Babyji

by Abha Dawesar

  We walked back to class and went to our desks.

  “Hey, Vidur, did you ask your dad my question?” I asked as we sat down.

  “He says it depends on the context. Intelligence is more important than beauty if you’re a scientist, but if you are a model then beauty is more important.”

  I couldn’t make up my mind if I agreed with his answer. “But is credit for one better deserved than for the other?” I asked.

  “Good morning, children,” Mr. Garg said as he entered the room.

  Vidur leaned close to me and said, “I’ll tell you later.”

  Physics was infernally dull that day. The class took notes listlessly. I had read ahead and knew that I did not need to pay attention because I had followed the chapter.

  When Mr. Garg was writing on the blackboard I wrote in my textbook in pencil, “What did he say?” I shoved my textbook under Vidur’s nose.

  He wrote on a sheet in his notebook for a long time without looking up. First I thought he was writing me an answer, but then I figured he was taking physics notes because he just kept writing. Finally he closed his notebook and pulled it beneath the level of the desk, passing it to me from underneath.

  I opened it to the last page. He had written, “In real life it is unlikely that someone will be as intelligent or as beautiful as in your example. It is also unlikely that he will have a corresponding level of success. It is usually not clear whether someone has achieved success without effort, purely on the basis of native intelligence or natural beauty. Furthermore, even though beauty and intelligence are qualities one is born with and that one can enhance, the mind is the jewel of one’s body because it is what makes men most different from animals. It is the mind that is the raison d’être of man.”

  I was sure that Vidur had reported everything to me more or less verbatim. I didn’t know how “raison d’être” was pronounced. As I read the paragraph a second time I imagined his dad’s voice speaking to me. I tore the paper from Vidur’s notebook. I had to tear it slowly, millimeter by millimeter, to keep from being heard in class. I folded it and put it in my skirt pocket.

  When class was over we stood up and sang out, “Thank you, sir.” In Mrs. Pillai’s class I moved to the chair next to Sheela. I didn’t want her to think I was a prejudiced upper caste hypocrite whose opinions stemmed from my brahmin birth. It was important that she know I had thought about caste objectively and reached my conclusions through reason.

  “Exploitative brahmin,” she whispered when I took the seat beside her. She had used Chakra Dev’s language to taunt me. I couldn’t argue dispassionately now; I felt anger in my blood. Him of all people! How could she stand to use the words he’d used?

  “How so?” I asked, trying to keep calm.

  “You’re for the caste system,” she accused.

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Why don’t you want the backward castes to improve their lot?”

  “But I do. I just don’t think the Mandal policy is the best way, that’s all.”

  “They had to carry shit on their heads,” she hissed.

  I knew I could easily get her to see me in a different light by telling her about Rani. But she might recoil at the idea that I was physically intimate with someone from a jhuggi. It would be too much the other extreme.

  Mrs. Pillai walked in, and everyone got up. Before we could sing out she rolled her eyes to the ceiling, waved a hand, and said, “Please don’t ‘good morning’ me.” I wondered if India ever got irritated with Jeet and told him not to “Hello, World!” her. I smiled.

  I opened my copybook and uncapped my fountain pen. Before bringing my attention to class, I leaned toward Sheela and whispered, “The Mandal recommendations are perverse. If a lower caste guy gets admission on the basis of merit, he won’t count in the reserved category. Reservations are for those who won’t make it on merit.”

  Sheela ignored me and started taking notes.

  As Mrs. Pillai spoke, I stared at her long neck and the movement in the tendons of her forearms as she wrote on the blackboard. I let my mind freelance.

  When everyone stood up at the end of the class, I squeezed Sheela’s hand in my own. I had to go back to my seat for the next class since Mrs. Thaityallam was strict about that sort of thing. “Let’s talk in the break,” I said as I gathered my stuff.

  “Okay,” she replied, still a little cold.

  When the bell rang for break the classroom cleared out. The boys went off to play, and the girls went to watch them. Chakra Dev seemed to be lingering, but he eventually went out. I took my tiffin box with my marmalade sandwich that Rani had packed and walked to Sheela’s desk. The sun was beating down mercilessly, and I didn’t want to go outside.

  “I am sorry about what happened on the bus that day,” I said. We hadn’t talked about it at all. And I wasn’t sure why I brought it up.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” she said.

  “But it was my idea.”

  “No,” she said, lowering her gaze. I grabbed her chin to lift up her face. She looked straight at me. The whites of her eyes looked particularly large. I felt I was swimming in them.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked after a few seconds. I tightened my grip on her chin and lowered my face till my lips touched hers. The flesh of our lower lips was in contact. We got closer for a second, and then she pulled away.

  “Anamika, the door is open. Are we crazy?”

  “We’re alone,” I said calmly.

  “Look,” she said, pointing to the door. Unless someone actually put his head through the doorway, he would have been unable to see us. But for anyone who chose to pop his head in, we were in plain view. I got up from the small wooden chair I had been sitting on. My legs were sweating. They had left long wet marks on the chair. I went to the door and bolted it. I was sure our seats couldn’t be seen through the door’s small square window.

  “What will people think?” she asked.

  “Whatever they want?” I tucked my skirt properly under my legs so that my thighs would not touch the chair and sat down. Our lips made full contact again. As we kissed I leaned forward till she was pressing against the wall. She exhaled deeply on the side of my neck. I could not hear my own breath at all. I slowly slid my hand under her tie and let it rest on her chest. Her breathing got heavier. I reached for the button of her white school shirt and undid it.

  I felt her breathing change immediately. She gripped my hand and said, “Stop.”

  “Why?” I asked, moving away from her face.

  “Because I don’t want you to.”

  “But you want to kiss?” I asked aggressively.

  “I like kissing,” she said. My hands fell to my lap, and my shoulders dropped. She moved her face close to mine and started again. After a while the door rattled. The small bolt on the top of the door held fast, but the lower part of the door vibrated.

  “God,” Sheela muttered. I got up to unbolt it. It was Chakra Dev. Compulsive masturbator, I thought, as I let him in.

  “Brahmins are chutiyas,” he said, looking down at my shirt. I didn’t respond.

  “Why was the door locked?” he asked unpleasantly.

  “It’s none of your business,” I said sharply.

  “It’s girl business,” Sheela said to him, trying to smile. She didn’t want to ruffle his feathers.

  “Girls,” he snorted and walked to his desk.

  “Tired of playing in the field,” Sheela said to him. I wondered if she was thinking about him doing his thing seven times a day. Or whether his political position on Mandal had made her suddenly interested in him. I would do anything to seduce her, but I couldn’t pretend that my ideas on right and wrong were different from what they were.

  “It’s too hot to be outside,” he said to her. He opened his pencil box and took out a folded twenty-rupee note. Then he shut the pencil box and headed back to the door. When he reached it he turned abruptly and walked back, this time to where Sheela was sitting. I
was standing by the blackboard a few feet from the door, impatiently waiting for him to leave. He let his elbows rest on her desk and leaned forward till his face was close to hers, then whispered something. I saw her body press up against the wall and heard her say, “No.” He turned around abruptly and walked out. On his way out he gave me an angry look. I didn’t shut the door this time, but I closed it most of the way and went back to Sheela’s desk.

  “What did he say?” I asked.

  “He asked if I wanted a Coke from the canteen.”

  “Tell me the truth.”

  “I swear,” she said. She put her arm around my shoulder.

  “Do you want him?” I asked.

  “Such a cheapad, are you mad?” she said. But I wasn’t convinced at all. Despite his dirty nails and coarse facial hair he was still the most grown-up boy in the class. Almost a man.

  The bell rang, and the building resounded with the heavy steps of boys running in from the playing field. As the classroom filled up it got hotter and sweatier. An unpleasant smell pervaded the room. I went back to my seat next to Vidur. His forearms were dripping with muddied sweat. He pulled out his pencil box from his backpack and opened it. We all kept a six-inch ruler, a protractor, and a compass in our pencil boxes. He took out his ruler and scraped it on his forearm, as if he were wiping the excess water from a window he had just washed. His brown sweat gathered in a single line at his elbow and trickled down one edge of the ruler. He shook the ruler out and let the fluid drip to the floor. He did the same thing to his other forearm.

  I watched him, repulsed but unable to peel my eyes away from the flow. He saw me watching.

  “How horrid,” I remarked.

  He shrugged indifferently.

  “Your father would disapprove,” I added.

  He grinned. “You don’t know my father. He says men sweat, that it’s just a fact of life.”

  Beads of new sweat had formed and were sticking to the black hairs on his arms. I couldn’t imagine a grown-up Vidur, a well-built army colonel with more hair than Vidur had now.

  “Well, better to wipe it off than get my books dirty,” Vidur said matter-of-factly.

  “Girls are nicer,” I responded.

  “Huh?”

  “Never mind,” I said.

  As the day wore on I started getting excited and tense in anticipation of India’s visit to our house that night for dinner. I imagined her sitting in the drawing room and eating at the dining table. Our dining table and the side tables in the living room had a sunmica finish that I didn’t like. We had bright curtains with a flowery print, while I would have chosen a solid color. I wished I were living in my own house where everything was completely to my taste.

  In biology class I daydreamt of the evening to come, of Rani, my mother, and India talking to one another. I imagined them at ease, laughing and filling up the room with the different scents of their bodies and the colors of their clothes. But what if they felt more at ease with one another than with me? Rani and India could even fall in love. An affair with each other would suit them so much more than an affair with me, I thought uneasily. I reverted my attention to Mrs. Ganatra and her disquisition on genetics. Four sets of genes coupling in various sequences to express either dominant or recessive traits. Was I attracted to long hair and soft skin because of a gene in my body? This was not the time or place to ask Mrs. Ganatra. There would never be a time or place to ask Mrs. Ganatra.

  “I’m stressed,” I announced to Vidur when the bell rang.

  “My father says that only grown-ups can be stressed. When we kids get worked up we are merely nervous,” he said.

  “Nervous about what?”

  “About doing well. About not meeting our parents’ expectations.” Vidur’s father seemed to think that he knew everything. I wanted to meet him and show him there was a thing or two he didn’t know.

  At the end of the day I headed out of the school building with Sheela. “Call me if you ever want to talk,” I said as we separated to go to our respective buses.

  “You call me,” she said. As she climbed the steps of her bus she turned around and flashed a smile. It made her look like a model in one of the shampoo ads. Women would walk away from the screen and then swirl around to show their faces to the audience. I felt as if there was glamour in my life. I knew how grown-ups must feel, the men who watched the ads and the women who walked away, throwing their heads back to smile at the men with one last look. It was a forbidden world. Rani and India had not helped me discover it. They were protective of me. Sheela was my real teacher. She didn’t give in to me. She was not swayed by my youth or my intelligence or my maturity or anything else. I always had to persuade her. She was a challenge.

  xii

  Self-Immolation

  When I got home I found Rani washing our china. We rarely got it out of the cupboard. My mother was making a huge fuss over India. Getting out the china and having Rani put in so much effort all day made me apprehensive. I went to my room, kicked off my shoes, and removed my tie. I undid my belt and unclasped my skirt, letting it fall to the floor. Then I put on pants Rani had laid out on my bed. She had spoiled me thoroughly. My mother had always insisted I make my own bed, fold my own clothes, polish my own shoes. But I knew Rani would pick up after me. It was her way of showing love. Was this how women loved? Like slaves? Devotees? No wonder men took them for granted. My mother ran around cleaning up after my father. My aunt cleaned up after my uncle, my grandmother after my grandfather. On the one hand it outraged me. But on the other I found that being a little prince suited me. When I grew up I’d have a big harem full of women. Whenever I had a visitor I’d be able to wave my hand and say, “Oh! Don’t worry, she’ll do it,” as I pointed to one of my brides. In turn I’d provide for them, give them gifts, and protect them.

  There was a knock on my door, though it was wide open.

  “Babyji, what will you eat for lunch?” Rani asked me.

  My stomach felt small and shrunken. “Nothing,” I said.

  “Eat something, just a little bit,” she said.

  “What is there?”

  “I made you some karela. It’s my mother’s special recipe.”

  I hated karela. No amount of overcooking rid the gourd of its bitterness.

  “We don’t like karela, but we’ll have it since you made it,” I said.

  Thinking of harems and rich kings and the old polygamous order made me talk in the plural form. Rani didn’t notice. She skipped to the kitchen. I followed her.

  She put a small amount of the vegetable on a steel plate and gave it to me. I carried it to the dining room, expecting her to follow me, but she remained in the kitchen. I went to the phone and called India. I balanced my plate on my knees as we talked.

  “It’s nice to hear your voice,” she said.

  “I’m very stressed about tonight,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “You won’t tell my mother about us, will you?” I asked.

  “Of course not.”

  “I left my lab register on your table.”

  “I saw it.”

  “Can you bring it?”

  “I can carry my big purse. But how will I give it to you?”

  “If we get an opportunity, you can pass it to me. Otherwise, take it back.”

  “Okay.”

  “Do you want to bring Jeet? I forgot to ask.”

  “Since I haven’t heard from your school headmistress yet, he’s still living with his father.”

  “Have you ever had an affair with a woman?” I asked. I knew very little about her past except her husband and her married lover. Somehow India seemed to be the kind of woman who had always had lovers.

  “No.”

  “Do you think you’re gay?” I asked.

  “Women can’t be gay,” she said.

  “They can’t?”

  “It’s normal for women to fool around. It doesn’t mean anything.” She spoke with authority. It sounded so impersonal to reduce ou
r involvement to a phrase like “fooling around.”

  “Being gay is a Western construct. Indian sexuality is a spectrum, not binary,” she continued.

  I had no idea what she was talking about. “Western construct” sounded even more exotic than “freelance.” I had heard the word “binary” only in Mrs. Pillai’s class. She had said that binary representation of numbers only involved two numbers, zero and one. And spectrum was from physics, light dispersion through a prism. But I couldn’t ask India to clarify. She would think I was stupid.

  We hung up, and I swallowed the remaining chunks of karela, trying to chew as little as possible. It wasn’t bitter, but I still didn’t like it. I had been taught not to waste food. I took my plate back to the kitchen where Rani was squatting, washing the dishes in tepid water. I bent down and handed her my plate, then kissed her on the forehead. Her skin was damp with sweat, making my mouth taste salty. I felt as if only Rani loved me enough not to question me. Loved me almost in a blind sort of way. The salt in her sweat made me feel that I loved her in an unquestioning way, too. I held her neck and pulled it. She stood up.

  “Come to my room. Let’s lie down for a second,” I said.

  She washed her hands, then wiped them on her sari as she followed me. I wanted to hug her and be held. We lay down. She stroked my hair and smoothed my eyebrows. I closed my eyes and fell asleep. When I awoke Rani was no longer there. I heard movements in the kitchen. I looked at my table clock. It was almost time for my mother to get home. I washed my face and called Vidur. The phone rang a few times. I was about to hang up, thinking no one was home, when his father answered. I felt as if I had been speeding on my bicycle and had to brake suddenly.

  “Hello,” the voice said again.

  “Hello. May I speak to Vidur, please. This is Anamika,” I said.

  “Oh, hi, Anamika. Hang on one second. Let me see where he is.” He had taken my name in a firm handshake sort of tone. I waited for Vidur to come on.

  “Sorry, he seems to have stepped out. Can I give him a message?”

  Completely on impulse I said, “Maybe you can help me. I was wondering what ‘Western construct’ means.” I wanted him to know that I understood some part of it, so I continued, “I mean I know it’s something constructed in the West, an idea that’s Americanized or European, but . . .” I trailed off, feeling silly and self-conscious.