The Boy Who Loved

by Durjoy Datta

  When he disconnected an hour later, Baba told me about the discrepancies in Dada’s tax filings, and how an inquiry could have landed Dada in jail. I have no doubt about Baba’s exaggerations.

  Baba grumbled for an hour afterwards, marking out transactions on Dada’s bank statements.

  ‘Walking out of the house like he knows everything! Now see what he is doing. Making his father file his tax reports and his mother run around town scouring for doctors for his pregnant wife,’ said Baba.

  ‘You threw him out,’ I said.

  ‘Same thing,’ said Baba and got back to Dada’s papers.

  Baba worked tirelessly through the afternoon till late in the night. He clutched on to the papers as if they were a raft still keeping him afloat in his relationship with Dada. He told Maa and me that he needed to talk to Dada again to get some clarifications. I wondered if he missed his voice.

  12 September 1999

  My exams are going well and yet it means nothing. I sit on the row adjacent to Brahmi’s. In the last three exams she has been unusually fidgety. She used to write with three pens. Blue to write, black to underline and red to mark indents. I had picked up the habit from her. Now, she was using just one for her exams. Her question papers have an alarming number of circles for the ones she couldn’t solve. Most of them easy pickings. After every exam, she would tear the question paper and throw it in the dustbin. I would fetch the papers from the dustbin, tape them together and estimate her marks. She wouldn’t make it to even the top ten in class, not that it mattered any more.

  I had decided I would put an end to this. She had to do well. It was her last set of exams after all.

  It was mathematics. I took extra sheets thrice, two of which I didn’t need. I stole glances at Brahmi’s exam sheet which was sparsely filled. Instead of her god-like handwriting, the paper was filled with squiggles, scratched-out answers and big circles, as if her fingers had gone crooked overnight. With an eye on the clock, I copied the solutions of the toughest questions in the exam on to the two empty extra sheets in a tiny handwriting. On my way out to the washroom, I dropped the two sheets on Brahmi’s table. She picked them up and read through hurriedly. She cancelled out her solutions and attached the two sheets to her exam sheet.

  ‘You could have done that for me too,’ complained Rishab after the exam. ‘I’m definitely failing this one.’

  ‘You sit too far,’ I offered as an explanation.

  Brahmi was too embarrassed to say anything. Later on, on the bus, she thanked me as if she was doing a chore.

  ‘Something troubling you?’

  ‘Don’t help me in the next exam.’

  ‘Whatever is happening isn’t your fault.’

  ‘I know it’s not but I don’t like being dependent. How will I enjoy the marks I get when I know I cheated?’

  ‘My bad.’

  ‘Don’t feel bad. I would have done the same for you,’ she said.

  I felt bad and for which she held my hand and didn’t let go for the rest of the bus ride. It helped.

  When I got home, I saw the first chasm in Baba’s resolve to not accept Dada back into the family. We went to Saraswati Vihar, a ten-minute drive from our house. It wasn’t until we were in the flat with a property dealer and Baba was assiduously checking the taps and the hinges of the doors that I figured why we were there.

  On our way back, I asked Baba, ‘So Dada won’t live with us?’

  Baba shook his head. ‘No.’

  ‘But everyone in the colony already knows that Dada’s married a Muslim so what’s the difference where he stays?’

  ‘Our house is too small.’

  Baba drove on without answering any further questions. It wasn’t the house, it was his heart which hadn’t yet opened up to the possibility of a Muslim woman spreading a prayer mat in his living room.

  I had refused to have any conversation with Dada till the time I was sure of what’s going to be the new family dynamic. After the unfair meting out of punishment to me, I wanted to be sure of which side I wanted to be on. But today seemed like a good day to talk to him. I had expected an emotional, overwhelmed, crying Dada on the other side—like I was—but he was upbeat and boisterous.

  ‘How’s your girlfriend?’

  ‘She’s not my girlfriend.’

  ‘What’s she then?’

  ‘I love her and she loves me,’ I said.

  ‘Aww, you’re such a child.’

  ‘Says the one who has an expertise in taking wrong decisions.’

  ‘You’re in love now, aren’t you? Is that a decision you took, my genius brother?’ he asked.

  ‘Even decisions I take subconsciously are better than your conscious decisions,’ I said tight-lipped.

  Dada laughed and said, ‘You’re such a pain in the ass. I can’t wait to see you.’

  I laughed too. I couldn’t wait to see him either.

  My stellar mood took me to Brahmi’s house. It was seven and I was ambling beneath her house waiting for nightfall when I noticed a group of labourers climbing down from the scaffolding on the building adjacent to Brahmi’s. From where I stood I thought a carefully controlled jump could take me to Brahmi’s ledge and from there to her window. For the next hour I stretched and lumbered up and wished my limbs were made of titanium. When I bounced the idea off Brahmi, she thought I had lost my mind and that I would break my neck and die. But with time her opposition crumbled and her eyes glinted with hope and possibility. I said a prayer and climbed up the scaffolding, taking Lord Hanuman’s name on each step—like him, I would leap for love. It was harder than it looked and I was out of breath by the time it came for me to jump. She asked me to rethink the five-foot jump but it was too late for that. She knew it too. Catching my breath, I leapt, I missed, and I hung shoulder down from the parapet, my legs dangling precariously.

  Brahmi gasped and outstretched her hand quite uselessly. It took me all my might and more to pull myself up to the ledge. I climbed into her room, my T-shirt in tatters. The blood from the minor bruises had already started to clot. After she had whispered words of concern and we discussed in gestures how dangerous it was to sneak in like this, we became acutely aware of the silence and the darkness of the room. She lit a candle and asked me to be absolutely quiet. I could hear the clock ticking in the living room, I could see the fear on her face. There wasn’t much to see in her threadbare room, which had just a bed and small cupboard but what I wouldn’t give to be here with her, for this to be our little world. If one could be envious of inanimate objects I was of this room which held stories even she wouldn’t remember now. The room knew what made her laugh when alone, what made her cry, the boys she loved, the boys she hated, the boys for whom she felt both; it knew how short days were and how long the nights, knew her desires and her fears, her peeves and her likes.

  We knew how dangerous it was so we maintained a funereal silence. A little later, she kept her head on my shoulder and held my hand. We breathed softly. Our chests rose and fell at the same time. She wept softly and I found myself weeping in response. Dried of our tears, and too scared to use words, we stared at each other which was awkward at first, and then seemed like the most natural way to spend our life. I took in every detail of her face. A few days later, she would leave and I would no longer be able to see her every day.

  I left after an hour.

  18 September 1999

  Things have been a little busy. The preparations to welcome Dada are in full swing. Baba has been working tirelessly to get the flat ready in time for Dada’s arrival. He has maintained a serious, almost-angry countenance all through to prove he isn’t happy with the proceedings. He walks out whenever Maa mentions Zubeida Boudi’s name—who he still calls that Musalman girl—and then calls Dada ungrateful every time he offers to pay for incidentals. The frenzied activity at my house has helped me sneak out without being asked too many questions. Their rising concern and obsession around Dada would have rankled had I still been a child.

&nb
sp; For the sixth day in a row I prepared myself to climb up and jump; it has become easier with time. I rubbed my hands and stretched and I looked up and saw Brahmi on the ledge. My first instinct was to run below the scaffolding and spread out my hands to break her fall, and I was still staring agape at her when she hopped, almost merrily, from the edge to the scaffolding. Of course, why shouldn’t she? She was the athlete between the two of us. She clambered down easily.

  ‘I could have come up,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to let my attention waiver from you.’

  ‘I never said that.’

  ‘But you thought it. I know because I did too,’ she said. ‘Now come.’ She led me to Tauji’s Bajaj Chetak whose key she had flicked and we climbed on. ‘Hold me,’ she said.

  I rode pillion all the way to India Gate. Twice we came across police checkpoints and she dodged and sped through both. Her acute knowledge of the little lanes criss-crossing central Delhi left the policemen scratching their heads. She had taken me there for the kaala khatta chuski but we spent a few minutes gazing at the arched gate.

  ‘It takes at least 82,000 men to die to have a memorial made after them,’ said Brahmi later while sucking on her chuski. ‘I can’t believe you haven’t been here.’

  ‘I’ve been here only once, on a school trip. Not with family. Baba says the men whose names are scribbled served the British army and died for their cause in the First World War, so what’s the point? He calls for a bigger India Gate with names of the men of Netaji’s army or the Gandhians, even the revolutionaries.’

  ‘And what do you think?’ she asked.

  ‘I love the lighting here.’

  Our lips slowly turned beetroot red from the chuski and we argued about whose were redder.

  ‘How are things at home?’

  ‘It’s like a room filled with LPG with the windows thrown open. I don’t know what’s going to happen if a match is struck.’

  ‘Your Dada’s lucky that they came around.’

  ‘Dada always thought they would. Didn’t he say Maa–Baba would regret not being there the day he got married?’

  ‘Your Dada knows your Maa–Baba better than you do,’ she said.

  ‘That’s quite shocking. I hadn’t expected them to give in.’

  ‘I know what you mean. My father’s side of the family would have never accepted this. They disowned a cousin of mine who married a Dalit. When he had a child, my aunts in Delhi prophesized it would be an ugly, demonic baby. My aunts still calls her names even after so many years. No one visits them any more.’

  ‘That’s so not right,’ I said, with a right conferred upon me by my Dada’s marriage to someone outside our religion.

  ‘My cousin converted to Buddhism. He had got tired of everyone referring to his wife as a lower-caste untouchable.’

  I wanted to correct her, tell her that you never stop being a Hindu, or convert to Hinduism through a magic ritual. You’re just born into this religion, this way of life, and it’s always there with you, like a birthmark or a congenital defect, unlike Islam or Christianity. But, of course, like every organization, to sustain itself Hinduism adapted too and you could now convert to Hinduism or shed it like a snakeskin.

  We finished our chuskis and walked hand in hand for an hour, after which she had to leave. She refuelled the scooter, drove us back and climbed to her room with the same ease.

  At the breakfast table, I asked if Bengalis too have their versions of churis and chamars.

  ‘Yes, we do,’ Maa said. ‘But all that doesn’t matter any more. No one cares about caste except the politicians. For them every division is a vote bank.’

  ‘So you will have no problem if someone in our family gets married to someone who’s an SC, ST, a Dalit or something?’

  Maa–Baba looked at me, horrified.

  ‘We would mind,’ grumbled Baba.

  ‘Between a Muslim and a Dalit? Who would you choose?’

  I was asked to finish my breakfast instead of asking them silly questions. Whatever division Maa was talking about is a vote bank for a reason. Because those divisions exist. At least in my house they do.

  Now while I am writing this, I am thinking about Brahmi’s niece and Dada’s unborn child, children of unholy alliances. If this were 1994, we would have known what the sex of the child was. Now it’s illegal.

  ‘It’s because of the Haryanavis,’ my maternal uncle had said a few years ago. ‘They do these tests and if it’s a girl, they go home and plunge knives into the wombs of their pregnant women and kill their daughters.’

  I had asked Maa once, ‘Do Bengalis do that too?’

  ‘We are not brutes like the northerners.’

  Dada had laughed and said, ‘What about the Great Calcutta Killings of 1946?’

  ‘That’s ancient history,’ Baba had butted in.

  Dada had laughed again and said, ‘You teach him about Ghor and Ghazni and Aurangzeb. That’s not ancient history?’

  ‘What had happened?’ I asked.

  ‘Thousands of Bengalis massacred each other. Men were cut up, burnt alive, women raped.’

  Baba had argued, ‘The Muslims did it. They wanted Pakistan. We didn’t do anything.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘We! The Hindus. We never attack first. That’s our weakness,’ Baba had said.

  25 September 1999

  She had waited until late to tell me.

  Like the past nights, we were roaming the streets on her borrowed scooter. She drove past Tamarind Court where earlier this year a model had been shot dead by a powerful man, and past IIT Delhi and AIIMS, which were the only two colleges worthy enough for the Gangulys. We came to a stop at Nizamuddin railway station, where we ate fried rice from a stall outside. Every night seemed endless till it was time to leave. And the next night, eons away. Time’s plasticine, malleable; when love’s in the equation, it’s as relative as Einstein theorized and was understandably lauded for because every fool in love wants a scientist to back what they feel.

  ‘Vedant has found me a job,’ she said when it was time to leave.

  ‘It had to happen,’ I said more to myself than to her.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I will miss you, Raghu. I will miss this.’

  ‘I will not miss bandaging you,’ I said.

  ‘I will not miss you threatening to murder my Tauji.’

  ‘I’m not promising anything. Is that why you insisted to pay for everything today?’

  ‘I’m going to be a paid professional,’ she said. ‘It’s the least I can do.’

  ‘When do you leave?’

  ‘He will call me and tell me. He has asked me to be ready. His friends are staying over at his place and he wants them to leave before I come.’

  ‘I will have to figure out buses to Gurgaon,’ I said.

  ‘That’s something I wanted to tell you, Raghu. I don’t want you to come there very often. You will have to concentrate on your studies. I wouldn’t want you to take your academics lightly and I don’t want to be guilty of that.’

  ‘Oh please, don’t overestimate your importance in my life. You’re probably the tenth most important in the list,’ I said.

  ‘You’re the first in mine.’

  ‘And that’s why you’re going so far?’

  ‘Raghu—’

  ‘I’m sorry, I apologize. That was needless.’

  ‘Come here,’ she said.

  She hugged me till her tears trickled down my shoulders.

  ‘See, it’s you who’s crying,’ I said. ‘I’m absolutely fine. I will be totally fine without you. Like who are you? I’m not going to miss you at all. Not even a little bit.’

  ‘Shut up,’ she said and she laughed and cried some more. She left me wondering if I would see her again.

  As I was writing this and trying not to cry like a baby, Maa knocked on the door. I looked at the watch. It was 3 a.m. I was prepared with what to say to her if she had found me sneaking out again. I have friend
s, Maa, I need to see them. Everyone was there so why couldn’t I be? So I opened the door. She came and sat on the bed and stared at me for a good minute. Quite possibly to give me time to confess before she would begin laying out what I was accused of.

  ‘I know you’re getting older,’ she said, her tone serious and full of regret. ‘Dada and you think that we come in the way of your happiness and so we have stopped interfering in your lives. All we can do is what parents are required to do for their children. We know you go out every night and we don’t know where you go, what you do with your friends, and we don’t ask. We had decided not to say anything to you. But as your Maa–Baba, we worry. That much right we have as parents, don’t we? Your Baba doesn’t sleep till the time you come back home. We feel bad, we worry, but we think there’s no point telling both of you what your boundaries are. You are free to do what you want. Times are changing. But there’s one little request I have of you.’

  ‘Yes, Maa?’ I asked.

  She opened her palm and there was little sachet in her hands. Rough Man Rider, the sachet said, on a graphic of a man riding a horse. It was a condom, not shampoo as I had suspected for a second.

  ‘Maa. That’s not mine,’ I said.

  ‘I found it in our dustbin outside,’ she said. ‘Raghu, you will lie now and I don’t want to hear anything from you. All I wanted to tell you is that you’re too young for this. I’m requesting you to concentrate on your studies.’

  ‘Maa, I do!’

  ‘Your practical files are shoddy, assignments are not up to the mark. Amarjeet ma’am says you don’t attend all the classes because of your extracurricular activities.’

  ‘You met my teacher?’

  She got up to leave. ‘Think about the girl who’s doing these dirty things with you. What kind of a girl would she be? She’s spoiling both you and her future.’

  ‘Maa, I—’

  ‘I am requesting you again, shona. Don’t do these dirty things in my house,’ she said and left.