12 September 1999
My exams are going well and yet it means nothing. I sit on the row adjacent to Brahmi’s. In the last three exams she has been unusually fidgety. She used to write with three pens. Blue to write, black to underline and red to mark indents. I had picked up the habit from her. Now, she was using just one for her exams. Her question papers have an alarming number of circles for the ones she couldn’t solve. Most of them easy pickings. After every exam, she would tear the question paper and throw it in the dustbin. I would fetch the papers from the dustbin, tape them together and estimate her marks. She wouldn’t make it to even the top ten in class, not that it mattered any more.
I had decided I would put an end to this. She had to do well. It was her last set of exams after all.
It was mathematics. I took extra sheets thrice, two of which I didn’t need. I stole glances at Brahmi’s exam sheet which was sparsely filled. Instead of her god-like handwriting, the paper was filled with squiggles, scratched-out answers and big circles, as if her fingers had gone crooked overnight. With an eye on the clock, I copied the solutions of the toughest questions in the exam on to the two empty extra sheets in a tiny handwriting. On my way out to the washroom, I dropped the two sheets on Brahmi’s table. She picked them up and read through hurriedly. She cancelled out her solutions and attached the two sheets to her exam sheet.
‘You could have done that for me too,’ complained Rishab after the exam. ‘I’m definitely failing this one.’
‘You sit too far,’ I offered as an explanation.
Brahmi was too embarrassed to say anything. Later on, on the bus, she thanked me as if she was doing a chore.
‘Something troubling you?’
‘Don’t help me in the next exam.’
‘Whatever is happening isn’t your fault.’
‘I know it’s not but I don’t like being dependent. How will I enjoy the marks I get when I know I cheated?’
‘My bad.’
‘Don’t feel bad. I would have done the same for you,’ she said.
I felt bad and for which she held my hand and didn’t let go for the rest of the bus ride. It helped.
When I got home, I saw the first chasm in Baba’s resolve to not accept Dada back into the family. We went to Saraswati Vihar, a ten-minute drive from our house. It wasn’t until we were in the flat with a property dealer and Baba was assiduously checking the taps and the hinges of the doors that I figured why we were there.
On our way back, I asked Baba, ‘So Dada won’t live with us?’
Baba shook his head. ‘No.’
‘But everyone in the colony already knows that Dada’s married a Muslim so what’s the difference where he stays?’
‘Our house is too small.’
Baba drove on without answering any further questions. It wasn’t the house, it was his heart which hadn’t yet opened up to the possibility of a Muslim woman spreading a prayer mat in his living room.
I had refused to have any conversation with Dada till the time I was sure of what’s going to be the new family dynamic. After the unfair meting out of punishment to me, I wanted to be sure of which side I wanted to be on. But today seemed like a good day to talk to him. I had expected an emotional, overwhelmed, crying Dada on the other side—like I was—but he was upbeat and boisterous.
‘How’s your girlfriend?’
‘She’s not my girlfriend.’
‘What’s she then?’
‘I love her and she loves me,’ I said.
‘Aww, you’re such a child.’
‘Says the one who has an expertise in taking wrong decisions.’
‘You’re in love now, aren’t you? Is that a decision you took, my genius brother?’ he asked.
‘Even decisions I take subconsciously are better than your conscious decisions,’ I said tight-lipped.
Dada laughed and said, ‘You’re such a pain in the ass. I can’t wait to see you.’
I laughed too. I couldn’t wait to see him either.
My stellar mood took me to Brahmi’s house. It was seven and I was ambling beneath her house waiting for nightfall when I noticed a group of labourers climbing down from the scaffolding on the building adjacent to Brahmi’s. From where I stood I thought a carefully controlled jump could take me to Brahmi’s ledge and from there to her window. For the next hour I stretched and lumbered up and wished my limbs were made of titanium. When I bounced the idea off Brahmi, she thought I had lost my mind and that I would break my neck and die. But with time her opposition crumbled and her eyes glinted with hope and possibility. I said a prayer and climbed up the scaffolding, taking Lord Hanuman’s name on each step—like him, I would leap for love. It was harder than it looked and I was out of breath by the time it came for me to jump. She asked me to rethink the five-foot jump but it was too late for that. She knew it too. Catching my breath, I leapt, I missed, and I hung shoulder down from the parapet, my legs dangling precariously.
Brahmi gasped and outstretched her hand quite uselessly. It took me all my might and more to pull myself up to the ledge. I climbed into her room, my T-shirt in tatters. The blood from the minor bruises had already started to clot. After she had whispered words of concern and we discussed in gestures how dangerous it was to sneak in like this, we became acutely aware of the silence and the darkness of the room. She lit a candle and asked me to be absolutely quiet. I could hear the clock ticking in the living room, I could see the fear on her face. There wasn’t much to see in her threadbare room, which had just a bed and small cupboard but what I wouldn’t give to be here with her, for this to be our little world. If one could be envious of inanimate objects I was of this room which held stories even she wouldn’t remember now. The room knew what made her laugh when alone, what made her cry, the boys she loved, the boys she hated, the boys for whom she felt both; it knew how short days were and how long the nights, knew her desires and her fears, her peeves and her likes.
We knew how dangerous it was so we maintained a funereal silence. A little later, she kept her head on my shoulder and held my hand. We breathed softly. Our chests rose and fell at the same time. She wept softly and I found myself weeping in response. Dried of our tears, and too scared to use words, we stared at each other which was awkward at first, and then seemed like the most natural way to spend our life. I took in every detail of her face. A few days later, she would leave and I would no longer be able to see her every day.
I left after an hour.