Rudderless

by Ijaza, Workshop 11

Ravi ended the chat with his wife and child who were back in Mumbai. These days, he keeps finding himself rushing to bring their daily conversations to an end. He knew that his wife could sense his impatience. Keeping secrets from her wasn’t an easy thing for him. 

When Ravi came to the Maldives three years ago to work as a pilot, he never thought there would come a day that he would remain on the island nation, yet not set foot inside a plane. But it has been eight months since he has last flown a plane. It has been three months since the company he worked for stopped paying him. And two months since Ravi started lying to his family.  

He scrolled through the pictures his wife had sent him earlier that evening. One of them was of a drawing done by his 6-year-old son Amar, showing Ravi flying a plane. Except the plane didn’t look like a plane. It resembled a kind of bird with a stick figure standing on its back. The drawing was captioned “my dada is a pilet”. 

He moved the drawing to a folder on his phone labelled ‘Amar’s Planes’. 

Ravi wanted his son to continue drawing his father, flying a plane. He prayed that he would never find out what Ravi had to do to support them. He switched on his laptop and logged into the other account he created two months ago. He saw his first customer for the night was already online. Taking a deep breath Ravi pressed the connect button. 

“Hey, when do you take off those silly clothes?” asked the customer.

Fathmath Ijaza lives in the Maldives. She writes non-fiction pieces for travel magazines but has many fiction story arcs playing in her head.