Thrity Umrigar Read online

  I say nothing.

  I watch Ronnie, his head hanging from the window, his golden ears flapping in the breeze and I remain silent. I swallow the lump that forms in my throat, I look out the window and blink my eyes until the tears disappear.

  But from this day on, I will carry another’s grief and longing along with my own, so that my sorrows will no longer be just my own. I will be connected to my father in ways deeper than the accidental geography of birth and blood. From now on, I will see my dad as a fellow traveller, a comrade scarred and betrayed by the same unattainable ideal. My father, I will realize, had his own Ovaltine woman.

  For years we will talk about that day at the vet’s, talk about it casually at times, wistfully at others. It will become our own private shorthand for what is missing in our lives, for the incomplete parts of us.

  And it will mark us, this unfulfilled desire, so that we will recognize each other in the dark, so that we will be more than father and daughter. We will be confidants; I will console him, bear his cross, spend decades seeking permission from the universe to be happy in my own life, in the face of the knowledge of his grief.

  And we will both forever be seeking our way out of the greyness of drab reality—he out of the cobwebs of a ruined marriage, I out of the entrapment of the mythologies of motherhood—and we will spend our lives looking for our way back to the shining celluloid fantasy of the Ovaltine lady.

  Nine

  MAD PARSI.

  The nickname is given to me by a fourth-grade teacher and it sticks, follows me like a shadow through school.

  It is a formidable reputation to live up to. Fuelled by the caricatures of Parsis in Hindi movies, the Mad Parsi tries her best to live up to her billing. No stunt is too outrageous, no feat is too daring. Suddenly, she is the custodian of the reputation of an entire group of people whose eccentricities are already the stuff of legend. It is up to her to carry on this proud tradition.

  Her reputation is sealed in sixth grade when she comes to school on a Monday and tells her friends she has discovered a new hobby—smashing windowpanes with her bare fists.

  (Let the record show that she has done this only once, and that too, on a pane that was already cracked, thereby escaping any injury. These details, needless to say, are left out of the retelling of the story.)

  But by sixth grade, there is another contender for the title of Mad Parsi. Anita Khalsa is a tall, gangly girl with a wide, infectious grin straight out of a Billy Bunter novel. Her mother is a mild-mannered, stately woman whose characteristic response to her daughter is a bemused shaking of the head, as if she still can’t believe she has given birth to this funny, giraffe-like girl.

  For a while, Anita and I run neck to neck but on the Day of the Blue Tongue, she inches past me and she is now the mad-dest of the mad Parsis. What happens is this: in biology class we learn that writing ink is made from fish oil.

  The next day, Anita arrives at school with a brand new bottle of Parker’s blue ink. Since we are allowed to use only fountain pens in school, we carry at all times, a fountain pen, a bottle of ink, and sheets of pink blotting paper. And so, Anita’s bringing a bottle of ink to school arouses no suspicion. At my school, the nuns looked at ballpoints with the same suspicion and contempt they reserved for condoms. ‘Disgusting contraptions,’ Sister Hillary would say if one of us was caught with a pagan ballpoint pen. ‘Ruins people’s handwriting. Girls from good families use fountain pens.’

  Shortly before lunchbreak, Anita makes a dramatic announcement. After lunch, she will drink the ink.

  We hurry through the hot lunches that are delivered to us by the tiffin-carriers. The carriers are thin but muscular men who every morning pick up hundreds of hot lunches packed in three-piece metal containers from individual homes and then deliver them to schools and offices all across the city. My particular tiffin-carrier appears at school balancing a long wooden box the size of a small boat, on his head. I often fantasize about skipping school and following him as he navigates his way into a crowded train with this wooden plank on his head.

  After lunch, we make our way back to our classroom on the second-floor as discreetly as we can. If the teachers get wind of Anita’s scheduled performance, they will stop it. This is the first year that we have a classroom with a door and we make the most of the privacy this affords us. A month ago, there was the infamous shoe fight, where for some mysterious reason none of us could later remember, we removed our shoes and threw them at each other. Outside, it had been raining hard, turning the grounds into a soggy, mucky, mud field. At one point, as the fight grew more boisterous, somebody’s shoe went sailing out the open window and landed in the mud two storeys below. We

  cheered the shoe’s landing until Zenobia, a fair-skinned, placid girl with a sweet nature, offered to go rescue it. We watched from the window and clapped as she retrieved the mud-covered shoe, holding it up triumphantly for us to see. But just as she was about to return to class, somebody had a brilliant idea. As long as Zenobia was down there, we may as well throw more shoes into the mud. And so we did.

  When Mrs Pereira walked into class that afternoon, she was greeted by forty giggling girls sitting at their desks with wet, mud-caked shoes. But we had Mrs Pereira well-trained and she never engaged in conversation with us if it could be avoided. Who knew what could happen? A question about wet shoes could produce an answer about a tunnel to China, if she wasn’t careful. So she ignored the puddles of mud on the floor, flipped opened her book and began to read to the class.

  Indeed, we had turned Mrs Pereira into a master of avoidance, an accomplishment that we were proud of. Day by day, week after week, we had systematically broken Mrs Pereira’s spirit so that she now jumped each time one of us spoke and winced when one of us raised our hands.

  ‘Miss, miss, miss,’ Roxanne would say, waving her raised hand frantically.

  Mrs Pereira would look up from her copy ofDavid Copperfield warily. ‘What is it, Roxanne?’

  ‘Please miss, something you just said that I don’t understand.

  Please miss, what is a rubber band? Can you explain?’

  ‘A band of rubber. Now be quiet.’

  The rest of us were delighted at this interruption and Mrs Pereira’s obvious irritation. ‘That was brilliant, yaar,’ someone whispered to Roxanne.

  Two minutes went by. Henrietta raised her hand. ‘Excuse me, miss. Miss?’

  Mrs Pereira looked distressed. ‘Yes?’

  ‘I just wanted to know, miss. Can I eat this apple in class?’

  The rest of us gasped. Eating in class was taboo, a sin along the lines of writing with a ballpoint.

  But Mrs Pereira was flustered. ‘No. Yes. I mean, do what you want. Just be quiet, all of you. No more questions, now.’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Pereira. Thank you Mrs Pereira,’ the entire class said, in that sing-song way that we knew drove her crazy.

  Henrietta took a loud, crunchy bite from her apple and then passed it on to the girl sitting next to her. We passed the apple around as if it were a joint, timing our bites to when Mrs Pereira started a new sentence.

  When the bell rang to mark the end of the class, the be-fuddled teacher shut her book and fled the room before we could even rise to wish her good day. We looked at each other and nodded with satisfaction. Another successful class.

  Two days later, we had another surprise waiting for Mrs Pereira. She opened the classroom door to walk into a room that had been mysteriously rearranged. We had moved the long, vertical rows of desks to the back of the classroom and reconfigured them so that all our desks were lined up horizontally in three long rows. The ceiling fan spun madly over a room that was three-fourths empty. And here was our tour de force—we had attached three cloth sling bags to the ceiling fan, so that when it was on maximum speed, as it was then, the bags whirled around like demons, the mirror work on the green bag flashing in the noonday sun.

  Mrs Pereira took in the rearranged furniture, the almost empty classroom, with a deadpan
expression on her face. But she flinched involuntarily at the dangerously spinning bags, as if they were a guillotine that would behead her. We giggled, and poked each other in the ribs waiting for her to acknowledge our handiwork or at least, to turn off the fan.

  Instead, she moved her desk a few inches so that it was away from the flapping schoolbags, flipped open the textbook and buried her head in it. Chapter five, she intoned in a flat voice.

  Anita and I looked at each other, crushed. The moving of the desks was her idea, while the ceiling fan was mine. But given Mrs Pereira’s deflating reaction, neither idea seemed particularly brilliant. I felt an involuntary, grudging admiration for our teacher. And immediately vowed to come up with a trick for the next day that would elicit more of a reaction.

  Now, someone shuts the door to the classroom, while another girl volunteers to stand guard to make sure there are no teachers nearby. The rest of us stand in a circle around Anita, who unscrews the cap on the ink bottle with a flourish and holds the bottle up to her lips. The rest of us wince. ‘Anita, don’t, men,’ someone says. ‘What if it’s poisonous or something?’

  But Anita’s cheeks are flushed and she has that telltale gleam in her eye that tells us her mind is made up. ‘Didn’t you pay attention in class today, girls?’ she says in a high-pitched, prim voice, wagging her finger at us just like Mrs Pinto does. ‘Ink is made out of fish oil. And that is good for you.’ And before we can stop her, she tips back her head and downs a third of the ink. She gags a bit but keeps drinking.

  Watching her, I am caught between two contradictory thoughts. On the one hand, I am seized with admiration for Anita. On the other, I know that I will have to figure out a way to outdo her to seize back the title of Mad Parsi.

  But the thing that seals my admiration and affection for Anita is what she does next. She tips her head again and drinks some more. And then, she smacks her lips. That smacking of the lips is what makes us break the dumbfounded, worried silence that has gripped us and burst into cheers.

  Anita grins. Her teeth are blue.

  I am at a birthday party for my friend Diana, one of the most popular girls in school. Bone-thin but wiry, she is, in my mother’s admiring phrase, an ‘all-rounder’—a good student and a competitive athlete. The nuns and teachers adore Diana because not only is she bright and intelligent, she is polite and well-mannered. Also, she comes from Parsi royalty—her father is a prominent doctor and hails from a family known for their sophistication and cultured ways. So I know it is a privilege to be invited to a birthday party for Diana.

  The house is large with high ceilings and cream-coloured walls. It is the kind of house that makes me want to lower my voice when I speak. This house, these people are different from my house and my family in ways that I can sense but not articulate. Diana’s mother is a soft-spoken, cultured woman who is doing her best to entertain the boisterous group of sixth-graders at her home. We play a variety of games like Charades and then it is time to eat. Diana’s mom turns to us. ‘Will some of you go into the next room and carry out a few chairs? We need some extra ones.’ I immediately volunteer to help and follow two other girls into the next room where Diana’s older sister is sitting cross-legged on the floor with some of her friends. As always, they ignore us. A record is spinning on the player. I listen to the song but it sounds totally unmusical to me and I don’t understand any of the words. I have lifted a chair and am carrying it out of the room when I hear Diana’s sister say, ‘I can’t get over this song even though I’ve heard it a million times. Just listen to the lyrics. They’re like a poem. I tell you, this is the song by which the ‘sixties will be remembered.’

  ‘What’s it called?’ one of the older girls asks.

  Diana’s sister sounds incredulous. ‘You mean you don’t knowThe Boxer ?’ she cries. ‘But this song is going to be a rock classic, I tell you.’

  I have no idea what they’re talking about. But the hair on my arm stands up and I am filled with a rush of excitement.

  Where I come from, nobody ever talks this way about music.

  Where I come from, a song is something to be whistled along with and music is an impractical luxury, like flowers and art and museums. Nobody I know has ever asked me to listen to the words of a song. I love what Diana’s sister has said, the self-importance in her voice, the confidence in her tone, the way the others nod solemnly, as if they’re all part of a secret tribe. Suddenly, I want nothing to do with the silly, childish girls who are wolfing down chicken sandwiches all around me. I want to let myself back into the other room and join the holy circle of the older girls, I want to listen again to that song as intently as they are, want to understand what the mumbling voice of the singer is saying, want to be grown up enough and smart enough to say wonderful, inexplicable, glamorous lines like, ‘This is the song by which the ‘sixties will be remembered.’

  But I am stuck with the chicken sandwiches girls. I do not have the confidence to rise from the table and ask to be let into another circle. Also, I know that like most older sisters, Diana’s older sister won’t give me the time of the day. A slow, sad feeling sweeps over me. Just as Miss D’Silva’s words had parted the curtains for me for an instant and provided me with the glimpse of some other, wondrously complicated world, so have Diana’s sister’s words. But then the curtain has closed again, banishing me as always to the world of giggling schoolgirls who sangBorn Free andA Spoonful of Sugar , who said inane, predictable things instead of inexplicable, outrageous declarations that made my hair stand up in excitement.

  A sour feeling of longing and loss lodges in my stomach, so that I turn away from my half-eaten sandwich. ‘Are you all right, Thrity?’ Diana’s mother asks and I nod my head mutely, trying to not let my misery show.

  I am different from these giggling girls at the table. I know this now. There is another world out there, a world where perhaps there’s a corner for misfits like me. But how to gain entry into that world is a mystery bigger than any that the Secret Seven ever solved.

  My Enid Blyton obsession has finally melted away into adulthood but not without a last hurrah. It happens the day Freny tells me gently that she thinks I’ve outgrown my beloved author, and yes, even the Billy Bunter and Nancy Drew novels I’ve been reading and that it was time I read something more appropriate to my age, such as Mills and Boon romance novels.

  I am appalled. What, give up my beloved childhood friends whose lives I was more familiar with than the lives of the kids I went to school? Peter, Georgina, Colin, Scamper, and Billy and Bessie Bunter had kept me company while the adults were too busy for me, running around as they were in their own private circles of misery. To deliberately give up such loyal friends would be a dastardly act of betrayal. I remember the countless hours I had spent reading these novels to the point where I could recite entire pages by heart—a feat that I used to perform regularly until the evening my mother slapped me in the presence of the old woman who lived on the ground floor. We had just returned from a parent-teacher conference where Mrs Patel had complained about my habit of repeating the very last thing that she said. ‘It makes the other girls think she’s making fun of me,’ she’d said. ‘I can’t tell if she’s trying to be a smarty-pants or not.’ And although I vigorously shook my head no, mummy decided that the teacher’s complaint was genuine and somehow linked to my ability to memorize entire passages from books. During the bus ride home she’d told me that both irritating habits had to stop immediately and I had promised and so both of us were equally stunned when I began to recite lines fromLast Term at Malory Towers as we as-cended the building steps. The door to the ground floor apartment had flown open just as mummy’s hand flew across my mouth and for a moment I was too ashamed and appalled to cry. It was the first time mummy had ever struck me in front of a stranger. She began stuttering an explanation to the old woman on the ground floor but I was running up the stairs, two steps at a time. But the slap worked. From that day on, I lost my ability to memorize passages. Most days, I didn
’t care.

  But some days, it felt like a loss, like forgetting a card trick you had known all your life.

  So when Freny asks me to give up Enid Blyton, it feels like another loss. We are in her and Babu’s room during this conversation and a garlanded picture of the prophet Zoroaster hangs on the lemon-coloured wall. With a dramatic flourish, I walk over to it, stand on my toes and touch the bottom of the photo frame. ‘I swear to God I will never stop reading Enid Blyton,’ I say. ‘These are the only books I want to read my whole life.’

  Freny suppresses a smile. ‘Okay,’ she says. ‘But if you ever want to read anything else, just let me know.’

  Two weeks after this declaration of undying devotion to Ms Blyton, I casually pick up one of Roshan’s romance novels. On the cover, a tall man with thick dark hair wearing a loose white billowy shirt and tight black pants is sweeping a slim-waisted girl with long red hair off her feet. Making sure that Roshan is not around, I flip through the pages, stopping when I come across a passage of what appears to be torrid love-making.

  I am hooked. Hello, Brad and Luther and Hal. Goodbye, Fatty and Peter and Colin. Goodbye, Georgina the tomboy.

  Hello, Daphne the virgin.

  Ten

  JESSE HAS THICK BUSHY EYEBROWS that she hand-plucks fiercely when she is trying to concentrate, a mop of wild hair and a pair of pink denim jeans.

  It is the pink jeans that makes us friends.

  For some reason, the adults hate Jesse’s jeans, are offended by them, read into them things about the wildness of her spirit and her untamed nature. The jeans make them think Jesse is an unpredictable nonconformist who looks down her long Parsi nose at their simple, middle-class ways, and since this is mostly true, it makes them hate her. Nobody in our neighbourhood—where we all lived and died by the all-per-vasive code of, ‘What will people think?’—dares to wear pink jeans. Also, it is unheard of for a teenage girl to care so little about her personal appearance, to wear sneakers instead of high heels, to care more about books than jewellery, to prefer silver to gold, to run her hands impatiently through her short hair, instead of combing her long tresses. And to make matters worse, Jesse talks openly of her many platonic relationships with the boys she’d gone to school with, talks about them with an easy casualness that has none of the simpering coyness that usually defines the way girls are supposed to talk about boys.