here,there & elsewhere. Toaster alarm

December means that the mornings are darker than usual. I am still asleep when the phone rings. Bins gets it before me. I hear him talking to Adonis, our local Greek god who just happens to be the Landlady’s son. “Fire Department? Coming today? Okay! We’ll be ready.” Bins is unaffected by morning and is always looking for excuses to force me awake ahead of time. So of course, the moment he puts the phone down he turns on all the lights while yodelling, “Get up, get up! The firemen are coming!”

As I crawl out from under the cave of cushions and blankets in which I hibernate each night, I ask, “But when are they coming?” Bins says, excitedly, “Adonis said, ‘today’! That could mean any moment! Maybe they’re already here, just waiting outside the door!” He can never bear it that I am not instantly awake. He considers it to be one of my million defects. “Come on! Or they will think that all Indians are sleepy sloths!” I want to tell him that at least one of us IS a sleepy sloth, but talking requires being awake so I say nothing. I squint short-sightedly at the clock-radio: it’s barely 8 am. Aaaargh. But I’m up by now and brushing my teeth.

Meanwhile Bins is rampaging about like a squirrel on speed. “We must offer them tea. That way they will not think we’re terrorists,” he says. “Why should they EVER think that?” I ask. “Because we’re brown,” says Bins, who is NOT. But he identifies so completely with being Indian that he’s adopted the ever-present paranoia. “Do we have any homemade cookies? Terrorists never offer cookies,” he says. “They’re firemen, not Navy Seals!” I yell over the shrieking of the whistling kettle. “They’re only coming to check if the alarms are working!”

“Why’re you wasting time? We must finish breakfast before they get here,” says Bins. He’s popped two slices of bread in the toaster-oven and he’s got three eggs boiling in a pan of water. “I’m sure terrorists don’t eat boiled eggs on toast,” I say, “so don’t start till the firemen are hammering at the door!” “How do YOU know what terrorists eat or don’t eat?” Bins demands. “Maybe they eat eggs all day long! Just to prove they are normal people, like the rest of us —” The toast begins to burn. The fire alarm goes off. The only way to silence it is for a tall man to stand on tiptoe while fanning the smoke away.

Someone’s hammering at the door. It’s Jiggs, our Indian pizza-guy neighbour. “Are you burning?” he wants to know. “Luckily the firemen are coming. They will put it out.” But because the door’s open, the smoke flies out and now the alarm in the hallway starts blaring. “It’s only toast!” screams Bins, flapping mightily, with both arms. The boiled eggs run dry and explode with soft popping sounds. The upstairs tenants run down in their skimpy nighties, yelling “FIRE!”

“You ARE a terrorist,” I say to Bins, as I run outside, offering everyone cups of tea.

Manjula Padmanabhan , author and artist, writes of her life in the fictional town of Elsewhere, US, in this weekly column

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