Page 132 of You Had Me At Annyeong!
‘It didn’t. She never saw this part of me. She only saw me scoring goals and sweating like a pig, that unfortunate clown.’
‘Ah, she got the beast …’
‘And you get the beauty.’ He smiles with a wink, rubbing his chinstrap and cocking up an eyebrow.
Mina can’t control herself any longer and laughs out loud.
‘You are a loony!’
She picks her glass off the table, throws her fur wrap across her shoulders, and starts to walk further away from the crowd, towards the far end of the pool that houses a panel of fountains, their water falling in cascades like molten pearls and dissolving into the shimmering water of the pool.
Rodrigo follows close behind like a besotted puppy.
‘Mina-ssi, wait up. Don’t go away already. Explain to me why I’m a loony. I thought you would say I am lovely …’
Mina laughs, but it’s only a whisper now. Rodrigo continues to babble but their voices keep growing dimmer before they are lost in the din created by the gurgle of the fountains and the accompanying, comforting sound of silence.
* * *
MUMBAI, INDIA
WINTER
Poor Apa!
Timira’s mother has now been home for a couple of days. And in the time that she was at the hospital, Timira has seen her father age exponentially. Now that she is back, her father fusses over her like she were his newborn child. Since the past hour or so, Timira has observed him hovering around their bedroom, going in and coming out for no reason, peeping at her mother from outside the door.
‘Poor Apa,’ she says and smiles.
Timira’s mother has required a pacemaker to be fitted into her chest, but has displayed no other cause for worry. She has been in high spirits since her surgery. Her sense of humour is as awful as it was before the surgery, and she’s stillmaking terrible jokes, Timira observes with a smile of relief.
‘Your father has called me heartless on so many occasions. And why? Just because I scold him a little for his immense stupidity. He’s stupid, how is it my fault? Such a callouslok!’
Turning to Timira’s father, she adds, ‘Ki?Hoyeche shanti[What? At peace now]? I’m not heartless, after all. I do have a heart. It might have malfunctioned a little … at least now stop calling me heartless!’
Timira usually laughs indulgently at her mother’s jokes, but her mother hasn’t seen her smile since she’s been back.
‘Timmy, why the long face? I’m great! Look, isn’t it good that they found that something’s wrong with me? And they fixed me up before it could get worse! Aren’t I lucky?’
Timira isn’t used to such positivity from her mother. Her mother is usually the naysayer, and her father the bringer of positive vibes. ‘Your mother brings the tea, and I, the positive-tea,’ her father often jokes.
Timira wonders if this medical emergency has had a profound effect on her mother’s personality.
Did she have an out-of-body experience while she was knocked out? Kya bhagwan ji se saakshaat hua Ma ka?
It has been over two weeks since she left Seoul. And, she’s yet to have called Haneul, even though he had set up camp in her mind and occupied every thought besides those about her parents. Between running the house, looking after her father who seems lost without her mother, and making rounds of the hospital, she’s had barely any time to even breathe. Whenever she does think of him, which is often if not all the time she is awake, she feels a pang of sadness. Every time her phone does not ring when she hoped it would, she feels her heart sink a little more. Every time her phone does ring and it isn’t Haneul, she feels like a toy that has been dumped and forgotten about.
When she informed Hanee of her safe arrival, she had heard about Haneul turning up at her place after she’d left for the airport.
‘Eonni, I bumped into him, walked RIGHT into him!’
But I sat in the lounge until the last boarding announcement for my flight. Staring at my damned phone! Why couldn’t he have called, she wondered.
But she was too tired and too sad to speak. Hanee understood.
‘I gave it off to him, eonni! I minced absolutely no words. He had no business being so late!’
Finding no response from Timira, Hanee rightly surmises that Timira hasn’t yet heard from Haneul.
