by Abha Dawesar
“I’m going to take a nap. You can tell me when you’re done with the cleaning,” I said.
“Are you angry with me, Babyji?” she asked.
“No,” I replied, shutting my bedroom door behind me. I felt emotionally volatile. I had lurked around her jhuggi the night before trying to find her, and now I found it hard to answer her in more than monosyllables. I knew I was hurting her. I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t, despite all my newfangled ideas about equality of the lower castes, get myself to be decent. I would never have spoken to someone who was not a servant in that tone. After a while I heard a knock on my door.
“I’ve finished the dishes. Should I go?” She sounded to me as if she might cry.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
She stood at the entrance to my room, head bent down, mute.
“Come here,” I said, pointing to the edge of my bed. Rani always stood or squatted on the floor when she spoke to me.
“There?” she asked, pointing to the bed. She suddenly seemed like a snail that had retreated into its shell, not at all the defiant woman who had shaken her ass at me, transfixed me with the bleeding red sindhoor on her head.
“Here,” I affirmed.
She sat down on the edge of my bed, her head still bowed. I felt awful. I put my fingers under her chin and pulled up her face. I stroked her eyebrows. She looked up. I traced the line of her full lips with my index finger. Her lips were slightly chapped. I felt as if she was my responsibility and my property. I kissed her. We were both still after that. I was shocked at what I’d just done. I had never kissed anyone, not even India. I observed myself from outside for a moment, my lips moving closer to hers and touching them. I tried to formulate the uncertainty equation. And then I thought of Schrödinger’s cat being dead or alive because of the observation.
“What are you thinking?” Rani asked, smiling flirtatiously. Her mood had lifted. I kissed her again, this time with full intention. How could I explain Schrödinger’s wave function to someone who’d never been to school? My Hindi, while perfectly fluent on a day-to-day basis, was severely limited when it came to expressing complex thoughts.
“Nothing. You are beautiful,” I said in Hindi.
She blushed. Even on her dark brown skin I could see color rise to her cheeks.
“I walked to your jhuggi last night. But only the men were outside,” I said.
“You came to the jhuggi?”
“Yes. I was looking for you. I wanted to see you.”
“Didi. Don’t do that again. People of your stature should not be seen there,” she said.
“Don’t worry.”
After Rani left I put on my shoes and rode over to India’s house.
“I’ve been waiting. Where were you?”
“Sorry, there was some problem at home with the new servant,” I mumbled.
“Your sexy servant?” There was an edge to her voice.
“Yes,” I said, looking down.
“Servants these days, I tell you!”
I felt wretched for talking about Rani that way. I was a coward for letting India say things about servants in that tone. How free was I if I was so scared? India talked about servants in the same way that all other women talked about them. Maybe she was just like ladies A, B, C, and X.
“Would you like a Coke?” she asked me.
“No, thanks. My mother returns from work at five thirty, so I have to go soon.”
I saw a flicker of disappointment on her face. Then she led me to her bedroom. We sat on her bed and hugged. I had still not kissed her. I wanted to now, but I had just kissed Rani. I didn’t want to kiss two women on the same day. I thought it would mean I wasn’t deep.
At dinner, as Rani made rotis for us in the kitchen, my mother asked, “How does she work?”
“She’s fine,” I said.
“Are you sure? Neeta asked to come back. She promises she’ll come regularly now.”
“Mom, the new one is fine. She’s always on time and she works well.”
“It didn’t take you long to switch your loyalties,” my mother said lightly. I shrugged my shoulders, feigning indifference.
When my parents went to sleep I slipped out of the house from the back door to the service lane. In less than ten minutes I was in India’s bed, playing with her hair. I no longer needed to convince myself I was free. I felt free.
My arms brushed her side and then came to rest on her rump. Her round cheeks were like perfectly formed cantaloupe. Some girls come of age when they hit puberty. Others when they have a child. Girls like my friend Sheela when they start going to the temple. My coming of age was distinct and happened in a split second. I moved both my hands all the way down India’s back and ran my palms over her cheeks. Then I grabbed both her buttocks in my hands. I squeezed them.
And came of age.
All my life I’d been taught to venerate elders. Anyone over five years older than oneself was an elder. Squeezing India’s rear violated every rule of veneration. It transformed her from an elder into a sexual being, an equal. It made me an adult.
I felt overwhelmed by the sensation. I wished I could express it in words, say something to her. She was moaning softly and rubbing her smooth calves on my legs. I squeezed the flesh in my hands more firmly now. It occurred to me that I could go further. I was afraid of feeling the area between her cheeks, but eventually I let my fingers linger down the crevice where they parted till I felt a hint of hair. Her breathing got heavier. I was scandalizing myself. I was petrified. I had no idea what to do next. There was etiquette involved that I knew nothing about. I stopped.
We spent the rest of the night cradled in each other’s arms, sleeping fitfully. Entire sentences from the Kamasutra rolled onto the screen in my dreams. The edition I had read had been in a small typescript with the painting of an ancient scroll on the book jacket. In my dreams the sentences were captions of photographs, the characters India and Rani and an upper caste brahmin man from some art film. I made no appearance in the dream. When I heard the alarm go off early in the morning, I shook India awake and put my clothes on.
“I’ll see you in the afternoon,” I said as I hurried out.
I rushed back to my house and got into bed before my parents woke up. When my mother walked in with my morning tea to wake me up for school, I rolled across my bed and yawned.
“The way you’re sprawled on that bed, one would think your husband was walking into the room. Cover yourself with a sheet!” my mother said.
I sat up and rubbed my eyes. I pouted. I took the cup of tea and wished I could share my bed and the experience of early morning tea with India.
Since I hadn’t really rested much at night, the world swam in front of my eyes. I paid little attention in class. I felt superior to all my classmates. None of them, not even the rowdiest guys who brought porn magazines to school, had ever touched the naked flesh of a woman’s ass. Maybe a young cousin’s, but not a real woman’s. I was sure of that.
“What’s Planck’s constant?” Mr. Garg asked the class in the physics period.
No one answered.
“Sumeet. What’s Planck’s constant?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“Then stand up and remain standing. Vidur, do you know?”
Vidur stood up and let his head hang down. I was surprised; Vidur usually knew the answer to everything. It was too late for me to write it on a chit and pass it to him. Vidur was my closest friend at school and shared my desk, a small wooden one. We had little wooden chairs. Since two students shared a desk, most of the students had drawn a line down the middle to demarcate their surface space. If someone’s pencil wandered across the line there could be a flare-up and a murderous argument during the break. Vidur and I were the only ones in our class who’d not drawn these lines. His notebook would often invade well into my space, and I’d not say a thing. Sometimes I’d put my steel pencil box, which I’d beautified with cutouts of George Michael, all the way on his side, and he
would only grin in response.
“Chakra Dev,” Mr. Garg bellowed.
“Sorry, sir.”
“Stand up then,” he commanded. Chakra Dev was the only boy in our class who shaved every day. He therefore thought he could lord it over everyone. I gloated. Not only did he not know Planck’s constant, he had no Indias or Ranis waiting to see him at the end of the day. When it came down to brass tacks, it was me, not him, who was the adult.
“Those who don’t know Planck’s constant, stand up!!” Mr. Garg said, almost shouting.
Everyone stood up. Except me.
“Why does only Anamika know this? Where have the rest of you been?” he shrieked. Mr. Garg was very fair, and his face turned red when he lost his temper. He’d been crying himself hoarse in class explaining quantum mechanics, and no one knew a thing.
“You, Anamika?”
“The value or the meaning?” I asked, standing up.
“What?”
“Do you want the value, or do you want me to explain what it means, sir?”
“Look at them all. Why don’t you explain it fully? Obviously I’ve done a lousy job. In fact, come here in front and explain it,” he said, gesturing to the front where he was standing. I felt terribly embarrassed. I hated being singled out for anything, whether good or bad.
I decided to remain at my seat and speak. It came naturally to speak to the class after speaking in the morning assembly every day as Head Prefect. I became less aware of myself as I defined the uncertainty principle and went into details.
“Excellent. Did you all hear that? You had a test on this yesterday, and none of you knew.”
Everyone was fidgeting. The students who usually did well in class were fidgeting even more. Mr. Garg was going to return our tests, and now they all feared the worst. I stood around feeling as if I didn’t belong, a bespectacled girl with nothing better to do than study her physics lessons. Then I remembered it wasn’t true. I turned my face away to hide the smile that came to my lips and noticed Sheela looking at me. She would obviously think I had been pleased about my academic prowess.
“Everyone sit down now and try to study like Anamika,” Mr. Garg commanded.
After class my friends started teasing me. I was generally well liked, but everyone thought I was too studious. I had made a few good friends in the past two years because I had helped them with little things. When we were fifteen, Ashima had met a boy in Calcutta when she visited her father’s family for the summer holidays. I had written a little poem for her that she sent him. I had asked her to describe him to me in detail, his light skin and speckled green eyes, his rosy lips and the soft blush of hair on his face. Writing the poem for her I had to love him, Jay, or I wouldn’t have been able to write the poem, so I thought of him all night till I was fervently in love myself. It was successful. Since then he had been writing to her regularly.
For his mother’s birthday, Vidur had wanted to give her a poem and had asked for my help. I was not able to think of anything, or to love Vidur’s mother, so the next day I let him copy the poem that I had written for my mother. I didn’t think there was anything wrong with this because it had already been written and my mother had already read it.
“How can you study physics when they are showing cricket on TV?” Vidur asked.
“How can you bear to watch cricket?”
Vidur wanted to join the army and was smart and well-rounded. I wanted him to think I was, too. I wanted to tell him how well-rounded India was.
“Miss Goody Two-shoes, my teacher’s pet,” Sheela said, coming over to where Vidur and I were sitting. Usually if someone teased me around Vidur, he would say a word or two in my defense. Today he just grinned and then got up and walked out of the class.
“I’m not all that good,” I said.
“You may do well in exams and come first, but I have much more fun,” Sheela said.
Sheela was very popular with the boys and relatively intelligent. But she was lazy. We were not close friends, but every now and then, when the rest of the girls in the class were mean to her, she would confide in me.
“I saw you smirk when Mr. Garg was scolding us all,” she said.
“I was smiling for another reason. It’s a secret,” I said. I looked at her full pink lips and milky skin and wondered what it would be like to kiss them.
“Don’t lie. I know you were feeling superior,” she said. Most of the girls were jealous of her, but she knew I cared only about studies and not looks and thus had no reason to give her the evil eye.
“You have beautiful lips,” I said.
She blushed.
“If you ever want to kiss, let me know,” I added.
“Huh?”
“I want to have some fun, too,” I said.
“Very funny,” she said, looking not in the slightest bit amused.
“I’m being serious.”
“You’re really weird, Anamika.”
I had put myself on the spot. I pretended I’d done it for effect and laughed.
I thought about Rani on the school bus back home. I wanted to take a nap in the afternoon with her lying beside me, but I’d promised India I’d visit.
When Rani came to do the housework I said, “I am in a rush today. Will you hurry up?”
“Yes, Didi.”
It made me sick to my stomach to see that on one level I had a functional relationship with her in which she was very much my servant. Was it even possible for two people to entirely forget their status and just be human beings with each other? I had always believed it was, but now with Rani I had a real-life situation to test it with.
After she was finished cleaning she told me, “I’m done. Should I go?”
“Rani,” I said, looking up at her.
“Yes, Didi.”
“From now on I want you to treat me like an equal when we are alone. In front of other people you can behave as usual.”
“I can’t do that, Babyji. It wouldn’t be right,” she said, lowering her eyes.
I walked up to where she was standing at the threshold of my bedroom and ran my fingers along her lips. She reached out. A thrill shot up my spine. I pulled her into my room and flung us both on the bed. Instead of the disturbing Kamasutra dream where I had failed to make an entrance on the scene, I saw Rani and myself in an erotic position. I grabbed her thighs from under her sari. My hands felt the tough muscles of her legs. Her gluteus maximus was strong and toned after years of labor. She was not wearing underwear. Servants never wore underwear. I squeezed her cheeks, one with each hand. My fingers felt her heat.
I looked into her face, which was very close to mine. Her eyes were closed.
“What’s the matter?” I asked, sensing some disturbance inside her.
She opened her eyes and said, “This is not right.”
“Does it feel wrong?”
“No.”
That was all the encouragement I needed. I went the extra few inches I had been afraid to go with India. After a while I slid my hands back down her legs and pulled down her sari.
“I have to go. But tomorrow afternoon come at two sharp,” I said.
“Yes.”
I closed the door behind her and brought my hands to my face. They smelt of slum, unwashed clothing, and her fluids. I went to the bathroom and washed my hands and face with soap. Then I walked over to India’s. I didn’t make out with her. I couldn’t after I’d just been with Rani. I told her I’d try to come again at night.
“I want to make you happy,” I said as I was leaving.
“You do make me happy,” India said.
“No, I don’t mean that way. I mean in bed.”
She smiled at me and played with my hair for a second.
“You’re so young, I can’t believe I’m doing this,” she said.
“I’m not that young,” I said, closing her wrought iron gate. It was taller than I was and very fancy. I walked home feeling strangely young and strangely old at the same time.
I
n the evening I read my biology book and did my mathematics homework while my mom cooked eggplant for dinner. My mother had given Rani the evening off. My father played cards once a week with his colleagues from the office; it was one of those nights. He’d come home after Mom and I had eaten and watched some TV. Those were the most peaceful times. At around eight forty-five, when we were watching the news, the phone rang. I jumped up to get it.
“Can I speak to Anamika?” a girlish voice asked. It was Sheela.
“Did you mean what you said today?” she asked.
I was nervous. I could be in a lot of trouble.
“I was joking,” I replied, turning to see if my mother was listening.
“You were serious. I could tell you were serious.”
“No, I was pretending to be serious.”
“Are you sure?”
She didn’t sound like she wanted to get me into trouble at all. What if she was interested?
“Why do you ask?” I said.
“Oh! Just-Like-That,” she said, her tone changing as if she was not interested in really knowing.
“No, tell me the truth,” I said.
“J-L-T,” she said, ending the conversation.
“Who was that?” my mother asked.
“Sheela.”
“Isn’t she that fair, healthy friend of yours?” my mother asked in an approving voice.
“Yes, that’s her.”
“You should go out less in the sun and eat more. Then you’ll be like her.” My mother is a typical north Indian woman who thinks women should be chubby and fair.
I didn’t want her to get started. It wasn’t enough that I worked hard at school and had professional ambitions. She would have been much more proud of me if I’d been lighter skinned, heavier set, and more domestically inclined. It didn’t bother me as long as I was left alone. I knew I’d do better than the others, and if she really wanted one of those girls I could always bring one home. Why did my parents want me to be both this and that? Couldn’t they see it was impossible for me to invest my first twenty-five years in excelling in studies and becoming a nuclear physicist if all I was expected to do for the next fifty was chop vegetables in the kitchen?