonakshi Sippy thought nothing of taking it out on the crew. I was being difficult, throwing tantrums on the set, refusing to say lines the way they were written, being a general pain in the neck. But it wasn't because of my usual, I can throw a tantrum, therefore I will, attitude. There was something about the day, almost like I was expecting something to go wrong. If I'd been superstitious, I would have probably prayed to the powers above to ward off whatever evil was to befall the world, but I didn't.

I placed the phone back near my ear. If Rohit was playing a prank, he had picked the wrong day. In my haste to blame Rohit for my moody behavior, I almost missed the point that Rohit didn't play pranks.

I moved away from the shoot location to allow the director to continue with his close-up shots with the other actors, forced a smile on my face, and replied, "Yes this is Mrs. Sonakshi Sippy speaking."

"Mrs. Sippy, your husband's had an accident."

I rolled my eyes, exasperated. "I don't think you know who I am," I replied to the stranger who was talking to me on my husband's phone. "I am the popular TV actress Parvati and my husband Rohit Sippy is a cardiac surgeon..."

The man on the other side of the phone cut me mid-sentence. "I don't care who you are Ma'am. I'm calling you because your husband listed your contact information on his phone's ICE list. I'm taking him to the nearest hospital. If you're not the right person, then can you please inform this person's next of kin? Every minute I continue talking to you, I'm taking away his chance to survive."

The stranger cut the call. I still believed it to be a prank call. And so I called back, with every intention of lashing out at Rohit as soon as he picked up the phone. The call went unanswered. I texted. No response. I was angry now. This was not funny. Rohit would not be spared.

I handed the phone back to my assistant and went back to complete the scene I'd shot halfway when the fateful phone interrupted.

Just as I was finishing my scene, my assistant came up to me and handed me my phone. He'd answered my phone, yet again. I would have to have a long chat with him about the protocols of walking around with my phone. He was only supposed to hold it, not answer it. But the moment, I placed it near my ear, all thoughts of firing my assistant vanished.