‘A week doesn’t give us a lot of time to spread the word.’
‘Well, you’d better get going then.’
Aleisha looked at Kyle who’d been sitting back and watching it all unfold. She smiled and he raised his eyebrows, giving her a double thumbs up.
She couldn’t wait to tell Mr P.
Chapter 37
MUKESH
BEEP. ‘ROHINI, PLEASE CAN you come with some trays of food for next Wednesday, deliver them to my house Tuesday evening, maybe bring some of those samosas you make? That would be nice. It’s for the library, an open morning. And I am helping organize.’
BEEP. ‘Vritti? I need your cooking assistance – do you have some nibbles you can bring for an open morning, for next Wednesday? Please deliver at my house on Tuesday evening. Something hy-po-all-er-gen-ic.’
BEEP. ‘Deepali, beta, please bring your special recipe punch – you know, the one you make for special occasions, ready for an open morning on Wednesday at the library. Bring straight there, but come to help at my house on Tuesday evening too.’
He hung up the phone, ticking off his three daughters on his list. He turned to Nilakshi, sitting in the living room, watching Zee TV.
‘Nilakshiben?’ he asked, cautiously.
‘Mhmm,’ she turned her head away from the TV for a moment, her ears still taking in the melodrama.
‘Aleisha needs me to give out flyers, for the library.’ He waved the newly printed flyers at her. They were bright, cheerful. ‘Zac made them. They’re very good, ne? So, what do you think about me spreading the word at the mandir? Will they laugh at me? Think I’m a lonely old widower?’
‘Mukeshbhai,’ Nilakshi said softly. ‘You are not a lonely old widower. And they know how much the library meant to Naina, they will know that you are doing this as much for that lovely young man Aidan as you are for her. You will have made her so proud.’
Watching Nilakshi, he knew he had made his peace with everything. Nilakshi was his friend. And Naina, in some way, had sent her to him too – she had made sure their paths had crossed. She had brought them together, for company, in the same way as she had guided him to the mandir, and had left The Time Traveler’s Wife as a sign. She had been right there, with him, from the very beginning.
He thought about distributing flyers at the mandir, what people would say; no one would expect this from Mukesh Patel. It didn’t scare him, really, did it? This was for a good cause. The city was often a lonely place, and even in Wembley where lots of people knew each other, people still felt alone.
He thought then about posting them through people’s letterboxes. Some people didn’t like flyers, leaflets, that kind of thing. Could something as innocent as posting flyers through letterboxes get him in a chutney?
‘In a pickle,’ Naina’s voice burst out at him then. ‘The phrase is ‘in a pickle’。’
At the temple, Mukesh’s courage finally plucked up, Harishbhai’s youngest son was pushing him around for the day in one of the coveted wheelchairs.
‘I need to have both hands free, for speed, you see,’ Mukesh had pleaded.
‘All right, Mukesh, I’ll do it for a tenner!’ Harishbhai’s son had bartered.
Mukesh was wheeled up and down the hallway, passed the gift shop and the shoe zones and the toilets. He had given away only about three flyers so far. He had to change his approach.
Harishbhai’s son was listening to something on podcasts and only acknowledged which direction Mukesh wanted to go in if Mukesh pointed or waved his arms dramatically. Mukesh was relieved he didn’t have to make much conversation with the boy. Though he hated fitting the ‘old person stereotype’， he loved the wheelchair and wondered why he hadn’t tried it ages ago, especially when he could get someone like Harishbhai’s son to push him around in it. He was going so fast!
Searching his brain for inspiration, Mukesh thought of TV programmes like EastEnders where people would shout in deafeningly loud voices, ‘Read all about it!’ from their newspaper stands, or ‘Two tomatoes for twenty pence!’ from their market stalls. He did a little cough, and started to shout, not too loudly because he’d be kicked out, but loudly enough to be heard, flyers waving in his hand above his head. ‘The Big Library Get-Together, don’t miss it, all your friends will be there and will wonder where you are if you are not. Bring your children and your grandchildren!’ It was miraculous, two women walked over immediately, curious. He had their attention! He handed flyers to them as he whizzed past, praying he hadn’t given them a papercut.