Babyji

by Abha Dawesar

  “Just make us tea. But after that I think it’s better if we are alone. Otherwise she may find it hard to teach,” I said.

  “Yes, Rani, why don’t you go after that to the electricity office to check on the bill?” my mother suggested. Rani ran all our errands for us. I knew that now even my father would never want her to leave because she had taken over all the time-consuming chores.

  I lingered in the drawing room longer than usual, eager to spend time with my parents. It was hard to believe that I had been gone only a few days. I wanted to tell them about the drugs, but I restrained myself. I talked about Arni and Deepak and told them that Deepak had an MBA from America. My parents said they would definitely invite the young couple to dinner soon.

  When I finally got to bed I was exhausted. As soon as Rani joined me we turned off the light and bolted the door. I lay in her arms. She felt familiar, like my house and my mother’s embrace. I had thought that it would be strange to be with her after having spent several nights with India. Their bodies were different except for the deep arch of their lower backs. Rani had downy hair all over her body, including her legs and under her arms. India waxed. I slept with my back to Rani, her belly and breasts pouring over my spine. She encircled my chest with her arm and put her hand in mine. I was carried into a fitful sleep.

  A cacophony of real and imagined lovers filled my head. They were screaming, shouting, accusing me of treachery and betrayal, infidelity and disloyalty. India and Sheela, Rani and Adit, Vidur, Chakra Dev, my mother, Mrs. Pillai, and Deepak all grievously claimed injury and showed me the damage I had done. Love in my dream was not a many-shaded thing but a single blinding light. Everyone bathed in it together, without distinctions, all balanced precariously on the edge of an abyss. The compartments in my brain were erased, compassion and maternal affection paraded naked with desire, lust conjoined with admiration.

  I awoke several times during the night, choking to the point of suffocation. Each time I woke up and realized I was in my own bed with only Rani beside me, there was a moment of respite. When I fell asleep again I saw amputated limbs, hearts outside their bodies, thighs cut open like meat, knees swinging out of their sockets, and eyes, disembodied and bleeding eyes, watching me from everywhere.

  Upon waking in the morning, I felt guilty when I looked at Rani. When my mother brought me tea I felt I had betrayed her. Remorse that real life had failed to induce was pouring down over me like a torrential monsoon rain carried by the southwest wind of my dreams. As I took my bath I cursed everyone for the roles they had played in my nightmare. Beauty had become permanently tarnished with bitterness, and it was my own night chemicals that had masterminded the deceit.

  Normally I would have been excited about Mrs. Pillai seeing me in civvies and made an effort to dress, but I didn’t care too much anymore, so I chose the striped red shirt in which I had committed my violence against Sheela. I combed my hair and wet it so that the side parting would stay. I found some Old Spice aftershave in my parents’ bathroom and splashed it on my face like the wind surfer in the TV commercial did. I set out my books in the living room for my lesson.

  Mrs. Pillai arrived in a pale pink salwar kameez, her chunni wrapped around her neck several times. She was holding her helmet in her hand when I opened the door for her. Her helmet was one of the newer ones, a sleek red design with a dark visor. I wanted to see her in it.

  “Good morning, ma’am,” I said, bowing a little.

  I asked Rani to get her some nimbu pani. Rani had squeezed one hundred limes and made several bottles of sugar syrup a few weeks ago, so all she had to do was mix the lime juice and the syrup with a little bit of water. After serving us she left for the electricity office, and we settled down to study. I had never got a private lesson before from a teacher. We were able to move rapidly ahead, and if I wanted to know something more than what was in the course syllabus, it was possible for Mrs. Pillai to answer. In class, whenever anyone asked a question beyond the syllabus, the teachers would say there was too much material to cover for our board exams and not enough time to deviate.

  The phone rang at some point. I got up and lifted the receiver.

  “Anamika, I got your letter this morning,” Sheela said. My breath caught on hearing Sheela’s voice.

  “Hello, are you there?” she asked.

  “I am so sorry,” I whispered.

  “When can I see you?” she asked.

  “In an hour,” I said.

  I wanted the lesson to end so that I could bike to Sheela’s house. I hadn’t thought she would ever forgive me. When I had written the letter in Kasauli I had only hoped it would ease my conscience and allow me to sit in the same classroom with her again. But I had failed to address the matter of the episode between us. My honesty in the letter about my life had been a form of cowardice.

  I returned to the table, aware that Mrs. Pillai had overheard the conversation and afraid she would guess everything from the tone of my voice.

  “Child, you have turned scarlet,” Mrs. Pillai said when I sat down.

  I was embarrassed that something personal had come up in the short time Mrs. Pillai was with me. I stared furiously at the register and avoided direct eye contact with her. We returned to our chapter on differential calculus, but I found it hard to concentrate.

  The phone rang again. This time it was Adit.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Hi,” I answered tersely.

  “When did you get back?” he said.

  “A couple of days ago.”

  “Who did you go with?” he asked.

  “India.”

  “The mysterious India again! Why didn’t you call me earlier?” he demanded.

  In the dream, Adit’s role had been particularly gruesome. He had held up his castrated member to get Sheela’s attention. Who did he think he was?

  “My business,” I said.

  “Call me when you’re in a better mood,” he said and hung up.

  “Lots of monosyllabic phone calls here,” Mrs. Pillai said. Her voice had an edge to it. I was afraid she would never come back to teach me again. An hour was almost up. Mrs. Pillai picked up her purse to leave. I walked her out.

  “Go in, child, it’s hot,” she said.

  “I want to see you in your helmet,” I said. I spoke in a tone that lacked all deference. I was in the doghouse with her anyway after the phone calls.

  She laughed and said, “My kids say I look like an astronaut in it.”

  The last few words came out muffled because she put on the helmet as she spoke. Mrs. Pillai wrapped the chunni around her neck and moved the scooter from its stand. She kick-started it, but it failed to come to life. Through the delicate white straps of her sandals I could see her small feet tense up as she kicked the starter a second time. This time the engine roared. Mrs. Pillai got on the seat and waved as she zoomed off, the scooter kicking up dust behind it. I walked back to the house and slammed the door behind me. I gathered my books from the dining table and dumped them on my bed. I found the key to my bike and waited impatiently for Rani to return so that I could leave.

  “But Babyji, it’s too hot to cycle,” she said when she got back.

  “I have work,” I said.

  “Please ride in the shade or you’ll get the loo,” she said.

  “You always worry too much about me,” I said.

  I rode to Sheela’s house. It was so hot that my palms kept slipping off the handlebars. Sheela’s servant opened the door and told me I could go up to her room, she was expecting me.

  Sheela acted as though everything between us were normal. She kissed me on the cheek and hugged me. She asked about Kasauli and the colors of the sky I had described in my letter.

  Sheela’s servant had nimbu pani ready within minutes of my arrival. After he had left two glasses for us on the table, I wanted to shut the door and talk to her privately. But I was afraid she would take my shutting the door in the wrong way.

  “Sheela, I need to talk t
o you,” I said.

  “Shh,” she said, putting her finger to my lips. Then she whispered, “Let’s just be quiet for a few minutes.” She pulled me onto the bed. We stared at the ceiling and the pattern of light and dark cast by the metal grill on her windows. I became aware of soft music playing in the room. It was instrumental music, and I could not place it. We lay entirely still, our bodies close but not touching.

  At first I found it hard to relax and just stare at the light pattern. But then I closed my eyes and drifted all the way to the moon. Mrs. Pillai was wearing her astronaut helmet and doing the moonwalk out of a Michael Jackson video. On the stark lunar landscape, Rani had found a corner arrangement of rocks where she was able to light a small fire and make rotis on the chullah. Sheela and I lay on our backs, staring at the blue green earth as it spun around the moon. We held hands and raised our arms up in the air. We found that they fell at a different speed than they would on earth. Sheela was very tickled by this. I explained how the gravitational force of the moon was different from that of the earth. India sat with her back to me, pretending not to listen to what I was saying to Sheela. She smoked a cigarette. The smoke rose high up and remained visible because there was very little atmosphere on the moon. I was sure that even people on earth could see the wisp of her cigarette. Every now and then she turned her head a little as she puffed and threw her head back as she exhaled. There were no men on the moon.

  I felt movement and sudden moisture. It woke me up with a jerk. Sheela was staring at my face. There was drool on the pillow beside my head.

  I slept with my mouth open, and my saliva flowed freely. I had to accept this about myself just the way a chemical like hydrogen sulfide, if it were a living thing, would have to accept that it stank. I remembered the letter I had written.

  “What are you thinking?” Sheela asked.

  “There is a notebook like this one,” I said, picking up a copybook from her desk and flipping it open. The page had points on the properties of fold mountains from Mrs. Thaityallam’s dictation. I pointed to the left side where Sheela had written “Fold Mountains” and said, “Anamika Sharma.” Where she had written defining characteristics of the mountains, I pointed to the first point and said, “Sleeps with mouth open.” Then to the second and said, “Dribbles.” And then the third, “Rapes.”

  Sheela’s forehead creased. She wiped the side of my mouth.

  “Don’t speak of yourself like that,” she said. Then she got up from the bed and went to the door. She shut it and fastened the bolt on top. When she came back she sat by my head and pulled it onto her lap. I could see her nose and cheekbones, her long brown eyelashes, her palate when she opened her mouth to speak.

  “I’ve reread your letter many times already. It’s beautiful, Anamika,” she said.

  She stroked my forehead with her hand. I did not feel she was any younger than India or my mother or Rani. I closed my eyes so that I could listen to her with all my concentration and enjoy the feeling of her hands on my forehead. They cooled my head and provided relief from the heat.

  “You don’t think I molested you that time?” I asked anxiously.

  “I think I overreacted, Anamika. After you left I wished you had stayed longer. I wished we had continued,” she said a little breathlessly. She seemed nervous.

  “So you’ve forgiven me?” I asked.

  “Yes. But we have to do it slowly,” she said.

  Her phone rang. I expected her to move away to get it, but she just let it ring.

  “Aren’t you going to answer?”

  “No. It rings all the time. I’ve been getting blank calls.”

  “How often?”

  “Sometimes twenty times a day, sometimes fifty,” she said. I got up from her lap with a jerk.

  “Do you think it’s Chakra Dev?” I asked.

  “Maybe. He called me once,” she said, stroking my head as if she wanted me to stay calm.

  “When?”

  “The day you came over and we had the fight,” she said. Did she really think of it as a fight?

  “What did he say?”

  “He wanted me to come to his house and meet his mother,” she said.

  “What?” I said, incredulous. Of all the things in the world I would have expected Chakra Dev to offer Sheela, an invitation to his house was not one of them.

  “He said that his mother would like to meet me because he had talked a lot about me.”

  “And what did you say?”

  “I said I didn’t believe him and he was a pig.”

  “And then?”

  “He said I could talk to her myself and passed the phone to her.”

  “Did you talk to her?” I asked.

  “I didn’t have a choice.”

  “Well, what happened?” I asked impatiently.

  “She said her son could be a real badmash sometimes but that he was good at heart. She said I should give him a chance.”

  “You mean she knew he liked you.”

  “She seemed simple and not very educated, actually. He had told her about me, and she had told him to be decent and invite me home instead of hassling me at school in the break.”

  “And then?”

  “She told me not to turn him down since he had asked nicely,” Sheela said.

  “What a strategy! Did it work?”

  “I told her I couldn’t. I said my parents don’t allow me to go to boys’ houses.”

  “Otherwise you would have?” I asked, suspicious.

  “No. You know I hate him. Though his mother wailed on about how falling for me had dampened his anger,” she said.

  “What is he angry about?”

  “She said something about his father but I was trying to get off the phone.”

  So he was just like everyone else! He had a crush on Sheela. Hearing that Chakra Dev had a human side made me want to throw myself with him into a vat of the blackest material around, the ingredient that I had recently discovered constituted the dark side of the human soul—mine, his, India’s, everyone’s.

  “Did Chakra Dev call you again after that?” I asked.

  “No. But I started getting these crank calls,” she said. Just then the phone rang. This time I lunged to pick it up.

  “Hello,” I said.

  There was no sound from the other side. After a few “hellos” I put it down.

  “What else happened while I was gone?” I asked, still digesting everything she had said.

  “Vidur came over a few times.”

  “Does he know about Chakra Dev?” I asked.

  “Yes, I told him. He said he was going to get some older boys he knew to beat him up.”

  “Did he?” I asked, a little alarmed.

  “No. I told him that I wouldn’t talk to him if he did.”

  “Does he like you?” I asked, knowing full well that he did.

  “Only as a friend. He’s my best friend,” she said confidently. I felt strange. How could he be Sheela’s best friend if he was mine?

  “Did he say that to you?”

  “No. He hasn’t said anything. But I’ve told him he’s my best friend. I can talk to him about anything. Even about you,” she said.

  “About me? What have you told him about me?” I asked.

  “Not about that,” she said, her eyes dropping to the floor.

  “Then about what?”

  “He knows I love you,” she said.

  “In what way?” I asked. She had not told me before that she loved me.

  “Just that I am crazy about you and think the world of you,” she said, looking shy.

  “Why do you love me?” I asked. I couldn’t help feeling Vidur deserved her no less than I did.

  “Because you are good. Because you have always been good,” she said.

  “But I am not. What if you find out I am not?” I asked. I didn’t want Sheela’s love for me to turn weak and watery the way mine for India had.

  “It’s impossible,” she said, bringing her face to mine
and putting an end to our conversation.

  On my bicycle ride back I thought about what she had told me about Chakra Dev. I considered calling his mother and telling her about the bomb. I also wondered about Vidur. It was strange to think he had been to her house and in her room. Where did they sit when he visited? I felt the need to know every detail about his visits, even if it was none of my business. I was glad for Rani and India, that they were not linked to my life at school.

  Rani made me tea when I returned. As I sat sipping it I told her I had had nightmares about blood. I said that in my dream everyone I had loved had suffered, though it wasn’t really true. They may have suffered, but it was really I who had suffered, and they had made me suffer by parading their innermost monsters to me. The dream had filled me with the foreboding that my own vivisection was imminent.

  After tea I called India and told her about my nightmare.

  “It sounds like something out of Hieronymous Bosch,” she said.

  “Who?”

  “I’ll show you next time. I have an art book you’ll like.”

  Neither of us mentioned when the next time would be. We had only just returned, and I knew she wanted to spend time with Jeet. I also wanted time to think about the rise and fall of my feelings for her.

  I called Adit and apologized for my abruptness on the phone earlier that day.

  “How was Kasauli?” he asked.

  “It was clean and pure.”

  “I went there for my honeymoon. Is it still a sleepy town, or is it overrun with tourists?”

  “It’s sleepy,” I said. It was my heart that was overrun with tourists, I thought.

  “Let me come and see you,” he said.

  “No. Rani’s here,” I said.

  “Let’s plan something together, all of us,” he said.

  “Who’s all?”

  “Vidur, Sheela, you, and me,” he said.

  “Have you met her?” I asked.

  “I went to her house a few times to pick Vidur up. He’s lost his head for her.”

  “What do you think of her?” I asked. I wanted Adit to be friends only with me.

  “She’s a sweet girl. Not the smartest, but cute. Bedable,” he said, laughing.

  “Hold your tongue,” I said sharply.