Hold my Hand (Penguin Metro Reads)

by Durjoy Datta

  14

  I have never believed that I will ever write a novel, or get published, or win the Michael J. Printz award for Best Young Adult Fiction, or date a supermodel, or run for Prime Minister some day, but I also didn’t think I would be in the hotel suite of a girl who makes you think of promises and forevers and cute puppies and double rainbows.

  Neither did I know I would be picking out clothes for her.

  ‘Dad buys all my clothes for me. He shuffles through fashion magazines and tells me the colour. Please don’t tell me he makes me look like a great, big joke.’

  ‘Oh, shut up! This closet looks like a socialite’s wardrobe! If I sell it off I will have enough to put in a bank in Switzerland. I can’t even figure out what goes where. Wait! I think I found a T-shirt!’

  I hand over the T-shirt to her and she holds it near her nose. ‘I got it in Paris. I can smell it.’

  ‘And then you say you’re not a circus puppy! No offence.’

  ‘None taken.’

  I choose a pair of pants; she says it’s too long and we settle on something shorter. She takes a shower and changes.

  ‘Are you sure you want to go out?’ she asks.

  ‘Yes, I’m sure. You need to give me a treat! Moreover, I’m not comfortable staying here. It feels like your dad’s watching.’

  ‘I find it hard to keep up when people walk fast,’ she says quietly.

  ‘I’m in no hurry.’

  We leave the hotel and find ourselves on the busy street. She takes her cane out and starts tapping it in front of her. She holds me with her other hand. People part in front of us, staying clear of her cane—they all look. Oh. My. God. They are all looking. People are looking at her, and me, their face contorting in pity, or maybe in relief that they are not like her. I’m furious, my fists are clenched, and I want to shout at them that they are nothing like her! And that she is my favourite person in the world!

  I calm down when I see people helping us out, and smiling, and giving us the right of way in lifts and escalators and pathways.

  ‘Are you embarrassed?’ she asks. I look at her angrily, but then I melt because a) she’s ignorant of what she has come to mean to me and b) she’s a dewdrop, beautiful and fresh and impossible to describe!

  ‘You’re the most extraordinary thing to have happened to me overseas!’

  ‘Overseas, huh?’ she mocks me. We find ourselves a seat on the Metro and she folds her cane and keeps it in her handbag. ‘You must be some kind of playboy, Deep. You’re likeable, you don’t drink, you read books and you’re brilliant enough to be sent for a trip to Hong Kong, all paid for, no less.’

  ‘I’m no dating expert, but girls want none of that.’

  ‘Girls are blind.’

  It takes me a few seconds to get the pun. And to figure out where we are going.

  ‘Where are we going?’ I ask.

  ‘Hollywood Street. Man Mo temple.’

  ‘Temple? Why a temple?’

  I unfold a map of Hong Kong that I always carry in my pocket and start looking for the street we are on. The names of streets are straight out of a Hollywood movie, sprinkled with liberal dosages of age-old oriental kung-fu. Cleverly Street, Queen’s Road Central and Staunton Street criss-cross on the same map with Wing Lok Street and Lok Ku Road, quite like Hong Kong itself, which is a cauldron brimming with people of innumerable nationalities, all of whom bring with them their cultures, which is then readily adopted and moulded and shared, till it fossilizes with the rest of Hong Kong, making it the perfect melange of colours and cultures. No wonder you would find an Indonesian and a French restaurant jostling for space between an authentic Chinese medicinal tea outlet and a street food stall selling the famed Hong Kong waffle and lobster balls and preserved eggs. As I’m thinking all of this, I get hungry, and Ahana and I share a chunk of freshly barbequed pork with rice we buy off a street stall.

  Soon we are down and on the street. Our task—to visit a two-hundred–year-old temple hidden in the recesses of the all-pervasive high-rises.

  ‘Get us a taxi,’ she says and I wave to stop one. She tells the driver to take us to the Man Mo temple. The driver nods and says, ‘Okay, okay, I take you, okay, okay!’ enthusiastic and chirpy. He bows twice, which I assume is a gesture to say he’s thankful and that’s strange because I should be thankful that he’s taking us there. I can get used to this. People in Hong Kong—from the taxi drivers to the shopkeepers to the waiters at restaurants are constantly smiling and thanking you, and it’s slowly spoiling me.

  ‘I thought I will take you some place which will help you write your book.’

  I search but I can’t recall if I have ever told her about the book. ‘When did I tell you about the book?’ I ask.

  ‘I guessed. You read so many of them, so I thought you would want, some time in life, to write one yourself.’

  ‘How will the temple help me write? I don’t think I’m the visit-strange-places-for-inspiration kind of writer. I’m mostly a stare-at-a-blank-computer-screen-and-then-curse type of writer. On second thoughts, I’m mostly a writer who doesn’t write.’

  ‘I’m starting to love the idea of you being a writer.’

  ‘Welcome to the club!’

  ‘I like writers.’

  ‘Here,’ the driver says and we step down.

  The little red and golden temple with sloping green roofs on which small dragons are perched or hanging precariously, is nestled on a street surrounded by much newer buildings. Its entrance is guarded by statues of what looks like a pride of lions; the lions can also be seen in different areas around the magnificent temple, She tells me that ‘Man’ is the God of Literature and ‘Mo’ is the God of War.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ I tell her.

  ‘Ideally, you should have been here with my dad. Both your gods are here.’

  ‘There is just one God.’

  ‘But isn’t it great that he’s like ice cream? You can pick a flavour you like and it will still be ice and cream,’ she says. ‘No one can tell you which flavour to like.’

  As I climb up the little stairs to the temple, suddenly the unrelenting traffic and noise of the city die out. Inside the complex it is like time stops here; it’s calm and it’s quiet, except for a murmur of prayers that floats around us, carrying us further away from the urgent bustle of the city.

  She follows close behind, holding my hand, yet gauging the steps.

  ‘Tell me what you see? It smells paradisiacal.’

  ‘Even I don’t know what that word means,’ I say.

  ‘Tell me.’

  I look around the temple and find that, except for the people around us, everything is old, really, really old. ‘The walls are painted red and engraved with red and golden coloured inscriptions and paintings. It’s beautiful! There is incense all around, which I’m sure you can smell. There are giant incense coils that are hanging from the ceiling, burning away slowly. So many! Look!’ I exclaim and then shut up.

  ‘How many are there?’

  ‘Like only about three million. They are hanging everywhere! There are also golden urns in which incense sticks are stuck, some as thick as my arm. Do you want to light some?’

  ‘I want the ones as thick as your arm,’ she beams.

  We buy a few incense sticks, the ones as thick as my arm, and light them in an open fire. A woman tells her that every stick has to be lighted before it can be offered to the gods.

  ‘How do the gods look?’

  ‘Like gods,’ I say. ‘Staring down at us. They kind of look angry. I get why the God of War is angry, it’s probably in his job description, but why’s the God of Literature angry?’

  ‘Because they’re still ice and cream.’

  We leave our incense sticks in one of the urns. ‘Take me where I can pray,’ she says and I hold her hand and make her sit down where a few women were talking to themselves. Periodically, they throw two semi-circular wooden pieces in front of them. I tell Ahana what they are doing and Ahana asks one
of the women. The woman explains, ‘You ask him a question. The wooden pieces are dice and they tell you if your wish would come true or not.’

  ‘That sounds like fun,’ she says, closes her eyes, mumbles something and throws the pieces in front of her. It’s a no. I hand her back the pieces. She tries again, mumbles a longer sentence, and it’s a no again. The third time it’s a yes.

  I try it too and it turns out to be a no; I stop trying.

  We leave the temple after walking around a bit, soaking in the ‘paradisiacal’ atmosphere, as she put it.

  ‘What did you ask for?’ I ask her.

  ‘Wishes are not supposed to be told. They don’t come true otherwise,’ she snaps.

  ‘Tell me the ones which aren’t coming true.’

  ‘I’m not going to see in the nearest future. And Dad’s not to stop trying to get me to see again,’ she says. She looks in my direction with her saddened eyes. I want to hug her but I don’t know if it’s appropriate.

  ‘I don’t see a point in asking God for stuff! It’s a business strategy. You ask for something, the pieces say no, you buy more incense sticks and beg him to turn it into a yes, and the cycle goes on. I don’t think he cares. God is maybe a really high-maintenance, attention-seeking woman,’ I say, and add, ‘but at least you got the last one right.’

  ‘The last one was for you,’ she says. ‘But I can’t tell you what it was.’

  ‘For me?’

  ‘God doesn’t want us to beg. Maybe God wants us to wish for good things for other people, and maybe that’s the point of worship. Maybe God is a woman, but an old mother looking for a little bit of love,’ she says and adds after a second, ‘What did you ask for?’

  I don’t answer.

  15

  Walking on the Hollywood Road (the closest I would ever get to Hollywood, although life does have a strange way of surprising me these days), I’m wondering how easily I have warmed up to the idea to walking with a girl holding my hand. I have held hands with a girl before, but it feels different. I’m as scared to let it go as I’m joyous about holding it in the present.

  ‘There’s a graffiti on the wall which I think is of a dog or a sheep and it’s wearing a mask that’s connected to a plant that’s strapped to its back,’ I explain. I really like explaining things to her. It feels like the only thing I have ever done that matters.

  ‘That has to be one thoughtful bad-ass teenager graffiti artist,’ she says.

  ‘Bad-ass teenager graffiti artist.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It sounds so cool!’

  We walk lazily up and down the streets, occasionally walking into a quaint shop that seemed to have jumped out of picture postcards from Venice or Amsterdam. I find it hard to tell her what they sell because these shops are like little museums selling history; antique pieces lie around to be bought and they are beautiful and they can be touched, and when she touches them and says, ‘I just shook hands with someone from hundred years ago!’ her face glows, and her eyes brighten.

  I see things yet I can’t experience them like she does. I don’t think of them as ‘Bad-ass teenager graffiti art’ or that I’ve ‘shaken hands with a person from hundreds of years ago’.

  We idle along the Hollywood Road and I describe to her the buildings whose grandiose designs are interestingly colonial, one of which—as I later learn is the old Hong Kong police headquarters—is marked as a heritage site on my map. She tells me it’s because we are on the second oldest road in Hong Kong laid by Royal Marine Engineers over a hundred and fifty years ago.

  Later, we walk to a restaurant that serves Korean food, and she tells me she loves Korean food and how it smells. I read out from the menu and she orders for both of us.

  ‘I must warn you that what you just ordered doesn’t look so nice,’ I tell her, looking suspiciously at the pictures on the menu card.

  ‘If you were to just feel your food without being able to see it, you wouldn’t eat half the things you like,’ she says like a saint.

  ‘I have a crush on your blind wisdom!’ I laugh.

  The food arrives and I have to give it to her that it tastes pretty good. I’m used to food where spices are all you taste, but here I can actually taste every ingredient individually.

  We walk out of the restaurant and I thank her for paying and she tries to slap me but misses.

  ‘Call a taxi?’ I ask. She nods, and when I ask if we are going back to the hotel, she shakes her head and tells me that she needs me to do something for her. The word need never felt so powerful before.

  ‘Is it okay if I call a friend?’ she asks.

  ‘Is it a girl? Because I’m wearing a shirt that’s over three hundred years old and never once washed. It’s the reason why I smell old.’

  ‘It’s a guy. And he’s blind as well. We are like the three musketeers only that we are just two and we don’t have swords or eyes or people to fight.’

  ‘Ahana, you’re funny. And not girl funny. Like guy funny, like stand-up comic funny.’

  ‘And you just know the right things to say to a blind girl,’ she flutters her eyelashes.

  ‘I have been known to be a charmer,’ I respond. ‘So much so that it’s like girls have a restraining order to keep away from me lest they find themselves falling hopelessly in love with me. My good looks are only known to blind people.’

  ‘Only blind people are allowed blind jokes,’ she answers. ‘It’s in the constitution of blind people which no one else but we can read because it’s in Braille,’ she laughs.

  Our taxi takes us to the Central Garden Station, from where the Peak Tram starts, a train that goes up into the mountains. Ahana tells me that there is an unbelievable view to be admired on the way. Of all the trams that criss-cross across the landscape of Hong Kong, giving it an old-world charm, this is the only one that climbs uphill.

  She calls her friend and he says he will be there, no questions asked.

  ‘It’s like a really slow rollercoaster that wouldn’t come down, but stops at the top,’ she says. ‘I have heard people say, ‘Look at that,’ and then there are many sounds of cameras clicking. I can hear people smile.’

  ‘I will let you know what all the noise is about.’ She nods happily. I’m excited too.

  The tram starts on a plane, and then suddenly and almost perilously, it’s inclined at an awkward angle that trains shouldn’t be inclined at, let alone be trudging slowly at.

  ‘This is a little scary,’ I say.

  ‘That would be a first. I have never heard someone say that in the tram.’

  ‘We will continue the conversation as if I hadn’t said anything about the scariness,’ I say. ‘Man! This is good though. We have left trees behind, which now look tilted, also I see buildings that are tilted—everything’s kind of inclined! This is so weird. Oh! I also see the sea! It’s like Newton’s frame of reference. How we see things depend on where we are.’

  ‘It took Newton to say that? They could have just asked me!’

  ‘Oh, your sexy blind jokes,’ I say. It’s the first time I have used the word ‘sexy’ with a girl.

  ‘Aren’t you just the stud?’

  ‘I’m every girl’s dream!’ I say expansively. Soon we’ve reached the top.

  Holding hands, we walk out and it’s ‘Hong Kong on the mountain’ all over again. There is a McDonald’s outlet, sushi restaurants, and people selling nail paints and giving free hairstyles. Ahana opts for a hair makeover and once she is done she asks me if it looks any good and I just nod vigorously and she somehow hears the eager nod. We walk to the Sky Terrace, which is famous for a birds’-eye view of the island. Our tickets are torn and we take the escalator. My fear of heights is slowly kicking in.

  ‘What it is like?’ she asks.

  ‘It’s like flying. It’s really up there. Everything is tiny, like really tiny. It’s not a birds’-eye view. I don’t think even they fly this high in the air.’

  ‘Do you like it?’

  ‘I’m
still a little scared. I think I suffer from every kind of phobia there is,’ I say and she reaches for my hand. We walk around the edge slowly, and I feel okay. Everything feels okay with her.

  ‘It’s alright. I will not let go,’ she clutches my hand tighter. She reminds me of my mom and of when I was eight and we were on the giant wheel, I was scared out of my wits, and Dad, who was Superman to me, laughed, and I wanted to emulate him and Mom whispered in my ears, ‘You’re stronger,’ and that made everything alright.

  We are walking around, slowly and cautiously, as if the wind would consume me and throw me past the ledge if I am not careful, when her phone rings and I spot a guy—he is unbelievably hot! I don’t want to be mean or insensitive, but Ahana and he are like model children from a property advertisement—too pretty to be less than anything but perfect.

  He is walking without a stick, though I’m sure there is one in his bag. He’s making clicking sounds that I can hear from afar.

  ‘He’s pretty buff for a blind kid,’ I say, amazed.

  ‘I wouldn’t know,’ she says. Then he is near us and she says, ‘Hi!’

  ‘You reflect sound like a koala bear! Have you gained weight? Happy Birthday!’ he rattles off and hugs her. It’s an awkward hug, hands and arms going everywhere, but once they find the groove, it lasts long enough to make me feel uncomfortable.

  ‘You must be Deep. I’m Aveek,’ he says, his hand hangs in the air and I shake it.

  ‘He was just telling me what it feels like to be here. He says it’s like flying,’ she tells him.

  ‘Let’s sit,’ Aveek says, and grabs her arm and starts making the clicking sound again. They sit on a bench and I follow. ‘My father tells me it feels like a bird shitting on a skyscraper,’ he says.

  ‘Well, Deep is a writer,’ she says, ‘and you’re just an eternal pessimist.’

  ‘I’m not really a writer,’ I correct.

  ‘How have you been?’ he asks Ahana, and they are still holding hands. ‘Is your Dad still being a jerk?’

  ‘He’s not a jerk. He’s just concerned and hopeful.’