Tanya Tania

by Antara Ganguli

  Yes, I think so. I don’t think we die once in a lifetime. Sometimes in one life itself we die many times. I took a class on Hindu philosophy and I think that’s what reincarnation is really about, shedding the angst and pain of a lifetime so you become thinner, cleaner, simpler, smaller.

  Arjun was your obsession. It was clear from the way you talked about him. His crazy body, his crazy mind, the crazy way he loved you, his hands on your buttocks, his hands in your hair, his hands on your feet, his hands on your mouth holding it shut while he fucked you. You were obsessed. I understand now. I’m not angry anymore because I understand.

  Winter is almost over. This morning I woke up and opened the window and jumped out into the garden and it was soft and secret and dreamy. I imagined a gentle knight and a sorrowful princess and he was smiling at her with all the patience in the world. The knight was my father and the princess was my mother. They began to touch each other and did not notice me hiding under a rosebush. And I, absorbed as I was in watching them did not see you, writhing with a snake in a pit right next to me. The snake rose up and struck you and you fell forward dead in the sand, looking straight at me with a smile on your face.

  This is a nightmare I’ve had for three and a half years. Well, there are versions. Sometimes there’s no snake, it’s a gun. Sometimes there’s no noise at all as if it’s happening in mute. Once, in the dream, I was blind but I could still feel you fall. Every time you fall with a smile on your face watching me.

  It didn’t just happen to you. It happened to me, Tania, it has never stopped happening to me.

  Love,

  Tanya

  February 25, 1992

  Bombay

  Dear Tanya,

  Okay that was less weird than I thought it was going to be. You sound a lot more normal on the phone. Except you have a weird accent. But I’m glad I called.

  It was pretty crap that you didn’t write and tell us that Chhoti Bibi was back. You know I made the maid wait outside for the postman for two weeks. And it’s like really hot outside. You’re INCONSIDERATE.

  Chhoti Bibi sounded fun although I didn’t understand a lot of what she said. You know what Tanya, I think inside, below the crappy stuff that comes from being poor, she’s actually cool. Cooler than you. It makes me sad actually. There are so many people who would have been total social rockstars and they can’t because they’re poor. It’s over for them before they even have a chance.

  It was kind of tough for Nusrat. I kept trying to give her the phone because you know she can like make some noises but she wouldn’t take it. She can be shy. She does sound weird so maybe it was good she didn’t. I’d be pretty mad if you said the wrong thing to her.

  So anyway the big update from my side is that Sammy has a girlfriend and she’s BLACK. She’s from NIGERIA. Yeah. Insane. I mean I think it’s weird that he couldn’t get an American black girl to date him. My mom forbade him to go to Nigeria because it’s like super dangerous. He told my parents that she’s super smart and is at Princeton on a full scholarship. He told me she’s hot like a model.

  If I wasn’t so short I’d be hot like a model. I have the Bengali eyes you know? Except they’re normal big on me not like protruding big like they are on some people (my mom).

  I have a nice ass and REALLY hot legs. My problem is my boobs. They keep growing man. I mean I know it sounds sexy and stuff but I don’t want it to get to the point where they are like Anjali’s, I mean she can’t even run and she can NEVER wear tank tops. I already can’t wear tank tops without a bra which is so sexy you know. Like a plain simple white tank top over jeans right after you’ve shampooed your hair and your skin is soft and shiny and just slightly sweaty, I mean sometimes I look so hot in the mirror I can only imagine what it does to guys.

  How much hotter do I have to be for Arjun to love me in public? He was mean to me today.

  Do you think it ever gets simple? I think it used to be simple at one point for my parents. My dad has told me stories about how they met and how they fell in love. You know my mom like totally stood up for him to her parents. They wanted her to marry someone rich like them. And my mom was like I’m going to marry this guy or no guy. And it worked.

  I mean I think that’s cool but I wonder if she would have married him if my grandparents hadn’t been against it, you know. What if she was trying to prove to herself that she was powerful, that what she wanted mattered more than what they wanted? What if that’s the reason she married my father? Is that good enough?

  What makes someone good enough? What is a good enough reason to want to spend your life with someone?

  Love,

  Tania

  March 3, 1992

  Karachi

  Dear Tania,

  It was nice of you to phone us. Chhoti Bibi couldn’t stop talking about it for days. You have become her hero. ‘No one has ever called me from India before,’ she kept saying. ‘All because I went to my cousin’s house.’

  It must be nice to be able to pick up the phone and call anyone you want without worrying about the expense.

  Remember I had told you I need to look over the family finances? Today I found the door of my father’s study unlocked after a long time. It was dusty inside and smelled of the petrified black thing in the dustbin that had been a banana a long time ago. I also found the folders I was looking for. My father’s bank statements.

  Things are worse than before. My father has sold his last remaining investments. There has been no income for over a year now. Before I could see more, my father came in. I thought he was going to shout at me, I thought he would scold me. But he only asked me to leave. The door has been locked again.

  I wish I knew what my father is thinking. I don’t mind if he is not thinking of me, I just want to know. What does he wake up and think of? Does he miss sleeping in the same bed as my mother?

  My dad thinks the hospital will change everything for us. That it will just take a little more time, a little more money, a little more patience and the hospital will make our lives. I haven’t heard him say that in a while. Ali says he is fida over me. My father is fida over the hospital.

  Chhoti Bibi didn’t come back for a few days as I told you on the phone. She somehow got on a bus with my pink bicycle and went to her cousin’s house in Lyari, one of those neighbourhoods always in the papers because of a riot or a murder or several. She won’t tell me her cousin’s name or what she did there. She just shakes her head with a deep, knowing smile on her face.

  She and Bibi act as if nothing has happened which I take to be the result of living with my family. Haha.

  I almost got into an argument with my mother about it. I asked her if we should be worried about what had happened to Chhoti Bibi while she was gone. She had been gone for four days and three nights. My mother looked at me blankly.

  I thought, how callous. Surely my mother has a responsibility towards a seventeen-year-old girl living in her house. Anything could have happened to Chhoti Bibi. Then I saw that she had been crying. The skin beneath her eyes had turned grey and wrinkled like a dead rat that had washed up into our garden last monsoon.

  My mother saw me looking and she lifted a hand to her cheek and rubbed at where the tears had tracked. ‘Your father didn’t come home last night,’ she said.

  ‘He was at the hospital.’

  She gave a short bark of a laugh I haven’t heard before and went into the bathroom. The tap ran for a long time before I heard her splash water on her face.

  My father was at the hospital. Truly. I’m absolutely certain he is not having an affair. I know this because I followed him a few months ago. He just goes to the hospital and stays there all day long. There are no women in the hospital except the nurses and they are all married and mostly old and fat.

  My mother came out and sat down at her dressing table and began to comb her hair. It fell around her in soft glossy curls even though I could tell she hadn’t washed it in days.

  ‘He was at the hospital,’ I said
again. ‘I’m sure he was at the hospital.’

  She looked at me at the mirror and smiled. ‘Tell me about Chhoti Bibi,’ she said. ‘Why were you so worried? What happened?’

  I told her what happened and she frowned. Then she called Bibi and scolded her for not letting her know that Chhoti Bibi had come back.

  So you see, my mother had known about Chhoti Bibi all along. She hadn’t forgotten, hadn’t disappeared. I shouldn’t have doubted her. I should be a better daughter.

  My mother came out of her room yesterday. We had tea together in the evening and Bibi made samosas in honour of the occasion. Even Navi was there by some miracle although he came late and was sweaty and rude and said the samosas were burnt when really, they were just crisp. She asked him questions about school but he gave one-word answers. He can be such a brat. I told her all about my college applications and she agreed with all my choices. Which is no small thing, Tania, because you know, my mother was admitted to all the colleges she had applied to, including Harvard and Yale. I have no idea why she went to Wellesley.

  My mother sat on the verandah and had tea with us. She talked to me about school and laughed at an excellent joke I made. We sat there for a long time, the three of us, drinking several cups of tea and even though I really needed to use the bathroom, I didn’t get up until it got dark and my mother went inside. I sat by myself in the garden with the flies and the invisible birds and wished that every day would end like this, with my mother and my brother sitting beside me eating burnt samosas.

  Love,

  Tanya

  March 14, 1992

  Bombay

  Dear Tanya,

  Something bad happened at school today and I was a part of it. I don’t know how to tell Nusrat. She’s going to hate me.

  I came home in a bad mood but it didn’t help that my parents were arguing at the dinner table. Of course.

  ‘How can you blindly follow the Congress after all these years?’

  ‘What is the alternative? A goonda gang of thugs?’

  ‘That is so unfair! You’re not even giving them a chance!’

  My mom started shrieking. ‘So they will destroy a mosque? Destroy our culture, destroy our country?’ A piece of spinach flew out of her mouth and landed in the daal.

  ‘Mom, can I have the vegetables?’

  ‘You’re the only businessman—sorry, businessWOMAN I know who doesn’t support the BJP Sraboni. Your hypocrisy is unbelievable! Do you remember when our country went BANKRUPT?’

  ‘Please Shayon, don’t even pretend to know about the economy, you’ll just embarrass yourself.’

  ‘Mom, can I have the vegetables?’

  ‘What you really mean is I’ll embarrass you, don’t you? Say it, for once just say it! Let’s stop this pretence.’

  ‘Say what Shayon? I’m tired. I worked really late today.’

  ‘Say it Sraboni! Just SAY IT!’

  ‘GIVE ME THE FUCKING VEGETABLES MOM!’

  I hadn’t meant to but somehow I was standing up with a glass of water and my empty plate in my hand. My mom was staring at me, her mouth open and full of food. My dad was pushing his chair back from the table and I was so scared he was going to leave, so scared that it would be another night of their fighting. The glass slipped out of my hand and fell to the floor and smashed.

  ‘What’s WRONG with you Tania!’

  I started screaming. Everything! Everything was wrong! How could they not see it? How could they be so blind? Fighting about stupid things that don’t matter when someone’s life was destroyed in school today. Stupid BJP, stupid Congress, my parents should have them for children.

  Of course it was my father that came to my room with a plate of food. He knocked on the door and peeped in with a big smile as if I was five years old. I wasn’t hungry anymore but I let him sit down next to me. He stroked my hair and I let him.

  ‘Why are boys so mean? Are men mean like that?’

  ‘Was someone mean to you?’

  I began to tell him what had happened. Even though I knew he wouldn’t like it. Even though I knew his smile would disappear and he would begin to fidget and look anywhere but at me, I began to tell him.

  I had always hated Aniket. Bopping around with his falling-off pants, thinking he is a hip-hop millionaire instead of a wannabe, gonnabe diamond merchant whose parents grew up in the village, pissing in the field. A loser who can’t play any sports and only stopped wetting his bed last year. Do you think no one knows? Just because you threw a new year’s party, you think people don’t laugh at you behind your back? Everyone knows, Aniket, everyone KNOWS.

  But I had never thought he would stoop as low as he did today.

  He humiliated her. He made her into an outcast.

  His girlfriend. Samara. They had sex last weekend. They have been together for two years now.

  We were sitting around in the Assembly Hall at lunchtime like we always do. Aniket came in with a lassi moustache and Nishant made fun of him and Aniket said something mean about Nishant’s parents not being rich and Nishant said that he’d rather have poor parents than parents who have to pay lakhs of rupees to keep their son in school.

  And in like a weird coincidence everyone else stopped talking just then so everyone heard Nishant. People laughed. Samara laughed.

  She should have known better. I had a bad feeling about it from the start.

  Aniket asked her to go to the auditorium with him which is where people go to make out. And she said no. And again everyone heard.

  Aniket’s face was sweaty and scrunched up like he needed to go to the bathroom. But he was looking at her like a Hindi movie villain. And he said, ‘That’s not what you said on Sunday.’

  Samara said loudly, ‘NO ANIKET!’

  That was a dumb thing to say. She’s so dumb, honestly.

  Aniket said again, looking around slowly at all the faces looking at him. He said, ‘That’s not what you said on Sunday when you were naked on my bed and I was fucking you so hard you cried.’

  Everyone heard that. Aniket knew everyone was going to hear that.

  He jumped up on the steps and shouted, ‘She was NAKED! She was naked like a baby! She was high as a kite! Drug addict bitch in my bed!’

  Who gave her the coke Aniket? Who took off her clothes?

  He made it sound cheap. He made her sound cheap. How is it that the boys always get to decide? Arjun decides when we can tell people about our relationship. Aniket decides when to tell people that he fucked his girlfriend. And when did it become that? When they had sex, Samara said he had called it making love.

  And she just sat there, on the floor, looking at him stupidly, blinking, blinking, not saying anything, not doing anything, just blinking and blinking.

  And everyone got up and walked away from her, one by one, as if she was garbage, as if just moments ago, Gita hadn’t sat with her arm around Samara. It was like Samara had sex and that was a cut-off point. Now she is no longer Gita’s best friend. As if they hadn’t been best friends since nursery school. As if nothing mattered except that Samara had had sex with the wrong person.

  As if Samara had sex on her own.

  My father got up. ‘I’ll get your mother.’

  I knew he was going to say that. I also knew that he understood but he didn’t think it was right for him to understand. My dad has weird ideas about this stuff. I didn’t want my mother. She would tell me to stop wasting my time with people who are not ‘serious’. That my problem is that I don’t have any ‘serious’ friends. She wouldn’t like Samara. Samara should have been writing college essays instead of having sex.

  After Lunch, no one sat next to Samara. She sat alone. She was so pale and the tears kept coming even though she had a handkerchief propped up right below her eyes to catch them. She looked so beautiful and so sad. She reminded me of a goddess, sitting there all tall and beautiful and pale except she looked so sad and everyone around her thought the worst things. Already the notes had gone around, already ugly c
artoons were in pockets.

  I felt a hand on my head. It wasn’t my mother. It was Nusrat! She had stayed behind for me. She came and sat next to me and put her beautiful arms around me. I felt her, I smelt her. I started crying. She understood like she always does. She tucked my head against her throat and wrapped her arms tightly against me. I love how Nusrat smells. Lyril soap and detergent and something else without a name. She understood without my saying anything. She always understands. I cried and cried and cried until there were no tears left and my head hurt.

  I had stopped no one from leaving at Lunch. I had said nothing. Everything I wanted to say and do was drowned under relief that it hadn’t been me, that it hadn’t been Arjun, that I was not Samara, that I was not sitting in class, beautiful, tall and alone.

  I asked Nusrat if she was ashamed of me and she didn’t say anything. She would have stood up for Samara. She defends people. She takes care of people.

  Halfway through the class after Lunch, Samara couldn’t take it anymore. She began to put her books in her bag, crying loudly. The teacher didn’t know what to do. He just stood there, twisting the chalk round and round in his hands until everything was white, including where he touched his brown pants. But no one laughed. We watched Samara leave, crying, her bag open and a book almost falling out of it.

  I felt so bad for her but I also felt so glad that it wasn’t me. So glad.

  I told Nusrat that. She held my hand tightly.

  The thing is, Tanya, if I’m so glad it wasn’t me, how come it feels like it was?

  Love,

  Tania

  March 23, 1992

  Karachi

  Dear Tania,

  Chhoti Bibi was really upset with your letter. She thinks you should have marched up and reported everyone to the teachers including Samara because of course she also thinks it’s awful that she had sex before marriage. She kept saying it over and over again until I got really irritated and told her that school teachers are not like the police to whom you go report crimes so they fix everything. She looked at me and said very seriously, ‘Of course not Baji, teachers are actually good people, right?’