by Tara Pammi
Farah could almost feel the world slowly tilting back on its axis. She waited, her heart leaping into her throat at the ache in Tara’s words.
“I thought it’s better to keep things formal between us. Especially since you’d already made it clear you wanted nothing to do with me. You know, student and teacher kind of thing. That distance is good for me.”
“How?” Farah demanded.
Finally, Tara faced her. “You know now how much I suck at math. It’s better for me to not have a personal relationship with the person who knows my level of stupidity when it comes to that blasted subject. It colors how you see me, how everyone sees me. It happened in ninth grade when Zen tried to help me. He was too kind to say anything but I saw his reaction.”
“That is total fucking nonsense.”
Tara’s laughter burst into the quiet of the coffee shop like Diwali fireworks lighting up the night. “How is it that you’re so hot even when you curse?”
Farah couldn’t help the blush climbing up her cheeks. Or the tingly, dizzy feeling sweeping up all over her body. Or her heart thudding away. All because this wonderful girl thought her hot.
She made a grunting sound and Tara laughed some more.
“What I was trying to say was that…anyone who treats you as less because you did not pass maths is like a pile of fresh cow dung. They need to be... No wait, they are something worse than cow dung. Because cow dung actually has a lot of uses as fuel, disinfectant, fertilizers, and even pesticides.” Farah cleared her throat, caught Tara’s gaze and burst out laughing too. “As much as I did not intend to lecture you about cow dung, I am glad that it has made you smile, Star Bells.”
If there was more than a little longing in how Farah said her ‘absolute pet name’ for Tara, she pretended like she didn’t hear it. She picked up her coffee cup just to give her brain something else to focus on other than Star Bells’ beautiful smile. The too-large sip of bitter coffee kicked her attention to other basic things, like how to not burn your tongue with scalding hot liquids.
Silence descended between them. But this silence did not have the uncomfortable, unnatural quality of the tuition sessions that had made Farah anxious.
This silence ate up the short width of the table separating them, rife and loud with unspoken things and something new. As if the bright sunlight of Tara’s smile had covered more ground over the dark shadow of Farah’s heart.
Farah sat up straight at her own thoughts. It wouldn’t be a surprise if Star Bells turned her into a poet by the time she had to leave. And that thought stopped the racing pulse in her veins like nothing else could.
Why did time always move fast when you wanted it to slow down? When you desperately needed it to still?
“So you want to be friends now?”
Farah looked up to find a teasing smile curve Tara’s mouth. “I would be a horrible person if I said no now, right?”
Apparently, her question hadn’t been just a tease. “Why are you here, Farah?”
Farah faked a smile. “Is that an existential question or a literal one?”
“Did you break up with someone? Did you–”
“I did dump my loser boyfriend almost two years ago but he doesn’t deserve even a–”
The pen she was playing with slipped from Tara’s fingers with a thud. Her face lost all its earlier animation as she looked at Farah. “A boyfriend?”
That anxious feeling curled up in Farah’s belly again. Until she retraced her words back and pinpointed the source of the dismay on Star Bell’s face. She didn’t stop to notice the urgency with which words rushed out of her. “When I told him I was bi, the pig started making all kinds of inappropriate jokes. His insecurity was like a sore that wouldn’t die. It was hard for him to grasp that my sexuality was not a statement about his macho-ness.”
“Oh,” Tara whispered. But Farah could sense the vibrations in her stillness. As if she was forcing herself to not jump up and down. “I’m sorry,” she said then, reaching for Farah’s hand.
Without thinking, Farah clasped it. The simple contact sent her pulse hammering.
Tara’s fingers were shorter than hers, the nails painted a rusty orange. Warm and soft against hers. The clasp of her fingers had a reluctance to it. A hesitation. Instinctively, Farah tightened her own, her heart kicking against its cage. God, she didn’t want to let go.
She looked up and knew everything had changed. Between them. In her world. The universe.... It had to look different now, didn’t it?
If Farah had expected that Tara would flirt or tease or ‘snark’ as she called it, she was wrong. Her round brown eyes held Farah’s in silent acknowledgement. Whatever they’d been circling around since she’d arrived was now out in the open. Electrifying the very air she breathed in.
The one topic she hadn’t been able to speak of to another person rushed out of Farah in a torrent. The words danced on her tongue, fighting to be released into the wild. “Mama died fifteen months ago.”
“Oh.” Now it was Tara’s grip that crushed hers. Farah heard the scrape of Tara’s chair against the floor a second before she felt Tara’s knees banging against hers.
“She ran a bookstore like this. After she and my father divorced, she returned to Hyderabad with me, and opened Farah’s Book World. We had a coffee shop though we did not offer these ridiculously overpriced concoctions.”
“What did you have?” Tara asked with a soft smile. Her eyes were bright with anticipation as if she was being given the key to the world’s most priceless treasures.
“Filter coffee and masala chai, with or without sugar. Each order got two Parle-G biscuits.”
Tara scrunched her nose. “Those are nothing but pure glucose.”
“Did you hear me say they were free?” Farah added, smiling.
A warm glow began in her chest and spread outward. For months, she’d been utterly incapable of even mentioning Mama to another person. Now, as Star Bells listened, she did not want to stop talking about the past, about how perfect and beautiful her life had been. “We had a tiny kitchenette at the back and that’s all we could offer since the sitting area was pretty small anyway. Customers came from all over the city looking for books, not to eat.”
“You grew up surrounded by all those books?”
Farah nodded. She’d known Tara would appreciate it. “Our flat was on the fourth floor above the shop. When I wasn’t being spoilt thoroughly by two sets of grandparents, and my uncle and my aunt, Mama and I would spend weekends looking for private collections sales and auctions. We had books in almost twenty languages.”
“It sounds like an amazing life,” Tara whispered.
“Exactly! And she didn’t get why I didn’t want to leave.” Farah played with the sleeve of her sweater, those arguments Mama and she had again and again, playing like a reel in front of her eyes. It was the first time in her life she’d seen her mother stick to her opinion so stubbornly. “After I finished college, I took a job teaching maths at our local high school. It wasn’t the greatest job, but I earned enough to pay for my few expenses. But Mama was not at all happy with my decision. She said I was wasting the talent and potential I had been given by lingering behind, near her and the bookstore. She wanted me to study further – Masters or MBA, something, or come here to visit my father to explore my career prospects. She wanted me to go out and live life.” Farah sighed.
“We had a huge argument about it and I...shouted at her. I said, fine, I will leave if you don’t want me here. And then, I refused to speak with her for over a week. I behaved no better than my toddler cousin, having a tantrum.”
The back of her eyes prickled with wet heat. Her belly was so tight that she felt as if she couldn’t breathe. She started shaking and Tara’s arms came around her.
“You’re safe, Farah.” Her voice was a whisper, holding Farah through the storm brewing within her. “Keep breathing.”
The steadiness of Tara’s voice gave Farah an anchor to follow. “Fifteen months ago,
a week into our fight, she had a heart attack. I was shelving some books, silently glaring at her. You know how you called me grumpy?”
“Yeah?” Tara said, her fingers gentle on Farah’s shoulder. “What about that?”
“That’s what she did too. I was her grumpy laddoo.”
Farah closed her eyes then, scared of the scene that had clung to her for months. She hadn’t been able to put into words, not even with her Atthayya. It played out like a slow movie in her head again but, this time, Tara was there with her. Whispering endearments in her ear, fracturing the grip the scene had over Farah. Holding her through it.
“What happened, Farah?”
“She clutched her chest and… collapsed to the floor. For a few seconds, I froze. It felt as if I was in some horribly-made movie. I stood there, staring at her. I thought stupidly if I did not move and go to her, it would not be real.
She died before the ambulance could reach the bookstore. She was everything to me, Tara. I did not know how to live after she… I did not want to. And the last time we talked to each other I said that she didn’t want me around.”
Tara’s arms came around her shoulders, and Farah buried her face in her chest.
Her tears came then. In this public coffee shop at the other end of the world while rain pelted relentlessly against the glass windows. While this girl embraced her so tightly that Farah wanted to burrow into her brightly-lit heart and never come out again.
These tears hadn’t come for months and months. She had wondered more than once if she was simply so cold in her heart that she could not shed a single tear for the woman who had loved her every minute of every day of her life.
The tears hadn’t come when family and friends had surrounded her. When she had walked through the shatteringly-silent bookstore night after night, touching and smelling the books that had been her mother’s greatest treasures. When she had climbed into Mama’s bed and buried herself in the cotton sheets that smelled like her.
Hot and scalding, it felt as if her tears burned away the hardened knot in her chest. Melting the calcified walls. Singing life back into Farah’s veins.
Tara’s fingers combed through her hair gently and Farah felt the warmth of her kiss on top of her head. She lifted a finger and rubbed at the button on Tara’s shirt. She wanted to touch the patch of skin at Tara’s throat. She wanted to follow her finger’s trail with her mouth, and press it into the hollow there. She wanted to wrap her arms around Tara and forget the world that existed outside of this coffee shop, outside of Star Bells’ embrace. Her body, her skin, felt incredibly small for the thundering beat of her heart.
Farah waited for that usual pang of fear or the overloud voice of caution to halt her racing thoughts, the spiraling mountain of longing but nothing came. Nothing could break or puncture this moment. There was nothing but quiet and peace inside her.
“I did not share all that to...escape the moment,” Farah whispered.
Tara unraveled slowly from around her. Her gaze when it met Farah’s was unusually grave. She didn’t tease or taunt about ‘the moment’ Farah was referring to. “I didn’t think that.” She reached out with a finger and wiped at the wetness on Farah’s cheek. “Thank you for telling me about her.”
Farah nodded. She didn’t feel shame or embarrassment for her outburst. Only a sweet sense of relief that she hadn’t realized she’d been searching for. “I have not been able to talk of her with anyone. Not once in all these months. You are a wonderful listener, Star Bells.”
Tara moved back towards her chair. “Any time, babe.”
It was on the tip of Farah’s tongue to demand that she stay close. That she put her arms back around Farah. That she kiss her again, properly this time. That she run her fingers through Farah’s hair again and give another solid kick to her rusted heart.
But her mother’s loss felt as fresh as it had fifteen months ago. Maybe even more so now. Because she was finally able to mourn. She could see all the good, amazing things Mama had given her, juxtaposed against the void she had left.
And to stretch out her arm and take Tara’s hand in hers and lift it to her mouth felt like a giant leap she wasn’t ready for. Even though every cell in her body was clamoring at her to do just that. As if her mind and heart were at a standoff.
No, what was it that Tara called them? A stare-off.
So Farah leaned back into her chair and took a sip of her cold, stale coffee. It tasted bitter and horrible, and Tara burst out laughing when she made a face.
She let the sound of Star Bell’s laughter wash over her and for the first time in months, she didn’t feel quite so alone.
Seven
Tara
“You are hiding here. You always hide whenever Professor Rao and I work at the dining table,” Farah said, walking into the living room in the basement.
I rubbed my eyes as the chandelier came on and flooded the dining area with bright light. The feeble white bulb from the kitchen had suited the whole ‘I suck at math’ and stewing in my own pettiness vibe I was going for.
Farah’s soft rebuke only made me dig into the pit I was rolling in. “Maybe it disrupts my focus? Have you two geniuses thought of that?”
It wasn’t that so much as I felt left out. Sitting across from Amma and seeing her face light up when she discussed advanced math concepts, that I couldn’t even pronounce, with Farah wasn’t my idea of a good time. So I’d grabbed my books and escaped to the basement. But I hadn’t missed the sudden silence or the stricken look in Amma’s eyes.
“I am sorry,” Farah said, unloading her laptop and notebooks on the table. “I was the one who started that discussion during lunch. I will not do that again.”
“You don’t have to do that,” I said, putting my pen down. “I’m just…stressed about this test.”
I’d been trying to get through one problem all afternoon. It felt like wading through a dark, dank cave with slush dragging at my feet. It was depressing as hell to be the person who dragged everyone else down. Plus being miserable was hard work physically too and it stole my appetite. The test was six days away and I was breathing, eating and sleeping algebra.
“Tara? Do you want to maybe…”
I smiled at the hesitation in Farah’s words. I’d gotten to know her well now, and her kryptonite was feelings – her feelings and talking about her feelings. She always managed to sound as if she’d bargained for each and every word with the universe before she released it. Like Ammamma bargaining with street vendors at the vegetable market in Hyderabad.
“I’m fine,” I mumbled. “I still have one more chapter to go through,” I added without turning around in the chair.
When the door to her bedroom closed softly behind her, I buried my head in my hands. I had no objective idea if this time around, I had a better grasp of the concepts that I had utterly failed at. Farah kept assuring me that I was improving. At least I knew she wasn’t making it up.
She couldn’t lie if her life depended on it. Either she spoke the unvarnished truth or she kept quiet. That’s where those long, awkward, sometimes frustrating, silences, came from. For another, there were those damned surprise quizzes she kept throwing at me and the improving grades – or marks as she called them – in each quiz.
I had to admit that I was doing better with her guidance. Whether I was doing better enough to pass the damned test was still up in the air. I could simply ask her. She would give it to me straight. So I didn’t dare.
The other thing that had struck me when I was already languishing in the misery of a botched answer was the looming Christmas break. Zen wasn’t coming home because he had a new girlfriend. Farah would be flying to Jersey to spend it with her dad’s family.
This was the first time since Thaatha had left for India that there would be no buffer between my parents and me. Amma and I were still playing the ‘we don’t say bad things to each other in this family’ game. Though lately I’d begun to wonder if she knew that we were even playing this game.
Dad made our awkward dinners worse by telling awful jokes he got via Whatsapp from his cousins all over the world. Which resulted in Amma and me having to explain all the buried misogyny in the ‘marriage is hell’ jokes to him. Which, in turn, riled him up enough for him to lecture that group of middle-aged men in a weird combination of Telugu and English.
All this meant I was going to spend most of Christmas break inside my head, either with good news or the worst news. God, sometimes, I hated my brain so much. SO much.
“Are you going to stay in the basement until the test is done?” Farah asked, coming out of her bedroom.
I shrugged.
Under the guise of rubbing my hand over my eyes, I stared at her. Every day, when she came home, she changed into leggings and a tee, washed her face and pulled her hair back. Then she drank the ginger chai I made for her and gave me a quiz.
This ginger chai duet we were dancing with each other had begun after I’d mistakenly tried the instant coffee she made for herself and gagged at its bitterness. After hearing her whine to her Atthayya about how much she missed ginger chai, I’d made it for her. I’d also picked up those ridiculously sweet Parle G biscuits she’d been going on about.
When she’d come into the kitchen that afternoon, she’d simply stared at the chai and the biscuits for a long time. Then, with great care, she’d sipped the chai after dunking a biscuit in it, while I cursed and ranted and railed at getting a question wrong.
I aptly titled this delightful evening appointment our chai duet. Every day, she sat on the chair perpendicular to mine and worked on her own stuff.