30 November 1999
Dada’s birthday has always been a dull affair. One-armed hugs.Paesh. Maangsho. Pulao. And that’s it. No gifts. No big smiles. No hullabaloo. But today was different. A certain excitement had gripped the Ganguly household. The house was being wiped and dusted and swept clean. Two maids and Maa–Baba had turned the house upside down and were putting it back together.
‘There’s a puja in the evening. Pundits from Kali Baari are coming, it’s for Anirban’s birthday,’ said Maa.
With Brahmi’s abandonment of her school and me and our love, everything had been a little fuzzy. It’s been eleven days now. I have checked the newspapers every day for any suicides in the Gurgaon area.
Thankfully Maa–Baba or even Dada haven’t noticed the bereavement on my face for Maa’s new obsession with Zubeida Boudi’s pregnancy hardly gives her time, and during her spare time I’m usually outside Brahmi’s house, looking for signs of life.
I took no part in the day’s proceedings. Instead, I stared at the landline, willing it to ring, knowing full well she wouldn’t call.
As our apartment slowly transformed into a temple, I left the haze of the agarbatti smoke behind and went looking for Arundhati, who had been looking for me as well.
‘Boyfriend?’ I asked as we walked around in the apartment’s park.
‘Yes. He asked, me and I said yes. On the last day of the exams,’ she said.
‘Sahil knows?’
‘Not yet,’ said Arundhati. ‘But Rishab is going to tell him today.’
Arundhati told me she was thankful to me for making me meet him. Quite frankly, I couldn’t find it in my heart to be happy for them. How could they decide on pursuing a new relationship, fall in love, when a friend of theirs was going through what she was? I faked a smile and congratulated her and wished her the best of luck. They were not really my friends. They just filled the hours in my day.
It was still early evening when I was sent to Dada’s house in order to fetch him and Boudi.
I rang the bell and waited. Through the rusted iron mesh of the gate, I saw Boudi’s swollen red eyes staring back at me. Dada came and got the door while Boudi disappeared inside the bathroom to wash her face. She came out smiling. I was asked to watch television while Dada said he needed to talk to Boudi. Pumping the volume of the television to the maximum, I pinned my ears to the door to discern the nature of the assault that had reduced Boudi to tears.
‘I can’t wear this,’ said Boudi, crying again.
‘It’s just for one day, Zubeida. Maa will be happy if you wear this. Everyone will be old and married in today’s puja. No one’s going to look at you, trust me. Why don’t you look at it this way? Maa is finally accepting you! Her friends from the kitty and the colony will be there. It’s her way of showing you that you’re a part of our family.’
‘Anirban, I can’t!’
‘It’s just for an hour . . . Fine, do what you will do then,’ mumbled Dada and stormed out.
In the car, on our way home, the tension was palpable. While Dada felt choked at the grief Maa would feel parading Boudi in front of her friends in all her glory, the little crinkle on Boudi’s forehead told me about her consternation at her new family worshipping a statue with eight extra arms and another with an elephant head sitting quite unbelievably on a mouse.
Maa welcomed Boudi with open arms. Not a frown, not a wayward grimace.
The Ganguly house wasn’t quiet in the two hours Boudi spent there smiling at everyone, bending down and touching people’s feet, talking about their kids, her parents, her job and the little kid who was about to come. She talked with poise and grace, shifting from Hindi to broken Bengali to English with unmatched ease, a spitting image of Maa. She’s beautiful, everyone said, some with love-laced malice. In a room full of jealous Hindu women who worshipped Surya, it was a Musalman woman who glowed like the sun itself. In hushed tones, they discussed the merits of the burqa. ‘It blocks out the sun and gives these Musalman women a nice complexion and skin,’ one said. ‘They all come from Afghanistan, that’s why,’ another argued. ‘But dark skin is more beautiful,’ a third had her final say.
Baba scowled the entire evening. Maa steadfastly kept herself busy, laughing too loud, frowning too much, as if she were made of nerve endings, capable of feeling everything.
When the puja started, Maa chanted the mantras louder to compensate for Boudi’s Muslim-ness. She chanted over the pundit’s muted, indecipherable Sanskrit words. The blood red of her sindur, of her bindi, of the alta smeared on her ankles glowed through the loud chanting. It seeped out of her and into the women who too glowed with Hindu pride, with the fury and unpredictability of their gods, as if to overshadow the blackness of Boudi’s burqa. Maa’s half-closed eyes brimmed with anger and compassion and hate and love.
Arundhati and I sat together. She wore a red suit, in tune with the theme today, and looked to rush out the entire time she was here, waiting for Rishab.
After the pooja ended, women kissed their bunched-up fingers and then transferred their love to Boudi by touching her on the chin or her hands—osmosis?
Later we went to the temple and fed the hundred-odd beggars with watered-down potato curry and deep-fried puris. Maa must have kissed Dada at least a thousand times in the evening, trying to wheedle out of him compliments on how such a celebration was apt and also humanitarian. After Dada and Boudi left, I asked if my birthday would be celebrated like this.
‘No. Dada had to be reminded this time. We don’t want the child under her influence. He will grow up a Hindu,’ said Maa and went back to cleaning the house.
A little later, she handed the garbage bag for me to put out.