Rani and Sukh

by Bali Rai

  ‘Right,’ she said, pointing at me. ‘This is my friend Rani. She’s fit and she’s clever and if I was a lad I’d give her one and she fancies you – you lucky little man . . .’

  Sukh went a shade of red that only Asians can. He was looking at anyone, anything, but me. And especially not at Nat, who hadn’t finished yet.

  ‘And I don’t care about all that my-parents-don’t-want-me-to-go-out-with-girls crap. Just lie to them. Everyone else does . . .’

  Sukh frowned. ‘But my parents don’t give a shit who I—’ he began.

  ‘Don’t be rude, Sukh – Mummy’s speaking,’ snapped Natalie, cutting him short. Talk about shut him up. He just looked down at his feet.

  ‘So be a good boy and ask her out, will you?’ finished Nat, finally taking a breather.

  I looked at him and grinned. My cutest, I-know-this-look-gets-the-men-going face. And then something in my head went pop and my heart skipped a beat. Like magic or something.

  ‘Hi,’ he said, through the haze of dreamy thoughts that flooded through my mind.

  ‘Hi,’ I replied, smiling.

  ‘Erm . . . do you . . . er . . . fancy—?’

  ‘Yeah she does,’ said Natalie, answering for me. ‘Meet her after school – down by the gates.’

  Sukh looked from me to Nat and then back at me, smiling wide. ‘OK,’ he said to me. ‘See you later, Rani.’ He turned and walked out of the library.

  ‘My, oh my, his ass looks fine in them jeans,’ sighed Nat, watching him go.

  ‘He said my name,’ I told her with an inane grin. ‘He said my name.’

  Natalie looked at me with something approaching pity. ‘Oh my God . . .’ she said, shaking her head.

  We met, Sukh and me, out by the gates after school and he walked me to the bus stop. Well actually, he walked me and Natalie to the bus stop, but Nat did keep a discreet distance behind us. Like all of two feet. Still, it was so nice just to talk to him and realize that he was promising. He didn’t giggle once, made no reference to his favourite football team and said nothing about collecting things of any kind. And he smelled nice – clean and fresh, which is always a must. By the time we arrived at the bus stop I was already in love. Well, you know what I mean . . . There was just something about him that made me smile inside. Because we were both from British Punjabi families I asked him what his surname was.

  He smiled at me. ‘Bains,’ he said.

  ‘Mine’s Sandhu,’ I said.

  I asked him what his star sign was.

  ‘Sagittarius – my birthday’s on the first of December.’

  As my bus pulled into the stop I nearly fell over. ‘December the first?’ I repeated.

  Sukh gave me a funny look. ‘Yeah – why?’

  I stepped onto the bus. ‘It’s the same day as mine,’ I told him. He started to speak but I put my finger to my lips. ‘See you tomorrow.’

  I watched him as the bus moved away until he disappeared out of sight.

  SUKH

  SUKH STOOD AND watched the bus disappear into the distance, feeling himself shiver slightly. There was something about Rani Sandhu that made him feel possessed. He felt drawn to her. And not just because he fancied her like crazy. There was something else. The way she looked at him. The little lights that flickered in her eyes. The way she held her head when she spoke to him. The soft, musical tone of her voice. It was like he already knew her – knew what she was going to say and how she would say it. When she looked at him it felt as though his face were being bathed in a warm light. And inside him something other than raging hormones stirred – something that he could never talk to his mates about. And then there was the business about sharing a birthday. Was that Rani having a laugh or was it true? Did they really share their birthday? How weird would that be if it were true?

  He shook his head and turned back towards the school. He had football practice and was late. Hopefully Jaspal had covered for him. He thought about the upcoming City Cup Final between his school and a less racially mixed school from an estate out to the east of the city. The game was going to be hard. Hard and dirty. The estate wasn’t known as the kind of place where Asians were particularly welcome. And their school team was good. He wondered who the coach would pick for the side, but the closer he got to the school gates, the more his thoughts drifted back to the events of earlier in the day.

  There was the good-looking mad girl who was Rani’s best friend, Natalie – the kind of girl that scared most of the lads because she was so upfront and straight about things like sex. Most of the boys in Sukh’s year called her a slag and that, but in a strange way Sukh actually admired her. She was independent and didn’t take any crap from them. She reminded Sukh of his own sister, although Parvy was much older and lived on her own; she worked for a big recruitment agency. Sukh’s family had wanted Parvy to get married in the traditional way, to a boy from the right caste and culture and all that, but Parvy had just packed up and left.

  Sukh was proud of his sister. She wasn’t some timid, shrinking-violet type like lots of other Asian women, who bowed to the pressure from their families. She was a go-getter and Sukh liked that. She also had a wicked flat in a converted hosiery mill in the centre of Leicester, which was empty because Parvy was away, working for her company in New York. And she had given Sukh a key. What was not to like?

  The reaction to Parvy leaving hadn’t been like a bomb going off. Sukh’s father, Resham Bains, hadn’t threatened suicide, murder and every combination in between. He hadn’t threatened to kill Parvy, kill her mother, kill himself. Gas the entire family. Not like in a lot of traditional Punjabi families, where Parvy’s actions would have been seen to dishonour the family name. Instead he had gone into a sulk that lasted for all of a month before Sukh’s mum had put her husband straight. He was just angry that Parvy had won a power struggle against him – and become ‘the bloody fish ’n’ chip goreeh’, as Sukh’s dad put it. Become a Westerner. Sukh’s mum had pointed out that their daughter was an educated woman and had the right to pursue her career, regardless of tradition. Sukh had agreed with his mum. What had his old man expected, asking them to grow up in England? Not to become English?

  Sukh’s elder brother, Ravinder, had toed the line of tradition without being asked and married some girl from Birmingham, all arranged by the family. He lived on the other side of Leicester with his wife Kamal, but was always coming round to see their mum. As for Sukh – well, he was far too young to even consider stuff like weddings but he knew one thing for sure – whoever he eventually married, it was going to be for love and not out of some stupid desire to uphold honour or tradition.

  Parvy still got a load of grief from the rest of their extended family – from every uncle and cousin, and every unrelated fat bastard who came from the same village in India and had moved to Leicester. They all had something to say. Sukh winced as he remembered punching one of his cousins, Daljit, because he’d said that Parvy would end up on the street, like a prostitute, without the support of her family. Sukh remembered how angry he’d become – he wasn’t about to let anyone slag off his sister, family or not.

  And then there was Rani herself.

  Even thinking about her gave Sukh butterflies. As he made his way towards the locker rooms he thought about her face, her hair, the way her hips swayed when she walked. The proud way her breasts sat in her shirt. And then he shook his head as if he were trying to shake such thoughts out of himself. He was going to have to hide what he was thinking from the lads – imagine the grief they’d give him if he went all chick-flick on them?

  Try as he did, though, he just couldn’t stop thinking about her. Not even halfway through the practice session when he needed to concentrate on marking his opponent. Not when he missed the ball completely two metres from the goal line. And not even when he was in the showers surrounded by his mates, all laughing and joking and chatting pure slackness about the girls they had dealt with – mostly in their dreams. Man, he had the bug and he had it bad.


  But there was something worrying his blissful thoughts too, nagging at the heart of his new-found heaven, only he couldn’t work out what exactly. Some kind of vague memory that he didn’t want to be bothered by. Instead he missed the bus on purpose and walked home on a cloud, singing some lover’s rock tune in his head, something that Parvy listened to all the time.

  RANI

  I STARTED SEEING Sukh properly after that first walk to the bus stop. Well, when I say properly, I mean as my actual boyfriend. I’d had male friends before – you know, the kind of guys you flirt with at school, generally ones in the years above, who seem so much easier to talk to and more interesting than the geeks who are the same age as you. But I’d never actually had a boyfriend. Not a real, actual, call-up-all-the-time and text-till-your-fingers-ache kind of boy. I was excited and nervous and a bit scared all at the same time. I mean, what if I was wrong about him and he was just like all the other boys in my year? The kind that tells his mates everything that he does with his girlfriend. And I’m not talking about shopping either . . . I’d seen boys like that, talking about which bits of their girlfriend they had touched or seen naked and all that immature stuff. Real bastards who were just using the girls they were with. Like the guy Natalie lost her virginity to.

  He was called Martin and he was in the year above us. Nat had pursued him for ages. She really fancied him and I suppose he was kind of nice, in a rugby player sort of way – if you like that sort of thing. He was all shoulders, thighs, big smile – and hairy arse, according to Nat. And eventually he’d given in and gone out with her. First it was all about holding hands and five text messages a day, and then dates to the cinema and shopping trips to Nottingham and stuff. Nat was really happy and I was really pleased for her because she was smiling all the time and seemed to have found the right man.

  And then he started telling her that he loved her and that he wanted to stay with her for ever – real Hollywood romance type things. Nat, for all her bravado and independent-woman crap, is a hopeless romantic at heart. She took Martin seriously when he told her that he wanted to sleep with her, to take their relationship on to the next level, as he put it. Eventually, at some house party thrown by one of Martin’s friends that I hadn’t been allowed to go to, Nat slept with him. I couldn’t believe it when she told me about it the next day. I mean, she was only fourteen – it was against the law. And I had all these moral arguments going on too, burned into my conscience by my family. No sex before marriage. No boyfriends before marriage. Let’s face it, as far as my family were concerned, with me it was no nothing before marriage. That’s why I had been so shocked – it was just something that I thought I’d never do, not unless I was really in love.

  But Nat was really into him and she believed him when he said that he felt the same. Then, the following Monday at school, he just blanked her. Like she didn’t exist. Stopped sending her texts, ignored her when she passed him in the corridor. Serious, big-time wanker type stuff.

  Nat was distraught. She felt used and dirty, and no matter how much I tried to tell her differently, she thought that everyone at school was talking about her – so much so that at one point she didn’t come to school for a week. It was really horrible seeing my best friend go through so much pain and anguish. Some of the other girls at school made it even worse by calling her a slag and calling me names too, just for defending her. One gang of Asian girls were really nasty. They went and spread rumours all over school about how Nat would sleep with anyone. It was horrible.

  That’s why Nat ended up seeing Dev. Not only because he was genuinely nice but because he didn’t go to our school and he waited for nearly six months before he even brought up the subject of sex. He helped her through that whole period after Martin when she was as low as she’s ever been. And he did it all because he wanted to. She didn’t even kiss him for four months – imagine that. Most guys would have done a runner inside a week. But then again, Dev is older than us and he’s really clued up about things. He lets Nat be who she is rather than trying to make her into someone she’s not like lots of other men do.

  The reason I’m telling you all of this is that Nat’s experiences are like the exact opposite of mine. I come from a really traditional Punjabi family and my dad and my three older brothers are strict as you can get. I’d never had a boyfriend before Sukh. Never even had a boy call me up at home or on my mobile. Sukh was my first foray into the world of relationships and I had Nat as my guide, wary of every move he made.

  ‘He seems like a nice boy,’ she said, about two weeks after I started seeing him. ‘But if he messes you about I’ll cut off his danglies with a pair of garden shears.’

  ‘It’s not him I need to worry about, Nat,’ I told her.

  ‘You on about your family?’

  I nodded at her. ‘Yeah. I’m going to have to be ultra-secretive. They’ll kill me if I get found out.’

  ‘Not with me around, babe. They’ll have to kill me first.’

  She let out a squeal – something she’d picked up from a Kung Fu movie – and then kicked out her leg, narrowly missing a cute boy in our class. The boy, Parmy, raised his eyebrows at her and then looked away when she blew him a kiss.

  I looked around to make sure that no one was listening to us. Rumours had a nasty habit of getting round our school quicker than the flu.

  ‘What if someone sees me with him?’ I whispered.

  Nat smiled. ‘Don’t shag him in public and I think you’ll—’

  I think the look on my face made her realize her mistake and she started to take me more seriously. She leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. ‘Sorry, Rani.’

  ‘I hear stories all the time about girls who get spotted in town, hand in hand with their boyfriends, by interfering old hags called “auntie-ji”.’

  ‘You’ll just have to be careful,’ replied Nat.

  ‘This one girl, from Coventry, got beaten up by her brothers for having a boyfriend. They locked her in her bedroom for months—’

  ‘Let them try and do that to you,’ said Nat defiantly. ‘I’d be onto the coppers like a flash.’

  ‘Believe me – with my old man, all the police would find is a dead body. Mine or his.’

  ‘Is he really that bad?’ Nat looked unconvinced.

  ‘What about that time you came round before your first date with Dev, wearing make-up and a short dress?’

  Nat grinned. ‘Yeah, and did I look sweet, sister. Sweet like jalebi.’

  ‘Well, after you went he called you a white whore and told me that I wasn’t allowed to see you outside of school.’

  ‘He spent enough time looking at my legs when I was standing in your hallway,’ she replied.

  ‘Yeah, well, he’s like that, Nat. You know he is. I tell you all the time.’

  ‘Yeah, Rani, but I never thought it was that bad. I mean, I knew it was bad but not . . . Oh, I dunno . . .’

  ‘I don’t mean to have a go but you won’t ever understand, Nat. You won’t ever face anything like that in your life. It’s hard to comprehend if you don’t live it.’

  ‘This is beginning to sound a bit heavy, sweetie.’

  ‘This is my life. As we know it. Three brothers who think I shouldn’t speak unless I’m asking whether I should make roti. A father who has a coronary at the mention of anything to do with Englishness and banishes me to the kitchen whenever anything interesting is being discussed. And a mum who doesn’t say a word unless it’s to slag off some other family or to defend her precious favourite son, Divy.’

  Nat gave me a hug. ‘Oh, darling. At least you’re still gorgeous and mine . . .’

  ‘Natalie – is that a private hug or can we all have one?’

  It was Mr Grimthorpe – the teacher from the pits of pervert hell. Maths lessons with him usually involved trigonometry, algebra and a feel of your bra as he gave you one of his special back rubs.

  Nat looked at me and giggled. ‘In yer dreams, wankyboy,’ she muttered, just loud enough to raise a l
augh but not enough for Grimthorpe to hear. Not that a lack of evidence bothered him.

  ‘GET OUT!’

  Natalie stood up, bowed to the classroom, bit her thumb theatrically at Grimthorpe, and exited the classroom like it was a stage. I sat where I was, wishing I could join her.

  Sukh was waiting for me after the lesson, standing just down the corridor from the classroom. I was the first one out.

  ‘Hey!’ I said, smiling, when I saw him. I had been hoping he would be there.

  ‘Hi – just thought I’d meet you out of class. How was it?’ he asked, as I looked into his amber-coloured eyes and smiled inside.

  ‘Oh – same old thing. Grimthorpe was being his usual self and maths is about as interesting as a family get-together at the Sikh temple.’

  Sukh smiled at my joke. ‘Wouldn’t know,’ he said. ‘Don’t ever go.’

  ‘What?’ I replied, imitating my dad. ‘Calling juself the Punjabi!’

  We both laughed.

  Nat came striding over as we stood looking at each other.

  ‘Hi, Nat – nice exit earlier. How are you going to pass your maths GCSE if you never stay in the classroom long enough to open your textbook?’

  ‘Oh, stuff it. We’ve got another year before I’ve gotta worry about how many xs equal how many ys. I mean, who needs that shit, really?’

  ‘Maths is a science . . .’ I began, mimicking another maths teacher we had.

  ‘Can’t see how quadratic equations are gonna be much use to me as an actor, dahling.’

  ‘That what you wanna do, yeah?’ asked Sukh.

  ‘Absolutely, dahling. How very sweet of you to enquire . . .’ Nat grinned like a cat.

  ‘I suppose that voice is just practice for the real thing then?’ replied Sukh.