by Shashi Bhat
“And you brought such a big tub of ice cream!” said one uncle.
“It’s all mine!” said another uncle, taking it from Mira.
“Ah, the three-colour kind,” said an aunty. “My absolute favourite.”
“Well, I didn’t know if the baby’s a boy or girl or what, and I thought chocolate is sort of a boy colour and strawberry a girl colour and the vanilla is whichever. I don’t know, it made sense to me in the store,” Harshvardhan answered, without any trace of shyness at being accosted by so many new people at once.
“Great rationalization! What a thinker!” said one uncle, patting him on the back.
“I don’t know, I myself have a partiality for chocolate, and I am most definitely a female,” said an aunty, her hands on her hips.
“I’m sure an uncle will share some of his chocolate with you,” said Harshvardhan.
“We have no such divisions here — men, women, et cetera,” declared an uncle.
“Complete equality,” agreed another uncle.
“Any ice cream for any person,” said an aunty.
“I scream you scream we all scream for ice cream,” said an uncle.
“Yes, Uncle,” Harshvardhan discreetly shot a smile at Mira, who thought the ice cream must be half-melted by now.
While they reassembled in the kitchen, the uncles talking about their preferred flavours of ice cream — mango, pistachio — and when they’d first tried it and how ice cream differed from kulfi and whether kulfi was better than gelato, Mira dreaded having to run the baby shower games. She would have to fake an excitement that matched the energy of this group; enthusiasm was not an emotion she wore naturally. When she’d been assigned the task of planning the games, she hadn’t realized she would have to lead the group through them, and hadn’t realized that one of the guests would include an appealing and unmarried person her own age. She fretted, remembering other times she’d been in such situations, the times she’d been at campus social gatherings and ducked into the bathroom to regroup, and when she’d shamed herself and family by freezing at that piano recital as her mother shook her head in the audience and Ravi asked in the car ride home, “Why didn’t Mira play the piano? She plays the piano at home all the time,” and the hypnotist — she would never tell anybody about the hypnotist.
It had happened only months ago, at the very start of the school year. She’d forced herself to go because though it was only weeks into the semester, she could feel the friend-ships forming around her while she remained solitary as an unbonded atom. Girls in her hallway had already established their five p.m. dinner routine and ceased inviting her after her fourth shy refusal. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to join them, but rather that she couldn’t see herself eating in front of them. The unusual nature of her eating habits became evident to her when she saw the other girls biting noncommittally into pears or leaving huge salads unfinished. Over the past few years, Mira had developed a mental block — she could not leave food on her plate. If she tried to combat this issue by taking smaller portions to begin with, she ended up just going back for more. If she were alone, she could sit in front of her plate using one tine of her fork to pick up the specks of food that were left (crumbs, bits of herbs), and a half hour could pass before she decided she was done. The only people she ever ate in front of were her family and Cynthia, who had been around since before the weird eating had evolved, and it had happened grad-ually and so lost its power to startle. At family dinner parties, Mira either slunk off to eat with the children or she wandered from room to room so that nobody noticed. She was terrified of eating an entire dinner, in a college cafeteria with limitless food, in front of the most ordinary girls she’d ever seen.
She’d reflected on her increasing fatness before, but for the first time now it struck her as really awful. Mira didn’t want to be somebody who ever even thought about food, wanted to be the sort of being she’d once heard a priest describe at a temple lecture she’d attended with her mother, a person who had thoroughly liberated herself from physical desires.
The hallmates went to frat parties three nights a week, taking scissors to the hems of each other’s skirts. Mira had gone to one of these during orientation week, where at the door of a house of castle looks and proportions, a boy wearing a white visor (pointless — it was nighttime) had asked her and the girls she went with, “Are you in or are you out?” and Mira wanted to laugh, though she was a little intimidated, but what was this, a cult? A secret society? Anyway, she had seen the same boy at general chemistry office hours the last Monday after-noon. One of the girls said, “We’re in,” shaking her hair with unconscious confidence, and so he’d passed to let them enter. Inside the castle were boys in T-shirts standing around, girls dancing boredly to overplayed songs on a carpet that squelched with beer — this is it?, Mira thought, I put on earrings for this? But then what had she expected? Princes? Jousting? And then she tried not to hate herself for her inability to dance; they stood the bunch of them in a circle (we could have done this in the dorm, she thought) and she self-consciously mimicked their movements, thinking, with each shoulder shrug or hip gyration, what limb she should move next.
And then the hypnotist, whose show she only went to see because she had called home to talk to her mother and Lala Aunty answered instead, and asked her, “How many friends have you made?” (only Lala Aunty would ask such a question so specifically) and Mira didn’t have a number to give her. Later, Mira was taking a shower in the big shared bathroom, pausing in her leg-shaving to pull at the flimsy curtain to close the persistent gaps on each side of the shower, when she met the eyes of a girl who was brushing her teeth.
“You want to come see the hypnotist with us?” the girl asked through her toothpaste, offhandedly, clearly expecting her to say no.
Mira said, “Yeah, all right,” ducking carefully behind the curtain before she could catch the reaction. She walked to the hypnotist show with four girls and felt like a puppy they had brought along, dangling around them as though on a leash, since these girls had clearly solidified their relationships, and girls tended to travel in groups of four, according to all the chick flicks she’d ever watched. The four split into two rows while walking and Mira tried to gauge which pair’s conversation would be easier to join — the first row compared fashion choices and the second compared leg injuries, and Mira had never kept up with trends or broken a bone. She chose the second row so she could adjust her pace to the girls in front of her. She laughed occasionally and tried to find a place to jump in. One of them monologued dazzlingly about the time she had cracked her fibia or tibula or one of those parts mostly unacknowledged except on lean, volleying girls. Mira thought the word fibia, tumbling in her head, would be better used as the name of a pretty girl who liked to stretch the truth.
They had gone early and found seats close to the stage before the rec room filled with students. The show began and the hypnotist asked for volunteers, and Mira of course did not volunteer, never would even think of doing so. But then the hypnotist, apparently wishing to engage the audience further, began pointing at people and asking them to come up on stage, even descending into the middle pathway and pulling people up from their seats. He got to Mira and eyed her, sized her up, and though she cowered, the girls she was with helped him urge her onto the stage. The hypnotist — wearing a black shirt and a bronze tie and speaking matter-of-factly — explained as he lined them all up that there were some people who just couldn’t be hypnotized.
Mira had never seen a hypnotist show and felt sick at the prospect of what she might be made to do — to crawl and bleat like an animal, to shout obscenities, to act in lewd scenes of the type she knew to expect from college shows — in front of an audience that wasn’t just that day’s audience, but one that would witness her life over the next four years. The hypnotist began his screening process, a series of steps with evocative names like Stiff Arm and Invisible Shackles. Her peers on the
stage fell into sleep, their heads falling to their chests. Their eyes closed and their arms dropped as they fol- lowed instructions. “A completely susceptible group,” the hypnotist marvelled, and then he saw Mira, sweating in her spot in the lineup and waiting to fall asleep herself, wondering if she would remember any of this, wondering if she was in fact hypnotized already, and he said, “Except you my dear. You didn’t concentrate did you?” He waved her dismissively and Mira slunk off the side of the stage. She had to make her way around the others and across to the stage stairs and then down the aisle and then over some people to her seat — she tripped over legs because they refused to get up. They just looked at her and some tried to hide laughs. She never could figure out if the others had just been pretending when the hypnotist made them squawk and moan, or when he made that one girl look into the crowd and see a massive naked orgy. Certainly she was glad that hadn’t been her, but while in the weeks that followed nobody remembered the other participants, the four girls in the hall remembered her. One found Mira eating alone in the dining hall and slapped her on the back and said, “Concentrate!” right as she opened her mouth to take a bite of her bagel. Another girl waved her necklace in front of Mira’s face, and another began to refer to her exclusively as “The Girl Who Couldn’t Be Hypnotized.” She announced it every time Mira went by. It wasn’t an endearing nickname, as it could have been; under the veil of humour she imagined darker intentions, a knowledge of her insecurities. It occurred to her too late that they might only be joking.
NOW AT THE baby shower, she tried to foist the games duty on Lala Aunty, who responded with, “Oh, no no, I can’t take credit,” as though organizing them had been a massive under-taking. And the game hosting wasn’t a massive undertaking either — all Mira had to do was stand up and give some instructions. She could be as involved or uninvolved as she needed to, she reassured herself.
“Okay, the first game is Pass the Parcel,” she said, from the corner of the room.
“Pass the parcel! Alriiight, pass the parcel!” they shouted.
“I’ll play the music and you guys pass this gift around, and when the music stops, you unwrap the top layer of wrapping paper and follow the instructions written there.”
They were all confused. Harshvardhan re-explained, “She’ll play the music and we just pass the parcel around until the music stops.”
“Tunes! Play some tunes!” an uncle shouted.
Mira played a Bollywood mix and they began passing it around, some playfully clinging too long to the package, and others tossing it hot-potato. The music stopped the first time and they all reacted together with immense eagerness. An uncle tore the blue paper and read Mira’s hastily penned instructions, which said to imitate a baby; without pause he squirmed and goo-gooed baby-like over the floor. The next time the music stopped, the aunties oohed at the new colour of wrapping paper revealed, out-of-season, Christmas-coloured, and the selected aunty wrapped a cloth diaper around a baby doll while her husband timed it, shouting, “Go!Go!Go!” while others agreed that she must be breaking some kind of record. Other victims underwent baby-food taste tests, told fairytales. Some were made to wear hilarious baby bibs throughout the rest of the game, others to drink ginger ale fruit punch from baby bottles. She kept thinking Harshvardhan was watching her, but couldn’t be sure with all the aunties in the way. Regardless, the possibility gave her adrenaline. Why had she been so worried about any of this? She wished she could play now; she wanted to be in the game. When the parcel landed on Harshvardhan, he belted out a nursery rhyme in remark- able falsetto. The last layer of paper instructed the player to give the parcel to the mother-to-be. She unwrapped the parcel and cooed over the stuffed elephant, squeezed his plush tusks.
They replenished chips and drinks and played the second game (baby charades), then evacuated the kitchen in one big horde while the aunties set up the dinner buffet table. Mira saw Harshvardhan looking at the family pictures hung across the living room walls. Most were regular 3” x 4” pictures framed in wood of varying shapes, sizes, and shades. Mira’s mother had arranged them according to a template from a decorating book; their edges collectively form a precise rectangle. She was glad most of them featured the thinnest versions of herself, in the nicest clothing she owned. At the bottom left corner of the rectangle, he stopped, squinting and eyeing the blurred photo.
He turned to her. “That’s your brother, right?”
“Yeah, Ravi. He’ll be around; I think my mom sent him out to buy ice.”
“And your name is Mira, right?”
She nodded. “Do you ever shorten your name?” she asked him.
“It’s just H,” he said, almost absently, then added, “Not because I don’t like my name, but because it saves time. Was this picture taken at a wedding?”
She looked more closely at the picture, moving tentatively near him. The pictures spread in front of her — faces aging and regressing from one to the next, her father only in the oldest ones, his clothes and hair a relic, her mother forcing a smile, Ravi failing to look directly at the camera.
“I think so. Yes. A wedding we went to in Pittsburgh. But that was a while ago.”
“I was there,” he said. “You sat at my table.”
She looked and looked at his face. There was a small white scar on his eyebrow, the only break in his skin tone.
“Your brother started dancing, remember? And I asked if you knew him. And you pretended not to. I saw the three of you guys all leaving together afterward.”
“Now I remember,” Mira said.
NORMALLY, MIRA WOULD have filled a dinner plate and retreated to her room to study, but today she stayed downstairs and hovered. She mingled with uncles who advised her on rrsp contributions, and aunties who asked her how she got her hair so straight.
H seemed to be moving parallel to her, so that they were never in the same conversation. Mira finished her food quickly and returned to the buffet, serving herself with nearly the same quantities she’d taken the first time.
Lala Aunty approached her. “Mira, will you go pour water for people?”
“Yup, I’ll just finish this quickly and then go around.”
“Maybe go now, so your mother has a chance to eat?”
“I’ll go in just a second,” Mira said, irritated, since at a glance around she could see that most water cups were still full, and that plastic water jugs had been placed within reach of the guests.
“You shouldn’t eat so much, Miru,” Aunty said, handing her a water pitcher.
It made sense that somebody like Lala Aunty, who made her living making meals, and who herself needed to lose twenty pounds, would notice Mira’s gluttony. Mira’s mother had either missed it or avoided commenting, and though Cynthia talked constantly about anorexics, it was in her usual derisive, hypothetical way. Aunty picked up a pitcher herself, and they went around to the seated people, offering them water, pouring it into their plastic cups, trying not to let the ice splash.
When they were back in the kitchen refilling the pitcher, Lala Aunty said, “I think your father knew his father back home. They went to college or some-such. And you know Harsha, he goes to your college, even though he’s from the States. Cheaper, I think, but still a top school. Smart family.”
“He goes where?” she hoped he wouldn’t overhear.
“Same as you, you didn’t know?”
“No, I met him at a wedding once, apparently,” Mira said, “but hadn’t seen him since then.”
“Oh, you will be great friends! You should ask him for a ride back to school.”
“He’s going back tonight, though, right? And I wasn’t plan-ning on leaving until tomorrow …”
“Come on, Mira! It’s to make some friends, that’s all. What do you do here anyway? Same as at school, most probably.”
When she had finished offering the guests water, Mira went to her room to pack up her cloth
es. She pulled off her selwar kameez and searched her closet for what to wear. Originally she’d planned to return in the same clothes she’d arrived in — old jeans, high school sweatshirt, bus ride clothing — but now she tried on everything she owned. Her breasts in the mirror seemed to form a horizontal cylinder under her shirts. Pants wouldn’t zip shut and her thighs were too tight against the fabric. Adding jewellery didn’t help. She tried on a necklace and the pendant looked like a tiny grain of rice next to her swollen face. A lovely hair band only isolated the accessory’s own beauty, emphasizing the deficiencies underneath.
She picked up the phone, heard her mother speaking, hung up, waited five minutes, pacing around her carpet, stepping in between the discarded clothing. When the phone was free, she called Cynthia and said, “I feel fat, Cynthia, ugh, I feel fat.”
“HAHAHA are you joking?” said Cynthia. There were voices in the background. Mira told her about H and her fashion dilemma, how nothing fit correctly. “Well don’t take a laxative, you have to sit in the car with him.”
“Cynthiaaa,” she said.
“Borrow from your mom,” said Cynthia. “She always wears those flowing ethnic tops.” So Mira borrowed a shirt from her mother’s closet and wore it over her jeans. She refreshed her eyeliner. What a genius Cynthia was. She imag-ined the sentimental message she would write in Cynthia’s next birthday card.
When she went downstairs, she looked around for H, trying to get up the nerve to ask for a ride back, but didn’t see him. The aunties and uncles had started to leave. Ravi was pulling jackets out from the closet in heaping armfuls and her mother was bringing out yogurt containers brimming with leftovers for the guests to take home. She figured he must have left already, without bothering to say goodbye — why would he say goodbye? With half-relief, she dropped her packed bag on the closet floor and went to help her mother, but Aunty intercepted her on the way.
