Reunion Café
by Subhravanu Das
A burnt cabbage sat in front of Danit’s door. It was whole; not chopped up, not shredded. He would have kicked it away, but he feared that it would explode. And an exploding cabbage was bound to wake his father up. Consequently, he was bound to be yelled at. He was bound to be slapped. He was bound to be pushed against a wall. He was bound to have his face shoved into a pillow brimming with fish scales. He was bound so comprehensively that he didn’t hoof the cabbage into the neighboring marsh, and neither did the cabbage let him shut the door on it.
There was something evocative about the cabbage — its deceptive grayness; its contours; its likeness to the sun; its likeness to the globe that had been left for Danit at the door, as a gift, on one of his birthdays. He had never found out who his benefactor had been. This cabbage couldn’t have been left here by the same benefactor. This cabbage wasn’t accompanied by a note wishing him all the happiness in the world. It was accompanied, rather reluctantly, by a roll of coupons, each offering a fifty-percent discount at a helmet store. He slid the cabbage into the secure pit of his backpack and returned to his room to hide under the covers.
On his way to the Accountants’ Gala the following evening, Danit stopped by a bakery. He needed to fuel up before squeezing into an event where, in lieu of food, spiced shrapnel awaited him. His termite-ridden molars burst into a song of agony when he asked the baker for a slice of white-forest cake. Stapled onto a board behind the counter, alongside the customary advertisements for taking catering orders and providing English tutorials, was a brand-new pamphlet.
Slurp and Swap!
It’s a stuff swap party, people. Sounds cool, right? This party will have you meeting strangers and exchanging one thing for another. All you lazy people, you now have reason enough to step out on a Tuesday. What better way to meet like-minded people than at a stuff swap party, right? Just make sure to come with your favorite thing that you want to exchange. Once the moderators have settled you in, you’ll have one minute to pitch your stuff to the person sitting opposite you. Sounds familiar, right? Yes, it’s basically speed dating, but for your stuff. Not interested in the other person’s stuff? Or vice versa? Move on to the next person till you find the stuff that talks to you. Once you’ve found your match, go ahead and swap your stuff.
Where: Reunion Café, Behind Neel Building, Puja Street
When: Same Day and Same Time as Archaeologists’ Gala, Accountants’ Gala, and Astrologers’ Gala!
In Danit’s backpack, the cabbage started thrashing about like a bird compelled to winglessness.
The advertisement prevailed and led Danit to a velveteen recliner inside the Reunion Café. Along with a fountain of milk as its centerpiece, the café had horns of differing sizes and sharpness jutting out from its floor at intervals. Most of the people present were seated and, among the few who were on their feet, only one sashayed from candlelit table to candlelit table; the one was Danit’s mother — smiling, like in all the garlanded photographs that kept the walls of Danit’s home standing. She carried in her hand an eight-foot tall trident studded with blue sapphires. The trident was capable of mangling the car that had run her over within a month of Danit’s birth. The trident was also capable of eviscerating the asteroid that the news claimed was headed Earth’s way. The trident, meanwhile, was content with dragging his mother down to the bridge between his eyebrows.
“Son, to offer I have a pashmina shawl that’s carved, not woven, by the rivers flowing into the Himalayas. What’ve you got?”
“This cabbage.”
“That belongs in a bin. Stop wasting everyone’s time.”
His mother continued her journey around the tables, never once looking back. Defying the scores of eavesdroppers that took their cue from her and steered clear of Danit, a dhoti-clad mendicant walked up to him and settled down to file the talons tattooed on a bare chest.
“I’m Warap. I might look like I’m old enough to be your dad, but actually I’m old enough to be your dad’s dad. That’s because I use this hemp loofah to exfoliate my skin every night. I won this restorative at a peacock plucking contest. Would you like to trade whatever it is you hold dear for my rare hemp loofah? Full disclosure — I don’t want you thinking it’ll get you high. It won’t.”
Danit let the cabbage roll away and received a snakeskin pouch in return. With the readiness of the resurrected, Warap went at the cabbage with both hands, plucking off leaf after leaf and stacking them up on the table, till all the gray, burnt layers came off and a white, fist-sized core lay exposed. Not even a misplaced crumb leapt Danit’s way as Warap swallowed the core whole. The leftover vanilla milkshake had to exchange hands to ensure that nothing came back up.
Danit returned from the café and found his home locked from the inside. By setting fire to the pouch containing the loofah, he managed to pass the cold, shawlless night curled up on the lawn. When he woke up, tendrils of incense were jostling against his knuckles, while wriggling under his feet was a pile of ashes. The newly risen sun having turned his luck around, his home now welcomed him through its hungry trapdoors. Danit tiptoed into the hallway, curtsied before all his strung-up mothers, and then pounded up to his room, only to crumble at the entrance; inside, lying on Danit’s bed and wrapped up in Danit’s sheets, was Danit’s father. A spasm of recognition was all that was needed for the bloated torso to push itself off the bed and into a wheelchair. Their eyes locked for a second, and every band-aid ever ripped off and every pill ever coughed up came together to eclipse that moment from eternity. With a shake of the head that was buried under hair as white as the cabbage’s core, the old man rolled out of Danit’s room and disappeared up the ramp leading to the roof. But the stench of his father didn’t make the journey with his father, causing Danit to dare no more than a peek into his own room; waiting on his bed was a circular, gray patch of piss. He fled to a loo and was confronted in its mirror by his face, crowned with his father’s hair — just as white and just as matted. He picked up a blue bottle of toilet cleaner, squeezed out a cupful of its liquid sapphire into his palms, and ran his fingers through each and every knot on his head. In the time it took for all the white to turn blue, the smell of piss vanished.
Subhravanu Das is an Indian writer living in Bhubaneswar. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Muse India, The Bombay Review, 365tomorrows, Kitaab, and Gone Lawn.
