Babyji

by Abha Dawesar

  “Are you in or out at the moment?” India asked.

  I thought her question was very clever. I was out when I had started talking about it. But talking to her about love made me love her.

  She slid closer to me.

  “One can never know one’s position with any certainty,” I said.

  Her coming closer had made me very hot.

  “What do you want right now? Or don’t you know that with any certainty?” she asked.

  “I want to collapse my wave function into you,” I said.

  In immediate response, India moved closer, the pores of her skin filling the field of my vision. Her murmurs of pleasure when I pulled at her hair and the heat of her body close to mine saturated my sense organs, as the big world of the Sivalik Himalayas around Kasauli tunneled into a world of minutiae. That was my last thought before I was swallowed into the dark hole that is the playing field of love, where two becomes one.

  Our life in Kasauli felt as if it had a rhythm. Though we had been there just over twenty-four hours, we had our bed teas and took a walk the next day as if we had been residents of Kasauli forever. I didn’t feel like a tourist at all. I had expected the act of going away to a hill station to be an adventure. I was surprised by the sense of leisure and relaxation that pervaded instead.

  India had invited Deepak and Arni over to our cottage for dinner. I did not feel paranoid about Deepak as I had the previous day. Kasauli had filled me with peace.

  Deepak greeted me by saying, “Aunty was telling us about the boy in your school who got the juniors to plant the bomb.” He was sitting by himself on a chair. India and Arni were on the large couch. I sat down beside him on another chair.

  “Yes, I persuaded the princi not to give him a yellow card, saying I would get Chakra Dev to apologize. But I called him and it didn’t work,” I said.

  “What will you do now?” Arni asked.

  “It doesn’t look like you have much choice in the matter,” Deepak said, looking at me.

  “I could try calling and speaking to his father,” I said.

  Deepak frowned. “He won’t like that. It’s insulting for a young man to have his father involved.”

  “Firstly, he’s left me with no choice. Secondly, it’ll be worse for Chakra Dev if he is suspended,” I said.

  “You’re right. I had some problems in school with a friend who got into bad company. I eventually talked to his parents about it,” Deepak said.

  “What happened after that?” I asked.

  “Rahul stopped talking to me. And then a year ago he called me and actually thanked me. He said that if his parents hadn’t interfered he really would have ruined himself. He was a smack addict. He had even started stealing from home.”

  “I think Chakra Dev’s rowdy exterior hides something else. Something hidden even to himself,” I said.

  “You could be right. After all, even the best people have a dark side. Why not the reverse?” Deepak said.

  “I think you’re taking on more responsibility than you should,” India said.

  “Aunty, you said she’s the Head Prefect. If she doesn’t take responsibility, who will?” Arni asked.

  “If you’ve already made up your mind, then you should find his weak point, strike him when it’s exposed,” Deepak said.

  “He’s totally insensitive. He has the hide of an elephant,” I said.

  Deepak chuckled. “Why is it that rogues like him get all the sympathy? Girls are willing to put themselves through so much trouble for goondas.”

  India patted my hand as she got up and walked over to the stereo system. She popped a tape in and said, “Let’s have some fun.”

  Then she turned her head a little and asked Deepak, “Do you have the stuff?”

  From his jacket pocket he fished out a small parcel made of newspaper. He unrolled it and laid it on the coffee table. There was green stuff and some rolls of paper. I had a sinking feeling in my stomach. India knelt down by the table and rolled some of the green stuff into the paper. Runa Laila was singing “Dum Maro Dum” in her sultry, immoral voice. I was panic-stricken. Deepak knelt beside India and made a roll as well. He lit it and passed it to Arni, who took a puff.

  “Will Anamika have one?” Deepak asked India.

  “Ask her,” India said to him.

  “No! Really, Aunty, that’s too much,” Arni said in a high voice.

  “Why not?” Deepak asked Arni, and added, “We were just talking this morning about how grown-up Anamika is. This is just weed.”

  “It’s really up to her,” India said, shrugging her shoulders.

  “Smoking a joint with friends in Kasauli. Ah! This is life,” India said, taking a long puff and exhaling. Smoke rose from her head as she threw her neck back. Despite all my negative feelings, this image of India was entirely beautiful. I knew I would never forget it.

  Deepak had rolled another one by now and offered it to me. A part of me said that if I loved India I’d puff what she was puffing, eat what she was eating, and sleep when she slept. A small, reasonable voice in my head told me I was insane. I closed my eyes and imagined my mother talking to me. I felt as if I were being tested. The love of my parents, my education, every moral lesson I had learned was being challenged. I had lost the previous night when I had had the beer with them.

  “No, thanks. I’ll pass,” I said to Deepak politely.

  “Hey, it’s cool. Have one, there’s no problem. She was just being a prude,” Deepak said to me, pointing to Arni.

  “I don’t feel like it,” I said. My mouth dried up a little. I was afraid he might insist.

  “Let her be,” India said, getting up. She turned up the music a little. Deepak got up as well. They both started dancing. I felt embarrassed for India. Was she losing control of her senses? She held Deepak’s hand in her own. With her free hand she smoked her joint. After a few minutes she let go of his hand, looked at me, and said, “Come dance with me.”

  Deepak had a beatific look on his face. Even Arni seemed a lot more mellow than usual.

  “No, thanks,” I said.

  She swayed her hips and walked to where I was sitting. It seemed vulgar. I tried to think I was a real stud, and she was my courtesan. I was Humbert Humbert, and she was my Lolita. I remembered the way Sheela had danced. India’s movements were like the slow-moving Ganges, a Ganges overflowing with thick cream. Sheela’s had been lighter, like a milk shake.

  She grabbed my hand and pulled me up. Arni and Deepak would see my rigid movements and laugh at me. But making a fuss was going to call even more attention to myself. So I pretended I was at ease. I swayed my hips and pursed my lips.

  The servant interrupted us and said he’d made a batch of rotis . We went to the rectangular table and served ourselves. The discussion tapered a little. All three of them were beaming, their minds elsewhere. When the servant moved around, refilling our glasses, I felt as if he were my connection to civilization. India seemed very happy, but I couldn’t relate to her. All emotions seemed illusory. Maybe the times I had felt in love with her it was a trick. Maybe Sheela had felt no connection to me when I had tried seducing her.

  “Balbir was cool,” Deepak said. India nodded.

  A few seconds later Arni said, “I like Pranav.”

  I wondered for a moment if Chakra Dev would be as peaceful as they were if he were smoking with them. In class he always had a combative energy, but I had no doubt he would succumb to the influence of the joint.

  Light ghazals played in the background. “I’m tired. I’m going to sleep,” I said.

  “Night, kiddo. Come back if you can’t fall asleep,” Deepak said.

  India sent me a flying kiss. I couldn’t manage even a smile back. I waved weakly and left. I threw myself on the bed and thought about my parents. I wanted to go back to Delhi; I couldn’t love India anymore. I knew with absolute certainty only about my mother. My sense of being attached to her was not an illusion. With anyone else in the world there was no such guarantee
. I wished I could remember the day I was born, the day the umbilical cord still connected me to her. Swimming in a vast amniotic sea, I knew I would never feel alone or on the outside. One could not be more inside.

  There were rustling sounds in the living room.

  “Can I take you home now, my angel,” I heard Deepak say.

  “You can take me anywhere. I’m yours forever,” Arni said.

  “For . . . e . . . ver,” Deepak sang out after her.

  I looked at the small table clock in the dim light and noticed it was around one. I didn’t let on that I was awake when India closed the front door behind them and came back to our room. As she brushed her teeth in the bathroom I bitterly thought that no one was mine, not even tonight, leave alone forever.

  At the crack of dawn I got out of bed and picked up Lolita. I sat in the big chair on the veranda. My mind got entirely absorbed in a drive across the United States with a dirty old man who understood me. A man I understood equally well. We were both made of the same element in the periodic table, a licentious element. I forgot all about India for a while, and in forgetting I found respite from my small emotions, my petty biology.

  When the servant opened the gate by the garden, I waved to him and asked him to get me some chai and toast. Along with my breakfast tray, he brought me an English newspaper.

  “Since the big Memsahib is sleeping, I thought you might want more to read,” he said to me in Hindi, laying it down on my lap. He had not talked to me directly since we’d arrived.

  I looked idly at the crossword for a while. There was a half-page ad titled “Just Say No,” sponsored by the antidrug committee. There were tiny photographs of teens all over it. They needed to aim their ads at the likes of India and Deepak, not at kids.

  I thought of Sheela. I knew she would never take drugs. I desperately wanted to be with her, to tell her how much I appreciated her purity. My heart felt heavy that Sheela would never forgive me for the way I had behaved, but I had to try. I tiptoed into the bedroom and got myself a ballpoint pen and notepad.

  I stared at the ruled pages of the notepad, trying to decide what to write. Forgive me, I am sorry, I beseech you, Let me atone—all sounded common. I thought of re-creating every moment of that fateful afternoon so that she could see it from my point of view. But then she would think I was not sorry at all or that I was shirking responsibility.

  I glanced at several square photographs from an advertisement in the color section of the paper. A girl from Central India glowed from the page, reminding me of Rani. An elephant in lush green grass made me want to walk barefoot. A stone temple on a beach stirred an immense longing for India’s past, her kings, queens, and golden epochs. In bold text at the bottom was written “India, my India.” It effused all the warmth and allure one associated with India. I felt it with every fiber of my being.

  I sank back into my chair and rested my head in my hands. The notepad that said “Dear Sheela” was staring at me. My throat felt tight, as if a nut had lodged itself in my esophagus. I wished it would melt away. I couldn’t bear the pressure and needed to write something, anything, to let it out. In the end I wrote to Sheela about Kasauli, about India and my mother. I didn’t distinguish clearly between India, my motherland, and India, my lover. I could not distinguish between my motherland and my mother. I talked about making love to the country and achieving a mystical communion with the land, its riverbeds and plateaus.

  I looked at the Department of Tourism ad again. It elicited everything I had ever learned about India in history class. The mother goddess figure of the ancient Harappan civilization, the conquest of India by the Moghuls, the mutiny of 1857, the massacre General Dyer committed at Jallianwallah Bagh, and the Partition. She had been plundered and violated and had bled a thousand times, but her visage was still beautiful. Tears started welling up in my eyes.

  I imagined India, the woman, as just as great a mystery as the land. When I finally signed the letter to Sheela after eight pages, I had not said anything about that afternoon or my own monstrosity. I had also glossed over India herself, the drugs she had taken at night.

  I read my letter over and over, not wanting to part with it. I saw myself as I had never seen myself before—as a concrete, distinct person with a set of thoughts and feelings, all of which were contained in the sheets of paper in my hand. Sending this to Sheela meant sending myself to her. My soul was not an intangible entity that was reincarnating from one life to another. My soul was right there on paper in my own handwriting. My soul was this letter.

  I held the letter, letting the whorls of my fingertips soak up the sensation of the paper.

  “Babyji, would you like something more to eat?” the servant asked from across the garden.

  “Do you have something for this?” I asked, showing him the folded letter.

  “I’ll check.”

  “Wait, do you also have better paper, as big as this but white?” I asked, deciding to transcribe the letter so that I would have a copy.

  “Should be some at home. Let me look,” he said.

  In a few minutes he was back with foolscap paper and a large manila envelope. I settled down to rewrite the letter. I was careful not to make any changes, even when I was tempted to improve some of the sentences. It was important that Sheela get everything exactly as I had written it down.

  Once I had completed the letter I became impatient to send it. I asked the servant where the post office was. I was sure that mail in the hills was slow, especially if one used a letterbox.

  “Babyji, I can go and post it now,” he offered.

  “No, please just tell me where it is,” I asked him, not wanting to let it out of my sight till the postal clerk had stamped it.

  “I’ll take you there if you want,” he said.

  I asked him to wait and went back to the bedroom to put on my shoes. There was no way to lock all the doors of the house without locking India in. I decided to leave the veranda door unlocked since Kasauli seemed safe enough.

  The post office was up a steep hill. I had trouble keeping up with the servant. He held the envelope in his hand and eventually had to hold my hand to help me climb. If Rani had married a man like him instead of the drunkard, she would never have come to me.

  When I returned home, India was still asleep. I resumed reading my book. I was into the last ten pages when I sensed movement in the bedroom.

  “Where are you?” India asked in the slow syllables of someone waking up.

  “Here,” I called from the veranda.

  “Come to me,” she said.

  “I’m reading,” I said. She should have said “please,” I thought, feeling irritated.

  “You won’t come here because you are reading?” she said incredulously.

  I didn’t respond. After a few seconds she whined, “You don’t love me anymore.”

  Her statement rang chillingly true. How was it possible that I could have loved her completely and then just stopped? Did it mean I’d never loved her? Maybe I’d made a mistake from the beginning. It was more comforting to think I was wrong about it from the start than to think that my heart could have felt one thing with total surety and then the opposite with just as much surety.

  “What’s with you this morning?” she asked from the room when I hadn’t responded.

  A switch in me flicked again. I got up from the large chair, dropping Lolita, and went inside. In the time it took me to walk the five steps from the veranda to the bedroom, I knew I needed to love her. It was just too insane and dangerous to think of love as something that could vaporize so quickly. I sat on the bed beside her and said, as much to myself as to her, “Of course I love you, that’s absurd.”

  After a few minutes of silence, which I was afraid to interrupt for fear of saying something offensive, I said, “I want to call my mother.” I felt a desperate need for some sort of reassurance.

  “I was going to suggest that you do. You haven’t called her since we got here. She’s probably worried,�
� India replied.

  “What will we do today?” I asked. I hoped the day would be filled with Kasauli. I needed physical activity and the outside world to stop me from feeling sorry for myself.

  “I’m calling Deepak so we can go for a drive,” she said.

  I nodded and strode up to the phone in the living room to call my mother.

  “Oh! Anamika, how are you? I am missing you so much,” she said.

  “I’m missing you. I’m missing you very much,” I said. I couldn’t suppress a sob.

  “What’s the matter? Are you all right? Is Tripta fine?” she asked.

  “I’m fine. Talking to you just made me a little emotional,” I said, sobbing a little more.

  “Oh! My child, come back soon then,” she said.

  “Yes, we’ll probably leave tomorrow,” I said, gaining control of the rasps of emotion running through me. My face and eyes were wet when I hung up.

  India had put on her nightie and come into the living room. She had heard me on the phone and came close to hug me. I recoiled from her before I had time to realize what I was doing. I had acted as if she were some sort of untouchable.

  “You’re acting weird today. If you want to end it just say so,” she said grimly. She looked hurt.

  “I can’t believe you do drugs,” I said accusingly.

  “We just did weed,” she said.

  “Drugs make you lose control of yourself and ruin you.”

  “I see no harm in taking a puff once in a blue moon. It puts me in a good mood,” she said.

  “It’s a false sense of happiness. It’s not real,” I argued.

  “There are chemical reactions associated with most natural moods. Drugs just vary the chemical balance in the body to alter your mood,” she said.

  “I don’t think every experience can be reduced to chemicals,” I said.

  “When I started breast-feeding my son it used to arouse me. Then I read that oxytocin is released in the body when one is lactating, and that it’s perfectly normal to feel that way,” India said.

  Was she that pathological? Attributing anger or happiness to chemicals was one thing, but a mother-child relationship was sacred. Did India feel everything only because a few ounces of liquid were squirting in some part of her body?