The Blue Notebook

by MD James Levine

  Mother would often swipe me because my resilience was too great. Her red palm would slap my face with such vehemence that I felt she might break my neck. Before I howled in pain at these quite frequent assaults, I would try to hold back my scream because I wanted to build up my ability to reside within myself. Nowadays the strikes are not with the open henna-reddened hand of Mother but from the pounding of man’s hips on mine. Mother trained me well, though, for now I do live within myself.

  No! I am not deranged. I do not believe for a second that I lie each day in a nest of gold with attendants and creamy foods. My cell, with its steel bars, is the size of a toilet. That is my home. I wait for the gray concrete night to become day—not that it matters a speck, for the walls never change. The dirt slowly accumulates with each entrant. When man makes sweet-cake on me, my bedding is so thin that I feel this notebook’s staples against my back. The only reason that I am fed is to keep my breasts filled and my bottom rounded and desirable. Man thereby feeds me.

  I am not deranged, for I know that man spends a hundred rupees to have his bhunnas in my face or in my legs, or two hundred in my brown hole.

  I am not deranged. I do not really see gold on my ceiling when I look up and I do not smell perfumes in the air. Neither do I smell the rancid stench of my cell or my bed because I am accustomed to it. I do, however, smell man’s smells. No man who visits me is clean; on some I smell their wives’ cooking and on others, their perfume. On some men I can taste the lipstick of other kisses that have been placed on his lips hours or minutes before mine.

  I am often confused. I am confused as to why day always follows night when there is so much variability in everything else. I am confused about why beauty resides in variability rather than in constancy. I suppose that there must be forces that exceed my ability to understand them. But that is neither delusion nor insanity.

  I am not deranged, but there are countless days I wish I were.

  I arrived in Mumbai with Father. During the week before we left, there was an unusual hush at home and so I knew something was up. Mother and Father did not argue even once, and there were no whiffs of perfume on Father’s sweat-drenched work clothes. I knew too that somehow I was responsible for this tranquillity, in part because Mother was kind to me even when she should not have been. Father was different; there was a new sad feeling between us that I later came to realize was regret.

  I am now an expert on the regret of men. Regret does not obey the rules of class or money. The husband, priest, father, teacher, doctor, businessman, son, banker, thief, politician all have the capacity for regret. From that day Father showed me his capacity for regret, I came to recognize it in all the men I met. When the soy farmers need to protect their crops from the harsh sun, they use veils of white plastic cloth with string woven through it; despite being lightweight and almost transparent, it is indestructible. Entire fields are swathed in this material, which resembles enormous sails. The white fluttering sails do not stop the sun from entering and making the crops grow; the clarity and intensity of the sun is dulled, however. This is true of regret. It is a veil, and like all human emotions it serves to soften the impact of reality. It is a failed belief that we cannot experience the true brilliance of the light, but it is through fear that we veil ourselves from that brilliance.

  We cloak ourselves in layers upon layers of regret, dishonesty, cruelty, and pride. Father, the week he brought me to Mumbai, was veiled in regret.

  I found out that I was leaving for Mumbai when I attended my goodbye party. It was not like a birthday party but rather was a gathering of people who were all uneasy. No one knew what to do or say and I did not get any presents. Everyone there, except me, knew that I was leaving. As the sweet-cakes and biscuits were passed around and the bowls of dahl slopped out, we were not burned by the afternoon sun, as the entire village was shrouded in a thick veil of regret.

  Everyone said goodbye to me. My brothers, sisters, and cousins cried and my baby brother Avijit wept. As I tried to work out what was happening, I decided that I was ill. I thought I was going to die from some disease that no one would tell me about.

  When Mother explained to me that Father was going to take me to Mumbai I therefore assumed it was to see a doctor, although normally we would go to Bhopal for serious medical matters. I concluded that I must be terminally ill. Then everything made sense: the party the tears, Mother’s kindness, and Father’s gloominess. I became scared, which is unusual for me because I am the silver-eyed leopard.

  The journey to Mumbai necessitated a great deal of walking and my first journey on a bus—just Father and me. I started out holding Father’s hand, chatting with him about the party and giggling about Uncle V, who fell asleep again while eating. By the time we had reached the main road my hair was sweaty and dusty and my hand separate from Father’s. Father and I shared few words as we waited for the bus. We sat in the shade of a dull green woody tree that had spent its entire life waiting for buses.

  Father sat looking outward with his back against the tree, his knees bent and his feet flat against the red-brown sand in front of him. He stared out across crops cloaked in white sheeting. The landscape was speckled with occasional trees that stood either alone or in groupings of two or three. The heat was excessive and the sky was a pale blue. After about ten seconds of watching my silent, folded-up father, I started to unwrap the food bundle that Mother had given me. She had wrapped several delicacies in a red-and-green square of cotton that I recognized from our hut. My eyes lit up; there were sweet-breads, nan breads, chutneys, and relishes (they were all leftovers from the party). Best of all, there were flour balls sweetened with dust-sugar, white sweet-cakes with swirls of green inside, and red sweets sprinkled with sparkling sugar crystals. Each item was so carefully wrapped and so easily unwrapped!

  “Batuk,” Father snapped, “if you eat everything now, you will have nothing for the journey” “Hmm,” I said, and then started to munch. The white sweet-bread with the green swirls was delicious. “Father, why are we going to Mumbai … am I ill or something?” “No, Batuk,” Father said in an irritated tone, “why would you think that? You are not ill.” I was relieved beyond belief. We sat in silence for a few minutes more and then I asked, “Then why are we going there … where will we stay?”

  “Batuk, you will find out soon enough.” Father’s voice was dry and he was irritated with me. “Now be quiet and don’t eat anything else—I told you. The bus will be here soon.” I was silent after that.

  I decided to get up and talk to the tree. I asked the tree, “What is it like for you to wait all your life for buses and never get on them when they come?” The tree was initially silent but then answered me a little rudely, “Did you not hear your father? Be quiet and wait for the bus.” There was a pause, and then the tree realized that I was going to take myself away and leave him alone. He cleared his woody throat. “You know, Batuk, I could tell you what it is like to wait many lives for many buses … but, sweet girl, I am thirsty and can barely talk.” I thought for a moment and cried, “Wait!” I ran to my bundle, grabbed my skin of water, and ran back to the tree’s roots and poured my water over them.

  “Batuk!” Father screamed at me. “What the hell are you doing! Stop! Stop!” “But Father, the tree is so thirsty. His voice is hoarse,” I answered. Father looked up at me from the ground and his face reddened from his neck upward. He was just about to scream at me again but stopped himself. “Come here, you little devil,” he called, and opened his arms. I ran over and jumped into Father’s arms. His work clothes were soft from their million washings and I could smell Mother’s cooking on him. In his arms, I melted into him and became him, for that is what I am—his. He was my father, who was taking me, his silver-eyed leopard, all the way to Mumbai. In the middle of nowhere, under the tree, I shut my eyes. I recognized that everyone’s regret at my leaving was only because they wished to be where I was now, in the arms of Father waiting for our bus.

  The tree was watching me as
Father and I sat there together as one. The tree spoke, “Batuk, why don’t you stay here with me? I could teach you all the mysteries of the world. My leaves have heard the laughter, words, and cries of every living thing. My roots have tasted water from across the earth. My bark holds the map to the secrets of all knowledge. My seed was blown here from a tree in the great garden of the Taj and so I know perfect love too. Come, Batuk, leave your father and melt into me.”

  “But tree,” I said from my father’s arms, “you know everything there is to know, and still you stay here waiting for a bus but never get on it. So what is your service?” “My service,” said the tree, “is to provide you with shade.” I thought about this in the long silence that followed, Father having fallen asleep. I wiggled out of Father’s arms and went over to the tree and scrutinized its bark. All I could see were little insects crawling in the crevices and cracks. Some insects seemed to have purpose and others wandered hither and fro, but they were all just insects scurrying around on a great tree. I said to the tree, “I cannot stay with you. I must go with Father to Mumbai on the bus.”

  I saw the distant cloud of dust from our bus approaching. “Father, Father, our bus!” Father woke up and started to collect his few things as the bus approached. The tree said to me, “I have one more thing to tell you, Batuk.” There was no malice in the tree’s voice, just regret. “Yes, great tree?” I asked. The tree answered in a voice so soft that you had to concentrate intensely on his leaves to hear it, “The whole world, Batuk, was created for you alone and no other.”

  As I turned to Father I noticed that the water I had poured over the tree’s roots had risen to Father’s face, for there I saw it, dripping from his eyes.

  I had never been on a bus before. The bus driver was the fattest man in the world, next to Uncle V. He wore a light blue patterned shirt unbuttoned to his mid-chest. He had breasts bigger than Mother’s and appeared to have a spare meal, or at least snacks, sprinkled over them. He was squished into the driver’s chair and you could see that the springs were fully compressed to the point where they no longer sprang. The chair had once been coated in red vinyl but was now so patchy and worn that the stuffing exuded from it like pus from a boil. I was amazed that the driver could turn the steering wheel at all, as his belly squashed against it so hard that the white plastic wheel was enfolded in his flesh.

  As we started to climb up the steps of the bus, the driver turned his huge head downward and barked, “What the shit are you two doing? If you are getting on, get on with it. If you are going to stay here and rot, get the hell off my bus.” Each of his cheeks hung off his face and wobbled as he spoke, as if he had two nan breads stapled below his eyelids. “And what do we have here?” he asked, looking at me as I scurried up behind Father. I noticed that only his left eye moved. He farted and growled, “Rat-Bag, what do they call you?” He had not shaved his face for days and I was sure I could see gravy on his chin hair.

  I said, “My name is Batuk.” “Batuk Rat-Bag, what sort of name is that? Where is your tail?” He laughed at his joke. He said to Father, “You look like a cheapskate—I bet you want to land your asses on the roof … if I lose the Rat-Bag on a turn … then that’s a bloody pity but don’t come crying to me.”

  Father was counting out his money as the driver looked me up and down, rather like he was examining a snack. Then he curled his slightly bluish lips and asked, “So you think you can hang on, Rat-Bag Patook?” I looked at the floor and said, “I bet you couldn’t throw me off if you wanted to. This piece of junk doesn’t go fast enough.” (If Mother had been there she would have slapped me.) He squeezed out of his chair, which was an astonishing feat since he was so tightly packed in; I thought the steering wheel might snap off. It crossed my mind that the driver might not have gotten out of his chair in a long time because he was actually a part of the bus, rather like the exhaust pipe. This thought was interrupted as he bellowed, “What the shit did you say?” He farted on the Wh.

  As he shouted, the entire air mass of the bus vibrated. He looked out at the array of scattered passengers, most of whom were trying to look elsewhere. “Ladies and gentlemen who are the esteemed and most honored passengers of the I.B.C., today you are in for a damn treat. Rat-Bag Patook does not believe that I can shake her from my bus … All I can say is that she should be ready for a long walk to Mumbai. When I get a rat on my bus I make sure to shake it off.” As he laughed I was sure I could smell his curry from long past. Several of the peasant passengers hooted and applauded. But then my father spoke, a short, slight man standing before the giant ball of ghee. He spoke in a barely audible voice at a painfully slow speed. “Dear sir,” he began, and you could sense the tree listening through the open windows. As each word left Father’s lips, I became more incredulous. Father said, “It is quite possible that you will drive this bus so recklessly as to place a nine-year-old girl in peril of her life. But the next time you call my daughter Rat-Bag, I will remove the tongue from your mouth and put it in your lunch box.”

  If someone had told me what would happen next, I would never have believed it. In an instantaneous action, Father pulled his khukri knife from behind his back, where I did not even know he had it. It was the curved knife he uses in the fields to cut plants, crack the ground, and decapitate snakes. What amazed me even more than the knife itself was the rocklike steadiness with which Father held the nine-inch blade against the driver’s sagging neck and his apparent intent to use it. His hand did not waver even a grass-breadth and his eyes showed no emotion except a bored calm. The bus driver had stopped breathing and there was absolute silence on the bus; even the tree had stopped moving.

  “We should leave for Mumbai,” Father whispered to the driver, and as he lowered the blade the driver’s head bobbled up and down in agreement. Father bought two third-class tickets, which are the best tickets there are. You get to sit on top of the bus and see everything. As we drove off I waved goodbye to the tree.

  The long ride to Mumbai was magical. Together Father and I watched Madhya Pradesh disappear. We pointed things out to each other: a vulture, a dead horse, thin cows, and funny-looking people. We drank sherbets at rest stops, dozed occasionally, and ate all our supplies. Father laughed many times. I thought that I did not really know him as a man but only as a father. He was a man of impulse and passion; so much of him was hidden from me. Father’s uncontrollable, unassailable, indivisible, unquantifiable love for me had emerged in a momentary act of violence. “Thank you,” I said, as Father offered me a piece of mango he had cut with his khukri knife.

  Father feared that reports of the driver being threatened at knifepoint would arrive in Mumbai before us. When the bus stopped in traffic at the outer limits of the city, we scrambled down the ladder to the street.

  We entered an area that was a sea of makeshift huts. The huts looked similar to those back home and I suspect that many of the people who live there came from villages like ours. There were rivers and rivulets of these dwellings. Why would people leave the fields to come here? The dogs, cats, and rats looked mangy, scavenging around us much like their two-legged masters. The air was warm and moist and smelled of rotting garbage and human excrement. A harmony of shrieking metal-wheeled carts, barking dogs, and the buzz of decay was accompanied by a gentle rhythm of human noise.

  With nowhere to sleep, Father found a small unused space between two family huts and unrolled the maroon blanket he carried. Both families watched him in silence and no one objected to our vagrancy. Father told me to stay still until he returned with food. I had been sitting on the bus for most of the day, and I was exhausted. I lay on our blanket staring at the zigzagging white patterns that pierced the woven maroon sky. I was thinking of nothing. My nose had already adapted to the stench, and the sky was darkening.

  Suddenly, in front of me appeared two thin ankles and I looked up. A boy about my age was staring down at me with the same expression as if he had spotted a strange piece of scrap metal on the floor. I felt he was wondering wh
at potential use I had. His clothes were rags whereas mine were simple—a little sand-soiled but otherwise clean. He cocked his head to the right, wrinkled his brow, inhaled, and was about to speak, but the words he was thinking never came. He then spontaneously turned away from me and sprinted off into the morass of huts without looking back. I sat up to watch him disappear. It occurred to me that his actions were the same as those of the dogs who follow their swaying noses into a garbage pile, realize that there is nothing left to eat, and run elsewhere seeking food. This is the behavior of the hungry but not of the starving. The starving stop, lie down, and prepare to die. The hungry scavenge.

  There he is, Prince Puneet. Puneet walks from his nest into the Common Street for the first time in days. When waiting to bake, we are permitted to hop between nests under the yellow gaze of the sunning Hippopotamus. Puneet is unsure of his legs. He is not wearing any makeup and when he sees me, his face explodes in a smile. “Batuk, Batuk!” he cries, and runs to me despite the obvious discomfort that I can see in his eyes. I throw down my book and my ever-shortening pencil (I will need a solution for that) and rush toward him. I hold him tight and, oh, he does have a faint odor of manhood. We speak at the same time, laugh, and try again. I whisper in his ear, “Heh, careful, do not look too well, my prince, otherwise you will have to make sweet-cake today.” Puneet is happy to hold me and rocks me in his embrace. “Hippo told me I am working tonight anyway. So what do I care?” he asks. “I have been feeling great for a few days anyway.” His smile is stretched across his beautifully defined face, from which his boy cheeks are disappearing. I am still holding him as I answer, “I have so missed you.” I place a thin smile on my face and gaze upward into his eyes. “Not as much as my man-fuckers,” he responds. “Puneet!” I cry, pretending to be shocked, “how can you speak that way, my holy, holy prince … are you … are you …” I am not sure quite how to ask but he understands. He holds me at arm’s length and says, laughing at me, “Oh, I know what you mean. Can I still shake my ass and bring in the rupees?” He grins. “The doctor says I am all right … you should have seen the smile on Mamaki’s face.”