2 Minute Worlds

In 1991, right after my house job, we got married. He was an army officer. I was a doctor. Together, we were pedestrians. Our love story had no soundtrack of car horns or roaring engines—just the slap-slap of our shoes on the road.

We traveled like nomads: taxis that smelled of stale cigarettes, wagons packed tighter than memory boxes, and sometimes, if fortune tilted in our favor, a borrowed motorcycle. Riding in the rain on a friend’s bike, I thought, This is romance. But then I got pregnant. And suddenly the romance of rain felt more like pneumonia waiting to happen.

Babies don’t ride on handlebars. Babies don’t cling to you when the road bumps like a drunk elephant. Babies want cars. Real ones, with roofs and seat belts and maybe even ashtrays no one uses.

My husband’s salary was four thousand rupees. A number so small it could disappear in the fold of a pocket. No rich father. No generous father-in-law. Just us. And by “us,” I mean mostly me, because his pay slip looked like a cruel joke typed by someone with a bad sense of humor.

Then I saw it. A newspaper ad:

Wanted: Lady Doctor. Salary: 10,000 Rupees. Accommodation included.

Ten thousand. More than double what he earned. My brain started doing cartwheels. Seven, maybe eight months of work—seventy, eighty thousand in savings. Enough for a car. A brand-new Alto was 1.5 lakh. Forget new. Forget the smell of plastic seats. I just wanted something that moved forward when you turned the key. A used Suzuki FX. Four wheels. One dream.

I was two months pregnant, throwing up like a malfunctioning fountain, but I wanted to run to that interview barefoot. Shoes felt like luxury. I was fueled by math and nausea.

That night, I told him. He listened, nodded, and said nothing. That was his specialty: silence that stretched long enough to make you hear your own doubts echo.

But in my head, I already had the car. I could see it parked outside. Blue, or maybe white. The kind of white that looked permanently dusty no matter how much you washed it. I could see myself putting the baby in the back seat, waving to neighbors, pretending I belonged in a family photograph clipped out of a magazine.

The next morning, I went to the interview. I told them I was ready to start immediately. They nodded, handed me a form. And then, for a second, I swear I saw the Suzuki FX waiting outside the hospital window. Four wheels. One dream. Headlights blinking at me like eyes.

By the time I blinked, it was gone.

I took it as a sign. Not that I would get the job. Not even that we’d have the car. But that somewhere, in some other version of the world, I was already driving home with a baby in the back seat, rain on the windshield, and the smell of borrowed motorcycles fading into memory.