Third on His Calling List
On borrowed lives and the quiet of your own
How Are You Coming?
“Hi, Vihan,” I spoke into the phone.
“Hi, Aishu Aunty,” said Vihan from the other side.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I am watching TV,” he said.
“What are you watching on TV?” I enquired.
“I am watching Diana,” he replied.
“Oh, that’s great. What did you have for breakfast, Vihan?” I continued.
“I had dosa and m…” He murmured.
“What, Vihan?” I repeated.
“I had dosa and mutton,” he said.
“Oh, that’s lovely,” I said as I smiled.
“Bye, Aishu Aunty,” he said. “Bye, Vihan. I love you,” I confessed.
“I love you,” he said back.
I heard the mobile being passed and his footsteps running away. Lavanya, my friend, got back on the phone. She told me that he had left.
“See you tomorrow, Aishu,” Lavanya said.
“Can’t wait,” I said, and pressed the end button on the call.
I got up to wash my hands at the sink before I had my lunch in the clinic. I heard my ringtone, the Arjun Reddy background score. I had not changed it since the movie came out in 2017.
She called back while I was washing my hands. Vihan had asked her to ask me how I was coming.
“By auto,” I said.
He had wanted to know.
Again
I walked to the first floor of the building and pressed the button on the call bell.
“Look who’s here,” I heard Lavanya call.
I entered the hall. Vihan came running to me and stood in front of me. He’d grown since I saw him last year. I could not believe that he would soon be three this July.
I immediately removed my blue sling bag. The teddy bear charm on it moved restlessly as I placed it on the diwan and carried Vihan in my arms. I kissed him on the cheek and asked him if he remembered me.
He said yes.
Lavanya told me how he loved the doctor’s set I gave him on his birthday last July. He would not stop playing with it.
“The doctor’s set is broken,” said Vihan.
“I know. I will get you another one the next time I visit,” I promised.
I removed the wrapped gift I bought for him from its bag and gave it to him. He eagerly opened it but was fumbling with the tape. I asked him if I could help him, and he nodded. I unwrapped the three-word puzzle set, and he clapped his hands in glee.
It was one in the afternoon, and Lavanya was cooking in the kitchen. Vihan was lying on the beanbag in the hall and watching a snake video on YouTube from the Discovery Channel.
He loved them, I discovered.
I was sitting beside the beanbag on the floor and playing with his hair.
I asked him if he wanted to play Ring-a-ring o’ roses.
In two seconds, he was on his feet in front of me.
We went three rounds. I stopped.
He smiled and said, “Again.”
That was the template for the next three days; he would appear at my side every few hours, take my hand without preamble, and we would go again.
We played hide and seek, too, where he cheated shamelessly by watching where I hid during his turn to count.
I pretended not to notice.
On the second morning, Lavanya handed me a Thums Up. I was sitting on the floor in the spacious hall.
Vihan came running and hugged me from behind. I swung him on my back.
After some time, I asked him to pick his sipper water bottle from the centre table, which he did obediently.
I clinked my Thums Up bottle to his water bottle and said “Cheers”.
He looked at me as if I were crazy and then slowly touched his bottle to mine, laughed, and said, “Cheers”.
We continued doing that for quite some time, and he had a goofy smile on his face the entire time.
It was eleven at night when we got into bed to sleep.
Lavanya, Vihan and I were sitting on the bed.
He came to me, hugged me from the side, held my face in both his little, soft hands, and then touched his right cheek to my left.
I held him like that for a few seconds, put him in my lap, and began to kiss and tickle him at once.
He started flapping his hands and legs and was laughing uncontrollably.
We calmed down after a while, and then he asked for videos of worms in chocolate.
I searched YouTube for worms in chocolates, biscuits, and Chocos, one of Vihan’s favourites.
He was seated on my lap on the bed and was seriously watching those short videos.
I told him this is why Amma asks you not to eat chocolates, because then you will get a tummy ache due to all these worms growing inside your stomach.
He looked solemnly into my face and said that’s why he only eats fruits and not junk food.
Both of us knew it to be false, as just half an hour ago, he pleaded with his mother to give him Chocos.
But he said it with such conviction that I smiled and agreed with him.
How She Gets It All Done
Lavanya was busy cooking paneer while I was playing with Vihan on the first day I was there.
She seemed worried and told me she doubted whether the masala had stuck properly to the paneer.
I told her not to worry and that I would love it either way.
When we were almost ready to eat, she said that the paneer was not so good.
She gave me one piece to taste.
I thought it was absolutely fine.
She seemed hesitant, though, so I ordered two veg starters so she wouldn’t worry so much.
All the time I stayed there, Lavanya was always cooking, moving, and looking after Vihan’s needs.
She was so busy, and I was hardly getting any time with her, that I ordered KFC one night just so she wouldn’t have to cook dinner and would get a respite from all the work.
I felt extremely bad that I could not help her.
I saw she had no rest at all.
I recognised this.
I had seen this in every home, in every woman after marriage.
I watched her move from the kitchen to the hall and back and thought that there should be a different word for this kind of work.
Something more accurate than love, though it was that too.
One or Two Suitable Matches
We were having lunch on the third day I was there.
Lavanya’s husband and her brother, who stayed with them, were also with us.
We were all sitting on the floor, having lunch and absorbed in conversation with each other.
I sat watching Lavanya the way you watch something you are trying to understand.
She had been in motion since I arrived.
Cooking, redirecting Vihan, and managing the house with such competence that it had become invisible to everyone in it, maybe even to her.
Her husband loved her.
Her child lit up when she walked in.
The house was full of the kind of noise that said people were comfortable with each other.
None of this was lost on me.
I had been thinking about this question long before that lunch, and long before Violet and Eloise made me examine it on screen.
The day before I came here, my mother and I had spoken about matrimony websites.
One or two profiles, I said.
We talked about DINK couples, about what I actually wanted, about adopting at 35 or 40 if loneliness ever found me.
Watching Lavanya, I stopped circling.
I looked at her life, this good, real, loving life, and felt with absolute clarity that I would disappear inside it.
That I would hand myself over piece by piece until there was not enough left to find.
Calm and Quiet
I got out of the auto I had booked on Rapido, carrying my backpack.
I was still in my grey snowman pyjamas.
I did not want to miss my time with Vihan and Lavanya by wasting time changing clothes before I left there.
I opened the door to my house and entered the hall.
I was greeted by calm and quiet.
I was happy to come home to my slow life, but I also missed Vihan terribly, especially his free hugs and kisses every hour.
I am in my clinic two days after I came back home.
I hear my phone ring and am glad to see it is Lavanya.
I picked up the call, and Lavanya told me that Vihan wanted to talk to me on a video call.
I call him immediately on WhatsApp. He is on his bed after eating lunch and about to have his afternoon nap.
I asked him what he had for lunch, and he told me he had rasam and an omelette.
He asked me if I was a doctor, and I showed him my stethoscope in the drawer of my desk and a syringe from the nurses’ station.
He said he also wanted to become a doctor.
After two seconds, he said that he wanted to become a police officer.
I laughed and told him he could be whatever he wanted.
He called me three days in a row every afternoon before his nap.
Lavanya told me I was third on his call list after his father and mama.
If this resonated, you might enjoy Letters From a Slow Writer, my occasional newsletter on autonomy, solitude, and living deliberately.
Aishwarya is a government doctor in Hyderabad and a personal essayist. She writes about solitude, money, books, and the quiet work of building a life on her own terms.