Babyji

by Abha Dawesar

  “Do you want to learn to read and write?” I asked suddenly.

  India’s eyes met mine as if she had been thinking the same thing. The airwaves around my mother’s head and mine and India’s were suddenly like a busy thoroughfare, jammed with synchronous signals.

  “We can teach you,” my mother said.

  “I think we should teach her to read and write English, not Hindi,” I said.

  “Maybe,” India said, sounding doubtful.

  “I’ll study,” Rani said, her voice excited.

  “Will Papa agree?” I asked in English.

  “He will or he won’t,” my mother said with a shrug. She and India looked ready to go to battle on Rani’s behalf.

  “Did you do Each One Teach One?” India asked. It had been a national literacy program where educational kits were distributed free of charge and each literate person was encouraged to teach an illiterate person. People tried teaching their servants. The campaign had failed to touch my family or me. But Rani was a pulsing presence in our house. The possibility of educating her seemed real.

  “No. Did you?” my mother asked India.

  She nodded. “It didn’t work too well. We should aim for more than mere literacy. Once she knows the basics she should go to a school,” she said in English.

  When Rani heard the word “school,” she said, “If I can go to school I promise to learn fast.”

  “Do you know how to write anything in Hindi?” my mother asked.

  “No.”

  “You’ll learn quickly,” my mother said assuringly.

  “Memsahib, you’re a goddess,” Rani said, looking at my mother. Her eyes were filmed in tears. My mother placed a hand on Rani’s shoulder. My heart stopped.

  “This is a fruitful evening!” India said.

  “Yes, who would have thought?” my mother said.

  Sitting on the couch between India and my mother and facing Rani, I felt like I was some sort of patriarch already. They were all mine. I was the luckiest person in the world. Rani got up and took away the dessert bowls. I switched off the TV. It was too late for the government to separate me from Rani just by listing her on some schedule. My brahmin fluids had already mixed with her low caste ones. Mandal could stuff his list of schedules up his nose.

  “That was a good idea, Anamika,” India said, turning to look at me.

  “Yes,” my mother said.

  “We all thought it,” I said. The thought electron called “educate Rani” had bounced from one head to another because we had been sitting so close. We were all slices of one big brain. Our thoughts and feelings were like a river that flowed from the mountains down to the plains and to the mouth of the Bay of Bengal. Much the same as India herself, her sacred geography intersecting many states and making it impossible for political language brokers and separatist movements to divide her up with any precision. It was an entirely new feeling of belonging, adventure, sharing, and being something greater than one small person. Instead of paranoia about the connecting lines that joined India to my mother and Rani, I felt all the more enriched by their connections. In the end they were all connected to me.

  India got up, saying it was time for her to leave. We escorted her to the door. Rani came from the kitchen to see her off as well. India hugged my mother and lightly touched Rani’s elbow. I told my mother I would see India to the outer gate. Once there I leaned forward and gave her a quick kiss on the lips.

  Later that night, when Rani and I were in bed, I said, “Basanti, good night,” in English.

  Rani tentatively said, “Anamika, gud-naight.”

  “G-u-d niiight,” I said slowly, phonetically.

  “Good night,” she said with perfect diction.

  xiii

  C Molecule

  School the next morning was agog with news of the self-immolation. During the assembly I asked the principal if he wanted to address the students again. He declined. The boy who gave the talk for the day spoke on the production of artificial rain using airplanes for seeding clouds. When he finished, we all trooped into classes.

  In a grim mood I pulled out my chemistry textbook for the first period and realized that I had forgotten to retrieve the lab register from under the sofa in the living room.

  “Would you set yourself on fire for a principle?” Vidur asked me as I opened my textbook to the carbon chapter.

  “No,” I said sternly.

  “Come on, Anamika, where’s your sense of humor?”

  “What’s funny? People are dying.”

  “Hey, look, charcoal and diamond are one and the same thing,” he said, pointing to the little blurb next to the chapter heading.

  It made me smile.

  “So, who is India?” he said.

  “Just a friend,” I said.

  “It’s not a name,” he said.

  “It’s a nickname.”

  “Girl or boy?” he asked.

  “Woman. Divorced. Mother of a child,” I said, summing her up as my mother had.

  He didn’t react.

  “So, did you ask your father about binary Western constructs?”

  “Yes,” he said, a devilish grin appearing on his face.

  “And?”

  “You wouldn’t believe the example he came up with,” Vidur said. We were interrupted by the entrance of Hydrogen Sulfide.

  “Anamika,” she called as soon as the class was settled.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said. I was resigned to being her favorite. I was one of the few creatures of the fair sex she did not hate. It was nothing short of a curse to be Hydrogen Sulfide’s chosen one.

  “Write the formula for isobutyl alcohol on the board before we move on.”

  I got up and went to the board. I hated writing with chalk. The crumbly calcium carbonate stuck under my nails and left me feeling unclean. The chalk made a squeaking sound as it touched the blackboard. It made the roof of my mouth tickle. I wrote the formula quickly and went back to my seat. Vidur was smirking when I sat back in the chair next to him.

  “Anamika, Anamika, smell my rotten eggs,” he teased in a whisper.

  I put my foot on his and stamped it firmly.

  “Carbon, children,” the teacher said and turned to the blackboard.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Vidur pleaded. I lifted my foot.

  “What was the example?” I wrote to Vidur in my book next to the diagram of a diamond.

  “Later,” he wrote beneath it.

  I sat through class waiting for it to end. Everything from the self-immolating schoolboy’s burnt brahmin body to the hardest substance known to man was made of the same damn C molecule. I was reminded of what my father had said once, “Everything is one thing. It is nothing.”

  I brooded. The excitement from yesterday had passed. India, Rani, Sheela’s silky black hair—nothing made me feel special anymore. Life felt interminable. It was no longer clear to me where anything was going. If we all had to turn into carbon sooner or later, then why not sooner? When the class ended it no longer mattered to me what Colonel Mathur had told Vidur. We stood up for Hydrogen Sulfide to leave and sat back down. I started pulling out my book for Mrs. Pillai’s class.

  “So, don’t you want to know?” Vidur asked.

  “Tell me,” I said.

  “He said that a typical Western binary construct was action versus inaction.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, Westerners think that people are either doing things or not doing things. But in reality, sometimes one can do and not do at the same time. Meditation is an example. By doing, one is. And by being, one does.” Vidur spoke with his eyes shut as if he were reciting from memory.

  I nodded, though I was not sure what all this meant. It sounded like what my father had said.

  “My father said paradox is the essence of being Indian.”

  “India is the essence of being Indian,” I replied.

  “Huh?”

  “Nothing,” I mumbled under my breath.

 
“You mean your India?”

  “Nothing, Vidur,” I said, this time firmly.

  “What’s going on?”

  Mrs. Pillai saved me by walking into class. I jumped up from my seat and sang out loudly before she could stop me, “Good morning, ma’am.”

  “Anamika,” she said, looking in my direction and rolling her eyes to the ceiling. The class burst out laughing since no one else had got up. I turned red and sat back down.

  “What’s wrong with you today?” Vidur asked, leaning closer to me.

  I ignored him.The thought about meditation had put me in a different mood. Life felt like a roller coaster ride. I had never been on a roller coaster, but I’d read the phrase in newspaper articles often enough. My mood changed at the end of each period. I wondered if such inconsistency and turbulence were signs of weakness or merely of age.

  “Anamika, you’re not listening,” Mrs. Pillai said, shooting a look in my direction.

  “Sorry, ma’am,” I said. There was no point in denying it. I sat up straight in my chair and picked up my pen. Vidur looked at me.

  She drew some Venn diagrams on the board, a null set with nothing in it, then another set à that was the set of all objects in the universe that were not A. A and à made up a complete universe, a binary universe. Everything depended on how you defined your sets. If you defined B as not A then the universe was binary. Sexuality, action, and even paradox were part of a binary universe. Or one could choose quantum physics, orbits, and energy levels that allowed for many states and uncertainties. My mind had wandered again. I came back into the orbit of mathematics. It was disloyal to think of physics in Mrs. Pillai’s class. Math had the same concepts as physics. I could define my sets so that the universe was the sum of sets A, B, and C or better still 1, 2, 3, . . . n. The choices were infinite, my possibilities limitless.

  When class ended Mrs. Pillai looked at me and said, “Come out a second.”

  I followed her out. It was a hot day, and the fans in the classroom were ineffective. We had all been sweating, but I felt my body release even more sweat. I was afraid she was going to reprimand me.

  “What’s the matter? You look so dreamy,” she said.

  “I was listening,” I said.

  “Something’s going on, Anamika. Do you want to talk?”

  “Are you happy?” I asked.

  “I’m tickety boo,” she said.

  “Would you put your hand on your heart and say you were truly happy, would you?”

  She paused a moment, then said, “I guess so.” She let out a breath. “What’s the matter? You’re not happy?” she said after she’d recovered from her own hesitation.

  “I’m fine. That’s not the problem,” I said.

  “You’re growing up. It’s a tough period. You’re a teenager.”

  I didn’t want this grown-up to adolescent talk. I forced a smile so that I could end the conversation. “Thank you for checking, ma’am,” I said, getting formal.

  “You’re welcome,” she said and turned away toward the staff room. I watched her small round hips sway and her white sandals flash from under her sari as she walked. Her neck was long and her back as curved and sexy as India’s. I wondered if she looked the same under her petticoat and blouse.

  “Not Mrs. Pillai,” I thought to myself as I went back into the classroom.

  When I returned to my desk, Vidur asked me if Mrs. Pillai had scolded me.

  “No.”

  “What’s the matter with you? Will you tell me or not?” he asked.

  “In the break,” I said.

  “I’ll take you to the canteen,” he said. He was the only boy with whom I had ever been to the canteen.

  Over a vegetable burger and a Coke I told Vidur the absolute truth. “I can’t figure it out.”

  “What? Binary systems or spectrums?” he asked.

  “How life is to be lived, what’s right and wrong, what we should want, whether our morality should be about what we want or what’s set down by society,” I said. I was worked up.

  “We’re still in school, we can’t know all this just now,” he said, shaking his head.

  “I have to know the truth. Truth is everything,” I said.

  “The truth about what?”

  “The truth about life and about love. The truth about truth itself.” I wanted to start crying. Why couldn’t someone who knew everything just sit me down and tell me? Why was it that no one knew anything? How had billions of people come and gone on this earth for thousands of years and still not figured out the answers to these questions? I would die if I didn’t know soon. It was the only thing that mattered. Everything rested on it.

  “Is it Wednesday?” Vidur asked. I nodded absently.

  “My father has a half day. Do you want to talk to him?” He looked upset. I knew then that he truly cared for me.

  “He’ll think I’m crazy,” I said.

  “I wish I could help. But I don’t think all these things. I think only some of these things. He won’t think you’re crazy. He likes you.”

  “I have to go home,” I said.

  “Just come back home with me. We can drop you home later in the car.”

  “My mother will be angry,” I said.

  “Call her,” Vidur said. I put my hand in my skirt pocket and pulled out a one-rupee coin. There was only one pay phone in the school. It was in the main building, far away from the canteen. I asked Vidur if he would come with me. I had felt the need to lie to stay back in school on Sheela’s account or to go to India’s house, but I was going to tell my mother the truth about Vidur. If anything my mother should have more objection to me visiting a boy. But I felt no hesitation in asking her openly.

  “Mom, it’s me,” I said.

  “Anamika, is everything all right?”

  “Yes. I’m calling because my classmate Vidur says his father has a half day and can help me with some physics problems. Can I go over to his house after school? They can drop me home.”

  My mother didn’t respond immediately. I knew she was weighing the pros and cons.

  “Are you sure it’ll be okay?” she asked gravely.

  “Of course. Colonel Mathur and Vidur will drop me back in the car.”

  “Okay. Ask them to have chai with us.”

  “Thank you, Mom.”

  “Rani will worry about you. Be careful.”

  “I will.”

  I felt bad for Rani, but I could appease her later. I put down the phone and gave Vidur a thumbs-up.

  “That wasn’t too hard. Physics problem, huh?” Vidur said.

  “It is a physics problem. Will your dad mind?” I asked.

  I had been so intent on meeting his father, it hadn’t even crossed my mind that I might be intruding.

  “My dad would love to meet you,” Vidur assured me.

  By the time we walked back to class the break was over. I hadn’t had a chance to speak to Sheela at all. Because of my mood swings I had forgotten about her in Mrs. Pillai’s class when I could have gone and sat next to her. Now it was the geography period, and there was no chance with Mrs. Thaityallam. I looked over in Sheela’s direction as Mrs. T. walked in. She was busy pulling out her geography copybook from her satchel. Eventually Sheela looked up and caught my eye. I pouted my lips and sent her a kiss across the room. She blushed. When I turned back I noticed Chakra Dev looking. He had seen me.

  “Children, draw a line on the right side of your copybooks,” Mrs. Thaityallam instructed.

  In between the geography and history periods I went over to Sheela and said, “I really want to spend time with you.”

  “My parents may be going to a big function next weekend. If they do, you can come to my house in the morning.”

  At the end of the day Sheela, Vidur, and I walked to the school parking lot together. I didn’t want to tell Sheela I was going back to Vidur’s house. I pulled her aside to chat as we got closer to where the buses were parked. I walked her to her bus and waited till she got on. Then
I walked back to Vidur.

  “Ready, Captain?” he asked. I nodded. We climbed on. The bus was already full, so we had to stand. Everyone was sweating, and the boys were covered in dust. Most of their shirts were untucked, and their ties hung loose. A few teachers sat in the front of the bus, wiping their foreheads and faces with the ends of their sari pallus. Some fanned themselves with pieces of paper. Since I was the Head Prefect everyone recognized me and knew this was not my regular bus.

  “Going somewhere?” one of the teachers from the junior school asked.

  “Yes, Vidur’s father is going to teach us physics,” I said. She looked at Vidur and then at me.

  “Good,” she said approvingly. Once the bus started to move it cooled a little. Vidur’s house was much closer to the school than mine, so his stop came fast.

  xiv

  The Fauji

  An army orderly in khaki shorts let us into the house and said Vidur’s father was playing tennis. We got rid of our school satchels, drank some cold water, and decided to head to the club.

  “Bhaiyya is really sweet. He’s been my father’s orderly since I was young,” Vidur said.

  “What does he do?” I asked.

  “Strictly, they are supposed to help only with army tasks like polishing my father’s shoes and the tires of his car. But Bhaiyya helps us at home, too.”

  “They polish car tires?”

  “Yes, with boot polish. And they put silver polish on the hub-caps.”

  We walked along the tree-lined road of the army cantonment where Vidur lived. It was much quieter than my part of Delhi. When we arrived at the club, Vidur said something to the guard, who then let us in. Approaching the courts I saw two figures and heard the distant tok tok of the ball. As we got closer the game seemed to end. The men dried themselves with towels. They wore baseball caps to shield their faces from the sun.

  “My father’s on the far side,” Vidur said. He cupped his mouth and yelled, “Dad!”

  His father waved, gathered his duffel bag, and walked over to the edge of the court where we were standing. Vidur introduced us. We shook hands.

  His tennis partner also walked over to us. “Hello, Uncle,” Vidur said to the other man.