"I'll see you on Monday then?", I asked mom.
"Er.. were you planning to go to your father's house after school tomorrow?", Mom asked peeping out of her car, looking concerned.
"Yeah of course..why?", I asked perplexed at this question.
I had always spent the weekends with dad ever since my parents divorced five years ago.
"Well the thing is..", Mom began bracingly "Zoya...you should understand this doesn't happen intentionally... your father is a busy man.."
I instantly knew what was coming next.
"So he's going off somewhere this weekend. Isn't he?", I asked sadly.
"Yes darling, it's for a very important meeting in Malad. But don't worry", Mom added hastily "You can certainly spend the next weekend at his house. And I made him promise to call you on Sunday evening".
"Right Mom", I said dryly.
"Zoya.."
"Mom, I'm fine".
"Okay", Mom gave up and it was an awkward moment as we said goodbye and she drove out of the society.
I continued to stand there feeling mutinous.
Made him promise?
Mom shouldn't be making dad promise to call me.
He should want to talk to his daughter.
This was the third weekend in two months that I hadn't been able to spend with dad.
After ten minutes, I realised me stubbornly standing there in the driveway wouldn't make dad cancel his meeting. There was nothing I could do except wait for the next weekend.
So I turned back and set off down the path back to A block to finish my calculus homework.
My room at our new house wasn't even fully furnished yet. Our suitcases were still half filled with clothes and things.
Mom and I had segregated all the stuff from our Bandra house, packed them into cardboard boxes and had stuck labels on each one so that unpacking would be made easier.
We had unpacked the boxes with the label KITCHEN on the first day because that was the most imperative one. We had also unpacked the photo frames and other personal stuff. After that, Mom had asked me to unpack one box each day from thereon.
But with one thing and another, I kept procrastinating and the boxes now lay all the way from my bed to the living room like stepstones on a garden walkway.
I did wish we had a real set of stepstones instead of boxes though it was impossible in a two bedroom apartment.
But Mom did manage to install a pot of purple hyacinths in the balcony after which she named the house as 'Heart Of Hyacinths'. Mom was corny, that way.
Ignoring the boxes jamming my room I huddled into a corner and was halfway through my first sum when the bell rang.
I skipped through the boxes and opened the door cautiously.
"Rahul?!" I exclaimed shocked on seeing him at my doorway.
"Oh you know my name now", he said looking surprised, "I wonder who could've told you".
"The Times Of India did actually", I said recalling the article I had seen on the bus, "I hadn't realised I was talking to a local celebrity at Tashan's that day".
"Celebrity?", Rahul laughed "I wouldn't go that far".
"Are you all famous people really so modest or is it an act?", I said "Anyway how come you're here?"
"I've been handing these around", Rahul said as he handed over a leaflet to me, "Yours is the last house".
Enchanted Stone plays at SVP stadium this weekend.
"Hey that's great!" I said, "Congrats!"
"Aren't you sweet?", he said and then his eyes darted into the house and all the boxes "Woah! Looks like moving day isn't over yet".
"Yeah, it won't be over till next year", I said sarcastically, now stepping out of my house and shutting the door behind me, not wanting him to see anything more, "Shall we go down?"
Don't even ask me why I'm inviting a guy I've met only once for a walk.
"Oh. Right", he said as we went down the lift, "So what are you doing this weekend?"
"Nothing", I said grimly.
"I thought you might be visiting your dad, given that you spend the weekdays with your mom after their divorce".
I gaped at him. Nobody had ever figured out that my parents were divorced before I told them.
"How did you..."
"I observe Zoya", he said sounding like the typical amateur detective on TV shows.
"But why?"
"I am a performer. I have to go to so many places, see so many people. If I'm not going to be agile, alert and observant then it's going to be rough".
"But surely you don't need to be detecting who's divorced and who's not?"
"Nope", Rahul said as we were now walking out of A block, "I just happened to notice. Your school ID says you're the daughter of Dr Shaheen Khan but you're Zoya Fakhri. I noticed it that day at Tashan's. And I guessed it was a long past divorce because. Probably a smooth one too because there was a picture of you with your dad in your living room. You wouldn't see that in a bitter divorce."
I literally wanted to yell at the top of my voice, race back upstairs to my flat and shut the door.
Who was this guy, man? Figuring out everything about my family. And I didn't know anything about him except his name.
"Alright", I said crossing my arms, smiling slightly "Since you seem to figure everything out, now tell me this. What kind of doctor is my mom?"
"Very clever aren't you?", Rahul said smoothly "You're mom isn't a medical doctor. She's a Ph.D in computer science. There's a plaque on your door which says so."
"Okay, I give up. You're a smartie".
We had walked past the society gates. Mom had given me permission to explore the new neighborhood by myself as long as I stuck to a one kilometre radius.
I glanced at Tashan's which was so packed with people that some customers didn't have a place to sit and were hanging outside waiting for a free table.
I hadn't gone past the bus stop since we had come to Borivali. I missed hanging around at the chat stalls and ice-cream parlours in Bandra with Riya and Mishti.
For the past one week it had been school, bus, home, repeat.
So I was pretty excited to be walking down the streets.
Halfway into the next lane, I realised everybody seemed to know Rahul.
Of course they did.
It was I who was dumbly unaware of the rock world in Mumbai inspite of living there all my life.
But even for a guy in an up-and-coming rock band, the fuss was a lot.
Maybe the fact that Rahul was a really really nice guy also added to it.
The guy at the Domino's down the road, offered him a free pizza (which I couldn't believe he declined) and two young girls asked for a selfie.
Everybody seemed happy to see Rahul and I felt nervous walking next to him. Fortunately, not much attention was thrown my way. But somewhere, I felt excited. This was a guy who played a stadium.
"So, is this like a really friendly and safe neighborhood?", I finally asked him.
"It depends", Rahul said.
"On?"
"On who you are".
That was on point. Rahul was a local celebrity.
"You seem to have a very interesting life", I said a bit enviously.
"A part of it is. Yeah".
"Come on, I wish someone offered me free pizzas".
"But there's certain parts of it, you certainly wouldn't wish for".
"Like what?"
"Like having to go to every house and hand over leaflets", Rahul said "It's a big bore. Rough day, today".
"You too?", I asked glumly.
"What do you mean?".
I filled him in about dad having no idea why I was confiding in him so quickly. These are things, I have taken months to tell Riya and Mishti. When I finished I realised, he was watching me closely, "That's a bummer!", he said patting my shoulder. I could tell he was used to being touchy with people, "But he said he would call, didn't he? Just you wait. It's going to be alright".
I was ready to believe anything he said so I nodded.
We were about to turn into another street when I stopped.
I would've loved to stand there and continue talking to Rahul, forever, but my calculus homework was practically crying out for me now.
"Listen Rahul, I have to go now".
"Huh, why?", he asked looking slightly disappointed.
"Homework"
"Oh right. Of course..."