‘No, I haven’t. I want to savour the news before they spoil it all. You should have seen how happy Dada and Boudi were.’
‘You’re calling her Boudi now?’
‘These days she seems more a part of my family than Maa–Baba do.’
‘I know it feels terrible when your own family treats you like this,’ she said. ‘My Tauji–Taiji . . .’ Her voice broke and failed her. A rarity.
‘What about them?’ I asked.
She looked at me, as if appraising whether she loved me enough to tell me. I conjured up the sincerest expression I could manage and told her she could trust me; what would be the point of being in love, otherwise?
‘Every time they hit me, I wonder if I too would grow up to be a person like them. Earlier I used to rationalize their violence, think that I deserved it somehow. Now I know I don’t. We are children and we deserve better.’
‘Your Mumma–Papa? Don’t they stop your Tauji-Taiji?’
‘They travel a lot. Being engineers, they keep busy. I’m glad you’re happy though,’ she said.
On our way back home, she asked me, ‘Can you come see me tonight?’
‘Where?’
‘Outside my window. If it’s not—’
‘Wait for me.’
‘I will.’
I waited for Maa–Baba to hit me with their routine taunts, discuss their misery and ruined life, and then slip into deep sleep worrying what the world thinks of them.
I stole from Baba’s wallet, sneaked out, took an auto to Brahmi’s house, and stood under the street light beneath her window. A little while later, the lights of her room went out. A candle flickered behind the frosted-glass window. The window opened with a groan and creak. She poured wax from the lit candle on to the ledge and fixed two more candles and lit them. The flames burnt yellow and blue and she smiled at me under their pale glow.
She mouthed, her eyes lowered in shame and shyness and things I have never associated with her, ‘Now what?’
On the pavement, I drew in bold letters with the chalk I had taken from school. ‘I see you.’
She let her fingers linger around the flame and smiled. She scribbled in the air—I see you. We spent the next hour writing messages to each other on the pavement and in thin air. Then she rested her chin on the ledge and I sat on the pavement and we stared at each other. The candles were about to blow out when she said—tomorrow. The flames died and it was dark again. The window closed.
I came back home looking forward to tomorrow.
27 July 1999
‘The later you tell them the worse it will be,’ Brahmi had told me, and so I didn’t think it wise to wait any longer. In the light of recent developments, there’s no one else I would trust more with my life decisions than Brahmi.
When I told Maa–Baba about Boudi’s pregnancy, Maa started to beat her chest, cry and laugh in a mad frenzy and Baba cursed Zubeida like the crazedkar sevaks who had brought down the masjid in ’92.
‘You shouldn’t have gone to the astrologer,’ I said. ‘If anything happens then—’
‘GO TO YOU ROOM, YOU RAT!’ shouted Baba.
I stood there, looking at him, in the eye, challenging him to make me budge. Which he responded to. He slapped me on my shoulder and bellowed his instruction again. Tears pooled in my eyes, my lips quivered but I didn’t take my disapproving eyes off him.
‘DIDN’T YOU HEAR ME?’ he shouted. He took my hand and shoved me inside my room, slamming the door on my face. Soon after that the bell rang and I peeped out of the balcony. It was Bhattacharya Uncle and Aunty. Maa–Baba lifted the embargo on the Gangulys’ relationships with the neighbours and let them in. After suitable condolences were offered, hearts were opened, and tea was drunk. Maa cried into Bhattacharya Aunty’s arms. Aunty said, ‘Of course that Muslim woman would do that. Ensnare him and then make sure he doesn’t leave. All the modesty is really a tool for seduction.’
‘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.
