‘She wasn’t a part of your future. It was okay to feel like that,’ she says matter-of-factly. ‘When did it change? You seem quite involved with her now.’
‘It’s kind of a cliché. Those dark, crazy thoughts just vanished, turned to dust the first time I saw Rabbani squirming in Mumma’s arms. She wasn’t even cute then. She was positively rat-like, with tiny claw-like hands and hair all over her forehead. She was primed for me to hate. She wasn’t like a cute newborn, she was a frowning, angry newborn. But I found myself at the epicentre of love. I looked at her and I was like, I should hate you, but all I did was take her from Mumma and coo to her like I was a fucking midwife. I didn’t sleep that night. Like some creep, I stood over her crib and kept staring at her.’
‘Because of love? Or were you scared that God would listen to you and take her away?’
‘Both. I kept staring at her chest, watching it go up and down, making sure she was breathing. For months after, I would drag my mattress to my parents’ room and sleep on the floor. I wouldn’t sleep till either Baba or Mumma went off to sleep. It was like, if I closed my eyes, she would drift away. If I left her alone, she would leave us, die.’
‘When did it get better?’
‘It never got better.’
‘We all ask things from God in our desperate times,’ she says unsurely and falls silent. ‘. . . it’s not who we . . . are.’
‘What did you ask?’
Her eyes flit to the little smudged swastika that she’s drawn in her palm. She shakes her head and says a silent‘Nothing.’It’s, of course, not nothing, and I wonder what it has to do with the swastika in her palm.
The rest of the kayaking group comes into view. Their kayaks are being pulled to the shore. A few are taking off their life jackets.
‘Were you serious earlier about not liking kids?’ I ask.
She nods. ‘When Gaurav was younger, I saw him as competition for resources around the house. It was either his new school uniform or mine. His shoes or mine. To be fair to my parents, they never discriminated. We were both equally deprived. I only started to like my brother when he started doing well in school. The first time I felt true love for him was when he won a quiz competition and got a thousand-rupee prize.’
‘I feel my crush on you slowly evaporating. But . . . three years ago, we could have bonded on our collective dislike of children. I keep telling Rabbani that she’d better be super intelligent because I’m not dividing Baba’s FDs with her.’
‘At least you have FDs.’ She laughs and her face lights up.
I paddle towards Gaurav’s canoe and poke my oar into him. ‘Your sister thinks you’re a drain.’
‘Didi? Maa–Papa,’ he points to them. ‘Ask him not to talk to us.’
Their parents are waiting at the beach. They are looking elsewhere.
‘Don’t talk to us,’ says Aanchal as she passes by me and joins her brother.
‘We will be strangers again.’
‘We aren’t strangers any more,’ she says.
The instructors pull our kayaks offshore.
6.
Aanchal Madan
I first watchedMahabharatwhen I was in the eighth standard. It was a bewildering experience. A brilliant story but with one very strange moment. Five men, closer to gods than men, stake their wife on a game of dice. I remember wondering if this was a dream sequence. That the god-like men would wake up and give up gambling for the rest of their lives in this realm. It wasn’t.
But now, it makes sense.
What was a game of dice to the Pandavas, is FIFA for the boys of today: a hypnotic, relationship-destroying juggernaut of distraction.
Gaurav is playing FIFA on Daksh’s PlayStation that’s hooked on to the TV in the resort’s TV room. His eyes are plastered unblinkingly to the screen. His fingers seem to be slowly melding into the plastic of the controller and soon there would be nothing to differentiate between him and the game. He’s in a little world of his own. I wonder if Gaurav will refuse to play if I tell him that Daksh confessed he has a crush on me. I think like the god-like men, he, too, would choose FIFA.
When Daksh came to talk to us while our parents went for the cooking class, I should have made an excuse instead of encouraging a guy who had just told me he had a crush on me. But my resistance disintegrated in front of the sincerity with which he said, ‘I’m bored. Do you want to hang out?’
And when Daksh told Gaurav about the PS he was carrying, it felt like Gaurav had a crush on Daksh. He was blushing. And it wasn’t just him. Daksh has a way with people. I saw even uncles and aunties talk breezily, laugh easily around him. I have tried to step around it, not think about it, and I have tried to deny it. But he’s charming, and not just to me. I had felt it on that beach where he was right—I was dissecting him—but his openness was so inviting. And then during the kayaking, he was so easy to be with.
Before this trip, one of my biggest fears was that I would feel out of place. In my mind, I had ready quips for everyone who would even hint that we didn’t belong. But that night on the beach, it was like he broke down all the imaginary walls I had built around myself. I had imagined that everyone would be mean to us, but here he was, smiling, wanting to spend time with us, even indulging my irritating brother.
