My short story, The Day You Ate Our Deliveroo Delivery, is published on Asymptote.
Asymptote facilitates encounters between languages, presenting work in translation alongside the original texts. It disseminates texts for free via eight social media platforms in three languages, through a dedicated social media team as well as its ever-expanding network of editors-at-large in six continents.
At noon, Shaffi loads up the Deliveroo app on his phone and within seconds it pings. He weaves his way through traffic and arrives at Chachi’s Kitchen, a busy, top-end Indian restaurant in London to pick up an order.
1.
The day you ate our Deliveroo delivery we’d ordered Indian food from Chachi’s Kitchen for four people. You knocked on our door and said, “I ate your food.” We looked you straight in the eye and saw that you did not look sorry. Instead, you looked defiant. We wondered what kind of person you were to do such a thing. We did not know who you were, where you were from, where you’d been, or what you’d done, but now you were here, standing on our front step, while it was pouring with rain, with your belly bursting with our special order of Indian food. The inconvenience of you and your story was too much to bear. “What?” we said, because we wanted to hear you say it again, that you had done something wrong to us. You said, “I was hungry.” “But that was food for four people,” we said. You looked down at your wet shoes. The rain pelted down…