Girls Don't Cry

By Gajra Kottary

Twenty-six-year-old advertising professional Amala walks the tightrope between her big-city dreams and small-town roots. Having just broken up with her possessive live-in Mumbaikar boyfriend, Amala returns to Jalandhar in time for her grandfather's funeral. Back home, she is barely on talking terms with her mother, Disha, who divorced her father and entered into a relationship with another man. But the funeral does let Amala spend time with her grandmother. Veera naanji speaks to her of their collective past, uncovering knotty family secrets that society habitually sweeps under the carpet. The much-revered men in her family were not as admirable as they seemed, Amala comes to see. She must now assess her life and relationships afresh.Girls Don't Cry parses the lives of three generations of women in a middle-class family and the choices they make as they navigate a man's world. It is a profound reflection on friendship and love between mothers and daughters, and on what it takes to face truths that can break you forever.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins India
• Release date: Jun 10, 2017
• ISBN: 9789352644469

Gajra Kottary

Gajra Kottary is the award-winning story writer of serials like Astitva, Jyoti, Veera, Buddha and Balika Vadhu, among many others. She has published two collections of women-centric stories. This is her third novel after Broken Melodies and Once Upon a Star, both published by HarperCollins India.

Book preview

Chapter 1

The coffee mug declared, ‘Relax, there’s a woman on the job’. Amala tossed her wavy shoulder-length hair. The empty mug reminded her that it was past her coffee time. The air-conditioning hummed, letting out a soft breeze that flapped the clipping on her green felt notice board. It was all a part of Amala’s peripheral awareness. Like Arjun, with his arrow head pointed at the eye and nothing but the eye of the bird, Amala moved with blinkered speed to complete the presentation and add last-minute finishing touches. Nothing could shift her focus. Not the clutter on her desk, not the red-clay idol of Ganesha that was placed on her table and propitiated with ‘Cadbury Shots’ and certainly not the ticking silver digital clock that showed the time to be 3.30 p.m. Just one hour to get to the meeting and make the presentation.

All done. Well … almost done. Amala could not hide the glee she felt over the pitch she was working on. They had to love it. It was a campaign that would get reactions in any case. She rubbed her palms in excitement. That glee, however, was short lived. She suddenly smelled something burning. Fire! With a shock she realized that her stole had caught fire with the cigarette butt she must have accidentally dropped. Her beautiful, intricately designed, turquoise-blue, imitation Pashmina, bought after ten minutes of intense haggling from Delhi Haat. Amala stepped on the leaping flames quickly and her ankle length boots smothered out the combustion. The room reeked. Struggling with the latch she pushed her window wide open and a gust of breeze outside the twenty-second floor filled the room.

Well that’s that, she thought. Nothing like fresh air and air-conditioning to kill all traces of burning.

Satisfied with the damage control she so effortlessly had achieved, she tossed her head again as she went back to the papers. ‘Oops! Nearly forgot,’ she said to herself and then hunted frantically for a pen to jot down a few ideas that had streamed out of her head.

Her phone pinged and she peered at the screen, and then sighed. Another poetry alert from Aabhas.

Amala’s colleague Aabhas wrote poetry. He had a verse or two for every occasion. Every single one of them. Amala was the guinea pig – the person who was forced to whet through every couplet. ‘No time now,’ she muttered. Then with an impatient sigh she quickly read through it:

Life goes on work and play,

But honest love itself displays

Moving life and work, heart and soul

Love moves along lovingly towards her goal

Her beauty and mysteries to me cannot be understood

To fall in love isn’t so good

You rise in love and that is mature-hood

‘Gosh he sounds a bit desperate,’ she thought, and promptly forgot about it.

The meeting would begin at 4.30 p.m. There was still some time for that. Amala took a deep breath, stretched and slumped in her chair. There was something niggling at the back of her head. She felt like growling. It was like the itch between toes – itchy but you could not actually get to it. What was it? Nothing came up, except that it had to do with her urge to act decisively in another area of life.

What was it? she strained to think hard. Then it came to her. Amala picked up her phone and asked for the office security supervisor to come in to her cabin. In a short while there was a knock at the door.

‘Come in,’ said Amala curtly.

‘Madam, you called?’ asked a burly moustached man, whose almost military-like physical presence contrasted sharply with his humble tone and attitude.

‘Who trains your men?’ asked Amala authoritatively.

‘Madam, I do,’ said Burly-in-Khaki.

‘Do you know that every morning your lift watchman is very churlish to the women? If a woman comes running to the lift he closes the door but if a man comes late he holds the door till the gentleman makes it. Yesterday he closed the door on a lady colleague of mine, almost crushing her. Don’t you teach them any manners? Don’t ladies need to be at work on time, or is this done purposely to derive some strange pleasure? What kind of training is this?’ demanded Amala, her tone gathering pitch with each accusation.

‘Sorry, madam, I will talk to him,’ replied the man, looking mortified.

‘No don’t talk just to him,’ instructed Amala, ‘talk to your entire team. All shifts. If I witness this again I will lodge a written complaint and then maybe they will change the security company.’

The visibly deflated security head scuttled off, promising instant changes in demeanour in his staff. And Amala returned to her presentation, satisfied.

Was she too rabid with the man? She shrugged, dismissed the thought and headed towards the coffee machine for her shot of caffeine.

The coffee machine was in the corner outside her office. Watching the machine pour out a frothy cappuccino, Amala inhaled the smell of good old coffee and felt herself perk up.

In a few minutes, with a cup of coffee and a multi-vitamin tablet in her, Amala felt buzzed enough to deliver a kick-ass presentation. She glanced at the clock. Was there time for a ciggie? Yes there was. She lit one, this time very careful, and exhaled, feeling her body melt into relaxation. It had already been a full day. All morning her presentation had been arduously worked on, then the fire, then the security straightening up … and now … phew the meeting.

There was a knock at the door, and a smiling Aabhas walked in, in his staid formal trousers and conventionally stiff shirts. ‘Ready Amala? All of them are waiting for the presentation.’

‘Yes, I’m ready,’ she said defiantly. ‘Oh, almost forgot … I have to add one more thing … damn it can’t find my pen.’

‘My favourite pen,’ muttered Aabhas, and handed her his beautiful Mont Blanc. ‘It came as a special award I got at my last job,’ he crowed.

Amala scribbled, barely hearing him. ‘Yeah, I know,’ she said involuntarily. ‘There!’ she said. ‘Let’s go!’ Amala moved forward in a self-assured, happy-go-lucky manner and Aabhas said, ‘By the way Miss, best of luck!’ They both laughed and did their high-five in bonhomie.

‘You can still take my lucky one to the meeting, though,’ he smiled.

Twelve pairs of senior, serious, impatient eyes stared at them when they walked into the boardroom. Amala gave a very formal greeting and got down to the PowerPoint and video clip part of her presentation. The idea was very modern. A twenty-first-century man who sat at home cooking for his live-in girlfriend was using tomato puree.

The old-time daddies of the advertising industry didn’t seem very pleased with the presentation.

‘But he is not even her husband,’ exclaimed Mr Jain. ‘And he is cooking! The public will reject this at once. It will be associated as a niche product!’

Amala, who had been living in with her partner Mukul, and who had chosen her own set of independent gender codes which she assumed all of urbane India believed in, found herself bristling at the remark. ‘Please understand that tomato puree is a tough product to sell in the Indian market as Indian housewives prefer fresh tomatoes to preserved and packaged ones. We could not have used any other situation. And…’ she added defensively, ‘well, times have changed.’

‘And how, may I ask? My son wouldn’t be caught dead doing this for his girlfriend!’ ridiculed Jatinbhai Parekh.

‘If you allow him to have a girlfriend at all,’ teased Jayantbhai Shah with a guffaw.

‘All this is very unrealistic – very western. This is not America. You are getting too influenced by American culture,’ reasoned Piyush Jain.

Aabhas, who had been a quiet spectator and had chosen to let Amala take the lead, watched the dissent and Amala’s face getting redder and redder and decided it was time to salvage the situation. ‘Sir, if I may explain the thought process behind it all,’ he butted in politely and continued as he was given a nod. ‘Times have – as Amala rightly said – changed. The law has changed. Women can give their children their surnames and the Municipal Corporation and schools will accept this. Young people do live in before they get married, to test compatibility. We are in a mobile, moving modern India. People from different small towns and villages stream into cities. Sometimes they live together for practical purposes – you know the housing shortage issues. Or sometimes, as is the case in this presentation, there are romantic reasons for living together. Young people want to belong to this set of up-to-date thinking. They want to belong to the New Age in many ways,’ he continued with utmost sincerity in his voice.

Aabhas paused. Every eye was on him and not all eyes were hostile. He continued, ‘As Amala said, the present need for a product like tomato puree is a small one. With this pitch what we are doing is in reality attracting both men and women. The market size is immediately bigger. We are subtly selling it for its modern-day, quick-cooking value, instead of the mess of chopping and blending tomatoes, etc. So even the modern man, in fact anyone who wants to cook quickly, picks and uses our product. Tomato puree will no longer be restrained to a specific gender, but to a class of people. What this pitch does is increase the aspirational value of the product. You will find that the middle-class, average man would aspire to empower his wife’s cooking by adding the ease to her process. Or, we can imagine that he starts to cook a dal with tomato puree because his working wife is stuck with train delays or the monsoon or was kept back in the office with some last-minute extra work. In fact this could be a sequel to the advertisement.’ Smiling, Aabhas paused.

The silence in the room was a friendly one. The ‘Big Dads’ of the trade had just received a new thinking. Change, modernity, sales, more business... hmm. Perhaps the formula could work.

There was an imperceptible nod between the three. ‘Umm, give us a week and we will discuss it and get back to you,’ concluded Mr Parekh, with a short smile and a nod. As they left the boardroom Amala threw Aabhas a grateful look. And when they were safely out, she clasped his hand warmly.

‘Aabhas that was perfect and so spontaneous! You just tuned into what was in my mind! And you said it much better! You were logical, and intelligent and superbly persuasive. I was so, so tongue-tied at their assault. I would have attacked them like an idiot and we would have lost the deal. Thank god you were there!’

Aabhas smiled in delight but deftly changed the topic, ‘Yes Amala, I hope you realize that I do understand your contemporary style of thinking and living? So now tell me, is your ‘Modern Man’ cooking you dinner tonight? And, more importantly, with or without tomato puree!’

Amala hooted with laughter. ‘Now Aabhas don’t turn this on me and make fun of my Mukul! But oh shit… that reminds me … Oh my God… today is the second anniversary of our meeting.’ Looking stricken she added, ‘I have to rush!’

Dashing to her room, Amala collected her things, switched off her computer and air-conditioning and hurriedly ran her fingers through her hair, checking her reflection at the cubicle glass window. Aabhas followed her in and shuffled around awkwardly.

‘Aabhas I am late, can this wait?’ she asked.

‘Just for you to read on the way – some poetry to help you unwind,’ said Aabhas as he handed her a sheet of A4 paper with six lines written neatly on it.

‘If it is that corny poetry you sms-ed a few hours ago, then I don’t need it,’ she said.

‘Oh that,’ said Aabhas shrugging it off. ‘That was written in the shower this morning but this has more feeling and energy and I think you will like it.’

‘You write while having a shower?’ asked Amala disbelievingly.

‘I have note pads all over, Amala – next to my bed, the kitchen, shower – you never know when inspiration strikes,’ he explained earnestly.

Amala grinned.

Aabhas was besotted. He followed her around with these lyrics and poems, longing for her feedback. Amala basked in the attention. She was careful never to reciprocate or encourage it. And she understood that because he could not receive her love, he showered his poetry on her in the hope that she would allocate her approval through it.

‘Okay, I will read it later. But now I really need to go. We have a special dinner planned; you know the moonlight-wine-and-roses type of thing? To celebrate being together for two whole years.’

‘Wow, you guys really do live it up,’ commented Aabhas.

‘Yes, Mumbai is a divine mix of money, romance, work and a liberal cosmopolitan air. Honestly Aabhas, where else can two unmarried young people like us live together in India without being judged by society? Here everyone does his or her own thing and it is okay! Here I can live, not just exist, as a woman. Here we can live and love,’ Amala gushed. Aabhas stared at her for a moment.

‘Amala is this what you want out of life? Freedom? Is that what is most important?’ asked Aabhas.

‘My philosophical-poet colleague,’ laughed Amala. ‘Now all I want is to get out and be with Mukul – he is neurotic about time and look at me, already so late. Got to go!’

‘Neurotic?’ repeated Aabhas with a frown.

‘Ciao Aabhas,’ yelled out Amala as the lift door opened.

Twenty-five minutes later she turned the key and entered their trendy little apartment. ‘Muuuukuul,’ she sang. ‘Mukul, where are you?’

There was resounding silence. ‘Tea,’ she thought wearily as she headed towards the kitchen. There was a yellow post-it note on the refrigerator.

‘I waited enough,’ it said.

‘Oh shit he is really angry,’ she muttered, and proceeded to dial his number. His phone was switched off. ‘Shoot!’ she said, deflated. This was not a good beginning to the evening. Amala cringed at the thought of Mukul and his temper. Just a month ago when she returned from a photo shoot from the Maldives he had sulked and sulked, disappearing every evening for two hours and returning only at bedtime. It had required a lot of understanding and love, good cooking and undivided attention, even returning from office early for days on end, before she won him back into good humour. She decided to dress herself up for a lovely evening anyway and entered the shower singing softly to herself. An old, tried and tested trick to change her mood.

Black silk harem pants from Fabindia with a soft imitation Thai silk blouse (her friend had bought it as a gift for her from Bangkok) with deep incuts at the shoulders. Her plastic strap bra underneath which she thought looked quite stylish peeped out casually, alluringly. The onyx, round choker hanging from a shimmering black thread completed the desired effect. Her pulse points drenched with a spray of Anais Anais – a gift from Mukul. She was all set to celebrate and serenade. Only thing was, where was the serenade? She redialed. Mukul continued to be unreachable.

Empty hours of blind waiting was Mukul’s most sought form of revenge. It was the game he forced her to play. Amala thrust her phone back into her pocket when a tell-tale rustling sound made her pull out Aabhas’s poem where she had stuffed it.

As life races through taking away

Each breath bestowed on me to live

I search each day in every way

Waiting for my loved one to give

Me the grace of her presence, bless me

By appearing but oh does she give me?

No she doesn’t appear the breath bestowed

Is again wasted, Cupid has not showed

His skills and prowess to me yet

But she will come – my last penny I bet.

Amala smiled. Sometimes she had no patience for this. Poetry was a thing you were forced to do in school. Yet Aabhas was someone you could not nudge aside with indifference. Aabhas infected you with his energy and his trust in life. His creativity, his need to be loved, to couple up, were raw, urgent and needed streamlining. Was she like this when she first stepped into this city? Hungry. Driven by an urgency. Therefore she indulged him. Because, somewhere, something about him resonated. Then Mukul arrived and everything changed.

The phone rang. Mukul.

She quickly flipped the phone. ‘Amala sorry about this – I know this is a very wrong time to call you. But I am a bit worried – you do have the pen I lent you, don’t you? I say I may be sounding a bit over-possessive about it and maybe I am – but just checking Amala …’

Aabhas. Amala sighed. Not Mukul.

‘Hey Aabhas,’ she said. ‘No problem at all. Of course I have your pen safely in my bag. Do you want to come and collect it? Mukul did not wait for me and has gone out. He will be back, that’s for sure. Why don’t you come over and have a drink with us. Celebrate with us?’

There was a little silence.

‘He did not wait for you?’ asked Aabhas, very hesitantly.

Amala sighed. ‘Aabhas, you know how short-tempered he is. He will be okay. He needs some space sometimes,’ reassured Amala.

‘I guess he does not like you working late?’

‘Oh come on Aabhas. Don’t make it bigger than it is. It is a special day so yes, he must have not liked me working late today,’ said Amala, beginning to get irritated.

‘I understand,’ said Aabhas in a placating tone. ‘But honestly then this is not the right moment to come. It is your evening.’

‘Oh please!’ said Amala, who was now exasperated with the anti-climax of being alone. She wanted laughter, company, Mukul and a celebration. ‘Mukul is not so stuck-up! Come over, have a drink, take your pen and zap out!’

The doorbell rang. Mukul. ‘Ok, see you soon Aabhas.’

‘Please let this be Mukul,’ she prayed as she put on her sweetest smile and opened the main door.

‘Happy second anniversary,’ she squealed, as Mukul stood there.

‘You actually do advertising pitches with all these incorrect words and expressions?’ responded a deadpan Mukul dourly.

‘What did I say wrong?’ asked Amala, stung.

‘You mean happy second year of meeting anniversary,’ Mukul retorted.

‘Mukul! Whatever! Come on give me a hug!’ cajoled Amala.

‘Amala, if it was so special, please tell me why you were not here for me? What were you doing in the office with Aabhas so late? Typical of you. Super irresponsible when it comes to me. I too need you – your presence in the evening. That is why I chose to live in with you, even though I didn’t need to. What a fool I am. I actually thought I would come first in your life. If this was really such a big day where were you?’

‘I tried to call you and explain, Mukul, but your phone was off. The pitch was set for late evening. You know how these old industry men are. I know you are mad but come on! Be reasonable. It’s me.’

Mukul stood there unrelenting.

‘And besides it was Aabhas who helped me through a very hostile reaction to my presentation. It would have gone much longer if they argued it out, or insisted that I redo it at once. Aabhas actually saved the day.’

But Mukul wouldn’t relent. ‘Come off it, Amala. Don’t be so naïve! He certainly has the hots for you. Anyone can see how he drools over you. This is the only way he can win you over. You have to be careful and alert. There is no such thing as a platonic friendship between man and woman. Men are after only one thing.’

Before Amala could add anything he continued, with growing agitation, ‘Of course my phone was switched off. What should I keep it on for? For the sake of a woman who has no real interest in me? How fast you forget you were a lost little girl when you came into this city. I guided you, mentored you and took you into my home, my life. And now on a day like this, you were more bothered about your grand pitch. As if I don’t work. As though you are the only person in the world who does!’

Amala listened in dismay. Another opponent today, another challenge to win, another chunk of an unjust accusation coming her way. This time from someone she loved so much. Amala was not going to let this one go. It wasn’t about winning and losing. It was about a relationship she valued and cherished with her heart and soul. This was no time to argue. Better to nip it in the bud. She changed her tactics.

‘Mukul,’ said Amala in a subdued, soft manner. ‘You know, you were never like this. Gosh you have changed. You were so understanding and encouraging about my career. In fact you taught me how to be professional, how to be a man in the workplace. All that I did not know about life was so lovingly explained to me by you. Growing up without a father, you were the only male influence – a warm, caring and strong man, in my life. You made me grow by leaps and bounds and I am really grateful... but why have you changed now?’

Without waiting for him to answer, Amala added, ‘Okay baba. I’m sorry. I know I should manage my time better. Maybe I need to learn that from you. You can help me develop this, can’t you? Living with you means constant learning. You never stop learning in