Part 3 of 6 · 2 minUnexpected Guests

The doorbell rang and Lasya woke. The face that opened the door bloomed with joy at the sight of her parents. When the idlis they had brought ran out, Amma made upma. Everyone drifted off to sleep.

In the morning, leaving mother and daughter to their talk, father-in-law and son-in-law went off to the market for provisions and vegetables. He had heard from Lasya that his mother-in-law made chicken biryani very well. Along with everything else he picked up his own favourite, snake gourd, for perugu pachadi. The cooking was done, and the eating too. For something to pass the time they put on Kannur Squad. Once his daughter had improved a little, her father tried to find out what had happened.

Telling the whole story, Pramod let slip the matter of Lasya having been to Kerala before. He covered for it at once — 'she told me she went with her mother.' Her father understood everything, but was still snagged on the words "a recent trip to Kerala". Her mother picked it up immediately: "That's her, that's her antics. It's nothing, babu — Lasya came with me as far as the Pamba river, when he wore the Swami mala. She'd have been about 10 then. She wouldn't even remember where we went or what we ate." "Oho, that trip — when you said 'recently' I didn't follow. She goes nowhere but college. She won't even walk to the temple next door without her mother beside her. She must have wanted to show off that she'd travelled the country and met famous people," her father said, and gave his daughter a knock on the head.

Deciding their daughter had settled, they planned the biryani for the next day and divided the work. As they were wondering what to watch while they ate, Lasya grabbed the remote. "I have to know what film my husband was watching last night," she thought, and announced, "now we watch only what I put on," and opened Prime. Her eyes and the remote's selection both stopped at "Oppenheimer".

Amma read out the names of the cast and the director and producers. Her father burst out laughing. "What are you laughing at?" her mother asked. "Do you remember — the moment she asked to go to a film with her friends, I sent her. She watched the whole thing and then struggled to get the gist of the story out. We had a hard time of it watching the dubbed version," her father said. "Yes — at the end a spinning top turns, that's the one, isn't it?" her mother put in. "That's a different film, Amma," Lasya began to say, and stopped. Because if she said it, she would also have to say which film she had actually gone to that day.