1 May 1999
There’s a common wall between the Bhattacharyas’ flat and ours. Arundhati has taken the room on the other side of the wall, and now every morning I wake up listening to Arundhati’s renditions of English pop songs I have never heard before. Both our rooms are illegal encroachments, two-bedroom flats turned to three. My room was almost broken down twice by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi; Maa–Baba have no doubt that it was the Mittals who had complained about the extra room we had constructed. It took the greasing of quite some palms before the authorities turned a deaf ear towards the complaints. Mina likes Arundhati’s songs. She whines and scratches at the common wall whenever Arundhati sings. I don’t mind them either. Mina’s tiny paws and Arundhati’s songs help me with my morning anxiety.
Arundhati stops by every morning to play with Mina and that hasn’t gone down well with Richa Mittal who’s forbidden to touch the puppy—the Mittals think it’s being brought up on raw meat.
‘Ram jaane what they feed the dog,’ Mittal Uncle had shouted at the weekly residents’ welfare meeting. ‘I’m warning all the members of the society that she will grow up to be a menace. What if she bites my daughters? Your sons? Who will pay for the injections, haan? Bolo Datta saab.’
But there was no beating the theatrics of Maa–Baba. Baba shouted, screamed, gesticulated wildly and even went as far as saying Mina was his dead daughter incarnate. At which Maa started to cry and so did a few other women. What works is not Maa–Baba’s actions but how genuine they are in what they do, no matter how implausible their cause.
The Mittals were soundly humiliated.
Now every time Richa sees Mina, Arundhati and I, her eyes burn with an anger I thought she was incapable of. She doesn’t blink till the time she walks out of sight. As the love of her life, I had broken her heart by not stopping Baba from demeaning her father publicly.
Just as I was leaving for school in the morning, Bhattacharya Aunty came to Maa to enquire if there was a temple nearby and if I could accompany Arundhati to one after school. ‘Arundhati used to go to a Hanuman temple every Tuesday,’ Bhattacharya Aunty told Maa.
So in the afternoon after school I rang their bell. Arundhati locked her house and followed after me. She was still in her school uniform, her shirt carelessly untucked, socks bunched up at her ankles and her shoes muddy. Her school seemed even more lax than mine.
‘Don’t your teachers say anything to you?’ I said, pointing to the shoes.
‘Everyone in my school dresses like this. There are seven hundred students in my batch so no one cares. Many of them come wearing sneakers. Back in Kolkata they used to slap our knuckles with wooden scales,’ she said.
At the temple she sat down on her knees, folded her hands and said silent prayers to Hanuman’s idol. She knew none of the Sanskrit chants Baba had taught me. She talked to her god in English.
‘Teach me a chant!’ she exclaimed when the pundit told Arundhati that I was one of the learned bhakts.
While we distributed our prasad to the beggars outside, Arundhati chanted the verse I taught her. Sounded much better coming from her.
‘Manojavam Maruta Tulya Vegam, Jitendriyam Buddhi Mataam Varishtham, Vaataatmajam Vaanara Yooth Mukhyam, Shree Raama Dootam Sharnam Prapadye. I got it right this time, didn’t I? What does this mean by the way?’
‘Let me pray to the one who is swift as thought, the one who is more powerful than the wind, the one who has conquered his senses, the supreme among all intelligent beings, the son of the wind-god, the commander of the army of forest creatures, give me refuge, the messenger of Lord Ram, the incomparable Lord Hanuman. Please accept me and my prayers at your feet.’
‘That’s so cool!’ squealed Arundhati.
‘Is it?’
‘You use it to impress the girls in your class, don’t you? This is how you made Brahmi like you? Isn’t it?’ asked Arundhati.
‘She doesn’t like me.’
‘If you say so. What did she name her puppy?’
‘Adolf.’
‘Nice!’
She made me chant some more and clapped like a little child every time. To thank me she gave me a mixtape of her All Time Favourites English songs. When the cassette player gave up, I had to eat my pride and ask Dada for his Walkman.
‘That’s it? You don’t want to tell me why you need it?’ asked Dada.
‘I will tell you when there’s need to tell you.’
‘Raghu? Zubeida is coming to Delhi tomorrow. Would you want to meet her? I told her you would,’ he said.
‘I would rather cut off my tongue. Why would I want to meet that Musalman—’
‘Raghu! That’s really—’
I stormed out. Back in the room I listened to the songs whose words remained a mystery to me. Maa made biryani today but it tasted like ash.
‘You don’t like it?’ asked Maa.
‘Why don’t you ask Dada if he likes it? He seems to have developed a taste for biryani, haven’t you, Dada?’
‘Shut up, Raghu.’
‘Yes, you seem to be pretty good at shutting up these days.’
‘Whatever it is between the two of you,’ interrupted Maa, ‘don’t get it to my dinner table.’
P.S. Have noticed a building from the bus back from school. It is a good twenty minutes away by a bus or car from home. I intend to check it out soon. It must be at least twelve-storeys high. It’s also new so I am thinking the security might be a little bit of an issue. But let’s see.
Just saying.