‘I told you. I don’t want to talk to her. She made me want to die, sir. I don’t want to be here,’ she said.
I don’t blame her. It’s a surprise she was still sitting there. Then I spoke, ‘Namrata, I’m really sorry for what I did.’
‘There’s no way your apologies can justify what you did to me, Aisha. I lost everydamnthing!’
‘I know. It’s just that I was threatened when you joined the school and it was really bad of me to do what I did,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry . . .’
‘You were threatened? By me?’
‘Of course, I was.’
‘Why!’
‘Because you were smart and you were funny! The teachers loved you. The boys thought you were charming. I was losing my grip on the school.’
‘But . . . but you were the one who everyone cared about! You were tall and hot, and the boys were in love with you,’ she said, shocked.
‘No one was ever in love with me. They just wanted to get inside my skirt. I didn’t want that. I wanted to be what you were. I wanted to be funny, I wanted people to want to talk to me because I was interesting, not because I had breasts, or because I wore short skirts. I wanted to make people laugh like you did. I wanted people to want being around me. I envied you so much . . .’ I said. The tears came and I held her hand and cried.
‘But Aisha . . .’
‘I really wished to be you. I never wanted to hurt you. Please trust me. I would do anything to undo—’
‘It’s okay, stop crying.’
‘But I’m so—’
‘It’s okay,’ She put her arms around me and I cried into her chest.
‘I’m so so sor—’
‘It’s okay, Aisha.’
‘I know it’s not. I destroyed you—’
‘That you did,’ she said.
‘I should have never . . . I’m so bad—’
‘It’s okay. Now stop crying, it’s okay,’ she said. ‘Don’t spoil your face. You’re too beautiful.’
‘You’re beautiful,’ I said.
‘Well, you both are,’ said Danish with a relaxed air, a smirk on his face, like he had planned this all along.
I started to see him like this scientist in front of the huge electric circuit board monitoring the emotion circuitry. I decided to like him. He looked at both of us and said, ‘Beauty was devised by someone very insecure to rob others of the happiness he or she couldn’t feel. It was a dick move, to be honest.’
I needed to write that down. When I become a woman, these are the kind of sentences I wished to say to engross people with my intelligence and warmth.
‘I am still a little confused about something though,’ Namrata said. ‘There’s another boy who joined the school with me. Norbu? He was smarter and funnier and everyone loved him too. You didn’t do anything to him. Didn’t he make you jealous?’
No, he didn’t. I remembered that boy. A teacher’s pet, he was now the Head Boy, the captain of the table tennis team, and the centre forward of our school, quite the charmer. Why didn’t I take him down? I scrambled for an answer.
‘Aisha?’ she asked.
‘Because he was a boy,’ I spat out
‘So?’ asked Danish. ‘Why leave out the boy?’
‘I . . . I didn’t mind him being better than me,’ I said.
‘Because he was a boy?’ asked Danish.
If I were a turtle I would have crawled inside my shell and waited out for everyone to die before coming out.
‘I guess so,’ I said.
‘And you went after me because I was a girl?’ asked Namrata.
I nodded shamefully. ‘I’m sorry. I was stupid.’
‘Okay, okay, don’t cry again,’ said Namrata before I started to use her shirt as a tissue.
Danish knew I was drowning in there and he thanked Namrata for forgiving me and told her he needed some time with me.
‘Are we friends?’ I asked Namrata while she was leaving. ‘Because I have never cried so much in front of anyone other than my mother and she’s like my friend.’
She smiled. ‘We can be if you like Harry Potter.’
‘I will draw a scar on my forehead.’
She laughed. Namrata shook my hand again and told me she had forgiven me and hoped I wouldn’t repeat the same stuff with anyone else.
‘So, it wasn’t that tough, right?’ said Danish and smiled at me. His smile enough was therapy though it made me cry a little more.
‘But why didn’t I do the same to Norbu?’
‘Ummm . . .’ Of course he had something to say. He was a professional and he had just worked his magic, reducing two women to tears in a matter of seconds. I waited for his theory. ‘He was a boy, and you thought boys are supposed to be better than girls so you weren’t surprised.’
‘But boys aren’t—’
‘Exactly.’
‘Shit.’
I had screwed up. Of course it made sense: boys are better than us. Had someone asked me, I wouldn’t have accepted it but deep down inside that’s what I had grown up believing.
‘Yes! You are right! When last year, our senior, a girl, made it to IIT, I was like how can she make it? Wow! But I never said anything about the boys who did. Like it was expected they would. Same with the girl who almost beat Norbu in a track and field event. I called her muscular! I bitched about her and pulled her down. And when a girl partnered with Norbu in the practical exam and aced it, I was like she must have cheated. I have been pulling girls down all this time. God! How many people I need to apologize to!’
Danish smiled smugly, that sparkling brilliance lighting up his eyes.
‘I have decided something today,’ I said.
‘And what is that?’
‘I won’t be the kind of girl who pulls another girl down,’ I said and as soon as I said it I felt a little halo crop up behind my head.
‘Good,’ he said.
And just then the bell rang and Danish asked to me go attend my classes though I really wanted him to ask me to stay. He was making me a better woman. These counselling sessions were great. In fact, I had a bit of a crush on him, and I decided if I had to lose my virginity to anyone it would be him. It would be memorable, fun, tender and everything it’s supposed to be. I walked out of his room wondering what our after-sex pillow talk would be like.
18
Danish Roy
I had decimated that one!
The metro had reached the last station and I had missed my station by a margin of fifteen minutes because I was still stupidly smiling, replaying in my head the wise words that had escaped my mouth involuntarily. It was nothing like driving a Mercedes SLK. But it was something and it had filled my heart with so much joy that I wanted to celebrate it with Ankit.
‘Hey, when are you coming home?’ I asked him over the phone.
‘Got back early today. Already home!’ he said. He sounded a little buzzed. Good. That was good. Getting high is exactly how I was going to celebrate my first personal victory.
I barged into Ankit’s room and found him under a bedsheet grunting and laughing with the girl from that party the other day. I could only see the girl’s face, which exuded a joy associated with enlightenment.
‘Fuck,’ he said, pulled out and rolled over.
‘Get out!’ the girl shouted. I ran out, embarrassed.
When outside, I heard my brother laugh wildly while the girl cursed and shouted and called me names. My brother kept saying between laughs, he didn’t know, he didn’t know, he didn’t see anything.
‘What’s up, bhai!’ Ankit came out, still inebriated. My unannounced arrival hadn’t startled him at all, and why would anything startle my brother?
‘I just thought . . . we should celebrate,’ I said.
Suddenly celebrating my workplace victory with him seemed so small. He dealt with hundreds of thousands of dollars in investments every day. Telling him about a little conversation with two troubled teenage girls felt silly.
‘Celebrate what
?’
‘Your car! Your new car, Ankit. What else?’ I said and he broke out into a huge smile.
The girl came out and Ankit put an arm around her. ‘You two know each other, right? She’s the girl from the party, remember? Yeah, we have made up again. She apologized.’
The girl rolled her eyes. ‘I didn’t.’
‘Of course, you did. You said okay when I asked you to come over and get drunk with me. That’s like an apology only, right?’
‘Whatever,’ said the girl.
‘C’mon now, you two, shake hands and be friends. C’mon now, shake hands.’ And like a parent, he pushed the girl towards me and made us shake hands.
‘Danish.’
‘Smriti.’
‘I know. I Googled you.’
‘Why?’
‘I didn’t.’
Smriti rolled her eyes. But I had Googled her. I Googled everyone. I checked two things about them: 1) what they were doing when they were my age (if they are older) and 2) how much they earned every month. As you know by now, none of these searches ever yielded any happy results. The girl was a young corporate shark.
A little later, all of us were drinking rum and coke and deciding whether drinking and driving the Mercedes was a good idea. Our seventy years of combined experience notwithstanding, we decided a short drive wouldn’t hurt anyone. But luckily, we couldn’t find the keys and so we deposited ourselves on the sofa and let the alcohol take its due course.
Smriti had become much kinder to me once drunk. ‘So, Danish, what exactly do you do as a student counsellor?’
‘I counsel.’
‘That’s like saying I entreprenuerate as an entrepreneur! What exactly do you do?’
‘I help students be themselves.’
‘Now what does that mean?’
While my brain grew frenzied looking for an answer, my hormones raged seeing Ankit neck Smriti right in front of my eyes. I had never kissed anyone and of late, even insect sex turned me on. There should be a government facility holding perverts like me. I looked away.
‘I solve their problems,’ I said.
‘Like how to get rid of their zits, whether pubic hair is okay, how to wax, etc.?’ Smriti laughed.
Ha. Ha. Alcohol makes everyone into the next big stand-up comic. She looked at Ankit who had no interest in her jokes and was busy burrowing a hole into her neck, using his tongue.
‘Yes, that. That’s exactly what I do. Wow. You’re so intelligent,’ I said.
There was no point fighting with her. I flicked through the TV channels while Ankit and Smriti made out on the couch, necking, grabbing each other, turning my celebration into theirs.
‘Hey!’ Ankit said suddenly, pushing Smriti away. ‘Smriti! Don’t you have that cousin who just broke up? What’s her name? Kanika, right? Why don’t you make her meet Danish? I’m sure they will hit it off! She’s a lecturer or something, right? They are both in the same field!’
Smriti, offended at the sudden break in the lovemaking, sat up straight, adjusted her shirt and said, ‘She’s not over the guy yet. He really used to pamper her.’
‘So will Danish!’
‘But—’ I protested though it didn’t register.
‘She’s not into men from the same field. That guy ran a business,’ argued Smriti.
‘So what, Danish is charming, he will sweep her off her feet! What say, Danish?’ Ankit said.
‘By saying what? He handles teenage problems? I don’t think that’s going to cut it. All her exes have been really successful people. She’s into that,’ said Smriti.
‘So what—’
I interrupted Ankit. ‘I have to leave. You two can continue this conversation about whether I’m successful enough to date your cousin or not. But I wanted to tell you that I’m already dating and the girl doesn’t care whether I’m more successful than her or not.’
‘What!’ Ankit jumped up from the couch. ‘You never told me! Fuck. Congratulations, man. What’s her name?’
‘Aisha,’ I said and stormed out.
19
Sarthak Paul
I’m never going to see these people again . . . I’m never going to see these people again . . . I’m never going to see these people again . . . That’s what I kept telling myself every time the rumour mills started to work overtime to cook up something about my sister Aisha.
Her apparent beauty is my curse, and my only identity in this school. I’m her brother. I love my sister but I don’t like her any more. It’s not something she has done but what people around me make me go through because she exists.
There were days I wished she were a boy. No one cares about the boy who has an allegedly promiscuous, outspoken, slightly strange brother. Unless of course, he’s gay, then that’s even worse. Femininity in anyone is a curse. If our creator was so smart couldn’t he just have created an androgynous being, and made gender superfluous? Surely, there are other species which are genderless. Why aren’t humans? Why can’t we have sex with everyone around us regardless of gender?
Years have passed since we had a proper conversation. She prefers to dwell in her own little world of books and her friends and her rumours and the little troubles she constantly finds herself in. I prefer to bury myself in my textbooks, hoping to emerge from the other side of the world.
I should shoulder some of the blame for our strained relationship, too. I was young and thought I could run away from the rumours, that they will stop being a bother, after all, how hard could it be? Quite hard, as it turned out. It was hard to listen to people talk shit about her and not feel every vein in my body burst. I didn’t fight any of them. That would have just made all of what they said true. I waged a silent battle against all of them, some I lost, and some I won. I was her brother after all, her protector, and I loved her to bits. I remember when she was small (though she was only a year younger), I used to stand guard outside the school playground and pummel every boy who used to trouble her. She used to be known as my little sister—the girl not to be harmed, my precious girl. But then she grew up and became a woman and things went downhill.
Here’s a list of things I had done against the rumour-mongers who were after my sister as if they were being paid for it:
- Poisoned Samrat’s food with copper sulphate every day till his appendix burst and he spent a month recovering at home.
- Stole Mrs Batra’s phone and placed it in Amit’s bag. He was expelled, of course. Yes, that was me.
- Tore off supplement sheets from Kritika’s final exam paper. She failed the year and left the school.
- Nudged Namit off the stairs. He broke his leg and was replaced as the cricket team captain etc.
- Set off the fire alarm and left the ID cards of Abhinav, Sumit and Kanika inside the washroom. All three of them were suspended.
- Put porn CDs in Samridhi’s bag and got her slapped by her parents and expelled.
But all this is coming to an end now. It was a losing battle; they had too many on their side and I was alone. I had to give up some time or the other. Planning and taking down one person after another was wearing me down
Running away from the entire situation was the easiest thing to do. School would begin and she would start dating someone and the rumours would just keep getting more vicious. I wasn’t ready for that. I had played my role of being the vindictive brother for five years now and I had had enough. I loved her, but the resentment people made me feel for her was eating me from inside.
Nine months ago, I had applied to all the universities across the globe which offered scholarships for undergraduate programmes. My destiny lay in a quaint little college in Poland that promised a full waiver on the tuition fee, and a little calculation told me I would be able to pay off the living expenses from the on-campus jobs. Who knows, I might even be able to send a little money back for my mother’s treatment? I hadn’t told anyone about the acceptance letter. My family has a penchant for drama and I can’t handle the tears or afford any change in plans
. Also, I didn’t want to feel guilty for leaving.
*
‘Thank you so much for doing this,’ I said and shook Vibhor’s hand. Vibhor was helping me throw a big party for my sister’s eighteenth birthday. It was sort of a ‘Sorry for leaving you and probably being a bad brother’ farewell gift.
‘Shut up, man. It’s your sister, after all! Okay, how many people are you expecting?’
‘I haven’t told her yet.’
‘Fine, let me know. I will get those massive JBL speakers. It’s going to be crazy!’ said Vibhor, rubbing his rather large hands in obvious delight. Vibhor was every bit the giant a football goalkeeper is expected to be; and he was every defender’s wet dream. It had been six years we had been playing together. And we weren’t friends. He was more like God to me. He was rich and effortlessly charming, and every girl in our school fawned over him without much luck. He only dated college girls. He was the hottest guy I had ever seen.
But on the field we were brothers, we shed blood and sweat together, our partnership was talked about in football circles all around the city. We were inseparable.
He was the only guy I could go to for planning this party, and he was ecstatic. ‘Bro! Parties are my thing! Why didn’t you come to me earlier?’ He hugged me like I was the FIFA trophy and I fractured a rib or two. ‘Where’s the smile, bro? This is going to be the best party ever,’ said Vibhor and punched me on my arm.
‘Of course I’m happy,’ I said and smiled weakly.
It crushed me to leave my sister behind but she hadn’t left me any choice.
20
Aisha Paul
My eighteenth birthday was approaching and people around me were making it a big deal.
I obviously didn’t care about it. Like what’s so different about being seventeen or eighteen? It’s just another day after all. Will it make me smarter? I would have bought into the concept if it meant a ten-point hike in my IQ but of course that wouldn’t happen now, would it? I was the kind of girl who didn’t make much of these media-propagated important dates.