28 January 1999
My plan to hide in plain sight at school lasted till two days ago.
Our class teacher, Amarjeet Kaur, a round-faced, stout and beautiful woman, who had been on leave till then, introduced me to the whole class and asked everyone to say their names out loud. I was prepared to forget every name as soon as possible but one name stuck in my head, entangled in my thoughts like a chewing gum stuck so badly in long hair that it needs to be burnt off.
That name is Brahmi Sharma, the class monitor.
Besides being toweringly tall at 5'7" like every class monitor should be, she is also the march-past incharge and the teacher’s pet. From the number of times I have seen other boys throw furtive glances at her I’m fairly certain that she has a long line of secret admirers. I had prepared myself to not join that line the very first time I saw her. I have found an effective strategy to not like someone. All you do is find a flaw in that person and then concentrate all your energies on hating it, fix a magnifying glass to your eye and train it on that flaw. It could be a mole, or a crooked finger; it could be a gender or a religion or a social class too. Slowly, you only see the flaw and not the person. It has worked with everyone other than Maa–Baba and Dada whom I can’t hate, no matter how hard I try to focus on their flaws.
I have been searching for something to hate in her. Her hair is long and shiny. It is usually tied into a scruffy, untidy pony, and absolutely un-hateable. Her face is amiable, with an odd pimple here and there. She has a lissome and athletic body, with perfect round mounds, bursting with puberty; she’s at the cusp of turning into a young woman. Her uniform is not as orderly as the good kids in class and hence not irritating at all. But then, today, something hit my eyes like a flashlight during load-shedding—her bony wrists. Like a child’s drawing, there are cut marks zig-zagging the entire length of her wrist. Then every time I saw her during the day, my eyes rested on her wrists. The little ridges are telltale signs of someone having taken a knife or a paper cutter to those hands. I know because I have pondered on that option, seen it in movies and in magazines. She has been close to death, flirted with it, danced on the razor edge of it, walked on the ledge of a high-rise, watched a train whizz by from inches away, and survived.
Back home, the mood was sombre. Worked for me. I didn’t have to put on a smile; I could be sullen just as Baba was, pretending that the Indian cricket team’s fortune affected me.
Recurring images of Pakistani men on news channels raising and fluttering their green-and-white flags in Chennai’s Chidambaram stadium seemed to cast a funereal gloom on our dinner table, as if the batsmen hadn’t lost their wickets but chunks of Kashmir. Baba, having had enough, changed the channel. On this one, the channel flashed a picture of a burnt car. I knew this piece of news. Over the last few days every news channel has been relaying the news of the gruesome murder of a Christian missionary and his two sons by a few Hindu extremists who burnt them alive.
‘The sons were just ten and six. I can’t even imagine,’ gasped Maa.
Baba muttered, ‘These Christian missionaries shouldn’t be here in the first place. Why do they even come here? We Hindus don’t leave our country and distribute pamphlets in the USA or Iran saying our gods are the best, then why do they?’
‘They didn’t deserve to die,’ said Dada.
‘But mind you, the funds for all these are being generated abroad. Ultimately it will lead to the erasure of the identity of our country, of our culture.’
‘Our culture?’ Dada mocked.
Baba, a reckless donor to the community temple and the head of the Durga Puja Committee, slammed his fist on the table. ‘You know why you can mock your own religion? Because you’re a Hindu. Try mocking your own religion and culture in any other country and see how they pull out your tongue and lash you. Always critical of Hinduism Anirban, respect the religion that gives you this freedom to question it.’
‘So there’s nothing wrong with burning alive a grown man and two children? Is that what you’re saying, Baba? Is that what our religion teaches us?’
While Dada and Baba fought bitterly, I kept squinting at the television to see if they would show the charred bodies of the little Christian children. Did they suffer? Did they scream like Sami had? Did they look at their father hoping he would save them like Sami looked at me that afternoon he drowned? Yes, he looked at me. He begged me to save him. There’s no point lying about it now.
What a perfect thought to end the day with. Brilliant.
P.S. Ashiana Apartments. It’s a six-storey building about a ten-minute walk from my house. There are no guards at the main gate. Pretty easy to reach the roof. The fall is clean and it will all be over in a matter of seconds. Around here there are hardly any buildings more than three storeys, stupid building laws. I have heard Mumbai is much better, every second building is over six storeys.
Just saying.