A bag of rancid potatoes going at…
The future of marketing. It wasn’t until you were home that you realized you had been played.
That piece was followed up with a letter to the editor on a missing stray. The few paras I hammered out and the picture got a special mention inMorning Herald.
It led my mother to believe I was Pulitzer-winning material.
Mummy nudged me towards the media when I was deciding which column to tick for my degree application.
Mummy, much as I love her, was not the reason why I chose journalism. I liked that all the cool people in college had ticked this option.
I was a regular girl. Not straight-silky-hair regular but ringlets-down-to-the-hip regular. I wasn’t a topper in anything, but if I put my mind to it, I could be quite a force in academics.
I was going through a rebellious phase when Andrew danced his way into my life. I was fixated on everything I didn’t have. Meena’s family had moved to the United States, where her father, a head honcho in the IT industry, was to be based for a few years. My dad couldn’t hold a job. Meena had the best clothes, her gadgets were top of the line, she could afford to go anywhere she wanted, eat any meal, splurge on spirits. Buy anything, including affection.
My annual shopping budget could buy her blush brush perhaps.
Andrew was the one person in my world who had less than me. He didn’t even have a dad or a pre-used car with a disobliging back door. His mother, rumour had it, died in childbirth.
Andrew embraced my life, my parents, my home, the food Mummy laid out on the dining table every time he visited (when it was just the three of us, we ate in the kitchen). Our crockery was middle-class melamine, but itwas attractive; our linen was old, but the stubborn stains were adequately covered.
Andrew and I never spoke about what we had or didn’t have, but by allowing me into his home, a barely standing bungalow of more than a hundred years, paint peeling, cracked floors and broken windows – an advertisement for derelict disrepair – I saw everything life had afforded me.
Andrew came over whenever he wanted to, even when I wasn’t around.
I was good with that. When he accompanied me, we made sure that he kept his hands off me. We were touchy-feely people: his right palm spread on the small of my back, his thumb hooked into the waistband of my jeans. He’d throw an arm over my shoulder for no reason. I didn’t want to alarm my parents with how comfortable I was with his touch. On me, in me.
On a dank afternoon, Andrew recounted how, despite topping not just Bangalore Scottish but all Bengaluru schools in the ICSE (X) and ISC exams (XII), he chose to study law instead of going with popular choices like medicine or engineering.
‘I think my mother would’ve been happy with my decision,’ he had said, leaning against the wall in my bedroom.
I clutched my half-empty mug and sported an even expression.
Why would it please his mother?
Did she study law? Or did she want to study law?
I swallowed the questions. What he’d said didn’t go down easily. I was born curious. I told myself Andrew meant to say grandmother, not mother.
There was an unspoken agreement between Andrew and me. He never asked where my dad worked, and I didn’t probe about his father.
It was common knowledge that Andrew and his grandmother, whom he called ‘Nana’, owned Bengaluru’s number one address, on Rest House Road, a bare-necessities structure that was waiting to be blown away. The Browns could sell and bank the cash at some point perhaps, but as things stood, they were stretched.
I was taking little sips of my black coffee, frustrated that we couldn’t talk freely about something that was essentially who we were.
Ask me what my father does for a living,I urged him silently.Let’s bring the dam down.
Andrew’s eyes were fixed on the wall behind me.
‘What about your father?’ The question slipped out of my mouth.
‘Bubbs,’ he said, his voice dead. He was shaking his head.
He called me ‘Baby’ most of the time. ‘Bubbs’, that cuddly nickname, was, ironically, a sign that shutters were being brought down. The conversation wasn’t over, but it would be if you couldn’t redeem yourself. That was the last I heard of the Browns.
I stayed over at Andrew’s place a number of times, helping him with something or the other, like applications for his master’s. Nana was always around, refilling water bottles and making us coffee, which we had with the packets of biscuits my father slipped into my bag.
There was a haunting emptiness to the house. The walls were bare, and there was minimum furniture. Sometimes, when his grandmother, Noelene, opened the door, it felt like I was walking into nothingness, fanned by a draught coming through a window that couldn’t be shut. A whisperof an embrace. It felt less empty when Andrew answered the doorbell, which was only once in a while.
