Yesterday I found a picture of my mother and your mother. It’s an old picture. There used to be beads on the frame I remember licking as a child but now most of the beads have fallen off. They are both looking into the camera but they are not smiling. My mother is not as thin as she is now. Her hair is cut short around her face. Your mother’s hair is long, black and falling across them both. Your mother’s arm is around my mother, her fingers denting the skin on my mother’s arm. My mother looks relaxed. If you look closely, her eyes are smiling.
I know when this picture was taken. It was right before my parents’ wedding. I know that your mother didn’t want my mother to marry my father.
What do your parents look like? My father is short and blockish, like the picture of a boxer he keeps in his study. He has hair coming out of everywhere: ears, nose, arms, legs, neck, even the tops of his hands.
My mother is slim and hairless. She’s so tall that she hunches. She’s so conscious of being white that she barely goes out. She’s so nervous about saying the wrong thing in Urdu that she says very little. My father is not like that. He goes where he wants, he says what he wants, he does what he wants.
Do you look like your mother? Why didn’t you tell Nusrat?
Tanya
September 1, 1991
Bombay
I know which picture you are talking about, my mother has it in her study next to a picture of you and your brother from when you were babies. My mom is so bossy it’s embarrassing. Why didn’t she want your mom to marry your dad? And how is it her business anyway?
Okay so today I told Nusrat everything. Like everything. She didn’t say anything. I mean, of course she never says anything but her face went blank the way it does whenever I talk to her about Arjun.
I wish she didn’t hate Arjun. I think she HATES him you know? I’ve tried to get her to actually sit down and get to know him but she refuses. Every time I’ve made her come into my room, she sees him and gets all stiff and just stares at me the whole time. He even brought her flowers once (well, I bought them and made him give them to her) but she wouldn’t take them, she wouldn’t even touch them. When he tried to force them into her hands, she dropped them and then looked like she was going to cry.
He’s not good with her either. He gets this fake smile on his face and speaks really loudly as if she is deaf. He doesn’t get it. Once he said something really rude about her. He doesn’t get it.
I wish she wouldn’t hate him. I get it though. I would too if I were her.
Today I had a killer day at school so I’m in a damn good mood. I was wearing my new shorts first of all and I got Nusrat to take them in a little bit so they’re like really, really short. There wasn’t a single boy who didn’t look at me. But also I had taken a gamble on one of the new kids in school and it has like TOTALLY paid off. When she joined she was a nobody. But I saw something in her. I took her up—like you know, had her sit next to me a couple of times, invited her out to a couple of parties. So anyway, Nirav, THE coolest guy in my batch, has made her his girlfriend. She’s made now. And I did it. And everyone knows it.
It’s so much easier to make other people than to make yourself. You work so hard to be the thing you think you want to be and then when you are almost there, you suddenly don’t want it anymore. I can’t figure out if I get it wrong or if my mind changes.
Does this happen to you?
You know, I don’t lie to you. I don’t make stuff up when I write to you. It’s pretty weird because in school, I lie all the time. I don’t lie with Nusrat either but she’s different, right? Not the same thing. YOU know.
What’s the significant thing with Chhoti Bibi? If it’s another Mental Math test I am going to throw up.
Love,
Tania
September 12, 1991
Karachi
Dear Tania,
Your letter made me really happy.
The thing that happened with Chhoti Bibi. I don’t know how to describe it. It will sound small and stupid. But she has stopped coming to my room. I haven’t seen her in ten days.
I did not know. If I had, I would have done something. I would have told her where to go. I would have sent the driver with her. I would have given her some money. I would have gone with her on my crutches.
I’m lying, I wouldn’t have.
It’s about jeans.
Chhoti Bibi bought a pair of jeans with her first month’s salary. The worst pair of jeans in the world. The kind of jeans you scorn when you see them on people on the street. The kind of jeans heroines in Bollywood movies wore in the 80s. Jeans that we (you and I) would never wear.
Bibi told me later that Chhoti Bibi liked to moon over a picture of me in the living room in which I am wearing jeans. She would tell Bibi every night that she wanted to look like me in that picture. That she wants to wear jeans like mine. Bibi told her that she can buy jeans like that in Karachi. Not true as I have never bought jeans in Karachi but Chhoti Bibi believed her.
As soon as Chhoti Bibi got her first month’s salary, she went and bought jeans. I don’t know where she went but I can imagine. She was thrilled to buy them and thrilled to show them to me which means something good about me, right? It must mean that I have done something to earn that kind of belief, that kind of trust. She was really excited to show them to me. She was really proud of the jeans. I didn’t know that. Should I have known that? I really didn’t know that.
The jeans are not even denim. They’re cotton with fake denim distress marks all across the fabric. A brilliant blue that will leave bits of dye everywhere. They have pleats. A red stripe running down each leg. Pleats, Tania. You can imagine them, can’t you? Please remember that they are not denim.
And I was already angry. She was late. I had been expecting her for almost half an hour. I had prepared a lesson plan. I was bored. I would have been angry with her even if she hadn’t been wearing the hideous jeans. By the time she came, it wasn’t just the jeans. It was everything. The way she burst into my room, loudly, noisily, waking me up from my evening torpor when I was already half mad with boredom. When it was so hot outside that the sun hurt, bouncing into my room, lighting everything on fire.
She had worn the jeans over her salwar. Oh, terrible, ugly, offensive jeans. They bulged everywhere those jeans, red stripes flashing, cotton stretching. And the salwar…the salwar was orange, a deep, dark brilliant orange, a roomy salwar, not meant to be stuffed into jeans and they took their revenge by spilling out and over the jeans, a big fat bilious orange sausage because Chhoti Bibi is not thin.
And I laughed.
If I could go back now would I take back the laugh? I don’t know. Because the truth is I hated her in that moment. I hated her for coming into my room, waking me up, not saying sorry, for thinking she could just do that, just occupy my room and my time. As if she could.
I hated her. The way she looked mortified me. It enraged me. She was wearing a nylon kurta I do not like because it has babies and pineapples on it of equal size. The colours have bled and the edges have blurred so that it looks like a pineapple is swallowing an armless baby. I hate that kurta.
She looked stupid and it made me angry. She was sweating and her hair was plastered on her forehead. She had sweat marks under her arms and her nose and forehead shined with grease.
She smelled of sweat and it filled my air-conditioned room. She was supposed to come and clean the room in the evening, air it out, open the windows, light the candles that I like. Instead she burst in, scattering the used tissues I had thrown on the floor, completely oblivious to me and my feelings.
She looked really stupid. I stand by that.
She ran into my room and skidded to a halt in front of the mirror. She was laughing and sweating and dropped shopping bags on the floor where they spilled sweets, coins and a blue and pink striped handkerchief. She pulled up the baby pineapple kurta and stuck out her hips at me in an effort, I think, to strike a pose like in the film magazines she loves. She wore a yel
lowed old slip of mine in lieu of a bra, tucked into her orange salwar, tucked into the jeans. Her gaze was not on me, it was on her reflection in the mirror and she looked enchanted by what she saw.
I hated her and I laughed.
At first she didn’t move, she didn’t even look at me. It was all stillness except for my laughter that fell around the room in waves, the light suddenly turning dimly golden outside like it does in Karachi without notice.
She swivelled her head and looked at me and I noticed suddenly tiny hairs on her smooth brown cheek, the lightest down, turned golden in the light.
Baji, she said. Baji.
I cannot revive the wonder and the hurt in those words. The way she looked at me as if I had hit her. But looking back, I see that even with that wound she didn’t shirk, she didn’t shrink, no, not Chhoti Bibi. I hurt her and she turned to look me in the eye, her emotions primary-coloured with no shades in between. Baji hurt me. Look at Baji.
She’s such a child. Chhoti Chhoti Bibi.
Her hands fell to her sides and her kurta dropped from where she had been holding it up near her chest. It fell halfway, arrested by the bunching of the salwar and the jeans at her waist. She looked worse than before and I felt as angry as before but also, finally creeping in and deflating the anger, shame.
‘What?’ I said defiantly.
‘You don’t like the jeans?’
I could not bear the directness of her gaze.
‘Throw away the tissues.’ I said turning over on my side. ‘And pick up your bags. Why did you bring them here?’
She must have stood there and waited for me to turn around for a long time because I saw the sun go down over our garden wall. The leaves turned translucent, opaque and then disappeared into darkness. Finally I heard the door shut and turned around and she was gone. The floor was clean. But there were no candles.
Bibi said she cried all night. And yes, I feel bad about it but Tania…I also feel a weird triumph. I can’t explain it. How is it? How is this?
Chhoti Bibi hasn’t come to my room in ten days now. Is it over?
Yours,
Tanya
September 25, 1991
Bombay
Dear Tanya,
I just want to say that you are meaner than I am. I am mean to people in my school but never to servants. It’s not fair.
The thing is, though, I totally get why you felt good about being a bitch. I feel like that all the time. That’s why I can’t wait to grow up because I think this must be just a hormones thing. I was totally not a bitch when I was a kid but you know, when you’re a kid and you can run fast and your house has cool toys and you don’t do anything super stupid in school, it’s so easy to be popular. It gets a lot harder when you grow older.
I showed your letter to Nusrat because I think she should know that you have this bitchy side. She didn’t seem to think it was that bitchy though. She thought it was funny. She also thinks you’re a good writer. Whatever.
So Neenee’s mom called my mom and complained about me not being nice to Neenee even though I had TOLD her not to say anything at home. I guess she has been crying again, she’s so boring. My mother sat down to have a talk with me about being a better person. She put on her ‘I’m a loving parent and my kids can talk to me about anything’ face and made me hot chocolate and we sat in the living room (which we never ever do unless there are guests) and she talked to me about being a good friend and a kind person and all this stuff. The whole time I looked at the painting behind her head which is a painting I hate and just swallowed everything I wanted to say because there was a party I wanted to go to that night and I knew that if she felt pleased about being a good mother she would like totally let me go. She’s DAMN predictable.
My mom thinks she knows everything but she doesn’t even know this about herself. It’s pathetic.
But anyway I didn’t say any of this because I wanted to go to the party. The lecture lasted thirty five minutes. She didn’t even suspect that I wasn’t agreeing with her. Thanks stupid, ugly painting I want to burn bit by bit over the kitchen stove.
The party ended up being super lame. Arjun was checking out these eighth standard girls—you know the ones I mean. The ones with the really skinny hips and their boobs just beginning to show.
I’m just so sick of everything. Don’t you think there’s supposed to be more to life? Than all of this stupid shit? Just more to life. There’s got to be more to life. Don’t you think?
Love,
Tania
October 5, 1991
Karachi
Dear Tania,
I’m sorry I haven’t written in a while. I haven’t felt like doing anything really. Not for a few days now.
Things are better with Chhoti Bibi. I’ve decided to just keep talking to her normally as if nothing has happened. I ask her for advice on things. The other day I asked her to help me rearrange my clothes. I said it out of desperation because I was looking for an excuse to keep her in my room but it was an unexpectedly big hit.
She handles my clothes like they’re made of gold. I never thought that t-shirts and jeans and track pants could inspire so much tenderness. She sat in front of my cupboard for hours, stroking and smoothing and folding. I kept up a steady stream of words but then I realized she wasn’t even listening.
When she was done and about to leave, I said, ‘Sorry.’
She looked at me as if I had slapped her. Then she wrapped her dupatta around her head and left.
I’ve noticed that she wraps her dupatta around her head when she is nervous or uncertain. Just like Bibi. They both do it when they go outside the house. What security does a dupatta offer? Yet inside the house, they pull up their salwars so you can see their thick legs with sinewy black hair wet from the hot water mop and bucket.
Have you thought about Nusrat applying to college in America? If she really does have good grades and speaks English well and can do well in the SAT, she has a good chance with her story. And perhaps you can help her and that can be your ticket if you’re worried about your grades.
Think about it. I think you should do it.
Love,
Tanya
October 16, 1991
Bombay
Dear Tanya,
You do realize that there is more to life than going to fucking college in fucking America right?
Tania
October 27, 1991
Bombay
Dear Tanya,
I want to tell you about my dancing. I haven’t told you about my dancing. I am training to do my arangetram in Bharatnatyam this summer. An arangetram is a dance recital. It’s like a final exam except you do it in front of everyone like in a concert. Bharatnatyam is supposed to make you very ladylike. My mother did it when she was my age and she’s very graceful. Even when she’s having dinner at home and not wearing anything special, she looks beautiful. She curls her fingers around the roti and her little finger stands up straight. She sits on the chair like a queen. She’s beautiful.
Arjun stares at my mom a lot. She hasn’t said anything to me but I’m sure she’s noticed it. He’s damn obvious. The weird thing though is that she hasn’t like forbidden me from seeing him. Her face gets tight when she comes home and sees that he is here. But she hasn’t straight out said no you can’t date him. My mom is weird like that. She has very clear rules in her head about how the world should work. This is probably because of a rule about letting your children make their own decisions.
My dad hasn’t even guessed about Arjun. He has seen him in the house but he just thinks that Arjun is one of my friends. My dad is adorable.
I’m sorry I was rude in my last letter.
Your friends come for your arangetram. Your close friends I mean. I probably won’t tell most kids at school about it. I mean I make it sound like a really difficult and beautiful thing you know. It’s best to keep it kind of mysterious. I can’t tell if it’s beautiful. If you lived in Bombay and weren’t a BP, I would have invited yo
u to my arangetram.
Love,
T
November 7, 1991
Karachi
Dear Tania,
I got selected as part of the Prefect Group for next year which means I am still on track to be Head Girl. I am up to date on all the school work (although just barely in Urdu) and I will be the captain when hockey season starts again. The only thing I’ve really lost because of the knee is a shot at the 300 metre swimming record.
I don’t dance. And yes, if you don’t throw a tantrum every time something annoys you, I would go to your dance recital.
Things are improving with Chhoti Bibi. We’ve had a couple of conversations but she is still wary of me. I’m trying to be patient.
But I fundamentally disagree with you. You want me to be normal with her because you want to see us interact as equals.
But we’re not. I’m at the head of my class and she dropped out of school when she was eight. My parents went to MIT and Wellesley. Her parents are illiterate. I’m going to be a human rights lawyer who works for the UN. She wants to be a servant. I just don’t see the point of pretending.
Call me cold and manipulative. I’m just honest.
I talked to my mother about it again. She nodded and agreed with me but I don’t know if she was really listening. I think she has a lot on her mind. If she would tell me, I would help her.
It’s odd to imagine you doing a traditional Indian dance. Doesn’t quite fit in with your talk of sex and tiny shorts and Arjun.
Tanya Tania Page 4