He stared at me for an odd ten seconds, and told me things were a little tight right now. Then he raised the volume of the TV, hoping it would fill our lives.
My last-ditch attempt to scrape enough money to help Brahmi entirely on my own and become her hero had failed. I tried and was unsuccessful in asking Sahil for the PowerBook. He had been getting quite good at coding and his face shrunk to a raisin when I asked. Rishab is another option but we are talking about a lot of money and a stupid idea, or rather the lack of one.
15 August 1999
I’m just back from Rishab’s house and it hurts to write this. My fingers are cut and bleeding from four different places and I’m hurting not only because of them but also from the losses.
Brahmi had insisted we celebrate Independence Day the way it was meant to be celebrated—by flying kites. Before long we realized why. Brahmi was a kite-warrior if there’s ever been such a thing. She decimated Sahil, Rishab, Arundhati and me with consummate ease, hermanja, the thread used for flying kites, cutting through our combined ranks like a hot knife through butter. Sahil and Rishab had dressed in their finest combinations of orange, white and green to impress Arundhati whom they were meeting for the first time and, from what I could gather, found attractive. The first few losses were put down as fluke, the next few were attributed to Brahmi having a good day, and the last few were spent grunting angrily.
It took us two hours and sixteen kites to accept Brahmi’s superiority.
‘All this just to humiliate us?’ asked Sahil.
‘Why not?’ said Brahmi.
Later we sat in Rishab’s room and he showed us his impressive VCR cassette collection. We watched the movieBorderon TV in tune with today’s date and shouted in joy when Suniel Shetty, Sunny Deol and Jackie Shroff won us the war.
‘I thought you boys must smoke,’ said Arundhati later. ‘I have never seen three boys hang out on a terrace and not smoke.’
‘If my mom finds out, she will gut me!’ said Rishab.
Arundhati laughed. ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘He’s cute.’
‘You said that?’ Rishab asked me.
‘Brahmi did,’ I said.
‘Brahmi said that?’ he said, his chest filling up with pride.
‘Do you want to smoke?’ asked Sahil. ‘I can get a packet from the corner shop.’
‘I don’t mind,’ said Arundhati
‘Have you smoked before?’ asked Brahmi.
‘Umm . . . I am not a loser, of course I have. Have you?’ asked Arundhati.
Brahmi shook her head.
A few minutes later, we were at Rishab’s terrace again. We ran through a pack in an hour.
‘What?’ asked Arundhati when she saw Rishab gaping at her, smiling stupidly.
Rishab said, ‘If you put that to your lips, it would be like you are kissing me.’
‘Like the four of us just kissed each other?’ asked Arundhati and put the cigarette to her lips, took a drag and passed it on to Brahmi.
Brahmi took a long, deliberate puff. The smoke dribbled out of her lips, her chest heaved, the burning cigarette dangled from her fingers carelessly. I took the cigarette from her before anyone could lay claim to the kiss that rested on the bud. On our way back home, Arundhati told me of her intention to date Rishab, which Brahmi wholly supported.
‘You do know you have to ask him too, don’t you?’
Arundhati laughed. ‘What do you think he will say?’
Fair point.
22 August 1999
Maa held me for fifteen minutes and bawled like someone had died.
