‘Do you care?’
‘Not really. My reputation feels like a noose around my neck.’
She can feel his laugh start at the base of his stomach and rumble out of his throat.
He takes her to a Chinese restaurant in Palmipur, and plies her with delicacies: gobi manchurian, chilli chicken, chocolate milkshake.
Afterwards, he says, as if still answering her earlier question. ‘You are amusing. You are unpredictable. You are different from all the other girls and more beautiful than any of them.’
She takes a big slurp of milkshake. ‘Ha! I’m just another one of your conquests. But I don’t mind as long as you buy me one of these every day.’
He smiles, but then he looks at her, suddenly serious. ‘You bring much needed laughter into my life, Puja. My ma died when I was three. My da is a tyrant. He expects me to do everything he wants, never asking what I want . . .’ his voice bitter. ‘I just want to relax, enjoy myself.’
‘And ruin me?’
‘Maybe.’
‘As long as I have fun in the process.’
He reaches across the table and takes her hand in his.
If this was the village, thinks Puja, everyone would be craning their necks, rumours already spreading to Dhoompur and beyond, her reputation tainted beyond repair. Here, a couple of people look askance at them but there is no danger of this tryst being reported back to her parents because nobody knows her, or her parents.
Puja imagines Sister Seema’s reaction to their joined hands, and recalls her hectoring voice, ‘And forget touching boys, even entertaining lustful thoughts about them is a sin.’ She giggles.
‘You’re the most beautiful girl in the village. I’m not bad looking myself. We make a great couple.’ His eyes glimmer like embers from a dying fire.
‘Is that all? What if someone more beautiful comes along?’
‘We get on, Puja. We are similar inside, tired of the village and its pointless restrictions, too good for it.’
‘That we are.’
‘Let’s seal our friendship with some milkshake,’ he says. ‘If there is any left that is . . .’ he tilts the glass, ‘I can’t believe it! You’ve finished yours and mine.’
She laughs. ‘Serves you right.’
And so it begins.
He takes to picking her up from school every day.
It helps that Sharda is not at school with her, always keeping tabs on her, and warning her of the dangers to her reputation. Sharda now attends the pre-university college in Dhoompur.
He waits for her by Nagu’s shack but of necessity they are discreet, not letting on that they know each other. Puja walks on one side of the road while he pushes his bike along the other side, ignoring her, and once they are both free from prying eyes, she crosses the road, jumps on his bike and they zoom away.
Some days, she does not bother going to school at all, and spends the day with him instead, roaming the countryside on his bike.
They go as far away from the village as they possibly can. They sit on craggy rocks by the sea, listening to its boom and roar, tasting the salt from the spray, looking at the waves performing to the tunes of the tides.
‘You’re my best friend,’ he declares, chewing on a stalk of grass. ‘When I’m with you, I feel whole,’ he says, gazing at her with his soulful eyes.
And, despite everything she’s heard about him and his wild ways, she believes him.
One day, when she cuts classes and comes to Nagu’s shack to surprise him, she catches him flirting with the girls from the sewing school.
She does not talk to him for two weeks.
He pursues her endlessly, relentlessly, until she consents to go for a ride with him on his bike.
‘Why?’ she shouts above the roar of the engine, her arms around him, her cheek resting on his jacket, revelling in the familiar leathery feel of it, breathing in his scent of lemon and motor oil. ‘Why do you flirt with all the girls? Why do you want everyone to love you? You even flirt with that ogre Sunita ma’am. You treat it as a challenge to make people love you and then get bored of them and discard them like banana skins.’ The wind scatters her words every which way, diminishing their gravity, but she has never been more serious as she asks, ‘Will you discard me too?’
He stops the bike. They are on a mud road, sugarcane fields on either side, the river glinting silvery sage in the distance, the sweet honeyed fragrance of nectar flavouring the air.
The wind that strokes her face tastes of pushed boundaries. It smells of squirming embarrassment and regret. It is yellow with grit, heavy with humidity, making her eyes smart and blur.
She jumps off the bike. He doesn’t, turning around and facing her instead, his expression inscrutable.
‘So,’ she tries for lightness. ‘Why have we stopped here?’
‘Because I wanted to answer your question.’
‘Oh.’
‘Come here.’
She goes up to him. He holds her hand. She prays no bus or rickshaw will pass by, no farmer on his bullock cart, no women carrying hay bales, to interrupt what he is about to say.
‘I . . . I want people to like me, and like you said, I make it my business to win them over. I feel better when they capitulate.’ His eyes, the colour of marigolds glowing in the sun, are solemn.
‘Especially women,’ she says.
He grins. ‘There is that.’ Then, as soft as the pink kiss of dawn brushing sleep from the inky horizon’s bleary eyes, he says, ‘But you . . . you’re different. ’
‘How?’
He looks at her and it is as if he is looking inside her, to everything that she is, her good and her bad, the Puja who exasperates the matrons, the Puja who is put on a pedestal by her Da, the Puja who is her Ma’s cross to bear, the Puja who is the complete antithesis of her sister. It is as if with his piercing tawny gaze, he can map the private depths of her soul and likes what he sees there.
‘You are like me, inside.’ He says softly. ‘You yearn for more,’ he sweeps his hand to indicate the mud road, the fields, ‘than this.’
She nods, her hand in his as if it belongs there, as if it has found its rightful home.
‘I do not give anyone else rides on my bike. Only you. You know that.’
She smiles. The air is celebratory, ringing joyful yellow, it smacks of fruit and happiness.
‘I like you, Puja,’ he says, ‘very much.’
She believes him. ‘I like you too.’ And she does.
He makes her happy. When she is with him, the dream she’s always had—of escaping the confines of the village, of being free of its limitations, and the senseless rules it imposes upon her, crushing her spirit—seems within reach.
Her village has always been too small for her and when she is with him, she can see beyond its precincts to different, wider horizons. When she’s with him, she can flee the village and its oppressing restraints, its repressive rules, and for a brief while, she can pretend she is someone else, someone with a different, more glamorous life.
The villagers, who adored her when she was little, and smiled fondly at her antics, now purse their lips and give advice she hasn’t asked for and doesn’t want. She cannot walk two steps without someone stopping to lecture her on the importance of a good reputation. If she hears the word ‘reputation’ one more time, she sometimes thinks, she will jump in a well and drown. She does not know why everyone else cares more about her reputation than she does. She pictures it as a ferocious beast tracking her every move, pouncing if she takes one step out of line.
Her father indulges her, but even with her da she cannot go too far, show her true self. Sometimes, she feels like she is dying inside, her life-force being choked out of her by the narrow-mindedness, the smallness of the villagers.
This boy understands. He feels the same.
With him, she can be herself.
‘I would like to run away,’ he says.
‘Can I come too?’ Puja asks.
‘Of course, I woul
dn’t want to go without you.’
And sitting beside him, she smiles, revelling in his throaty laughter and tasting contentment as she breathes in the piquant tang of a summer’s evening. She is, at that moment, completely at peace with the world.
For once, she does not dread the inevitable return to the smothering confines of the village quite so much and the burden of not living up to her father’s idealized version of her seems lighter and the aggravations of her family: her mother’s perpetual worries about Puja’s reputation, and Sharda’s ‘good’ girl to Puja’s ‘bad’, no longer seem insurmountable.
KUSHI
THE PEACH EMBRACE OF SETTING SUN
Ma wrote these letters to her mother after I was born, so she wouldn’t make the same mistakes with me. What did she do?
Around me, in this unfamiliar present, nurses fuss, mosquitoes whine, trolleys wheeze, patients moan. The doctor comes by to check on me, his whole being radiating exhaustion, aubergine hued circles dogging his weary eyes. His visage: square face beneath thin, greying hair, a kind gaze that seems to take in everything at a glance, matches what I had envisaged when I heard him talking with Ma.
‘Young lady, it’s a real pleasure to be able to meet you properly,’ he says, as he smiles and extends his hand, ‘I’ve heard a lot about you, what you’ve done for your village and beyond. We’re doing our very best to restore you to the best of health so you can carry on the good work.’
When he leaves, I close my eyes and imagine I am outside, skipping among fields glimmering greenish gold in the peach embrace of setting sun. The air sings as I dance past the men walking home from work, their vests soaked with sweat, their shoulders hunched, their thoughts turned to hot food and a warm bed, past the huts where fragrant smoke paints the sky a darker shade of grey and families are gathering for their evening meal. The coconut trees sway in the soft breeze aromatic with the fragrance of ripe mangoes, frying fish and cooling rice, hot chapathis and spicy potatoes.
I open my eyes and I am back in the malady-laden present, clutching my mother’s letters, and breathing in the smells of phenyl and pain, of agony and entreaty.
I drag my mind away from the frustration I feel back to the letters.
Puja . . . despite myself, I like the picture I am getting of her. Devil-may-care, happy, outgoing. Ma, on the other hand seems to have been quite a stickler for the rules, afraid to do anything she wasn’t meant to.
And yet, she let me do what I wanted. She was afraid for me and yet she encouraged my causes, revelled in my inquisitive, feisty nature. Was it because she was hell-bent on not repeating the mistakes of the past, as she says in this letter? Did she hold Puja back? Is that what pushed them apart?
I think of Ma having feelings for Gopi, but steadfastly denying them, a sweet girl, afraid to put one foot out of line. So very different from the person she has always encouraged me to be.
From there to here. What happened to change that innocent girl who loved her sister so? When did that love sour into hate, the laughter choke into broody silence? And why?
I pick up the next letter.
SHARDA—CUSP
THE YELLOW OF MATURING PINEAPPLES
Second PUC (Pre-University Course) Exam Results for Sharda Ramesh, Age 18
First rank holder in the state of Karnataka
Kannada 90/100
English 92/100
Maths 100/100
Physics 100/100
Chemistry 100/100
Biology 99/100
* * *
Extract from The Hindu:
With the unprecedented score of 581/600, Sharda Ramesh of Dhoompur Pre-University College scores the first rank in the Second PU exam for the entire state of Karnataka. Sharda’s exceptional score and her outstanding achievement is unparalleled in the history of Dhoompur Pre-University College, which services the children of all the neighbouring villages.
Sharda Ramesh hails from Nandihalli, a sleepy village snuggling on the banks of the river Varna. Most children in Nandihalli do not study beyond the seventh standard; the boys going on to work as labourers and the girls either as servants or with their mothers looking after siblings as they prepare for marriage. The children who do attend school have textbooks that are second-hand, with pages missing. The students do not have the facilities to undergo special coaching for the exam, as they do in the cities. And yet, this year, this village has produced a young girl who has gone on to get one of the highest recorded scores in the pre-university exam.
This reporter interviewed Sharda Ramesh, the shy girl who has put Nandihalli on the map. ‘I like studying,’ she said. ‘I would like to be a doctor to set right some of the wrongs wrought unfairly on the innocents of this world.’
This jaded reporter who has interviewed countless people in his time, confesses himself humbled by the simple words of this amazing girl, who with fraying second-hand books and no extra tuition, has achieved this astounding score. Kudos to her and here’s hoping that she holds on to that spark of ambition, ignites it and unleashes it on the world. This state and this country desperately need young people like you, Miss Sharda Ramesh.
Dearest Ma,
The day my PUC results come through is one of the happiest days of my life. That is the only day I can remember since the birth of Puja, Ma, that I manage to overshadow my sister, to outshine her in Da’s eyes.
Da laughs loudest for Puja. He is a different man when Puja is around. The worry lines on his forehead relax and he seems younger and you and I are both grateful to Puja for that.
I know Da loves me, Ma, I do. And I am not immune to Puja’s charms myself. But I wish with all my heart that sometimes, his face would light up for me like it does when he sets eyes on Puja.
She fills our home with warmth, makes it radiate contentment, no matter how worried we might be of making ends meet. I love Puja and I am envious of her, my heart in constant tumult where she is concerned. I know I could never get away with the stuff she does, but then I wouldn’t want to either. Puja is unique, a law unto herself, my beloved, infuriating sibling. I am delighted to be related to her and yet sometimes I wish she was someone else’s sister, someone else’s responsibility. You want me to look after her, Ma, and be a good role model for her. But she doesn’t like being looked after.
‘You are always studying, Sharda. You must learn to live a little,’ she says, often.
What she says is true and yet I do not know how to be any other way. This is who I am.
I love learning. When I solve a maths problem or understand a scientific mystery, I feel like I have achieved something, I feel able to be outside myself, the chunky, clumsy girl that I am.
But Puja . . . Puja is sunshine and laughter. She is the moon shining silver on an overcast night and the rain after a long drought. She is sweetness and joy and the best of dreams. She gets into scrapes but is forgiven when she flashes her charming smile. The villagers are awed by her beauty and her vivaciousness; frustrated by her misdemeanours. She is a vision conjured out of the dust, our village’s lucky charm, or so Da claims. She is like a rare bird landed in our midst, whose very presence lifts us, so we can bask in her reflected allure, share a tiny sprinkling of the fairy dust she is made of.
But that day, the day of my results, I—squat, chubby, unremarkable—am the rare bird, the repository of fairy dust! That day, I do not wish to be anyone else, not even Puja. For the first time, I am completely happy in my own ordinary skin.
I knew I had done my best but I had no idea I had performed this well. The principal of the college personally handed me my results.
‘Wow!’ he had said, eyes glistening behind his cloudy glasses. ‘What an achievement! The newspapers are coming here, Sharda, to interview you and me.’ He removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. He was overwhelmed. As am I!
I clutch the piece of paper and run all the way home, gulping in the dense air, heady with the aroma of jasmine and over-ripe cashews.
I am not the fastest girl in the
village, Ma, nor the most agile, as you know. I am short and heavy and I do love my food. But that day I have wings.
You glow, Ma, when I have explained my report card to you and Da as both of you never had the opportunity to go to school and thus cannot read or write.
‘You have made me and your Da so proud, Sharda,’ you say, your eyes glimmering with joyous tears.
‘I can stop working soon,’ Da declares, beaming at me the way he does at Puja, and making my whole being shine. ‘Because, you, Sharda are going to earn ten times in one day what I make in a month.’
And Puja wraps her arms tightly around my neck when she arrives home, a luminous butterfly, full of delight, trailing that special something in her wake. She skips around our small courtyard, a lithe danseuse, her sugar-spun curls twirling, screaming, ‘Well done, Sharda, well done.’
That evening, there is a big celebration in the village grounds in my honour. The entire village congregates in the open field, bringing mats with them. Duja, who never misses a trick, circulates the crowd selling bhel puri from a cane tray slung across his neck, dispensing it, 50 paise apiece, in little paper cones fashioned from Udayavani, the daily newspaper—that day’s news is oily and slick with spice, piquant with flecks of chopped red onions. Birakka, who is always in competition with Duja, does the same, but with roasted peanuts and goes one up, by circling the throng with a flask of cardamom and ginger tea.
You, Da and I have pride of place on the makeshift stage erected in a hurry that afternoon, when news of reporters arriving sent the principal into a frenzy. A generator has been borrowed at great cost from the electronic shop in Dhoompur and the fruit-scented gloom of early evening is dispelled by its flickering lights, which attract a plague of flies.
I’m wearing my best salwar, cerise with yellow flowers, the only one I own which isn’t threadbare from use. My hair is in plaits. My eyes are shining. I cannot believe this: standing in the harsh yellow, moth-infested spotlight (courtesy of the grumbling generator) and squinting at the audience of villagers, a whispering hushed mass silhouetted in darkness, all of them submitting to being feasted upon by a buzzing pestilence of mosquitoes just for me. The rumble of applause builds up to a roar triggering a warm rush of happiness that permeates my entire being.
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