‘We are ruined,’ wailed Maa. ‘Our lives are over. Is this why we carry our children in our wombs? So they spit on our faces when we are old?’
Baba nodded and drank the whiskey Bhattacharya Uncle had got him.
Then the Bhattacharyas left, leaving Baba with the bottle. Baba was up till late, drinking which was at odds with my plan to see Brahmi again tonight, try our new communication channel. When I got up in the middle of the night to check on him, Baba scrambled to his feet, eyes bloodshot and teary, smiling like a lunatic.
‘Did you hear, you son of a whore?’ he pointed at me. ‘You didn’t, did you? We will kick those Pakistani troops out of our country. We won the war. We won’t allow them inside this country or this house. Go to Pakistan with them!’
He slumped back into the sofa, cradling the bottle like a child, smiling and crying. I waited for him to slip into a daze. I sneaked out to see Brahmi. By the time I got there, she had slept with her head resting on the window ledge. I waited. What if she woke up looking for me and finds me gone? What precedent would that set for our love story? She woke up after an hour. We tried what she had taught me over the past week—Morse code. Together we memorized the little dashes and dots for every alphabet. I learnt the words I LOVE YOU rather quickly.
. .
. - . . --- . . .- .
- . -- --- . . -
‘So for every dot you flick your torch once and for a dash, twice without pause,’ she had explained.
Little flashes of light for every letter in the alphabet. Every phrase we said to each other during the night took a painstakingly long time to execute and decipher which meant we were really careful in picking what to say. Which I think is the only way to have a conversation. The flickering of the light carried our messages between us through the night. But no matter how many different ways I tell her I love her it always seems inadequate. I could use up all the words in the dictionary but I still wouldn’t be able to aptly say how I felt about her. She felt like a part of me.
28 July 1999
Rishab, Sahil and I hung out at the terrace of Rishab’s rather aristocratic house, sitting, talking about the girls in the class. Rishab and Sahil were at ease talking about skirt lengths, the imagined boyfriends of our classmates, and their projections of the peak breast sizes, all of which made me uncomfortable because others might be discussing about Brahmi and me too. Rishab told us stories from his last school, about his legendary seniors who had dated each other and sometimes college-going women, and in some cases—teachers (though those seem more like myths). Sahil, at one point, got bored and said, ‘Are we going to do what we are here for?’
‘What are we here for?’ I asked.
Rishab scrambled to the terrace door and locked it. Sahil took out a cigarette pack from his back pocket and dangled it in front of me. He said, ‘And for the record I don’t smoke. But there’s always a first time, isn’t there? So who’s going first?’
I didn’t believe a word he said. The way he held the cigarette gave him away. Had it been his first time he would have held it like Rishab, who was holding his like a knife. Which is ironical because it is after all life-altering in a permanent sort of way.
Every few months, either Maa or Baba would launch into a rant about someone whom they found smoking. ‘Look at Bannerjee’s son,’ Maa would say. ‘Smoked and died at thirty-five of a flooded lung. Tragic.’
The names would change but every story ended with death. I believed Maa–Baba’s stories till Dada told me we were subjects of systematic story-based brainwashing. Stories of men dying of smoking, in motorcycle accidents, through bad marriages, were fictional.
So yes, I decided to smoke.
Sahil lit the cigarette in his second attempt.
Sahil said, ‘I think you two are my best friends. If I don’t take my first drag with you, then what’s the point of being friends?’
Sahil took the first drag and coughed. He took three more drags. It didn’t get better.
‘Damn,’ he said before thrusting it out towards us.
I took it.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Never been surer.’
For the next half an hour, we smoked and coughed and our lungs and cigarettes burned. We ran through a pack in no time. How much worse could the cigarette smoke be than agarbattis, the incense sticks which Maa–Baba lit a lot to drive away the evil influence from their lives? Three pundits had spent four hours at our place to ensure the well-being of the Ganguly family. They told Maa–Baba that the havan would remove the buri nazar, the evil eye that had befallen us. How much further were they from making a voodoo doll of Boudi and pricking its stomach?
Sahil and I had lunch with Rishab’s parents, his two elder sisters and a younger brother. They all talked and laughed loudly. Envy wrapped around me like a creeper and bled me of any joy I had left inside.
29 July 1999
Brahmi called me tonight which was new. We had strict rules about calling each other. Maa took the call and her revulsion was clear on her face when she heard a girl on the other side.
‘Five minutes,’ said Maa and handed over the receiver to me.
We pretended to talk about homework while Maa hovered around. When Maa finally disappeared into the kitchen, and I told Brahmi that, she said, ‘It’s my birthday tomorrow.’
The school register had another date; I had checked.
‘My real birthday is tomorrow, the official is on a later date. Will you call me at twelve? I have permission to stay up late,’ she said.
‘Am I the only person you’re calling to ask that or are Sahil and Rishab calling too?’
‘Why is that even a question?’ she asked.
‘So it’s just me?’
‘Just you, Raghu. Just you.’
At 11.50 p.m., I checked on Maa–Baba. Then I tiptoed to the drawing room and called her. She picked up midway through the first ring.
‘Happy birthday in advance! May you have the best year possible,’ I whispered into the receiver.
There was silence.
‘Are you crying?’
‘Why would I cry? It’s my birthday,’ she said.
‘So happy birthday!’
‘Thank you,’ she whispered back.
‘There are still three minutes to go.’
‘Can I cut the call after a minute? Will you call again? I don’t want Tauji–Taiji to think it’s a long call,’ she whispered.
I cut and called her again. She called me Naina this time and thanked me for calling her.
‘You sound sad. Why is that?’
‘I have been wished for the first time in ten years. Mumma–Papa are never home on my birthdays.’
‘Where are they now?’
‘Bombay.’
‘But they will surely call?’
‘I should cut the call now. Can you call again?’
There were fifteen more calls after that one that I made to her. Every time I was a different girl. At 12.30 a.m., I heard Taiji scream for her to disconnect the call. Before I could ask her if I should come see her, the line was cut. At 2 a.m., I was below her house waiting for light to come on in her room. The window stayed shut but on the glass was a paper with a note scribbled in black sketch pen. THANK YOU. I waited for three hours for her and came back. She had told me to not worry if something like this happened.
I came back cursing her parents for skimping on STD calls. When I sneaked in, I saw Maa on the sofa, staring dead straight at me. She didn’t even bother with an entire sentence.
‘Brahmi?’
I nodded.
‘You won’t go from tomorrow. I don’t want people seeing my son sneak out in the middle of the night to meet a girl. If you have to live in this house, there are certain rules you have to follow. There’s plenty of time in school. There’s no need to go in the night to meet her. And what kind of parents does she have who allow this?’
Maa didn’t wait for an answer. She got up and left.
There’s
no way I’m not sneaking out tomorrow. I have inherited my self-preservation streak from Maa.
2 August 1999
Dada and I had been on the receiving end of quite a few beatings, he more than me. Being the academically weaker one, he was the one who was often chastised for low marks, suspensions and unfinished practical files. Though I detested it, I am for the parents’ and teachers’ right to slap a child. Though, sometimes there comes along a teacher like Raman Verma; he teaches mathematics to eleventh and twelfth graders. He is the weapon of choice our principal uses to rein in students and dole out disciplinary beatings. He pulls guys by their belts and smacks them right across their faces. I have borne the brunt of it once for unpolished shoes.
It hurt for two days.
Brahmi’s bruises were more severe and Raman sir wasn’t the perpetrator.
‘Volleyball match,’ she explained to Rishab and Sahil.
In the next period Brahmi slipped me a piece of paper.
Will your parents be home today?
No, I wrote back.
Can I come, she wrote.
Of course, I said.
Through the rest of the day at school, I alternated between being furious at the cause of the bruises, and being confused as to why she would want to come to my house when no one was around. I didn’t ask her out of nervousness for what her answer might be.
‘Raghu?’ she asked as we entered my house, which was more dishevelled than usual. ‘Where’s you room?’
I lead her to my room. She drew the curtains shut.
‘Do you have a first-aid kit?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Can you get it?’
‘Of course I can but—’
‘Can you close the door on your way out?’
I nodded and ran to get it from the bathroom cupboard. When I came back, she was tucked inside a blanket, only her bare back showing, her face away from me. My heart thumped in fear and excitement and embarrassment.
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to look,’ I said and turned away.
‘Come here,’ she said.
Unsure, I walked up to her, my eyes glued to her back. A part of me was thinking of Richa and how uncomfortable I was seeing her but how natural this seemed.
She was still wearing her bra but the straps lay limp on her upper arm.
‘Are you here?’
I moved quickly. It was then that I noticed the bloodcurdling welts on her back. There were three huge gashes, blood clotting around them, inflicted with a belt. Two Band-aids were stuck on them clumsily.
‘Take the Band-aids off.’
I did as instructed. Her back quivered as I ripped them off even though I tried to be gentle.
‘Now do as we were told in the first-aid class,’ she said, her voice resolute, unshaking. ‘First Dettol.’
My fingers trembled as I dampened a little piece of cotton with Dettol.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Do it,’ she said, biting into my pillow.
I cleaned her wounds. She muffled her cries. The more I cleaned a wound, the bigger and deeper it seemed to get. More and more raw flesh stared at me. I bit my tongue twice and tasted iron. I put a piece of cotton and stuck the gauze to it with medical tape.
‘Will they stay?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Double tape it?’
‘Okay.’
‘Thank you,’ she said.
I packed up the kit and left. She came to the living room once she had dressed.
‘Sorry, you had to do that. There was no place I could have gone,’ she said.
‘Tauji did this to you?’
She nodded.
‘Why did he hit you? Please don’t evade my question. I want an answer. I love you, we have established that. So I need to know.’
She fought away her tears. ‘I made a few STD calls to Mumma–Papa. They caught me.’
‘Can’t you tell your parents about this?’
‘What would they do? They are away and I don’t want to trouble them,’ she said.
‘But—’
Her eyes flooded with tears and she put her arms around me. And soon I was crying, and crying more than her and it was she who had to quieten me, ‘Oh, Raghu, you’re so stupid! Why are you crying, stupid, stupid boy, shh, shh, I’m fine, Raghu, look, I’m fine now, stop crying now, such a stupid boy. What am I going to do with you? Just look at you, you baby.’
Weren’t parents supposed to be our saviours? This can’t be repeated. She can’t be another Sami. I won’t watch on helplessly this time.
‘Do you want to watch television?’ she asked.
I nodded vigorously and she had to ask me if I was okay. We watched TV for what seemed like hours. She thanked me when it was time for her to leave. We had just stepped out of the house when we bumped into Arundhati. I introduced them.
‘Ah! So you’re the famous Brahmi? Hi! I’m Arundhati! I played the role of Raghu’s pretend girlfriend for his master—’
‘I know,’ said Brahmi.
‘You’re cuter than I imagined,’ gushed Arundhati.
‘She has a thing for cuteness,’ I said.
‘We should make her meet Sahil then. He too has a thing for cute people,’ said Brahmi.
‘Is he cute?’ asked Arundhati.
‘Is he cute?’ I asked.
‘Maybe,’ Brahmi said and the girls laughed.
When Maa came back from work, she saw the soiled bandages in the dustbin and didn’t even ask me the wheres and hows, or if I had hurt myself. Her apathy had only begun to hurt when she came to me with an instruction.
‘If she comes one more time inside my house, I will throw you out.’
Little does she know that she will come back, in a few years’ time, as her daughter-in-law. Yes, I have imagined that.
And why not?
7 August 1999
Brahmi deals with pain much better than I do.
I had dodged Brahmi’s outstretched fingers for a good thirty seconds before the Dettol-drenched cotton ball found the open gash on my forehead. I ground my teeth while she cleaned and dressed up my wounds.
‘You’re so stupid.’
‘Your Tauji needed to be taught a lesson.’
‘If I wanted him to be beaten up I could have done that myself. I’m stronger, taller and fitter than you,’ she said.
Fair point but where’s the heroism in that?
Redemption was in my reconnaissance and strike mission against her tyrant Tauji that I had planned and that had failed splendidly. Today morning I charged at her Tauji with a steel rod when he drove past me in his Bajaj Chetak. I had counted on him losing balance and being pinned beneath the scooter. I would have then beat the shit out of him, aiming at soft tissue and legs, and asked him to not lay a finger on Brahmi from there on. I’m not stupid, I had covered my face with a crêpe bandage. Her Tauji was bigger, smarter and quicker than I had anticipated. He swayed out of the first blow and it all swiftly went downhill from there. He shouted a war cry, parked his scooter with surprising deftness, scrambled for a rod which he found readily and charged at me. I was prepared for a fight unto death but people had heard Tauji’s hoarse screams. I turned and ran and fell. Her Tauji caught up and got two blows in till I managed to run away, the crêpe bandage coming off my face, soaked in blood.
‘What were you trying to achieve?’ she asked.
‘I hadn’t thought long-term.’
‘Raghu, if I need help I will ask,’ she said.
‘But you can’t live there any longer.’
‘You say the most obvious things sometimes,’ she said.
‘Can’t you tell your Mumma–Papa to shift elsewhere?’
‘Tauji is like a father to Papa. Papa owes everything to him. Moving out would be partitioning the house. And for what? Me?’
‘Why not you?’
‘You’re sweet,’ she said. ‘I’m trying to find a way to leave the house.’
‘How?’ I said, wonderi
ng what she meant by find-a-way-to-leave.
‘There’s a cousin who lives in Gurgaon, Vedant. He might take me in.’
‘That sounds far away.’
‘I’m hoping it works out,’ she said.
‘Why didn’t you do it before?’
‘There was no reason to.’
‘What reason do you have now?’
‘Don’t you miss the most obvious things too? You, of course,’ she said.
Between then and now, I have rewound and replayed the conversation in my head a bajillion times. The more I did the worse I felt about not being the knight in shining armour for her. I was more like a jester in bandages.
In continuance of the dramatic events of today, Maa noticed the sullied bandage on my head. And just like that, the wall of her indifference crumbled and she forced me to see a doctor, and held my hand in the auto, in front of waiting patients, and the doctor, and while my bandages were changed, and on the way back, and when I ate dinner.
Baba maintained his cold indifference.
12 August 1999
Brahmi hasn’t been coming to school since the day she bandaged me. For the first two days I called her phone and it was constantly engaged. Ma was keeping strict vigil so I could not sneak out at night either. By the third day I thought I would lose my mind so I went to her house during school hours. I walked around the house, passing it every ten minutes, hoping to catch a glimpse of her. I made several such rounds. I managed to spot her a couple of times but could not make eye contact. She came to the balcony around 11.30 a.m. to wring and put clothes on the clothes line, and then again at 3.00 p.m. to take the clothes off. She seemed fine, which only begged the question, why hadn’t she been coming to school. Yesterday I knocked on the flat above and below hers, pretending to sell tickets, and asked the people at the door questions about the people staying below/above them. They would look at me strangely and slam the door on my face. Today, to my relief, she was sent to drop clothes at the dry-cleaners’ and I caught up with her. We walked a few yards away from each other to not raise eyebrows in her neighbourhood.