25 March 1999
Dada’s secret is corroding my insides. Today we got the results of our first unit test of the year and I embarrassed myself by giving her a ten-mark lead. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say my abysmal performance was because of Dada. Brahmi sought me out in the library which was a welcome change. Since our day at Keventer’s I have seen her occasionally go missing and have had to physically stop myself from tagging along. Not once has she asked me to accompany her which confirmed my suspicion that I wasn’t needed in her secret jaunts outside the school. Our conversations too were strictly academic, carried out in an adversarial tone.
‘I was scared you would beat me,’ she said.
‘Huh?’
‘Show me your answer sheet. I want to see how you did,’ said Brahmi.
‘You beat me. That’s all that should matter. I’m not showing my answer sheet,’ I said, clutching my pocket where the crumpled answer sheet lay.
‘You will have to show me.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I think I won only because you did badly, not because I did well. Show me your answer sheet now. Quick, quick!’
So I did. The mistakes were silly. The joy of her win slowly drained out of her.
‘Do well the next time,’ she commanded.
‘I will.’
‘Whatever you’re struggling with, leave that at home when you attempt your question papers.’
‘I am not struggling with any—’
‘Your lies won’t work with me. Don’t spoil the only reason why school is fun,’ she said.
‘Which is to beat me in tests?’
‘To be the best at something,’ she said as if she was a queen.
‘Fine,’ I sighed and accepted.
I promised Brahmi a fight in the next session.
‘But if I win the next time, do I get to ask you for another story?’ I pointed to her wrist.
‘Why do you want to know them?’
‘No reason. I have never attempted that despite the knives at house being quite sharp. So I’m curious. Moreover I don’t think I’m a knife person,’ I said.
‘What are you then?’ she asked.
We were getting into dangerous territory but a sense of abandonment gripped me.
‘Buildings, tall buildings. They aren’t as ubiquitous as knives or cutters.’
She scrunched her face.
‘Why? What’s wrong?’ I asked.
‘I am not comfortable with the disfigurement that comes with it,’ she said.
‘So no train tracks? Or hanging? Or burning?’ I asked.
‘No.’
‘Sleeping pills?’
‘Too risky. Too much time to change your mind and for regret to seep in.’
‘But knives? That takes time too.’
‘Knives are knives,’ she said. ‘Should we talk about this with such frivolity?’
‘We wouldn’t talk about it if not with frivolity,’ I said.
We both nodded, surprised at my seemingly intelligent observation.
She sighed and said, ‘If there are other factors that determine our choice of you know . . . then I think we are safe. If we were serious about it we would have done it by now, not matter what the means.’
‘Not bragging, but I am surprised at how intelligent we are,’ I said.
She giggled. Like a real giggle, not the sorts she fakes, if and when she finds herself in a group of girls who don’t know she’s different. It wasn’t annoying at all. Giggles are the best.
‘Touchwood. Can I sit here and study now?’
‘I don’t see why not. Are you not going out today?’
‘I have no money and you haven’t lost a bet to treat me. Though the next time you do, there’s a new burger Nirula’s has added to their menu.’
She fetched a book to read and sat next to me. Her invitation was at best dubious but it would do for now. By the time we walked out of the library most of the students were already in class. The corridor was deserted. We had barely walked a few yards when the cooing of a dog drew us to a class long abandoned.
‘We will be late for the class,’ I said.
‘I didn’t ask you to follow me,’ she said.
‘Now that’s unfair.’
We jumped over broken desks and props stored from previous annual day functions.
‘There,’ she said.
In a corner, a pregnant bitch scrambled to her feet seeing us and fell right back. I swear I saw tears.
‘Poor thing.’
‘Dogs can’t cry the way we do. It’s some allergy. But she does look like she is in pain,’ said Brahmi. She took off her sweater. ‘Give me yours.’
‘I can’t! It’s new. Maa–Baba fought tooth and nail for a discount on this.’
Her stare wore me down.
‘Fine,’ I said and took it off.
She linked our sweaters, arms tied to each other, and draped it on the bitch. Then she cradled her on her lap till she drooled all over her skirt and went to sleep.
‘I wash my clothes myself,’ she said when I pointed at the mess.
‘And the sweater?’
‘Mumma won’t notice,’ she said.
The bitch, visibly comforted, was chewing through our linked sweaters when we left her and her unborn children.
‘Maybe she didn’t want to live,’ I said.
‘So?’
‘So now you gave her hope. You became her friend. She will now want and expect you to come to see her every day. We should have left her to die.’
‘She’s Shahrazad.’
‘Isn’t that an Arabic name?’ I scoffed.
‘She was a queen.’
‘She was in pain. She would have been better off dead,’ I said when we got to class.
‘Pain’s rewarding.’
‘That only looks good on posters. How can cutting yourself reward you? What exactly is your reward?’
‘Every time I fail I know I would like to live a little more,’ she said. ‘Moreover Shahrazad is going to be a mother.’
The sweater and Shahrazad, Dada and Zubeida, chemistry and Brahmi—I told Maa nothing when she got home from work. It took Maa an hour to find out about the misplaced sweater, and another two to find where I had hidden the chemistry paper—the letter box of the uninhabited flat 14B.
‘Mumma, I . . .’
Maa started to cry.
‘In the letter box of all the places! First, you lose your sweater and now this. What am I supposed to do with the two of you? One brother does god knows what in Bangalore and the other one is falling in bad company.’
‘I didn’t want to spoil your mood, Maa. And my marks might incr—’
‘Still lying. Still lying. Where did you learn to lie? What else are you lying about?’
Baba finally butted in. ‘There’s no point scolding him. He is boka, stupid, he will not amount to anything. Five thousand rupees I spent on his material for IIT, five thousand. It’s going to come next week. All waste! He would be lucky to get through Stephen’s, leave alone IIT.’
Maa–Baba had always been good at worst-case scenarios when it came to their sons. An hour of absence meant kidnapping, a cut on the knee meant tetanus, and running to catch a bus meant crushed skulls. But this time his worst-case scenario didn’t even cut close.
‘Who’s got the highest marks? Tell me! Who got the highest marks?’ scoffed Maa.
‘Brahmi.’
‘How much?’ asked Baba.
‘Twenty-three.’
‘Twenty-three! She has scored ten marks more than you! All this is because of the stupid trump cards you keep collecting! Where are they? Where have you kept them?’
Maa stormed to my room and got the bunch of cards I had been collecting for the last five years. While Baba held me, Maa burnt a handful of them over the stove.
‘Don’t do it!’ I shouted and cried my fake tears.
Maa threw the rest in the dustbin. Baba took me by my arm and dragged me to the balcony and locked me out. Neither the burning of the trump cards nor being locked outside seemed like a punishment. Trump cards used to be Sami’s obsession, not mine.
‘That boy is teaching you all the wrong things,’ Maa used to shout.
After his death, I pretended to still obsess over Bret Hart, the Hitman, and Hulk Hogan like my other classmates to be, you know, normal.
It suddenly fell quiet inside the house. Maa–Baba’s voices reduced to distressing whispers. Their sadness seeped through the mosaic of the floor, the fabric of the curtain, the wired mesh of the gate and clawed into me. Maa came to fetch me after an hour, crying and repentant. After dinner Baba came bearing a new set of WWE trump cards. Over dinner, Maa–Baba and I analysed my chemistry question paper and they were as confounded as Brahmi was.
‘Don’t do silly mistakes the next time,’ they both echoed.
‘I won’t.’
‘What do we have other than the two of you?’ said Maa.
‘I know, Maa.’
After they put me to bed, they took a taxi to the airport to get Dada home. They must have told Dada about today’s happenings because he came to me once he was home.
‘They expect more out of you. Don’t disappoint them, Raghu,’ he said.
‘And you can go about doing whatever you want to, isn’t it?’
‘That’s unfair, Raghu.’
‘Absolutely not! I’m the one who has six scholar medals, thirty-three certificates, and the first row in the annual-day choir. What have you given them, Dada? Just a lousy 1650 rank in IIT JEE? 89 per cent in boards?’
‘I didn’t get the memo saying we had to do certain things to qualify as being a worthy Ganguly.’
‘But you were certainly given plenty of instructions about what they expected you to do.’
‘Raghu.’
‘And what you weren’t expected to do!’
‘Oh please, I am too tired for this,’ said Dada and left the room like he wasn’t so obviously at fault.
These days Dada has a way of making everything worse.
Bad day in all, but right now I’m thinking of Brahmi’s and my sweater—twisted and tied and unified.
P.S. That beautiful abandoned building I saw a few days ago? Yes. They are tearing it down or maybe it’s just falling apart.