3 May 1999
Aren’t there times so sad even crying doesn’t cut it? Like on a pain scale, what you’re feeling is immeasurable? That’s what Dada and Brahmi made me feel today.
Brahmi had been lying to me all this time. She had called me a friend. Why did she have to throw the word around casually if it didn’t mean anything to her? I didn’t ask her to label what we were. She chose the word and sullied it. Maybe I deserve it. Damn it. Adolf is dead. Mina’s brother is dead, gone, lost. And Brahmi’s wholly to blame for it. Brahmi’s parents hadn’t allowed the puppy home so she had kept the puppy outside, feeding him, wrapping him in blankets, smuggling him home in the nights after everyone was asleep. She never thought to mention it when we discussed Mina and Adolf, or even ask if I wanted to take him home.
‘How could you do this to me?’
‘Your family had accepted it and mine hadn’t. I couldn’t find it in my heart to tell you,’ she said.
‘So you would just lie?’
‘I didn’t—’
‘I didn’t what! You didn’t think that he would get lost? He was a puppy! What else did you expect from him?’
‘We can find him.’
‘Of course we will find him. We will find him dead! DEAD!’
‘Don’t say that,’ she said.
‘Why didn’t you tell your mother to keep him inside?! Didn’t she have sense? Or is she as stupid as you are?’
‘Raghu—’
‘Just shut up!’
Brahmi started crying and I stormed off. A part of me wanted to apologize for what I had said about her mother, the other was still furious. A little later she found me in the basement.
‘You should have told me,’ I said when I saw her approach.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘We will search for him after school.’
‘Are you still angry?’
‘No.’
‘I know you are.’
‘I’m sorry for what I said about your mother,’ I said.
After school we spent two hours scouring every lane and road near Brahmi’s home, screaming his name till we lost our voices and didn’t find Adolf. She thought he would come running to us. I knew we would find his bloodied body at the side of the road. I wondered if his end was painless. I was even jealous that he got out of suffering so early in his life and I am still here, living one day after another.
Adolf was gone.
‘I should go back home,’ I said.
‘We will look for him tomorrow,’ she said.
‘Sure.’
I boarded the bus. She waved me goodbye. As the bus rolled out of the bus stop, I heard Brahmi scream out Adolf’s name again. I ran to the back of the bus and peered out from the window. Brahmi was still looking for Adolf. Soon her shouts were reduced to a whisper and the bus turned at the corner.
It’s all her fault. If we hadn’t saved the pregnant Shahrazad that day nothing would have happened. At least we wouldn’t have been in the middle of this. Two of the three lives we supposedly saved are now lost. What was the point of it all?
If our friendship was a living, breathing organism, it was born the day the bitch gave birth to Adolf and Mina, and she let it die. But unlike Dada she was at least repentant. She apologized every twenty minutes, if that’s any consolation.
I couldn’t share what happened with Maa–Baba, or Arundhati—they would think less of Brahmi if they knew, and I wasn’t ready for it. I whispered in little Mina’s ears the news of her brother’s death but she was more interested in chewing my little finger. I waited for Dada to come home which was not until 3 in the morning.
‘Where were you, Dada? Don’t tell me you were at the office like you told Maa. I called and they said you had left at 9. So where were you?’ I asked.
‘Why are you still up?’
‘Where had you gone, Dada?’
‘God, what’s with you? You’re worse than Maa. I was with Zubeida. Happy?’
‘Zubeida? Where? How? Till 3?’
‘I was in her hotel,’ he said.
‘Like in the lobby of the hotel?’
‘In her room,’ said Dada.
‘In her room? Just the two of you?’
‘Yes? Why?’ he asked. ‘Why do you look like you’re going to faint?’
Fighting tears, fingers clenching-unclenching, I told Dada I needed to meet Zubeida.
‘Why?’ Dada asked.
‘You spend the night at a girl’s hotel room and you don’t think I should meet her?’
‘No, of course you should meet her. I am just asking because the last time I had asked you to meet her you had flipped—’
‘BUT THIS time you were in her room, Dada! It’s different,’ I added with emphasis in my voice.
‘How the hell is it different?’ he said, shrugging as if it wasn’t a big deal.
‘Dada, are you in love with her?’
Dada shrugged. ‘Yes, so?’
‘Are you just in a relationship, like you like her, or are you in love?’
‘I’m in love for sure,’ he chuckled.
‘SO WHY THE HELL DON’T YOU TELL ME IF YOU WILL GET MARRIED TO HER OR NOT!’
‘Is it so important?’
I didn’t deem it necessary to answer Dada’s stupid question. How stupid is Dada to think he can spend a night with a girl he loves in a hotel room and not get married to her? Of course, he’s getting married to her. I’m not an idiot to think that staying a night together could mean a pregnancy but there are certain moral obligations that come when you say you’re in love. Maa–Baba didn’t throw the word ‘love’ around so frivolously and neither did they teach us that. Maa–Baba never said we-were-figuring-out-what-we-wanted-to-do after they professed their love. Quite unlike Dada who tells her he loves her, stays in her room, and then behaves as if he’s not going to get married. Is he lying to Zubeida and me about his love for her just like Brahmi had lied to me about Adolf?
Is nothing sacred any more?