by Abha Dawesar
“How does one know what is good and bad? Is it set down from nature?” I asked.
“What subject do you need to know that for? Don’t you want to be an engineer?”
“I need to know it for my life, Papa,” I said.
“God tells us what is good and bad. Society and customs tell us.”
“But our customs are different depending on caste, and what is good and bad cannot differ with caste,” I argued. I was sure that it was far more permissible for Chakra Dev, with his backward caste yadav badge, to get away with a whole lot more than for me with my brahmin one.
“What’s good for the goose does not have to be good for the gander. The ancient books like The Gita and The Upanishads tell us our duty, and doing our duty is good.”
“Even if they were right when they were written, how do we know they are right today?”
“They are eternal,” he stated flatly.
“Girls didn’t go to school then. But they do now. The world has changed,” I argued.
“Rajan, she’s right. Women weren’t meant to have careers and simultaneously raise kids. It’s a different world. There are no easy answers for how we should be living our lives,” my mother said. Hearing my mother speak made me realize that for my mother this whole discussion was not just about my future and me. It was about her having a job and a kid and managing a house.
“But jaanu, her question was about how we get our standards of morality and duty. I am not talking about other things,” my father said.
“But what about happiness?” my mother said quietly.
“Jaanu, are you unhappy?” my father asked even more quietly.
“No, Rajan. But I wonder, with so much of duty to this and that, where is the place to live a joyful life?” She sounded tired.
“But the stages of life prescribed in the ancient books answer our need for knowledge, for love, for doing good to others, and for renunciation.”
“You really think there is one single path to happiness when there are so many different types of people?” my mother asked.
“You like tea, and I like coffee. I want to be a physicist, and Vidur wants to join the army. I don’t want to get married, and mom did. How can the same formula make us all happy?” I asked.
“What do you mean you don’t want to get married?” my father said.
“She’s too young to want to be married. Don’t say anything,” my mother said to him.
“At your age I didn’t want to get married, either. I wanted to ride a motorcycle across the Australian outback,” my father said. I knew that my mother had forbidden my father from riding a motorcycle when they got married. He had sold his secondhand Rajdoot and bought a Vespa. But my father had never talked about wanting adventure before.
The lights in the room flickered and came on. The ceiling fan started to whir again. The fridge hummed. Power was back.
“Thank God,” my mother said. The light in the room seemed very harsh. My mother’s face was covered with sweat. Rani’s head was still covered by her sari pallu the way it usually was, but she had perspired so much that her hair was stuck to the pallu. My legs were feeling sticky, but Rani’s fanning had kept my face dry. I said “thank you” to her in English.
“Back to work,” I announced and got up.
In my room I poked through my school satchel and decided to attack the gargantuan homework assignment Mrs. Pillai had given us. I thought of Mrs. Pillai with her hips swaying on her way out of class. I closed my eyes and imagined my lips on hers. It was not hard to imagine at all. Was it wrong? It broke all the rules of the student stage of existence described in the scriptures. A student was a brahmachari, celibate and chaste by definition. On the other hand, if good and bad were to be measured, as Papa said, on the basis of whether they furthered the goal of the student life, then having an affair with Mrs. Pillai could only further my mathematical skills. I would study much harder because I would not want to disappoint her. I was thinking of nothing but having affairs twenty-four hours a day. It was insane. I opened my book and stared at the Fibonacci sequence.
When Rani walked into my room after finishing up her work for the night, I was surprised to see that over an hour had passed. I had plowed through most of my homework without losing my concentration between the folds of women’s saris. She came to where I was studying and ran her hand through my hair. I closed my book.
“What does one say in English when someone says ‘thank you’?” she asked me.
“Welcome,” I said.
“Welcome,” she repeated.
“Good,” I said.
“Meaning?” she asked.
“Accha,” I said.
“I want to learn the alphabet,” she said.
“I’ll write down two letters for you tomorrow before leaving for class. There are twenty-six letters. You’ll know the alphabet in thirteen days,” I said.
“Write four. I’ll do it in half the time.”
We lay on my bed hugging silently. I remembered that I had promised to call India when she had phoned in the afternoon during Adit and Vidur’s visit.
“I forgot I have something important to do,” I said to Rani, extricating myself from her embrace. I tiptoed to the living room and called India.
“I’ve been longing for you. Longing so much,” she said. I felt guilty.
“It’s impossible to come at night. Rani sleeps in my room,” I said.
“I don’t want you to take a chance. I don’t want anybody to know about us.”
Hearing her speak drew me into her orbit. I could have listened to her speak for hours. I wished I could go over immediately.
“What are we going to do?” I asked.
“I’ll think of something. Now go back, and don’t let Rani suspect anything,” India said.
I went back to my room and lay down again beside Rani. Something had changed. I could only think of India now. I wished it didn’t take me so much time to shift from one to the other. I wished I were as quick as an electron jumping from phase to phase. Rani was quiet. The silence frightened me. I unhooked the front of her blouse.
“No, Babyji,” she said, putting her hands on mine to stop me.
“Why not?”
“You should sleep.”
Restricted access to Rani was unacceptable. The idea that she could say no to me was downright inflammatory. I pulled her hands down to her sides and pinned her wrists to the bed. Her lips were unresponsive, like inanimate pillows.
“What’s the matter?” I said.
“It’s wrong. You should marry a boy like Vidur baba. You have your life ahead of you. I’m unlucky to have a brute for a husband,” she said. I could tell she had been thinking about it all evening. In a way I was relieved that it was not the phone call or my having left the bed that had caused her to refuse me, but her own thoughts.
“Vidur is just a child,” I said.
“But he’ll grow up. At this age all boys are children.”
“Look, there’s nothing wrong. I want you,” I said. I couldn’t sustain a serious conversation about marrying Vidur.
“No, Babyji, I don’t want you to do this,” she said. I wondered if she actually didn’t want it. But I knew that if I shifted back and commanded her as a servant I could have her. I wanted to tell her it gave me pleasure, but I didn’t know the word for pleasure in Hindi. I said instead that it made me happy. From the little light in the room I could see her smile weakly.
Then instead of thinking of the Hindi movie villain, I just did everything that I thought he would do. Although she didn’t stop me, I felt that some part of her was resisting me. But then there was a distinct moment when she yielded. I felt one with her and eventually fell into a deep dreamless sleep that was interrupted only by the sound of the alarm clock going off. Rani hugged me with a whimper, and I felt her body stretch itself awake. Her smile was beautiful, her happiness uncensored. If she had had doubts in the night they were gone now. I felt blessed to have her.
A
s I put on my school uniform I wrote A, B, C, and D on four index cards and left them with a pencil and copybook for her to practice with. When she came to my room to give me my tiffin box I pronounced each letter to her and made her repeat it. We did it twice before I left for school.
xvi
Hulla Gulla
When I arrived at school there were armed security guards all over campus. They looked at the students, especially the tall boys, with some hostility. They stopped kids who were carrying anything more than schoolbags and inspected their belongings. They had been called in to stop any untoward incidents related to Mandal. Clusters of students and teachers spoke to one another in whispers. There was an atmosphere of mutiny everywhere. The bahadur from the principal’s office found me as I was walking toward the Pushkin Block.
“Babyji, the principal Sahib has called you.”
I went to the principal’s office.
“Anamika, the milieu is very uncertain. We plan to continue classes for as long as possible,” the princi said to me, then paused dramatically.
“But?” I said, raising an eyebrow.
“But Delhi Administration might declare that all schools should close. We will be powerless then. I want to discuss how we can ensure the students are organized in that event.”
“We should make sure there’s a list with phone numbers of all the students and teachers of each class. The subject teachers should also give a four-week study plan to the kids,” I said.
“Four weeks! Our Head Prefect is a pessimist!” he said.
“One never knows. I remember the curfew in 1984 went on longer than we thought.”
I tried looking for Vidur and Sheela after I spoke to the princi, but it was impossible to find them in the bedlam. In the assembly ground I made announcements over the PA system, continually asking classes to line up, but they fell on deaf ears. Instead of lending an air of order to the campus, the military guards had had the opposite effect.
“What is this hulla gulla?” the princi asked me as he came up onstage.
I shrugged.
“Tell everyone to get into line,” he said.
Stretching my authority to its limits, I started addressing the class teachers over the PA system. “Mrs. Thaityallam, please get IX E to line up,” I said. Technically it was the responsibility of the teachers to make sure that students formed into lines. The Head Prefect was meant only to assist the teachers. But it was a real joy pointing out to Mrs. T., the biggest stickler for duty and decorum, that she needed to get on with her job. I thought she’d be furious with me, but she gave me a hasty glance when she heard her name and rounded up her kids.
By the time we gathered for assembly we were fifteen minutes behind schedule. We sang Schiller’s Ode to Joy, and then a small child only a little older than Jeet read the news. He was terribly nervous at having to speak in front of the school and swallowed up a lot of words in his haste to finish reading. His thin legs shook under his gray shorts. When he walked back I patted his head.
The school talk was given by a girl in the senior class, who spoke about the mother goddess figure in the Harappan civilization. I thought of India every time she said “mother goddess.”
“I’ll speak when she’s done,” the princi said to me while she read.
“Do you want me to announce you, sir?” I asked.
“It’s a good idea. Everyone is falling asleep right now,” he said.
The girl spoke in a monotone. When she finished, it took a second for the school to realize that her talk was over and to begin clapping. I walked up to the microphone and said, “Everyone must have noticed all the security guards swarming our campus. I am sure you want to know what’s happening. The principal is going to address us.”
He walked up to me and said, “Stay here. Don’t go back.”
I stood next to him, staring at the six thousand children in neat formation, while his voice boomed across the assembly ground. No one was fidgeting anymore.
“If we have to close down the school, we should be prepared. In the zero period all the teachers will make lists with the phone numbers of the entire class and photocopy and distribute them. We don’t want the coverage of the syllabus to suffer if we are forced to close. Is that clear?”
There was no response.
“Is that clear?” his voice resounded again.
“Yes, sir,” the kids said in chorus.
“And Classes X and XII, you should realize that the board exam will be held regardless of whether we are able to cover your syllabus in class. So make sure you study.” After a pause he continued, “The army has lent us these guards to prevent self-immolation. We don’t want anyone to get hurt. Is anyone going to set themselves on fire?”
There was no response from the assembly.
“Is anyone going to set themselves on fire? Answer me,” he thundered.
“No, sir,” everyone sang.
After his talk, a sort of sobriety descended. Even the rowdier students walked directly back to their classes. I walked past Mr. Garg, who had his lips pursed together.
“Good morning, sir,” I said.
“Oh, Anamika!” he said absently. Then he turned to look at me.
“Yes, sir?”
“You are one of my best students. If the school shuts down, I don’t want you to suffer.”
I wasn’t sure exactly what to say. I didn’t think he was trying to pay me a compliment.
“If you want, I can come to your house and give you tuition,” he said.
I was touched. Even if he intended to charge money for the tuition, it was incredible that he should go beyond the call of duty to teach me just because I was a good student.
“Thank you, sir,” I said. My heart filled with gratitude. I had never given a second thought to Mr. Garg outside of the classroom. I felt as if I had tasted something beautiful and pure. His offer was so unselfish it made me believe in things I had long stopped believing in. I wished he were leading the country. I went back to my classroom feeling idealistic and full of hope.
Our class teacher, Mrs. Ganatra, who also taught us biology, passed out a sheet of paper on which to write our phone numbers. She told us to call her if we had questions.
“Don’t worry about disturbing me. I go to sleep around eleven and get up early.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” Vidur said. A few other kids sang after him.
When the sheet came to our desk I looked at the list while Vidur was putting down his phone number. Chakra Dev had already written his, and so had Sheela. Chakra Dev’s number was several down from Sheela’s. I wondered if he’d seen it and noted it.
Mrs. Ganatra asked us to take out our textbooks and told us which chapters were most important and which questions we should try to answer from each chapter in the next few weeks. The main section on human biology was left to us. I had personally been looking forward to it for months (it had drawings of the male and female organs). Vidur and I had opened the book together at the beginning of the term and gleefully looked at the index—“Chapter IV, Section III: Gonads.” It seemed now that the pleasure of watching everyone squirm in embarrassment was going to be lost. I was disappointed. On the other hand, if I didn’t have to come to school I could devote a lot of time to both India and Rani. I could spend the days with India in her house and the nights in mine with Rani. Once in a while I might even be able to bike over to Sheela’s.
The period ended by the time Mrs. Ganatra had made us mark up our books. Vidur leaned over to me and said, “If schools really close, you can come over to study. My father will teach us.”
I felt my ears get hot and felt guilty when he mentioned his father.
“I’ll come if he can teach chemistry. I hate it.”
“Oh, yeah! He’s great at it. He knows all about chemical reactions,” he said, his eyes dancing. But Vidur was always playful, and one couldn’t tell how much he really knew when he said things.
The next period was Mrs. Pillai’s. She walked into class with h
er eyebrows furrowed. It was unusual to see her hassled.
“Kids, I am so sorry about this. You’re going to suffer the most because you have board exams.” Everyone pulled out their textbooks and stared back at her.
She turned her back to the class and picked up a piece of chalk. Most of the teachers had long nails, and when they wrote on the board I would imagine the chalk getting under their fingernails. It made me shiver. But Mrs. Pillai had slender fingers and well-clipped nails. She wrote her phone number and underlined it. She turned around to face us again.
“I know that nobody here cares two hoots about mathematics. But if anyone has a question I want you people to call me at home.”
Copybooks opened, pages turned, and everyone took down the number.
“If anyone here wants to get extra classes from me, all you have to do is call. I might have classes at home if there are enough people who can come. Otherwise if you are near enough I will come by Vespa. I don’t want anyone who is interested in working hard to suffer. Got it?”
“Thank you, ma’am. We appreciate it,” I said. I wanted to say it before Vidur did.
“I’m glad someone appreciates it. Look at all of you. I’m more concerned than you are about your boards.” She extended her hand toward the class and made a sweeping gesture that took everyone in from the window side to the wall side.
“Thanks,” Chakra Dev said in an inappropriate tone. I whirled around to see his face. He was half smiling and half sneering. I didn’t want Mrs. Pillai to go to his house and teach him. He probably wanked off thinking of her.
I looked back at Mrs. Pillai. She was busy writing a list of chapter, section, and question numbers on the blackboard. Everyone was copying them down. I couldn’t imagine her navigating Delhi’s chaotic traffic on a Vespa, her sari fluttering about her and her face encased in a helmet. It was thrilling that she rode a scooter. It was rare for a woman, a sign of independence. Her light cotton sari was starched to a crisp. Even though it was wrapped around her many times, the outline of her petticoat underneath was visible. The sari pallu fell off her shoulder as she wrote on the board. The weather was very hot, and she was wearing a sleeveless choli. I could see the round shiny knobs of her shoulder bone. My pulse raced.