‘Okay. Now you’re not looking away. So I can sit with you?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Thank you,’ she said.
While Brahmi Sharma struggled with the crossword I counted the little ridges on her wrists. Some were deep, straight and longish, others were lighter and half-hearted jabs. They looked like hieroglyphics, like tattoos of the brave.
‘Stop looking at my wrists. I fell down on knives,’ she said, mocking my interest, pulling her shirt sleeves over her wrists.
‘I know you did.’
‘None of the knives were sharp enough.’
‘Why weren’t they sharp?’
‘Mumma keeps them blunt. It’s because of her,’ she said and got back to her crossword.
She filled in three words. 17. Down—BLEED. 21. Across—GRIEF. 15. Across—I. She bleeds grief.
To keep myself from staring at her, I turned my attention towards the treaty between my country and Pakistan. For the rest of the day I tried to beat Brahmi unsuccessfully in all the classes. Unlike some stupid, cantankerous moron she had spent the days before the new session studying. During lunch I followed her as she left the class. Three turns in the basement and I lost her. It took me twenty minutes to find my way back to the class.
Later at home, Baba was in a sullen mood because of the nuclear treaty I was reading about in the morning.
‘We should have dropped a bomb while there was still time,’ said Baba, in his usual tone of toxic hatred.
Last year Baba had ordered a celebratory dinner from the Chinese restaurant when Atal Bihari Vajpayee had declared us a full-fledged nuclear state, with the capability of obliterating small countries with a mere press of a button. He called Atal Bihari a hero, a patriot, a guiding light for Hindutva in this country. The American chop suey was fabulous.
Baba had waved his fists in the air and said, ‘See! Did you see! Didn’t I tell you there is no one better than a staunch Hindu to lead the country? To finally make Pakistan pay for all their transgressions! What’s the use of an army if you don’t utilize them? Ha! It’s not a surprise they named the bombs Shakti to signify our goddesses. Raghu! Now see the fun! This country will change! No more of stupid appeasing politics! This is what we deserve! Our country! Jai Mata Di. Jai Shree Ram. Durga. Durga.’
Today, Baba sang a different tune. ‘How could a man, an orthodox Hindu, give in to a peace treaty?’ He went on to rave and rant about how he felt betrayed.
I listened till I lost interest.
I can’t write more today because I have to go prepare for tomorrow’s class. I can’t have her be better than me at everything.
11 March 1999
Alcohol, drugs and cigarettes are the refuge of the weak, that’s what Maa has taught me. Baba toes a different line. They are forbidden in theshastras, he tells me, which I know is a blatant lie. Indra, Varuna and the like drank and ate and got high with impunity. And who can miss Adolf? The eternally, perennially dangerously high one, the god of ganja smokers who renounce everything but their chillums. If we were really bhakts, we too would be living in a happy daze of smoke and soma, still be hunters and gatherers with no EMIs to pay or pollution to worry about. Our only concerns would be if the spear’s sharp enough to breach the rhino’s thick skin, or whether the mammoth would trample us before it bleeds dry, or if we would live to see another day. Who’s to say that’s not a better life to have? When death’s close and hovering around you, the quality of life improves, doesn’t it? That’s when we make our bucket lists, try to cram a life full of desires into a few months, live a little in the face of death.
Coming to the point, Dada made a bad day even worse.
Earlier today, our physics teacher took a surprise test. Brahmi caught my furtive glances at her paper and promptly hid her answers. Furious at her assumption that I was cheating, I hid my answers too. We were still playing the game where we wanted to sit with each other but we weren’t friends. Maybe polite acquaintances.
When the exam ended, I grumbled, ‘I don’t need to cheat.’
‘Did you prepare for your exam? I saw you struggle in the beginning.’
‘That’s presumptuous. Skulduggery. That’s the word you missed in your crossword today morning.’
‘What does that mean?’ she asked.
‘I can fill the crossword you do every morning and I can do my own physics tests. And from what I saw, I will score more than you.’
‘I didn’t get anything wrong,’ she said.
‘Want to take a bet on it?’
‘What is at stake?’
