‘And the sweater?’
‘Mumma won’t notice,’ she said.
The bitch, visibly comforted, was chewing through our linked sweaters when we left her and her unborn children.
‘Maybe she didn’t want to live,’ I said.
‘So?’
‘So now you gave her hope. You became her friend. She will now want and expect you to come to see her every day. We should have left her to die.’
‘She’s Shahrazad.’
‘Isn’t that an Arabic name?’ I scoffed.
‘She was a queen.’
‘She was in pain. She would have been better off dead,’ I said when we got to class.
‘Pain’s rewarding.’
‘That only looks good on posters. How can cutting yourself reward you? What exactly is your reward?’
‘Every time I fail I know I would like to live a little more,’ she said. ‘Moreover Shahrazad is going to be a mother.’
The sweater and Shahrazad, Dada and Zubeida, chemistry and Brahmi—I told Maa nothing when she got home from work. It took Maa an hour to find out about the misplaced sweater, and another two to find where I had hidden the chemistry paper—the letter box of the uninhabited flat 14B.
‘Mumma, I . . .’
Maa started to cry.
‘In the letter box of all the places! First, you lose your sweater and now this. What am I supposed to do with the two of you? One brother does god knows what in Bangalore and the other one is falling in bad company.’
‘I didn’t want to spoil your mood, Maa. And my marks might incr—’
‘Still lying. Still lying. Where did you learn to lie? What else are you lying about?’
Baba finally butted in. ‘There’s no point scolding him. He isboka, stupid, he will not amount to anything. Five thousand rupees I spent on his material for IIT, five thousand. It’s going to come next week. All waste! He would be lucky to get through Stephen’s, leave alone IIT.’
Maa–Baba had always been good at worst-case scenarios when it came to their sons. An hour of absence meant kidnapping, a cut on the knee meant tetanus, and running to catch a bus meant crushed skulls. But this time his worst-case scenario didn’t even cut close.
‘Who’s got the highest marks? Tell me! Who got the highest marks?’ scoffed Maa.
‘Brahmi.’
‘How much?’ asked Baba.
‘Twenty-three.’
‘Twenty-three! She has scored ten marks more than you! All this is because of the stupid trump cards you keep collecting! Where are they? Where have you kept them?’
Maa stormed to my room and got the bunch of cards I had been collecting for the last five years. While Baba held me, Maa burnt a handful of them over the stove.
‘Don’t do it!’ I shouted and cried my fake tears.
Maa threw the rest in the dustbin. Baba took me by my arm and dragged me to the balcony and locked me out. Neither the burning of the trump cards nor being locked outside seemed like a punishment. Trump cards used to be Sami’s obsession, not mine.
‘That boy is teaching you all the wrong things,’ Maa used to shout.
