Nimita's Place

by Akshita Nanda

  “Aditi will tell you more.” Vicky was worse around his father. One time, Vicky was so angry he nearly choked his father. But he calmed down when Aditi spoke to him. Like he mostly calmed down when I spoke to him.

  Mostly.

  “Vicky is a molecular biologist. What would he do in a business?”

  “A science education should teach you to think, na? Who’s to say a molecular biologist can’t be a good businessman as well?”

  “But wouldn’t the stress of business be worse for him?” I was thinking of Dad and Mummy running around night and day, of the times when I was young and there were months when we didn’t go to the movies and ate dal and rice at home while payments from retailers were delayed.

  “Stress is more manageable in a family environment,” said Dr Bharucha. “The support system is there as well as the baseline knowledge that these people will be there for you. In an external environment, he will be more likely to think that others are out to get him. Basically, he needs patience and understanding. Family is…” He hesitated. “Family can usually be counted on to adjust and provide that, no matter what.”

  I nodded. What temperature was his air-conditioner set at? His office was so cold.

  “Okay.” Dr Bharucha put on his glasses and gave me a sheet of paper. “These are the medicines he needs to take. This one, every night, it will make him sleepy. This one as and when he is building up to an episode.”

  So many pills.

  “This is my cell number. He can call me any time and I will answer. Now, I’m going to call Vikram in and tell him the exact same thing. It’s important that he feel I am telling him the same things I have told you. You understand?”

  I nodded again. I couldn’t see his face because my vision was blurry.

  Dr Bharucha patted my hand. “It’s not so bad, darling. Wait and see. He’s already much better off than so many of my patients. He’s from a good family, he’s got a good education—and he’s got you. Okay?”

  Vicky and I held hands in the auto back from the clinic. Dr Bharucha practised at the other end of town, near Kondhwa, so we had both taken the day off to go see him.

  “What’s that noise?” Vicky said as we passed the railway station and moved closer to the bridge across the river.

  “Dhol tashas,” I told him. “Come on, Mr Hong-Kong-returned, you know how crazy Maharashtra gets during Ganpati festival. These are the drummer groups practising in advance.”

  “Isn’t this early for the festival?”

  “The groups start practising two, three months in advance. Don’t you know anything, Mr Foreign-returned?”

  He smiled, squeezed my hand. “Shall we see the practice?”

  So instead of taking the auto rickshaw all the way to the university, we stopped and found a way down by the riverside. About a dozen groups were out in force, banging a variety of drums. All-girl groups in white salwar kameezes and matching coloured chunnis. All-male groups in jeans and white shirts and headbands of different colours. Mixed groups of men and women, clearly housewives or professionals doing this for fun and for Ganesha.

  “I’ve always thought Ganpati was the patron god of molecular biology,” I told Vicky.

  “Why?”

  “Look. He’s created just by his mother. That’s parthenogenesis. Shiva cuts off his head and replaces it with that of an elephant. The first successful case of genetic engineering ever recorded and it happened in India a trillion years ago.”

  Vicky laughed. “And he rides on a mouse, so that’s your lab rat for you as well.”

  It wasn’t that funny but I laughed till I cried. Get us through this, I prayed quietly to Ganpati. Get us both through this, remover of obstacles, patron god of molecular biology.

  Not every prayer is answered the way you think it should be.

  “So did you go to the Parliament building? We saw the photos on the news,” Romy-Bhaiya says on Haanji.

  What, even the US knows what’s happening in Singapore?

  “Narendra Modi is coming for the funeral,” he says.

  “Okay.” I don’t want to talk to Romy-Bhaiya. I don’t want to talk to anybody.

  Chia Ying is really angry with me because I won’t talk to her about what happened after the dinner party. Irving is not in the flat. Must be with his precious friend.

  “So we’re planning on coming to India in a few months’ time,” Romy-Bhaiya says. “For Diwali.”

  “That’s great.” That makes more sense than Mummy and Dad travelling up. This way, Kishmish can meet all our family.

  “Yes. Lots to do.” Romy-Bhaiya makes a face. “Listen, I know Mummy and Dad spoke to you about the Lonavla property.”

  My stomach hurts. “I don’t want to talk about this right now, Bhaiya. Please.”

  “Then when you want to talk about it?”

  “Not now.” Never. “Things are just—not now, okay?”

  He drums his fingers on the table. “Nimmy, you don’t understand what I’m going through. You don’t have a family like I do.”

  “Haan? Because I’m not married, my opinion counts for less than yours?”

  “Listen, don’t twist my words. That house is mine also, na? Don’t be so possessive. It’s time to let go.”

  I cut the connection and don’t take his next call. Let him complain about my childishness and possessiveness on the family WhatsApp chat groups.

  Love is possessiveness. Love is possession.

  Love comes when you possess knowledge nobody else has about one person, about that person’s weaknesses and secret fears. Anybody can show their strength to the world, but it is only to those we love and trust that we reveal our weaknesses. Knowing that, I knew Vicky loved me. He showed me all his secrets, his fears, his weakest parts, even his mad, plate-flinging rages. All his secrets.

  I didn’t run away immediately.

  Because I didn’t run away immediately, the two months after we visited Dr Bharucha were full of discovery, a lot like our first year of friendship. Now we were learning to be more, experimenting with living together.

  Vicky’s family paid for a very, very nice flat on Fergusson College Road. It was partly furnished and newly painted in my favourite style. Every room was painted cream with just one wall in a different colour, blue or green or deep yellow.

  My name was not on the lease, but my choices were all over the flat. I had pillows and sheets for my hostel bed, but now we went shopping for couple items: matching sheets, new curtains, two bright yellow beanbag chairs for the small balcony.

  Vicky insisted on buying plants too: a money plant, a bougainvillea, a small hibiscus. I added a curry-leaf plant and a small pot of tulsi, because wasn’t tulsi the herb that kept evil away from a household?

  Doing up the flat took several weeks. It was exhausting. We took weekend breaks. There was a tour bus to Mahabaleshwar where we walked around visiting the strawberry farms and had lunch at the up-market hotels. We took another bus to the Karla Caves to see the rock carvings, but got sidetracked by the Katraj Snake Park, where reptiles were milked for venom to make antidotes. We met interesting scientists there too, immunologists, and had great chats about the future applications of animal secretions in cancer research.

  Going back to the flat was the best part. It was a tiny place, a one-bedroom-hall-kitchen, but just big enough for two people as long as they didn’t want to be in the kitchen at the same time. I hardly ever returned to the hostel. I lounged on my beanbag, fought with him for the TV remote, argued about who was supposed to have been watching the rice before it got burnt. Vicky could make good omelettes, but his dal and sabji were terrible.

  The bai who came daily to clean thought we were married and so did the neighbours, who smiled at me when we went for walks around the colony’s tiny garden. “How long have you been married?” Mrs Arora next door asked me. I lied and said, “Two months.” She looked at me strangely and I realised that this is because there were no lines of fading mehendi on my hands. I’m not good at lying.


  When I told Vicky, he burst out laughing and insisted on buying mehendi cones and attempting to decorate my hands. I ended up with a star, a heart and something that looked like a lizard before pushing him away and washing my hands.

  He liked doing these things, the romantic gestures that appear in Bollywood movies to make people tear and go, “Aww.”

  Two weeks before Ganesh Chaturthi, he even bought a plaster-of-Paris idol for us to put in the nominal puja place. Ganesha, Ganpati, elephant-headed god of molecular biology. From our balcony we could see the colony’s giant statue, from the kitchen we could hear the loud songs of the nearby slum’s mandal, where Ganesha presided over a scene from the Ramayana. Closer to the university, Ganesha smiled over cardboard cut-outs of US troops invading Iraq and of Abdul Kalam, our president and space programme founder, launching rockets. All of Pune was competing for the best, flashiest Ganesh display, just like Mumbai must have been. People went crazy at their mandals, dancing all day and night to religious songs and Bollywood numbers. It was a licence to party.

  Family celebrations are usually quieter. My Marathi friends keep the idol at home for ten days of puja, and then submerge it in the sea or, because it is impossible to reach the sea in Mumbai on Ganesh Chaturthi, in the nearest river.

  Since Dad and Dadi are Punjabi and Romy-Bhaiya vetoed “drowning Ganpati-Bappa” when he was a kid, I had never kept a proper Chaturthi until Vicky brought the plaster-of-Paris Ganesha home.

  We looked up the prayers on the Internet, figured out which was the auspicious east-facing corner and set up the chubby figure in its purple-yellow painted robes on a box. I covered the box with a red scarf and some gold lace. Vicky plucked some flowers from the colony garden and we were all set.

  The second day of Chaturthi got weird. “Come and see this,” Vicky called from his seat in front of the TV that evening. Every news channel was broadcasting the Ganeshotsav “miracle”, where stone and clay idols of Ganpati were apparently drinking milk offered by devotees. The footage showed a woman in a salwar kameez holding a spoonful of milk near the trunk of a painted idol. The level in the spoon actually went down until all of it disappeared and only the shiny steel could be seen.

  “It’s a hoax,” I said as the footage changed to a scene of a man holding a tumbler of lassi near a stone idol. Again the level of liquid went down as we watched.

  The scene switched to a reporter holding a microphone. “Scientists say that the liquid is taken up by capillary action in the porous stone and clay of the idols. But for devotees, it’s a festive miracle.”

  “That makes sense, capillary action,” I said to the beanbag. Vicky had disappeared into the kitchen. He reappeared with a mug of milk and began offering it to our Ganesha idol.

  The mug was too big and Ganesha’s trunk too small. Vicky went back into the kitchen and got a spoon instead. He offered a spoon of milk to the idol, which sucked the liquid up.

  “I thought this was plaster of Paris?”

  “It is,” Vicky said. “This is a miracle.”

  “Maybe the guy just told you it was plaster of Paris, but actually it’s made of earth. I bet if we break off a little corner of the trunk we’ll know.”

  “No one is touching Ganpati-Bappa! Where’s your faith, Nimita?”

  Ganesha stopped drinking milk after two teaspoons. “Guess he’s full.”

  “Or maybe it’s plaster of Paris which had dried out a little and now it’s moist again.”

  Vicky looked at me and then went into the kitchen. That night he slept very pointedly on his side of the bed.

  Hysteria over the milk-drinking idols continued to build over the next week. Pundits began proclaiming a year of great prosperity for Ganesha devotees, of superb luck for those who got married and even more good luck for newborn children.

  Vicky woke every morning and fed the idol a teaspoon of milk. “I feel like something wonderful is going to happen,” he said to me each time.

  Perhaps it already had. He was going to the lab with a smile on his face and even laughing and joking with Rishi and Lakshwant.

  Ganpati Visarjan, or the immersion of Ganpati, is a big thing in Mumbai, in all of Maharashtra State. My family usually stays indoors to watch it on TV rather than risk being trampled by crowds or meeting rowdy men high on alcohol. I figured Vicky and I would also take our Ganpati to a quiet spot on the Mula River to avoid the crowds, but he insisted on going to the busiest section where a big fair was being set up, and giving his Ganpati-Bappa a huge sendoff along with a hundred thousand other people.

  “You know Visarjan is responsible for a lot of water pollution,” I told him.

  “Where’s your faith, Nimmy? Let’s have fun.”

  It wasn’t fun, exactly, forcing our way through hordes of people on foot and large flat-bed trucks, dhol tashas and loudspeakers competing to burst their audiences’ eardrums. Vicky carried the idol and I held on to his kurta because there were so many people, if I lost sight of him, he would have been swept away.

  Long before we reached the river, our chappals were slick in the mud created by the hundreds before us. I slipped in the slime made red by people spitting paan and flinging gulal, coloured powder, like it was Holi.

  When our ankles were wet, I tugged on Vicky’s kurta and mouthed “here”, but he shook his head and kept on walking till we were knee-deep in water. Then he finally stopped, bent down and put the idol in. “Go home safely, Ganpati-Bappa,” he said.

  The idol did not sink immediately. Its head bobbed up and down, and Vicky had to press it under the surface. “Go home now,” he said.

  The idol still didn’t go under.

  “Sink, I said,” Vicky told it, getting irritated. He pressed it so far down I suspect it became stuck in the mud. “Mission accomplished,” he said, not looking very happy.

  We went home in silence, tired and letdown. My stomach was off, the way it is a few days before I start my period. I didn’t feel like touching Vicky that night and luckily he stayed up late, talking to Aditi on the phone.

  Next morning, it felt odd to see that box with the red scarf and gold thread but no Ganpati statue. I put it away before Vicky woke up. I had expected him to have an emotional crash after the high of the past week. He was rattled that day, muttering on our way to the lab that the experiment he had set up was destined to fail. “Take the other pill,” I told him in the rickshaw and he listened.

  I felt my stomach relax when he took his pills. My palms were sweaty. I knew what could happen if Vicky didn’t take them.

  I wished he didn’t need me to remind him.

  My stomach was really bad that day. It must have been the stress. Dad’s birthday was coming up and I would be expected to spend that weekend in Mumbai. Take Vicky along or no? I couldn’t think of a reason not to and then I realised I was thinking of reasons not to introduce my boyfriend and live-in partner to my parents.

  That night I walked into the bedroom after Vicky was asleep and stood there looking at him. He looked so different when he was asleep, younger, stronger—normal. I looked and looked at his face, the curve of his back, the fingers of his hand curled over the sheet, one leg kicked out onto my side of his bed. Looking at him I knew that if he woke up and lifted the sheet in invitation, muscle memory would make me move in next to him. I still wanted him very much. I knew and liked how he felt, how he smelt, before his morning bath with the night sweat still on him, after sex, before brushing his teeth. I knew the medicines he was taking, the digits on his black credit card, the phone number and address of his family, his school records and the way he took his tea.

  Why was I not ready to take him to Mumbai?

  I thought about it a lot for the next few days. My experiments were going slowly, as Dr Savarkar had warned, the hyacinths rejecting the engineered tissue in the next generation. I started thinking of performing new methods of gene delivery. Maybe the problem was the “delivery sequences” before and after the genes I wanted to have expressed.


  On Thursday, I realised my period was six days late. Unusual, but these things happen due to stress. But a thought stayed, small but gestating in my mind. We normally used two kinds of birth control but it wasn’t always effective, was it? What if?

  It couldn’t be.

  But what if?

  Twenty-two, almost 23, is too young to be a mother.

  Would I be ready, at any age, to be a mother? A mother to Vicky’s child?

  This is the thing about being a biologist. I think a lot about genes and heredity and marriages, maybe even more than my buas.

  We know very little about mental illness, but there is a genetic component.

  I thought so hard about it that I felt nauseous. I went to the toilet and vomited. First food, then bile, then bad-smelling air. I retched and retched while pressing my hand to my stomach, imagining a little ball of cells growing, dividing, sub-dividing into stem cells like we use in our lab petri dishes. These were different. These would change and evolve in different ways inside me, becoming blood and tissue and heart and lungs and in nine months, a new being.

  One loop of DNA, one unexpressed gene and it would have Vicky’s eyes and my hair. Another curl of DNA, another set of genes expressed and it might have my brown eyes and Vicky’s hair.

  And his episodes.

  5.

  Chia Ying is watching television. It is a boring programme, rows and rows of people holding umbrellas as a line of vehicles travels slowly down the road.

  I stand behind the sofa. “I’m going for a walk,” I tell her.

  She twists her neck to look at me. “It’s pouring.”

  “I have an umbrella.”

  Chia Ying turns her entire body to look at me. It is difficult to stand still when she looks at me like that.

  “I’m going,” I tell her.

  She pats the back of the sofa. “Nimmy,” she says. “Sit down.”

  All of last night there was tamasha in the void deck below our flat. Nine floors up, with windows open, I could hear it all. Some boys playing the guitar and singing sad songs in Chinese—Mandarin?—and Malay. Some women crying. Some laughter. Some speeches. So many candles that when I went down for a walk, because it was impossible to sleep, the heat from the void deck sent me to 7-Eleven for an iced lemon tea.