15 March 1999
Today I went to the Mittals’ house to watch an episode of Hum Paanch because our TV had stopped working. The Mittals, who live in the flat above ours, and with whom the Gangulys share a rich history of skirmishes big and small. Our car, a ten-year-old Fiat, stands in their parking lot which Baba hijacked a couple of years ago after they sold their scooter. The algae growth on our living-room walls is because the miserly Mittals don’t fix their drainage system.
‘They have cash and jewellery hidden in their bed boxes! Don’t I know these banias? All thieves!’ says Baba.
It is unlikely.
Their house smells of poverty and despair. The sofa’s old and lumpy, their fans creak, the flooring is cracked and dark in places, the refrigerator doesn’t work half the time, and the bed sheets are always stained. Maa says they are saving dowry for their two daughters—Kanika, seventeen, and Richa, sixteen—both of whom study at the Kendriya Vidyalaya. They are both darker than me; the younger one is the colour of my elbow. Last year Richa had accepted me as the love of her life when I had inadvertently walked into the bathroom while she was bathing. She was the first woman I had ever seen naked, and I was the first man who had seen her like that. Ever since that day she shies away from me whenever I’m in the room, blushes excessively when I ask for extra tomatoes or a cup of dahi, steals glances at me till I smile and accept the existence of that secret between us. She’s beautiful with her thick black hair melting into her skin and has the body of a grown woman, no doubt about that, but I feel nothing for her. That’s unfair. If we were intended to live most of our lives in pairs, why didn’t we come with the names of our soulmates imprinted in our hearts? Why do we stumble from one name to another till we make a choice, right or wrong? Why would she fall in love with me when I would never love her back? The checks and balances of love in the world will never settle. It will always be a CA’s nightmare.
Coming back to the Mittals.
Despite Maa’s affinity for fair skin, she loves both the girls dearly. In them she used to find solace for the void left behind by the daughter, Mina, who left her too early. After Dada, Maa had a baby girl whom she had lovingly named Mina, meaning light. She was born with a heart too small and didn’t live past a week. Mina’s death severed not one but two mother–daughter relationships. Post Mina’s funeral, Didimaa told Maa she had wished for Mina’s death, as a punishment for how Maa had ignored Didimaa.
‘Now you know what it feels like! Kali has listened to my prayers!’ Didimaa had screamed.
Maa, in the grip of fury and grief, had thrown a vase at Didimaa’s head.
Mama had found Didimaa after a full hour, lying in a pool of blood; Maa sitting on the couch, watching her. Maa had been there for the entire hour, watching Didimaa plead and bleed and pass out.
Ever since I heard the story, I have searched in Maa’s eyes for that streak of insanity which had driven her to let her own mother almost die. What if Didimaa had actually died? Surely our family would have come up with an excuse. Old woman falls from bed, splits her head open. No big deal. To maintain our integrity we would have lied like petty criminals. Our lives would have gone back to normal. The new normal being living with a murderer in our midst. Nothing happened but I can’t help thinking, what if. We were an hour away from being a family of abettors to a murder. A family that can hypothetically do this can do anything. It’s not a surprise that Maa–Baba–Dada haven’t asked me in two years about how exactly Sami died. Neither have they wanted to know why I hadn’t called Sami in the four days that Sami was rotting in my school’s pool. Had I known he was there? They prefer not to know the answers.
Anyway.
In Mina’s mourning or longing, every Sunday Maa used to feed the strictly vegetarian Mittal sisters with her own hands—mustard ilish, muri ghonto and dahi prawns—before the Mittal parents found out. The Mittal sisters are now prohibited from visiting our house, though I can go to theirs.
Today Mittal Aunty served me three chapattis and watered-down daal while we watched the show. When I came back Maa asked, ‘Did the girls ask about me?’
‘Yes. When Mittal Aunty wasn’t around, they told me they miss our food, especially your fish,’ I lied.
Maa smiled brightly and told me, ‘Now only if you and your Dada grow up quickly, we will have a girl in this house. I will make her everything. But only get a Bengali girl, okay? Who else will know the difference between rui and ilish and katla? In our times, long hair and the ability to pick out the right fish was all that was desired in a girl, and Bengali girls have them both!’
‘But even south Indians know their fish.’
Maa was fumbling for a counter, when Baba butted in. ‘Those Dravidians are too smart.’ I tuned in and out as he ranted about how they did not want to be a part of India and how Vallabhbhai had prevented the country from yet another Partition.
‘Ei, chup koro to (Just stop it, okay),’ said Maa and stopped Baba in his tracks.
‘If he doesn’t know about our history, where we come from, how we suffered and for how long, how will—’
Maa asked me to go complete my homework when Baba was mid-sentence. I took my registers and my books and sat in the balcony with them. Over the left side of our balcony is the Mittals’ and sitting there was Richa, with her books and her registers. Getting up and going inside would have been rude so I just sat there for an hour. I regretted it once I came inside. What if she thinks there’s something going on between us? What if she’s attached to me? Would she cry when I’m gone? That’s sad, though if no one cries when I’m gone, that’s even sadder.
My selfishness sometimes baffles me.
P.S. Found a beautiful abandoned building today, a fifteen-minute walk from home. It’s seven storeys. No lifts, which means you have to climb all the way up on the crumbling stairs. But it’s worth it. It’s quiet. And there’s no ledge. Which means you don’t have to climb awkwardly to jump down. You can just lean into the fall. The only concern is the ragged beams below. Wouldn’t want to land on them.
Just saying.