11 October 1999
My head’s bursting, my heart’s bleeding and my fingers are failing me as I try to write this down. Let me tell you what happened today in a chronological order so as to make sense of it all.
Maa–Baba and I were quite surprised when Arundhati, Sahil and Rishab landed at my place, unannounced. Dressed in white kurta–pyjamas, the boys looked like little princes, and between them stood Arundhati, stately and resplendent in her blue-and-gold saree.
‘Quick! Get ready. We are going out,’ they echoed.
‘Where?’
‘A party, at my place,’ said Rishab.
‘For what?’
‘That’s a secret,’ Arundhati answered.
I looked at Maa–Baba, who nodded. Maa helped me find my kurta and Baba ironed it. When I was all dressed up, Baba clicked a picture with his camera, and then one from Rishab’s new digital camera.
‘You can delete pictures and take new ones if you don’t like them,’ said Rishab.
‘We know how digital cameras work,’ said Arundhati.
‘I was just—’
‘Next you’re going to tell us how cars work, is it?’
We all supported Arundhati’s bullying of Rishab.
In the car to Rishab’s house, they told me Brahmi was throwing herself a farewell party since she wasn’t going to be a part of one in school. I felt slighted that Brahmi hadn’t told me about her wish to have one. I would have organized one for her. Neither did I know when Brahmi told them about her decision to leave school; she had categorically asked me to not tell anyone, not even Dada–Boudi.
Brahmi was waiting at Rishab’s house, looking wonderful in a red-and-black saree. ‘You look gorgeous,’ she said and stepped closer to me.
‘So do you,’ I said.
‘When did you tell them?’
‘They just know I’m shifting and doing my studies through open school,’ she whispered.
‘What are you guys whispering? Let’s click pictures!’ said Arundhati. ‘Come here!’
Arundhati made me stand in between and linked her arm around me. She exhorted Brahmi to do the same. My heart fluttered and it shows in the picture that was clicked. Rishab’s parents met us and told us that the upper floor of the house was ours and we were free to do anything except break the showpieces. We all laughed and politely took their leave.
We huddled inside Rishab’s room.
We sat and talked and smoked and coughed and laughed. We made Arundhati sing for us and, by god, did she sing beautifully. Later, Rishab played his mixtapes, and Sahil and Arundhati—both fabulous dancers—showed off their moves. Brahmi smiled all through. She looked happy. Then we took turns to tell her how much we would miss her. The three hours we spent at Rishab’s passed in a flash. When it was time to leave I volunteered to drop Brahmi home. She changed into her regular home clothes and gave the saree she had borrowed from Arundhati back to her. In the auto, she thanked me for coming, told me she would miss this time and slept on my shoulder.
‘We are here,’ I said, tapping on her shoulder.
She woke up with a start.
‘Can I walk you home?’
She nodded.
She froze ten yards from her house.
‘No.’
This single ominous word escaped her lips.
Two adults, who I knew were her Tauji–Taiji, came charging at her. In a swift sequence of events which included a lot of cursing, shouting, slapping, her more than me, we were at her place. Their entire colony was watching—from their stairs, their windows, their balconies. She had been dragged by her hair, while I was given a more merciful treatment—they only pulled me by my hand. They pushed Brahmi into her room and locked it. Her Taiji was crying and her Tauji looked at me in angry silence.
‘WHEN WILL THIS GIRL STOP TROUBLING US?’ shouted her Taiji, pacing outside Brahmi’s room.
I scouted the area for pointy objects, things I could jam into the carotid arteries of her Tauji–Taiji and break her out of there.
Her Taiji disappeared inside a room for a few minutes and then dragged out a big bag.
‘She was planning to run away!’ shouted her Taiji and pointed at me. ‘Was she running away with you? Tell me or I will inform the police!’
Her Taiji passed a washing bat to him. Tauji kept it next to him.
I wanted to say, ‘So what, and yes, she was planning to run away with me because I love her and who else would be more deserving of her’, but the words died an early death in my throat.
‘Is she running with you? What are you? Twelve? ANSWER MY QUESTION, YOU BASTARD.’
‘Sixteen. I’m sixteen. Which twelve-year-old has a moustache,’ I said and her Taiji charged at me and slapped me across my face.
Indignant, I told her, ‘You slap me once more and you see what I do.’
At which point Tauji clenched the washing bat in his hand and pointed it at my face.
He said, ‘Beta, you don’t know who I am. It would be advisable if you tell us where you were taking her. Either you tell me or you tell the police.’
Who was he? Judging by the state of his house, he couldn’t be a powerful businessman or politician who could legitimately use that phrase.
‘Are you the police?’ I asked him.
‘I am an advocate at the Tis Hazari court. My friends in the police will make you disappear tomorrow and you won’t even see it coming,’ he said. ‘If I want it, you won’t see the light of day tomorrow, ladke. So open your mouth.’ He patted my face with the bat. He said, ‘Tell us where you were going with her?’
‘Uncle, with all due respect, I am not talking to you. If you can please call her parents I will tell them everything.’
‘Brahmi’s parents?’ asked her Taiji.
‘Yes? Who else?’
‘They are long dead,’ said her Tauji.
‘That’s not funny, Uncle.’
‘Oh, bechara, poor thing,’ said her Taiji. ‘He doesn’t know. See? This girl is crazy!’
‘What don’t I know?’ I asked, walking to the room they had locked Brahmi in, but her Tauji was swifter than what I’d expected and rammed me against the wall. He jammed the bat against my neck and pressed home.
‘Look ladke, Brahmi’s parents are long dead, it’s been ten years,’ he said and pointed to the picture on the wall, draped with a garland of dried flowers.
‘But—’
‘Our niece is crazy, that saali. For ten years she has gone around saying her parents are alive, her parents are alive, making up stories about them. She’s made our lives hell. How much patience does she expect from us? Huh?’ said her Taiji.
‘But—’
The words died in my throat.
‘WAS SHE RUNNING AWAY WITH YOU?’ asked her Tauji and released the bat from my neck.
‘No,’ I spluttered.
‘Don’t know how many times we have taken her to the hospital for her bleeding wrists,’ screamed her Taiji.
‘But that can’t be—’
‘That’s exactly how it is,’ said her Tauji.
‘But her parents are—’
Her Taiji continued, ‘She just does it to trouble us! She of course knows they are dead! When she cries all night calling out to her Mumma–Papa, doesn’t she know they are not alive? Then why in the morning she pretends that they are? Going around telling everyone that they are alive!’
‘But—’
‘She’s an embarrassment,’ said her Taiji. ‘She should have died the same day her parents did. But no! She’s still here, making everyone believe we are the villains in her life.’
‘You hit her,’ I muttered.
His Tauji let me go. ‘Of course we hit her and we would do it again. What’s she if not a burden to us? If she dies, we will be in trouble, if she doesn’t then also people blame us for making the girl crazy.’
Her Taiji said, ‘You want to run away with her? Do so! Rid us of her! She steals, she lies, and she doesn’t let us sleep! We will do what is required of us. We will write a report that she’s missing and then what happens will happen.’
‘I was not running away with her,’ I said.
‘Then why this bag? Who the hell is she running away from?’ grumbled her Tauji.
Vedant’s name was at the tip of my tongue but I shrugged and told them I didn’t know.
‘Then who are you?’
‘I’m like a brother to her,’ I said, in more of a reflex.
They shoved me out despite my begging them to let me meet her. They told me she’d never be meeting anyone. She was going to live in that room, die in that room, and that’s what was going to happen. I had tried to argue but Tauji had swung the bat and got me square on my face. My mouth filled with blood and a molar came loose. I waited beneath her window, strained my ears and my eyes for a sign and got nothing. As I walked the entirety of the way home, the pieces of the jigsaw fell into place. Her parents were dead, that was irrefutable. They weren’t alive with shifting geographical locations. I had not once suspected her of lying.
The daze of mixed emotions has now left me. I don’t feel angry that she lied to me about her parents, I don’t feel left out and cheated that she loved me and told me all the stories behind her cutting herself but not the one that mattered. I don’t feel cowardly I couldn’t break her out of the house and run away with her. All I feel is overwhelming love. After all, I too had kept Sami alive in my head, in my behaviour, in the way I felt and interacted, in the way I lived and the way I loved, till I met Brahmi and everything changed.
Maa asked about the bruise and believed me when I told her that Sahil and I had gotten into a friendly scuffle.