Chapter 8: The Shopping Spree
The image pulsed between them for one second, two—a raw, private truth caught in the glow of the laptop screen on a public bench. Rohan’s hand shot out, fumbling to slam the lid shut. The snap was too loud.
Silence swallowed them. The mall’s cheerful drone—the distant ping of a game, a child’s laugh, Muzak—felt like a mockery.
Priya did not gasp. She did not look away in staged horror. She simply sat, her face composed into an impossible calm, watching him. The kindness in her demeanor had fossilized into something ancient and unreadable. Her knuckles were white around her paper cup of tea.
“Ma, I…” Rohan’s throat closed. Every excuse was ash.
“You will catch a virus,” she said finally, her voice low and remarkably even. “Clicking on… such things. Your laptop is for your future. Not for this rubbish.” She took a sip of her tea, as if discussing a substandard vendor.
It was the most devastating thing she could have said. Not condemnation of the act, but dismissal of its importance. A scolding for poor digital hygiene. In her conservatism, she had found a weapon far sharper than outrage.
Rohan could only stare, his shame curdling into a hot, defensive confusion. “It’s not… it was just a pop-up.”
“Do I look like I was born yesterday, Rohan?” she asked, not unkindly. She placed her cup down with precise finality. “You are a man. I know these things.” She stood, smoothing the new, unfamiliar cotton of her kurta. “Now, we should buy your father a proper shawl. The acrylic in the taxi will only make his cough worse.”
She began walking, a purposeful figure cutting through the crowd. He scrambled to pack the laptop, his legs clumsy, and followed. Each step was a punishment. Her reaction was a door slammed in his face, but he couldn’t tell if it was locked from the inside or out.
They found a shop selling fine pashminas. Priya’s fingers, usually so decisive when assessing fabric for her business, moved over the soft folds with a strange hesitation. She held a dove-grey shawl to the light.
“This is good. Warm but light.”
“Ma,” he said, the word bursting from him in a strained whisper. “About the laptop…”
“What about it?” She did not look at him. “You helped me with the form. I thanked you. The matter is closed.” Her tone broker no argument. Yet, her eyes, fixed on the weave of the shawl, were shiny.
The shop attendant approached, all smiles. Priya engaged, her bargaining autopilot kicking in, her voice suddenly bright and social. “Too much, too much! For this price I should get two!”
As they haggled, Rohan felt gutted. The confrontation he’d braced for—the tears, the shouting—would have been cleaner. This was burial. She was interring the incident, and a part of him along with it, under layers of practicality and feigned indifference. He watched her, this woman who had held their family together through his father's slow decline, who had just signed a shipping form from a mall bench, who knew what a pop-up ad was and what it wasn’t.
He saw, for the first time, not just his mother, but the architecture of her endurance. The sheer force of will it took to ignore what could not be fixed. To sidestep a son’s messy humanity for the sake of continuing to call him ‘son’.
She settled on a price, paid in crisp notes from her damp purse. As the attendant wrapped the shawl, Priya finally turned to him. The performative brightness faded.
She said the words as if they were items on a grocery list she’d forgotten. “I saw the tab. ‘Canada XExpress Entry.’ I know what that is. I use the internet too, beta.” A faint, sad ghost of a smile touched her lips. “Even I get pop-ups.”
All the air left his lungs. The video was a decoy. A shocking, embarrassing decoy. She had looked past it and seen the deeper betrayal.
“It’s not… it’s just an idea, Ma. Just research.”
“Hmm.” She took the wrapped package. “Your father needs a shawl. You need… something else. I understand.” She handed him the bag. “Carry this.”
They walked back through the atrium. The momentum of their journey, halted by the landslide, now felt permanently derailed.
“I’m not leaving right now,” he said, the words feeble.
“I know. You are a good boy.” She patted his arm, the gesture almost maternal again, but the distance remained.
“Is that what you want?” he asked, a flare of anger cutting through his guilt.
She stopped, right there under a giant, swirling advertisement for Danish butter cookies. Her composure wavered, just for an instant, and he saw the bone-deep fatigue underneath, the woman grappling with a husband’s illness and a company and a son who was already, in his heart, gone.
“What I want,” she said softly, “is for you to be where you are. Fully. In the taxi, be in the taxi. In Kolkata, be in Kolkata. With your father… be with your father.” She looked at him, her eyes holding his. “This halfway living… it is a disrespect. To him. To yourself. Even to those…” she gestured vaguely back toward the bench, “…silly videos.” Her point was brutal and clear: if you must escape, have the courage to truly go.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out, a reflex. It was a message from his cousin in Kolkata. He read it, and the mall’s temperature seemed to drop ten degrees.
“What Is it "
Dhurandar movie tickets confirmed displayed the messages