And tomorrow the cooking challenges would start.
The producers, including her traitorous friend, were being unsurprisingly tight-lipped about everything. China had officially crossed over to the evil side. As for DJ, he had swept in, shot the introductions, and taken off. All Ashna had gotten out of him was a quick hug and a promise to catch up soon. There was some sort of emergency with one of Yash’s fund-raising events in LA that Nisha couldn’t get to, and DJ had jumped in. All hands on deck, that was the Rajes. DJ had slipped effortlessly into the golden circle just the way Ashna had expected him to.
Ashna wished she’d been the one to help with Yash’s fund-raiser, coward that she was. But running away never solved problems. Having tried that strategy, she knew its success rate was zero.
It was past midnight and she was still at the restaurant taking inventory and getting things set up for the week. Mina Kaki was going to help her manage Curried Dreams when she had to shoot. Wilfrieda and Khalid were going to share sous chef duties. She had taken care of the things she had control over. The rest she couldn’t think about until she got there.
Just as she was ready to leave, her phone rang.
She answered because there were only so many problems she could push away for later.
“That knife didn’t touch you, did it?” Shobi said with uncharacteristic maternal worry.
She’d seen the clip. Fabulous!
“I thought you stayed off social media.” Shobi wasn’t a fan even though her foundation had a following of hundreds of thousands, which of course she would bring up soon enough.
“Hate the thing. For the most part I leave it to my social media director. But Flora chanced upon the video and sent it to me.”
Ashna loved Flora, her mother’s personal assistant, but she wanted to shake her for this. “It wasn’t how it looks. You know how TV is.” How Media Jumbles Reality was another one of Shobi’s favorite themes.
“It’s that restaurant. Look at what it’s done to you. By now you should have been in a committed relationship and not swooning like a teenager.” Ashna made her way to the holding area and started wrapping silverware in napkins. God forbid if Shoban Gaikwad Raje might say anything as conformist as by now you should be married the way any other Indian mother would. But no, the keeper of women’s rights had to say “committed relationship” instead. It would have been all fine and dandy had Shobi herself been capable of being in a committed relationship.
Ashna rolled a napkin with far more force than necessary. “Wow, I never thought I’d hear the ‘you’re thirty and not married off’ thing from you.”
Shobi made a horrified sound. “Oh please. I would never be quite so regressive. I just meant that I never saw you as the swooning sort.”
Ashna had a good mind to let her think she was, indeed, the swooning sort. “I didn’t swoon. The camera just makes it look that way. I was caught by surprise.”
“Right. Surprise at how stunning a man can be, by all reports.” Her mother chuckled, as though she had finally found her absconding sense of humor. So what if it had taken her daughter’s public humiliation for her to find it.
Ashna lined the perfectly folded rolls neatly on the counter, ready for tomorrow’s fifty tables, because at least the video seemed to be bringing in customers. “It had more to do with the fact that the man did not look like someone who could help me win. It’s about winning. Isn’t that what you’ve always taught me?”
Her mother made a scoffing sound, so much more within the Shobi lexicon than her previous good-natured chuckle. “Well, see, it’s always about the damn restaurant. But you’re right; that video clip is going to make sure that you don’t get voted off. So it might help you win after all.”
“I can win because of my cooking. It is possible, you know.” It was actually not possible at all. How impossible it was reared its monstrous head inside Ashna.
Shobi’s response was to twist this in the most infuriating way possible. “I’m not saying you can’t. All I’m saying is that you should take a moment to explore why you’re doing this.” A pause that harkened the coming of another swift and brutal kick to the gut. “Why do you repeatedly let the restaurant be a punitive place for you?”
Sometimes Ashna just hated Shobi. But she hated herself more for answering the phone.
Awkward silence stretched between them. Not that they could have a conversation without those. Ashna shoved the perfectly folded rolls out of alignment, then adjusted them.
Finally, Shobi cleared her throat. “Why do we always end up here, Ashna?”
Ashna laughed.
Shobi cleared her throat, another ominous sign for what was coming. “Why don’t we try something different. What are you doing with the restaurant when you shoot? Do you trust the people you’ve hired?”
A double punch this time. Baba’s employees had robbed him clean after his death and it had been Ashna’s fault for leaving them to do it.
“I was going to ask if you maybe needed help with it? You won’t come to India, and it’s been so long since we’ve seen each other . . .”
Ashna started pacing. Had Shobi just asked her if she needed help?
Once when Ashna had been ill and hadn’t been able to get out of bed or eat without her aunt forcing spoonfuls into her mouth, her mother had apologized over the phone about being in the middle of a project it would be unthinkably irresponsible for her to abandon. Thousands of women and children were counting on her. She was raising money so underprivileged women could have toilets inside their homes instead of having to walk outside their villages every time they needed to use the restroom. Wasn’t that more important? Couldn’t Ashna understand how Shobi couldn’t leave that, no matter how badly she wanted to be there?
Who could argue that those things weren’t more important than a daughter who had inconvenient timing when it came to falling ill?
Even after Baba died, Shobi had flown down for a few days and then simply gone back to India for some project or other.
The last person Ashna had wanted to face then was Shobi anyway, given that after spending all those years blaming Shobi for destroying Baba, Ashna had been the person to finally push him over the edge.
“What about the foundation? And the Padma Shri? There’s got to be so many events around that.”
“I’ve built a strong enough team that they’re taking care of everything.” Another swipe that wasn’t lost on Ashna. “I won’t be able to get away for too long, I’d have to be here before the awards ceremony in two months, but I do want to help. How long do you shoot?”
“Not sure yet,” Ashna said.
Whatever this was—this thing where her mother seemed to have added “bond with daughter” to her monthly goals—Ashna did not have the time for it.
“Mina Kaki is helping me. We’ve got it all worked out, so don’t worry about it.” That should work because Shobi was usually happy to hand her mothering responsibilities off to her sister-in-law.
It worked. Thank God. After a few frustrated sounds, Shobi let Ashna go.
Ashna packed up and made her way home. It was late, but Mina Kaki was a night owl, so Ashna called her.
All she had to say was “Hello,” and her aunt knew what she was going to say.