by Durjoy Datta
But slowly my mother’s appearance began to deteriorate—her eyes were constantly puffy, her skin lost its lustre and she was always tired. And though her smile never faded, an unmistakeable exhaustion had crept into it. For the first few months, she spent more time in hospitals than in her beloved kitchen, undergoing a battery of tests. Father broke FDs, encashed LTAs and put it all into doctors and hospitals, flying her from Delhi to Bangalore to Mumbai to Chennai for a second, third and a fourth opinion. The answer was pretty simple—regular dialysis for the rest of her life and prayers that her kidneys don’t give up.
After that we all resumed our lives, getting used to living with and loving an older, MS DOS version of our mother. Then the first cracks began to appear. Regular dialysis meant an additional expense of 8 lakhs a year (in addition to the visits to many doctors), which meant all my parents’ savings were gone within the first two and half years. We moved into a tiny, one-bedroom apartment. Sarthak and I would sleep in the bedroom and my mother would sleep on the sofa in the living room.
My father started working overtime and still wouldn’t earn anything to save for a rainy day, so we just hoped there wouldn’t be any. My mother’s illness, no matter how hard she tried, wasn’t only hers to carry. It was ours as well.
My shoes were worn out, Sarthak’s bag was torn and tattered, and my father’s shirts kept ripping off from where my mother had darned them.
Sometimes late into the night I would watch my mother staring at her medical reports and bills, crying, drinking bottle after bottle of water because the doctors had told her it helps the kidneys. She would sit in front of the TV, out of habit, but not switch it on. She would lie sweating beneath the still fan to save on the electricity bill. My father would flick newspapers from colleagues’ desks after they were done and read it in the night. Unnecessary furniture was sold off. My parents even went off tea for an entire year. We never ate out. No picnics. No fetes. There was a sadness but we were never unhappy.
Days passed and things never looked up financially. There was never enough to go around. Sarthak and I garnered whatever scholarships, cash prizes, and the like we could get to help with the expenses. We would scribble on newspapers to save paper, slyly eat out of other’s lunches to keep from eating a lot at home, and steal from the library. Sarthak even got a scholarship to a boarding school and left for a few months, leaving us richer but quite miserable without him. But he didn’t last long and came scampering back.
My mother, my beautiful, smiling mother started to break down, one smile at a time and one day, when I was just fifteen, I found her in the bathroom, naked and in a pool of blood. My mother had tried to kill herself. She was still conscious when I found her. I had shouted and pulled her away from the shower, and dragged her limp body on to the sofa in the bedroom.
She had turned on the shower so that I didn’t have to clean up later, she told me afterwards.
I called the doctors who stitched my mom up (she refused to go to any hospitals so they made our bedroom into a makeshift hospital bed), and called me brave and whatnot. Sarthak and my father were visiting relatives in Raipur.
She made me promised not to tell my brother and father about the little incident. It’s our secret, she told me.
‘Why did you do it?’ I asked, crying, thinking of what my life would be like if she had died in the shower. The thought was unbearable, it was like a physical pain, like someone had reached down my throat and was clawing at my internal organs. I howled.
‘I . . . I didn’t want to be a burden any more, Aisha . . .’
‘You’re not a burden!’ I shouted and hit my mother repeatedly. I thought of her being dead, burnt, ashes, nowhere, nothingness. I would be so lost.
‘Yes, I am, Aisha. You could have such a better life without me. You would be fine without me,’ she said.
I wanted to slap my mother really hard, like really hard. How would my life make sense if I couldn’t share it with my beautiful mother? She was my only friend! How could she say that? Was she insane? I wiped my tears on the end of her saree and said in as serious a voice as I could muster, ‘If you ever try this again, I swear on you, no, not on you—that wouldn’t work—I swear on my father I will kill myself.’ And with that I jerked the cannula off my mother’s hand and jammed it into my wrist. God! That hurt!
My mother gasped and pulled the needle out, little puddles of tears in her eyes, as she rubbed the blood off my wrist and asked me if it was paining.
‘Do I make myself clear, Mom?’ I asked, trying not to wince since I was making a strong point here.
My mother tearfully nodded. She cleaned up the wound on my wrist and covered it with a Band-Aid.
‘But Aisha, promise me something?’
‘What?’
‘You will not grow up to be like me.’
Now that was confusing. ‘Who should I grow up to be like then?’
‘Find that out yourself. Find out what kind of woman you would want to be. Just don’t be me.’
‘Why?’
‘Didn’t I almost leave you alone in this world? Didn’t I just fail?’
That she had. Her selfless act was pretty selfish after all. Her love for me and for us was flawed after all, and beneath the saree there was no shield, and no star-spangled Wonder Woman costume.
‘But I love you,’ I said and hugged my mother.
Since that day, following my mother’s instructions, I started my search to find a different me, one different from Mom.
I had to be someone better. I had to become my own woman.
It was three months after the incident that my father’s overtimes resulted in a promotion that loosened the noose around our necks but by then I knew I didn’t want to be my mother any more.
10
Danish Roy
While my career plans had come to a screeching halt, Ankit, like a true supportive brother had asked me to join him for a celebratory party thrown in his honour by the rich, smug bastards who would fund and overwork him.
Before we left for the party, I was suitably drunk on my father’s twenty-year-old single malt—it was my revenge for his and my mother’s lop-sided genetic transfer of intelligence and charm.
‘It’s going to be a great party!’ exclaimed my brother as we slipped into the BMW the organizers had sent for him. There was a little icebox with miniatures of Grey Goose and Black Label. Like a true unemployed person, I transferred them into my pocket before we left the car.
The party was the fakest thing I had ever been to. Drunk and totally out of my wits, I stumbled from one conversation to another, being nasty with everyone who would talk to me.
‘So you work with your brother?’ a girl asked me, clearly hoping to network.
‘Yes, I manage his whores. Do you want to sign up?’
Another fledgling female entrepreneur walked up to me when she saw me and my brother together. ‘So, your brother is quite the rage here, isn’t he?’
‘Sure, he and his ten-inch big cock. Bet you can fit two of those in though, can’t you?’
I was an angry disappointing fucking loser who couldn’t do one thing right in his life amongst these overachievers.
Before I could be sued for sexual harassment and be an even bigger embarrassment to my brother and my family, I plonked myself on the bar stool, and decided to drink myself to nothingness.
Three hours and four hundred drinks later, my brother was literally dragging me across the floor, trying to wake me up because it was time to go home. I know this because my head bumped into tables twice but I was too hammered to regain control of my limbs. I was a paralysed octopus. Too many limbs. Not enough head.
Outside, he sat me down and turned my head towards a flower pot where I vomited for the next twenty minutes. He had ordered a cab. In my blurry, post-alcohol vision, I could see a girl in his arms, not the entire girl, just a pair of the longest, glittery legs I had ever seen.
‘Hey,’ said Ankit, slapping my face gently, ‘hey, I’m j
ust going inside. She will be with you. Be okay, okay?’ He thrust a plastic cup of lemonade in my hand. Seemed like a perfect waste of a good buzz but I sipped at it, and after fifteen minutes I was better enough to hear my brother’s newest girl talk.
‘I run couponcode.com. I started it when I was nineteen,’ she said.
‘I was still watching xnxx.com fifteen hours a day when I was nineteen,’ I replied.
‘You’re funny,’ she said.
That must have been the sweetest thing anyone had ever said to me in the longest time.
‘So you’re planning to sleep with my brother tonight?’ I asked, my social charm again failing me. She thought I was joking, again. I wasn’t. Did I mention I couldn’t talk to girls without insulting them?
As we waited on, a Mahindra Scorpio came to a screeching halt a few yards away in front a cigarette stall, and two boys jumped out, raucous and more drunken than I was. Suddenly put into a protective role, I told the girl, ‘Let’s go inside. It’s not safe.’
‘Why? Why should we go inside? They should get into their car and leave,’ she said.
‘This is Delhi, not a feminism rally,’ I slurred.
The boys were now looking at us while dragging on their cigarettes. They weren’t doing anything, just staring lecherously, licking their lips, blasting songs from their stereo, laughing rowdily, making their muscled pecs dance. But I was scared shit. They could rip me apart limb by limb and take this girl away. Nobody can say I didn’t warn her.
‘Let’s just go inside. Don’t be foolish. I want to live.’
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ said the girl. She refused to budge.
‘Don’t be stupid. They are drunken men, they can do anything! If something happens, you will be to blame!’ I almost screamed but I was too afraid to say out anything louder than a whisper.
‘What!’
‘Who is what?’ asked my brother who appeared from behind.
‘Those men are staring at my legs and your brother here feels I should go inside and hide. He thinks if anything happens to me it would be my fault and not theirs. Because they are drunken men and they can do anything!’ she exclaimed.
‘You don’t have to put it like that. You make me sound like—’
‘What?’ the girl snapped. ‘A patriarchal, medieval boy who burns women for dowry? Yes, probably you’re that.’
And even as we were talking, my brother, the hero, had walked up to the men and asked, ‘You can leave if you have bought your cigarettes.’
The girl’s eyes which were like embers were trying to burn through my soul, searing on my conscience that I was a regressive, scared piece of shit. Suddenly she turned dove-like and fluttered near my brother.
‘You should leave,’ she said to the men who, I could tell, were counting the number of cricket bats they had hidden in the trunk.
And before I could make sense of what was happening, as it often happens in Delhi, blows were being exchanged and my brother was getting pummelled left, right and centre.
This was my spot in the limelight.
It was one of those moments where a man’s character is tested, one solitary moment which defines the good in a person, one selfless act of bravery that obscures everything else he might have done in his life.
But . . .
There wasn’t even a shred of bravery in all 178 cm of me.
Zilch. Nothing. Nada.
My feet were bolted to the ground and I shrieked like a little kitten on seeing my brother getting smashed.
The girl came running to me and pulled my arm and pushed me towards the battlefield. ‘Fuck you, Danish. Go help your brother!’
‘Yes,’ I murmured and said a little prayer. For someone whose facial beauty is comparable to a dead rat’s, I didn’t want them to break my nose.
Finally, I gathered my senses and got into the thick of things, wildly throwing punches, cursing and shouting, missing everything and everybody while trying to pull my brother out of their way.
The last thing I remember was following the last seconds of the trajectory of a head of a hockey stick coming in my direction.
Blank.
*
I woke up later with a bitch of a headache in the backseat of a car the nice girl was driving.
‘Your brother really ditched you back there. Isn’t he older than you? Shouldn’t he be protecting you?’
‘He was just a little rattled, that’s all,’ Ankit said.
‘He’s a coward, that’s what he is. He asked me to go inside. Can you believe it? How do you stand him?’
‘He’s my brother and I love him,’ Ankit said.
‘He’s a shit brother to have.’
‘He’s still my brother,’ Ankit said, grinding his teeth.
‘He’s a disappointment and you know that,’ she said.
Ankit didn’t reply to that. A little later, the car stopped in front of our house and Ankit pulled me out from the backseat. He dragged me through the front gate of our house.
‘Where are you going?’ Ankit asked the girl as she started to get out of the car.
‘I thought . . .’
‘I’m not sleeping with someone who insults my brother.’
And that was the end of the nice girl for that night, who was rather truthful I must add.
*
‘What happened!’ my mother shrieked the moment she saw blood coming out of both our faces.
‘I got into a fight and Ankit tried to save me,’ I said before Ankit could utter a word. ‘It was totally my fault. I’m sorry.’
My father charged at me and it seemed like he would almost hit me before my mother came between us.
‘I told you not to take him!’ my father shouted at Ankit.
‘But—’
‘He’s a disgrace, Ankit. Disgrace!’
He threw the newspaper he was carrying to the ground for dramatic effect and stormed off. My father wasn’t finished though. A little later, he emerged from his room with an envelope in hand. He had that look on his face I have so clearly etched in my memory, that look which was an indication that he had found out about another one of my lies.
He threw the envelope on my face. Inside, was an application for the registration for my second attempt at graduation. It had reached him that morning. He knew I had failed.
‘He failed his final year. He lied to us. He lied to you!’ he shouted at my mother who looked at me as if I had committed genocide. ‘He will amount to nothing in life.’ He charged at me again, angry. ‘What will we say to our relatives now?’ He almost hit me again but stopped short and thrust a finger in my front of my face instead. Then probably seeing his spawn drunk and bleeding evoked pity in his cold heart. ‘I will find you a job and you will do it regardless of what you think about it. I will not have you sitting at home being a burden on this family. Get it?’ he shouted and worked himself up enough to finally slap me. He walked away and slammed the door behind him.
11
Aisha Paul
One of the worst things about my school life was what my elder brother had to endure because of me. Poor boy went through hell and back for me. It started when the boob gods started being benevolent on me and gave me a 34B when they should have stopped at something like a 32A. Even Megha wrote in her diary which I chanced upon (I was surprised she wrote one): Aisha is not even pretty! She’s so dark! And her pimples. Oh God. All she has are her boobs.
No one cared about my unwaxed legs, or the pimples, or my bad hair or my crooked teeth or shabby shirts, it was like suddenly my boobs were the epicentre of all gossip.
Sample these rumours:
Aisha and an eleventh grader were behind a dumpster and he had his hands up her shirt.
Aisha uses a massage oil that gets them really big. She kneads them like dough every morning. Sometimes she gets boys to do it!
Aisha is quite the nymphomaniac. That’s why they grew so big!
Her boobs might be big but they have ugly moles on them.
She has ugly nipples. A friend sucked on them. He’s in college. Of course, she’s into college guys.
It was sweet of Sarthak to never confront me. I knew it was hard for him. He must have been struggling with his own adolescent sexuality. To top that, he was dealing with the repercussions from mine. Every time a rumour cropped up, he just curled into his own space like a little snail and totally cut me off.
We were quite thick before my damn boobs grew out.
It was like he was standing at the junction of a forked road for people who had to decide whether to be an introvert or an extrovert. He chose the former because people kept reminding him of a sister who had boobs, which of course, made him vulnerable to attacks and humiliation.
If only I had been a boy, my brother would have been a different person altogether. He wouldn’t have spent the last four years of his school trying to block out all the voices of the hormonally charged boys who wanted to flick my nipples or look up my skirt. If he were not the nicest person in the world, he would have slapped me and told me to wear loose clothes, stay away from boys, and maybe even have asked me to shift to a girls’ school but he didn’t, and that made him the only kind of man I like in the world. However, I wouldn’t want to wish any brother in the world a sister like me.
We waited for the bus together that day. His cycle had broken down. He stood away from me, like I had leprosy. When we got on to the bus, I got away from my friends for a change and sat next to him on the last seat. He flinched. Just what a girl needs from her big brother.
‘Why don’t you sit with your friends?’
He stared into his phone like he always did. I had never seen him hang out with people, or go on boys’ night outs, but he was always on his phone, scrolling through social media feeds, reading up articles, and catching up with world news. He knew everything.
‘I wouldn’t really call them my friends. I know them and I talk to them but they are not really my friends friends. I don’t think I have found a real friend yet. You?’