by Abha Dawesar
“All of that can’t just say night,” Rani said, putting her hand on the page.
“No, they are instructions for some studies,” I mumbled. To occupy her with something else I wrote some more letters in her notebook. Teaching English without the use of the Hindi script was strange. I had to tell her not just e for egg but also that an egg was an anda and that g stood for ghost which was a bhooth and that she shouldn’t worry yet about the letters o, s, or t since we would get to them later. Teaching her to read and write in Hindi would have been more practical, but I did not remember the order of the alphabet in Hindi anymore. I had no memory of how I had learned the alphabet or learned to read.
In the morning I tore out the page from Rani’s notebook on which she had written India’s words as well as the sheet in my chemistry register that India had filled. After reading the sheet a few times so that I would remember her words forever, I tore both pages. It almost broke my heart.
xviii
Death
When I met India in the morning for our cold coffees, I told her everything that had happened at school and canvassed her opinion on Chakra Dev. In the bright light of the morning there was no longer the same urgency to make love. The night felt much sexier.
“I think Rani is right. You should leave him alone,” she opined.
“As it stands, I have. The princi will suspend him when school reopens. I think of him as raw energy. It could be channeled either way,” I said.
“He’s already gone wrong. This isn’t chemistry with its reversible reactions,” she said. I wondered what she would have said if it were Jeet instead of Chakra Dev. Would she stop trying to improve her son because she thought it was too late?
Before I left, India told me that she might arrange for us to get a ride with her friends Deepak and Arni to a hill station where a friend had a cottage. I wasn’t sure my parents would give me permission. India told me to leave that to her.
I went back home to pick up my bicycle and rode to Sheela’s house. A male servant opened the door for me as soon as I rang Sheela’s bell. Sheela smiled at him a lot and called him Bhaiyya. She took me up to her bedroom on the second floor. I shut her door.
“No, leave it open.”
“What do you mean?”
“Bhaiyya will get suspicious,” she said.
I resigned myself to having a tame study session, a bitter and certain disappointment welling up within me. I sat on her bed and pulled out my physics book.
“I want to do mathematics today,” she said.
I reached for the textbook and opened it to the probability chapter. She reached for her stereo and put on a tape. It was Terence Trent D’Arby singing “If You All Get to Heaven.”
“How will we study with all this noise?”
“I can’t concentrate without music,” she said, smiling. Her smile was right out of a TV commercial. I wondered if it was practiced.
I tried to drown out the noise and focus on probability. But she didn’t let me work. She started touching my furrowed eyebrows with her finger. She whispered, “Sooo serious.”
“Stop making fun of me.”
“I’m not making fun. You look so cute deep in thought. So scholarly.”
I felt like an utter fool. The coolest girl from class was calling me studious. I didn’t want to be cute. I wanted to be sexy. I felt humiliated and ashamed.
“Do you understand anything about probability?” I asked, ignoring her.
Instead of answering me, she got up and started dancing to the music, the door to her bedroom still wide open. I worried that the servant would see her and get ideas. Her body moved in a smooth liquid motion as if she had done this all her life. She twisted her index finger and called me to her. I stood up. She held my hips and swayed. I was acutely uncomfortable and asked her again, “Do you understand probability?”
“The probability of you having fun is zero,” she said, laughing. Then she squeezed my cheek between her thumb and forefinger as if I were a child. This pissed me off. I went back to her bed and looked at the textbook. I pulled out my big practice register and tried to do a sum. I felt overwhelmed and kept reading the question again and again. A small voice told me it was a good thing that Sheela wanted to dance with me, but the rest of me was unable to rise to the occasion.
Just then the servant walked in carrying a tray with two glasses of lime juice. I looked at Sheela, wondering if she would keep dancing. She did. He looked at her, placed the tray on her desk, and left. I couldn’t believe she was so comfortable with him. There was something overtly sexual about Western dancing. I associated it with hippies, free sex, and loose morals. I wondered if she was having an affair with him. I went to her stereo and turned it off.
“What’s the matter?”
“There’s nimbu pani here. Plus, I want to know something.”
“What?”
“Are you sleeping with him?”
“Who, Ramu Bhaiyya? Are you mad? He’s worked with us since I was little.”
I was quiet. I had thought that because Sheela was religious she would be very Indian in her outlook. Seeing her sway to American music made me wonder if I really knew her at all.
“What’s the matter, Anamika? You look really unhappy. Didn’t you want to see me?” she asked simply. I patted her bed where I was sitting, and she came and sat next to me.
“I’m sorry. I don’t like dancing.”
“But you’re such a flirt,” she said.
“I don’t know how to dance.”
“Don’t you dance at weddings?”
I shook my head.
“Come, I’ll teach you,” she said.
She got up and pulled me to her. I suddenly became aware of the soft skin of her palm and wanted to learn how to dance. She turned on her stereo again and pulled me close. I raised a finger to ask her to hold on a minute. I closed the door and bolted it.
“What will he think? I never close my door.”
“He’ll think less than he thinks when he sees you dancing like that,” I said. Her breasts were too ripe and her mouth too fleshy for her to act like a child.
She moved her hip close to mine. Our faces were close, and my glasses kept touching her cheek. She pulled them off and put them on her desk. I let myself sway along with her. My feet were barely moving, and my hand was under her T-shirt.
I kissed her.
“Do you like the smell of Old Spice?” I whispered.
She kissed me back, but her lips were closed. I pushed my tongue forward.
“No. I don’t want to do that.”
Her resistance made me try it again and again. Eventually she sighed and parted her lips a little. I fiddled with the clasp that I could feel under my hand.
“Stop, Anamika, you’re making me uncomfortable.”
I remembered the way she was dancing when her servant had got the drinks. After that display it seemed unlikely that my pass at her could make her uncomfortable. I persisted. She pushed my hands down from under her shirt and stepped back.
“Stop!”
She seemed angry, so I stopped and picked up the glass of nimbu pani and began to drink it. She picked up her glass as well. We both sat down on the bed and didn’t talk. I put my hand inside her T-shirt again, this time from the front. She pushed it down, looking irritated. I lay down on the bed and dangled my legs off the side. My mind wandered to the rape scene in the The Fountainhead, when Howard Roark rapes Dominique without any exchange of words, and their love affair begins. Chakra Dev would do that, too, I thought, though he was no Howard Roark. I got up carefully and put my nimbu pani back on the table. I replaced Sheela’s, too.
“I thought you liked me,” I said.
“I do.”
“Then why are you so resistant?”
“You’re moving too quickly.”
I lay back down on the bed. This time she put her face on my shoulder and played with my hair. My hands found their way back under her T-shirt. She didn’t stop me. After a while I yanked off her T-shir
t. Her bra was tight fitting and showed her ample cleavage. The skin on her chest was very fair in comparison to her face and arms. I had never seen such white flesh in my life except in foreign movies. I started unzipping her jeans.
“Stop,” she said, putting her hand on mine.
“I’m not going to stop. I want you.”
“You have to,” she said softly. I felt she was resisting me only for the sake of resisting me.
“No,” I hissed.
I pinned her down on her bed and held her hands above her head. I kissed her face and neck. She closed her eyes and smiled. I held her two hands in one of mine and unzipped her jeans.
“Please don’t do that,” she said in a panic.
“Shh,” I said as I tried to pull them past her thighs. I pulled her underwear down, too.
“Anamika, please stop,” she whispered urgently.
If she really didn’t want me to she could scream or move away or kick me. “You’re beautiful,” I said as I slid my hand between her thighs where her bloomers should have been. She closed her eyes again, but this time I couldn’t tell if she was enjoying it or not. I pushed with my finger. I wasn’t slow, the way I had been with India and Rani. I was afraid if I was too gentle she would use it to move away. I used all the force I could muster.
She let out a howl. “Stop, it hurts.”
I pulled back and said, “I just fucked you.” There was blood on my finger.
She opened her eyes and looked at me as if I was sick. Then very quietly she said, “Get out of my house.”
I was hurt. I hadn’t meant it in a bad way. I got up and put on my glasses and collected my practice register and book bag. I wanted to talk to her.
She had got up from the bed and pulled on her jeans and her shirt.
“Why did you do that?” she asked.
“I wanted to be inside,” I said.
“I don’t understand you. You can be so gentle sometimes, and then at other times you’re like those cheapads on the bus.”
“I’m sorry,” I mumbled. I didn’t know how to respond. I wished I could say something to make her feel better and think differently of me.
She stood in the middle of her room with her arms across her chest as if she were guarding herself. I gathered everything and walked toward her door.
“I’ll see you later,” I said, unbolting the door. Then I left the room without looking back and descended the stairs almost in a run, the bloody finger in my pocket. The Bhaiyya looked out from the kitchen when I was at the bottom of the steps. I ignored him and made my way out the front door.
I unlocked my bicycle and mounted it. As I pedaled my agitation ebbed away. I thought about what had happened. I wasn’t culpable for rape. I had just pushed her into doing something faster than she had wanted to.
There was a lock on the door when I got home. I had to fumble for my key and let myself in. Rani had probably gone to the market to buy vegetables. In the beginning when she had moved in with us my mother had not wanted to give her the key. But now she had her own key. I washed my face and then went through my satchel, removing the mathematica and replacing it with my chemistry textbook for studying at Vidur’s house. I was no longer excited about seeing Adit. I didn’t feel like a Sartre femme or homme but like human detritus. I was gauche, a quasi-rapist, a rake no better than the cheapads on the bus. Maybe I was being too harsh on myself, but even with the maximum benefit of doubt I was a bumbling sixteen-year-old with grand delusions about being a philanderer.
As these thoughts were whirling in my head, the bell rang. I opened the door for Adit and offered him a glass of water. He followed me into the kitchen. I filled a glass with water from the fridge and handed it to him. He drank it in one swig and handed it back to me.
“Do you want more?”
“No.”
I put the glass in the sink. He remained standing in the kitchen.
“Let’s go,” I said.
“Anamika,” he said, the sound waves gathering weight as they vibrated alone in the air.
“Yes?” I said after nothing followed the pause.
“Will you give me a hug?”
I kept standing where I was standing and said nothing. He came closer to me. For a brief second I saw his eyes, the way they were looking at me. He came even closer and squeezed me tightly. I felt relief, as if a huge charge I had been carrying inside my body had just been dissipated, grounded like electricity.
“Don’t worry, I won’t take advantage of you. I just needed to hug you.”
The word “advantage” made me blush. I stood still as his arms squeezed me tighter and tighter.
“That feels a lot better,” he said as he slowly let go of me.
I remembered Sheela again. Even a man would have behaved better than I had.
“I raped a girl today,” I said.
“That’s impossible,” he said. I couldn’t argue. I felt drained and leaned against the kitchen counter. He touched the tip of my nose with his finger.
“We’ll talk about it on the way. I am sure it’s not as bad as you think,” he said.
“I have to get my things,” I said.
“Wait,” he said and led me back to the living room where he had put his briefcase.
“I brought you the book.” I looked at the cover, a drawing of a young girl. The word “Lolita” looked like lollipop.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Let’s go,” he said.
I gathered my things, and we went to his car. As we drove off I saw Rani walking toward the house in the side mirror of his car. I rolled down the window and waved to her. She waved back.
“Tell me about this girl,” he said matter-of-factly as he drove.
“She’s a classmate. I went to her house. I forced myself on her.”
“What exactly did you do?”
“Entered, plunged, pierced,” I said dramatically. I couldn’t believe myself. A few minutes ago I had felt embarrassed simply hearing him use the word “advantage.” The state of my being was entirely capricious. I felt like a test tube filled with chemicals, danger written all over it.
“She let you do this?” he asked.
“No. She told me to stop, but I didn’t.”
“I don’t think that’s rape. I’m not saying it was a nice thing to do, but it wasn’t rape.”
“You just want me to feel better. It was disgusting,” I said.
“You’re so young,” he said.
I was feeling young. But after a while I said, “I always thought it was intelligence that counted more than age.”
“It does. That’s why I don’t feel bad pursuing you.”
My heart started up embarrassingly. As Adit drove I looked out the window. The AC was on, so I had rolled my window back up. It was nice not to have to breathe the outside air. Each time a truck or bus got ahead of us, it spewed dark smoke.
“Adit, I don’t want Vidur to know anything about our friendship.”
“Of course not. That’s out of the question,” he said immediately.
“Do you feel guilty?”
“There’s nothing to feel guilty about. Thinking about you makes life a pleasure.”
From his lips the word “pleasure” had more illicit overtones than the F word when Chakra Dev said it.
“I was very excited about seeing you today,” I said.
“I was, too. Now if only I didn’t want you, it would be perfect,” he said.
I let the remark pass. Adit wanted me? My heart started beating fast again. I didn’t want him to talk about it, but I was a little drawn to the idea at the same time.
“The problem with being a man is that you think with your little head sometimes,” he said.
My friend’s father referring to his anatomy like this. Tauba! Tauba! I felt even my internal organs turn red. My ears were burning. I wished I could get out of the car. I looked out the window again. We were already in the cantonment. There was less traffic and more large, green trees. More space.
“So, kids, what do you want to study?” Adit asked us, looking from me to Vidur.
“Organic chemistry,” I said.
“Ethylene, methylene, hydrocarbon derivatives,” Vidur sang.
“All right, children, take out your notebooks. And don’t mind my rotten egg smell,” Adit said in a high falsetto, imitating Hydrogen Sulfide. Obviously Vidur had told him in detail about our teachers.
Adit explained concepts to us first in plain English, then with some formulas, and finally with real numerical examples from the book. Vidur paid more attention than he ever had in class. And even I stopped thinking of everything else. We studied for an hour, after which the orderly made us some tea and brought out Britannia Digestive biscuits.
“Vidur told me about the incidents at school yesterday,” Adit said.
“Yes, the politicians could never have guessed that Mandal would cause such an uproar,” Vidur said.
“Chakra Dev almost got suspended,” I said to Vidur.
“What are you talking about?” Vidur asked. I told Adit and Vidur everything that had happened in the princi’s office and about my phone call later.
“If they implement Mandal, only Chakra Dev will get admission to an engineering college, even if he is suspended from school. No wonder there is such a brain drain. The brightest doctors and engineers are all in the U.K. or the U.S.,” Adit said.
“Delhi University has thirty-five thousand applicants for fifteen hundred seats. If ninety percent of those seats get reserved for scheduled castes, I won’t make it,” Vidur said. “We’re kshatriyas ,” he added. I looked at Adit. He was still doing his dharma, working as his ancestors had done. My father on the other hand, though a brahmin, was now a paper-pusher, a bureaucrat.