Swimming Lessons

by Rohinton Mistry

  Jehangir’s school years had been devoid of girls. His parents could not afford the exhorbitant fees which, for some peculiar reason, were common to all coeducational high schools, and from whence issued rumours, periodically, about students being “dismissed for attempting sexual intercourse on school property.” The rumours, vicariously relished and savoured when they reached the boys’ schools, fuelled and stoked high the envy and frustration rife within those walls. Their occupants had a heavy study load. Besides the regular subjects, they learned to forgo things taken for granted by their wealthy counterparts in coeducational schools — things such as music lessons, camping trips, and guided tours to Jammu and Kashmir. But they discovered ways to make up for it. They learned how to use their eyes to undress their female teacher and gaze longingly at the outline of her bra, drop erasers or pencils and linger at floor level to retrieve them while she sat at her desk on an elevated platform (the days when she wore a sari were barren, black days), and carry home unforgettable images of flowery panties.

  These pursuits went a long way in honing imaginations and developing agility and suppleness in tight places. Unfortunately, the supply of female teachers dwindled drastically in the higher grades, when their need was greatest. But the students believed that within the egalitarianism of university life all wrongs would be righted, and continued to believe until they arrived, bright-eyed and optimistic despite their awkwardness, to discover their faith had been groundless.

  Jehangir had been trapped in St Xavier’s Boys School; its effects lingered, and even in college his first two years had been fallow. He lacked the sophistication of the chaps from coeducational schools, in their Levis and other imported clothes, who took pleasure in flaunting the ease with which they mingled and joked in the college canteen before the gawky ones from boys’ schools or the “vernacs” from non-English medium schools (at the bottom of the sophistication hierarchy) who continued shamefacedly to clothe themselves in old school uniforms at their parents’ insistence to get the full wear out of them.

  Jehangir suffered the superciliousness of the boys from coeducational schools with a silent rage. Sometimes he was consumed by bouts of inferiority which he palliated by trying to accept with calm resignation that the gulf between them and him was no wider than the one between him and the dolts in Firozsha Baag. But such fatalism did not make things less embittering. He despised their sardonic comments to the innocent ones who kept using ‘periods’ instead of ‘lectures’: “Periods, my friend, occur for menstruating females and schoolboys. In college we attend lectures.” He envied their long and loud laughter laden with confidence, their clearly forceful and distinct speech during class discussions, which he could not help but compare to the diffident mumbles of the others.

  He observed them, tried to learn from them and be like them, but remained inevitably mired in his reticence when it came to girls.

  She started talking to him one day while they waited for choir practice to begin. It had taken a lot of courage, two years’ worth of it, to join the college choir. As he correctly guessed, it was comprised mainly of members of that hateful species from coeducational schools who, in addition to their sartorial advantage, came equipped with prior experience from school choirs and corresponding portions of arrogance All he had was a love of music and a good but untrained ear. After the first meeting he decided never to go again. He had felt like a gatecrasher at an exclusive party.

  But a week went by during which he re-collected his courage, and the day for choir practice arrived. She was a soprano, he sang bass. She started the conversation, and Jehangir was relieved to find he had no trouble keeping it going. She had a lot to say, especially about Claude, the conductor: “The pompous jackass thinks all the girls in the choir are his personal property. The next time he puts his arm around me, I’m going to take his baton and poke it in his froggy eyes.” Jehangir laughed, surprised at how naturally it came.

  They had talked often after that. His fear of blushing when spoken to, or stumbling over his words if he thought they were being overheard gradually diminished. They discovered a common interest in reading and she invited him to her house. He borrowed books, met her parents, and went back often for more. She sometimes mentioned movies she had seen or wanted to see, and how it would be fun to go together, but they always stopped short of making definite plans.

  Jehangir had never been much of a cinema-goer. Amidst the bunch of envelopes marked Rent, Water, Light, and others, the last was labelled Pocket Money. But this one always stayed empty. And if sometimes he had enough money for a cinema ticket, there was no one at school or in Firozsha Baag he really cared to go with. The low opinion he had of the boys in the Baag formed during the days of Pesi paadmaroo and the misery his life had been then, persisted. He preferred to sit on the steps of C Block and read, or watch the activity in the compound. Sometimes, he heard them heroically recounting their feats in the cinema: chucking paper balls of empty potato-chip bags at strangers, or hooting and whistling in the dark to provoke shushing sounds from the audience. He felt nothing but contempt for their puerile antics. A delight in Nariman Hansotia’s yarns on the steps of A Block was the only thing he shared with them.

  When Mrs Bulsara decided he was old enough to go out alone provided he always returned by eight o’clock, Jehangir varied the routine of his evenings. He began going for walks to the Hanging Gardens. His favourite place there was the children’s playground after the children left at dusk. Then, it was occupied by men who transformed it into a gym every night. They came regularly, and improvised by using the various combinations of bars and railings of the slide or swing for pull-ups and push-ups, and the plank of the see-saw for sit-ups. They must have had an arrangement with the night-watchman, because the playground was strictly for children. Jehangir, hidden behind a bush or tree, watched the exercisers. They fascinated him. Their rippling, sweating muscles were magnified versions of the bodies of the boys in the school gym. Watching their powerful torsos and limbs had a strange effect on his own skinny body, it sometimes triggered a longing for brawn and sinew in his slender arms and legs.

  Later, in college, Jehangir stopped going to the Hanging Gardens. He was suddenly very conscious of his aloneness, and felt silly wandering around amidst ayahs with children or couples looking for solitude. Hiding and watching the exercisers did not seem right, either.

  The cinema became his new haunt. In the dark movie theatres it did not matter that he was alone. If he sat next to a girl, he would fantasize that she had come with him and was throbbing just like him. He let his elbow touch her arm as if by accident on the armrest they shared. When she edged past him during intermission or after the movie, he gently grazed the back of her thighs with his knees, almost like a light caress. He would maneouvre to make a show of allowing her maximum room, but made sure to get the most feel. Those were moments of pure ecstasy, moments which he re-lived in bed at night. Sometimes, if there was a particularly active couple next to him, he spent more time watching them than the screen, employing the contortions of a head trained in school under desks and benches. But a stiff neck and an ache at his centre were his only companions when he emerged from the theatre.

  Several choir practices later, she went with him to the cinema, and Jehangir found it hard to believe that he had not come alone again to the darkened hall of possibilities. After the intermission she was gently massaging her right wrist, having sprained it the day before. He asked if it was hurting terribly, and later remembered the moment with pride, that he had had the courage and presence of mind to stroke the wrist without a word when she held it out for him over his lap. The stirring which began at his centre swelled with each stroke; after a while their fingers entwined, clumsily, until the index, middle, and ring found their proper places, and interlocked in a tight clasp. He was tremendously aroused but did not dare do anything else. Much too soon the flag appeared on the screen and the audience rose for Jana Gana Mana. His tremendous ar
ousal was quickly doused. All that remained was a nasty ache, the unpleasant residue of lust unreleased, as though he had been kneed in the groin.

  It was a while since the train had stopped at a station. Jehangir crossed his legs. He was disgusted with himself. Getting excited again at the mere memory of holding hands. He had read in various magazines and books that boys of fifteen in America enjoyed regular sex, and had the privacy to do it, while he at nineteen was still a virgin, worked up just at the thought of holding her hand, and it was all very unfair and frustrating.

  The train was passing by farmland. The fields were sere, brown and bare, and the little vegetation persisting tenaciously was parched yellow. The monsoons were late again, and here, outside the city, the delay was writ harsh across the landscape.

  In the city, too, there were hardships. The quota of tap water had been curtailed, and Jehangir had been waking up at five A.M. for the past month to help Mother fill up storage drums for bathing and cleaning and cooking, before the supply was cut off at six A.M.

  Scrawny cattle foraged amidst the stubble in the fields. Telegraph poles whizzed by, menacingly close. Poles which periodically cracked open the skulls of commuters who travelled hanging from doors and windows, and provided fodder for the death toll faithfully recorded by city newspapers. A death toll sharing the inconspicuity of inside pages. Side by side with assaults on scheduled castes in one village and murders of harijans by brahmins in another.

  When he had brought her home the first time, it had been for a very short visit. He had warned his parents beforehand, praying that Mother would take the hint and remove the mathoobanoo from her head; the white mulmul square made her look like a backward village Parsi from Navsari, he had recently decided. But he was not spared what he thought was a moment of shame and embarrassment. There were quick introductions and several awkward silences, then they left for choir practice.

  Later, when Jehangir returned, Mother said during dinner that he should not be seeing so much of the girl. “This is not the time for going out with girls anyway. The proper time will come after finishing college, when you are earning your own living and can afford it.” In the meantime, if he did go out occasionally after asking for permission, he would have to continue to be home by eight o’clock. It would not do to stay out later than that and let things get too serious.

  Jehangir said that he would be home by eight if she did not wear that mathoobanoo.

  “I am not going to tolerate your ifs-bifs,” said Mrs Bulsara, covering her hurt with brusqueness, “what I am saying is for your own good.” It was obvious, she said, that the girl came from a family better off than they were, her life-style would make him uncomfortable. “Trust a mother’s instinct. It is only your happiness I think of. Besides, she is the first girl you have gone out with, you might meet someone you like more. Then what?”

  “Then I’ll stop going out with her.”

  “But what of her feelings? You might be giving her serious hopes.”

  “No one has any serious hopes. It’s so silly, all these objections.”

  “It is always a serious matter where a girl is involved. You will not understand that at your age.”

  Dinner finished without any real unpleasantry. But not for many nights after that. The dinner-table talk grew sharper as days passed. At first, words were chosen carefully in an effort to preserve a semblance of democratic discussion. Soon, however, the tensions outgrew all such efforts, and a nightly routine of debilitating sarcasm established itself. Every dinner saw the same denunciations brought forth, sometimes with a new barb twisted through them.

  “There’s something about the way she talks. Without proper respect.”

  “Saw what she was wearing? Such a short skirt. And too much makeup.”

  “Because you are going out with her you think electricity is free of charge? Ironing shirt and pant from morning till evening.” The ancient dented serving-spoon, descended through hands of foremothers, struck the pot of brinjal with a plangency denoting more to come.

  “Why must a girl wear so much makeup unless she is hiding something underneath.”

  “Shines his shoes till I can see my unhappy face. More shoe polish has been used after meeting her than in all the years before”

  “If she does not respect your parents, how will she respect you? Your whole life will be unhappy.”

  Father said only one thing: “Trust your mother’s instincts. I always do, they are never wrong.”

  Things rapidly became worse Not a day passed without quarrelling. They said things to each other which they would not have dreamt of saying at one time; bitter, vindictive things. Every few days there was a reconciliation at Father’s insistence, with sincere hugs and tears of remorse which sprang from the depths of their beings, so fervent was the desire to let peace and understanding reign again. But this would last for a short time only. The strange new emotions and forces which had taken hold, indecipherable and inscrutable, would soon be manifest again; then the quarrels and hurtful words would resume.

  After the first few visits Jehangir did not bring her home any more. Besides, she always refused to come under some pretext — she had felt the antagonism that silently burgeoned on her arrival. There was no outward sign of it, on the surface all was decorum and grace, welcome and kindness. But to sense what lay underneath did not take much. She also picked up the unintentional hints he dropped during those evenings when they met after an excessively trying time at home Then she would try to help him, and before they parted he would agree to stand up to his parents, become independent, and many more promises.

  But the promises were always smothered by a fresh wave of reproaches awaiting him at home If he managed to speak in the spirit of autonomy that she had inspired in him earlier in the evening, it still turned out unfavourably.

  “See?” Mother would say with mournful satisfaction, “see how it proves my point that she is a bad influence? He goes to her and returns with such cruel words in his mouth. And who put them there, that is all I am asking. Because such words were not there before Now I must start all over again to remove her effect on him. Then he will be more like the son I once knew. But how long can I go on like this, how long?” she would conclude dolefully, whereupon Jehangir abandoned the balance of his painstakingly prepared words.

  He looked at his parents now, supporting each other as they slept through heat and dust. The photograph was in his wallet. They had told him to bring it along. He had taken it with her camera during the college picnic at Elephanta Caves. She later gave him a copy. It was a black-and-white, and as he gazed at it he could feel the soft brown of her eyes drawing him in, ready to do her will. The will of my enchantress, he liked to imagine.

  Mother had taken to going through his trousers and wallet. He was aware of these secret searches but had said nothing, not wanting to add to her sorrow and to the bitterness that filled the house.

  The day after he received the photograph, she triumphantly found it: “What is this, why must you carry her photo with you?”

  “What right did you have to look in my wallet?”

  “What right? What right, he says! To his own mother he says what right! A mother does not need any rights. A mother exercises her judgement out of love. A mother does whatever she knows is right for her son.”

  The photograph was brought up constantly for days after, and with each passing day the rhetoric grew increasingly forceful and wildly inventive.

  “It is not enough to see her makeup-covered face in the evening. He must also keep her photograph.”

  “People have been made to go crazy by a photo with a magic spell on it. Maybe her parents are involved in this, trying to snare my son for their daughter.”

  “She knows you will go to study in America one day and settle there. By thrusting her photo on you she is making sure you will sponsor her. Oh yes, it begins with a photograph.”


  “Be careful you don’t forget your own mother’s face, you don’t have much time to see it these days.”

  And always, the eight o’clock ultimatum: “Remember, the door will never open for you after eight o’clock.”

  In the end Mother was glad to have the photograph. “One good thing she did by giving it to you. Now we have something to show Bhagwan Baba.”

  The train braked in preparation for the approaching station. A kayrawalli climbed aboard to flop upon the floor with her basket of plantains. She mopped her brow with one corner of her sari, rubbed her eyes, and sat with drawn-up knees after administering a good scratching in some region under the sari-folds. Any minute now she’ll start badgering the passengers to buy her plantains, thought Jehangir. But she sat where she was, enervated, with no inclination to acquire business. Perhaps she did not dare to wake the slumbering people In school they used to say that for a quarter rupee a kayrawalli would lift her sari and flash for you. For a rupee she would even perform with a plantain. He wondered if it was true.

  The glass bangles on her wrists tinkled as the train swayed along, and she fell asleep. The plantains in her basket looked bruised and battered, beginning to show black patches because of the heat. They would have to be thrown away if they remained unsold. Granny had a saying about eating them: a plantain in the morning turns to gold in the stomach and a plantain at noon is silver; a plantain in the evening turns to brass in the belly, but a plantain at night is iron in the gut.

  He wondered why the kayrawalli was travelling away from the city and towards the suburbs. People like her brought fruit to the city. Maybe she was on the wrong train.

  Just like Father and Mother and me To think that I put the thought in their heads.

  Once, in the midst of a bitter outburst, he had said, “Why don’t you ask your famous Bhagwan Baba if he also handles matchmaking? Maybe he’ll be in my favour.” He spoke with what he thought was biting sarcasm. Everything now had a habit of degenerating into a sarcasm contest.