‘My shona, my shona, what would I do without you? You’re my everything! You told me you were eating but look how thin you have become!’ she wailed, holding up my gangly arms. She threw an accusatory look at Baba who shrugged. She waved down a coolie. Before the coolie could reach us Baba had already picked up the suitcase.
‘I’m not senile yet,’ Baba said drily.
Maa–baba didn’t talk at all during the taxi ride home. Maa kept her hands firmly wrapped around me, kissing me and ruffling my hair from time to time as if surprised I still existed. Our house soon began to be filled with the deliciously rich aromas of ilish cooked in mustard paste, and red mutton curry. Baba pretended like it was no big deal. We ate and watched TV like we always did. Like Dada was away at the college hostel and not in Bangalore, married to a Musalman woman who was carrying his child. While I completed my schoolwork, Maa scrubbed my room clean, reorganized my clothes and my books, washed my clothes, and changed the bedding.
We were making a new start.
In the evening, no one questioned me when I left the house to go to the temple. For the past week, Brahmi and I had been meeting in the evening to buy little knick-knacks she would need when she started her new life in Vedant’s house. Both of us would steal a little from our family members’ wallets and buy detergent one day, a deodorant roll-on stick another, or even packets of rajma and Maggi.
‘I don’t want to be a burden,’ she would tell me.
Today we were scouting for undergarments, which was as embarrassing as it sounds. For the most part I loitered at least a hundred yards away from her when she entered a shop, most of which had posters of half-naked women stuck on their shopfronts, staring at me, labelling me a pervert for staring back. She laughed when I refused to carry the black polythene bags containing what to me was contraband.
‘Are you happy?’ she asked.
‘That’s a wide question.’
‘With your parents’ turnaround?’
‘I’m not sure how I feel. I have seen the worst in them and it’s hard just to overlook that.’
‘Do you like idli–sambar?’
‘Why?’
‘Because I love idli and that’s what we are going to have right now. But you have to dip the entire idli into the sambar because that’s the only way to have it,’ she said.
I was pretty full by the time I got back in time for dinner. I was asked innocuous questions about school, practical files, teachers, etc. The conversation veered while Maa–Baba washed the utensils and I hung around finding one pretext after another. They would fall silent every time they would see me around.
Maa said, ‘We could call them here for a few days if you don’t want to go. It’s too much pressure for them. Zubeida’s parents aren’t reaching out to her. Leaving that poor girl to live alone. She gets so sick in the mornings. They haven’t even found a maid yet.’
‘I’m not letting that girl inside my house,’ said Baba roughly.
‘I am not losing my son,’ snapped Maa.
Baba strode out of the kitchen and stood smoking in the balcony for a good hour.
When he came inside, Baba said, in the tone of a defeated man, ‘Even if she does come here where will they stay?’
Baba’s resolve to hate Dada was wearing thin.
‘We will sleep in the living room. We can’t make her sleep outside,’ said Maa.
5 September 1999
I changed her bandages again today. We lied to Sahil and Rishab.
‘It’s a mathematics project we are working on. No, no one else is allowed in the team,’ we told them.
We were in the basement and she took off her shirt and wore it from the front while I faced the other way. Unlike that day, there was no blanket hiding her. Pain trumped any shame for both of us. I saw her naked back with gnawing embarrassment and rage.
‘Did it pain?’ I asked when I was done. I turned away and she wore the shirt.
‘Lesser than last time,’ she said.
Her Tauji had noticed the missing money. Brahmi hadn’t admitted to the theft and yet she got slapped around with belts. Years later I would look at these scars as wounds I helped heal. But she didn’t seem bothered by it at all. She was just smiling morbidly.
‘It’s just a few more days,’ she said.
