IF YOU LOOK FOR ME, I AM NOT HERE

‘Who?’

  ‘He.’

  ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘The one who’ll love me lots.’

  Women were complicated.

  We stopped at Mohan’s Fruit & Juice stall sheltered under a large banyan tree. Swami was at the stall as usual, and not far from him Sweetie-Cutie. She moved closer to Mohan and poked her long reddened fingernail into his side. ‘I’ll have two glasses today. I am so thirsty.’ She leaned towards him. Mohan rode his hand over her thigh playfully. Sweetie-Cutie slapped the back of his hand. ‘You won’t spare a hijra even, will you?’ Mohan handed over the two glasses to Sweetie-Cutie. She gave one to Swami. “Now drink this and not another word about Coca Cola,’ she said, slapping his head.

  Swami drank from his glass in a long swallow and, wiping his lips with the back of his hand, he jerked his head back in appreciation. He looked up at the pigeons drifting in the breeze like fluffs of soiled cotton. By some freak of nature the sky was clouded over; freakish for this was not the monsoon season. Then all at once, without notice, it began to rain. The birds flew up in a flutter and found shelter in the banyan tree. The aberrant rain cloud moved away and the rain stopped as suddenly as it had started. Swami stretched his arms above his head and squeezed the air with his fingers. ‘Come on you impotent clouds,’ he shouted. ‘Rain, you dried up sisterfucker!’

  Sweetie-Cutie clapped her hands. ‘Come, come. Rain all over our parched red earth and wet me now!’

  Rebecca laughed. Sweetie-Cutie turned around and stepped up to her. She surveyed Rebecca from head to toe. ‘You’re all grownup. How old are you now?’

  ‘Fourteen,’ Rebecca said.

  Sweetie-Cutie turned to me and asked. ‘And you, my princess?’

  ‘Twelve.’

  ‘Letsgo,’ Rebecca said.

  Eros Cinema was the only theatre in town that screened English films. It had a matinee show on – Alfred Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief. Outside the cinema house, Rebecca bought purple berries from the jamun-seller. I looked up at the poster on the wall: Cary Grant kissing Grace Kelly against the backdrop of the French Riviera. I ran a finger over the mouths trying to decide whose lips were which. Rebecca was looking at another poster of Grace Kelly in a short dress. She had blonde hair and light eyes and her lips were painted a dark maroon, almost purple. Rebecca hitched up her skirt to make it shorter, unfastened two buttons of her blouse, and tucked the collar in. She bit a jamun and rubbed its flesh hard on her lips. They turned purple. ‘Look, I’m just like Grace Kelly,’ she said.

  ‘Beautiful,’ a voice said from behind us.

  I turned around to see Cyril Ricardo standing by the railing. He was dressed in jeans and a blue shirt. He had faint stubble on his face. He smiled at Rebecca. Her face turned as purple as her lips. Then he smiled at me. Tara smiled back at him.

  ‘Are you going to the film?’ Cyril asked.

  ‘I’m going with Siva.’ She clutched my hand in hers.

  ‘Fine. I’ll get tickets for all of us,’ Cyril said.

  Inside the hall Cyril sat between Rebecca and me. He whispered to Rebecca all the time and she whispered back. I didn’t know what they were whispering about. Tara whispered to Cyril but her whisper came out loud. I put my finger on my lips and said, ssshh. Then Tara moved closer to Cyril, shoulders, arms and thighs almost touching. Cyril turned and ruffled my hair. Tara smiled.

  After the film, we went to Pinto’s for ice-cream. We stood under a tree and ate the cones. Tara liked ice-cream. But she couldn’t eat it fast enough and the cream trickled down my arm. Cyril laughed as I licked my arm clean. Then we darted into Sunrise Studios next door. Bala showed us the three backdrops that he had. Plain white. For passport, he said. Another was of a blue Eiffel Tower in stormy Indian weather. The third one was of a tree with Japanese cherry blossoms and a full moon. It was for lovers, Bala declared with a wink. Bala had special clothes that we could wear. Cyril wore a red shirt and a cowboy hat, Rebecca a saree as blue as the sky. Tara chose a yellow skirt over a red blouse. They were too big for me. Cyril smiled and Tara smiled back at him and filled me with sudden warmth.

  Bala handed Cyril a comb and a box of talcum powder. Cyril patted Rebecca’s face with the powder and ran the comb through her hair. He twirled a lock of Tara’s hair and pressed it behind my ear. Tara looked up at him with shining eyes. Then with his arm around Rebecca’s waist and mine, Cyril stood in front of the pink blossoms and the full moon. Three copies. One for Rebecca. One for Cyril. And one for me.

  Next to the studio was Glorious Me that, besides cosmetics, sold hair clips and ribbons, bras and panties. It had a show window with a buxom mannequin, its Plaster-of-Paris hair shaped into a bun. Its candypink body was dressed in a pointed bra and flimsy lace panties, and covered with a see-through nylon wrap. Inside the shop, Tara tried out hairclips and ribbons on my hair and glass bangles on my wrists. Out of the corner of my eyes Tara saw Rebecca pick up a tube of lipstick from the Mix-n-Match box and shove it into her pocket. Tara slipped a butterfly hairclip into my pocket. Cyril bought two friendship rings. He slipped one onto Rebecca’s finger and the other onto his own. I felt a constriction in my throat and I wondered what it was all about. Inside my chest Tara’s heart beat wild. Just then there was a screeching of tyres and a scream from the road and we rushed outside. A taxi had hit Swami, and he had fallen on the road. A mob had collected around him. It watched as Sweetie-Cutie pulled Swami up. There was a bruise on his arm and a gash on his forehead. ‘It’s a miracle,’ she said, ‘he is not hurt much.’ The mob watched as Sweetie-Cutie pulled the driver out of the taxi and started to beat him up. She let out a stream of choice expletives, and then she lifted her saree up to her hips and exposed her sexless groin to him. The crowd rapidly receded. Rebecca let out a series of moans. She was shaking.

  ‘I’ll walk you home,’ Cyril said.

  Rose-aunty was on the veranda. ‘Hello Cyril,’ she said. ‘How is your mother?’ Then turning to me, she asked, ‘How is your grandmother, Siva?’

  ‘There was an accident in the market,’ Rebecca said.

  ‘Much better aunty,’ Cyril said.

  ‘Patti’s okay,’ I said.

  ‘A taxi hit Swami,’ Rebecca said.

  ‘But he was not hurt,’ Cyril said.

  ‘Not much,’ I said.

  ‘It’s a miracle,’ Rose-aunty said.

  ‘Ma didn’t have a miracle,’ Rebecca retorted and rushed inside the house.

  ‘Miracles don’t happen,’ I said following behind her.

  ‘As if you know,’ Rebecca said.

  I knew. But I didn’t shed-light-on-this-matter since Rebecca had darted up the stairs and into her room. When I got to the door Rebecca was standing before the mirror lipsticking her lips.

  ‘I’m Grace Kellying myself,’ she said.

  Cyril had walked in through the door. He laughed. He ran his fingers through his hair, puffing it up. ‘I am Cary Granting myself.’

  Then Rebecca played records of Beatles and Cliff Richard. Grace and Cary sang the songs they knew: words of loving and kissing you, tomorrow missing you.

  Tara tried to sing-a-long; she didn’t have the words. So I hummed the tune. Cary held Grace in his arms and they danced. As I watched them I felt Tara sliding downdowndown inside me. The constriction in my throat grew into a lump. It’s all right, I thought. They were only playing Pretend. It wouldn’t last. It was only a temporary bliss. Grace and Cary’s singing voices rose in the air like smoke. The smoke caressed the walls, the curtains, the paper flowers on the desk, then trembled over the bed, and lay on the rumpled cotton sheet. There it remained soaking up all their singsong tenderness. There was too much of it. Cary sighed and Grace tried to sigh but instead she gulped down a word and it slipped down her throat and lay waiting in her belly, a flitting, a fluttering: a butterfly.

  Suddenly Grace leant toward Cary and pressed her
lips to his.

  I was aghast. ‘Why did you do that? Now you’ll get pregnant.’

  Cary held his stomach and roared with laughter. Grace giggled and her eyes filled up with tears.

  ‘It’s true,’ I said. ‘After a girl gets her periods, it is not safe to kiss.’

  ‘Who told you that?’ Grace asked.

  ‘Munniamma.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘She said if a girl kisses a boy, she gets a daughter. And if a boy kisses a girl then a son is born to her. And, and,’ I clasped my hands and looked down at them, ‘if a brother and sister kiss then she gives birth to a he-she.’

  ‘A he-she?’ Cary was laughing. ‘Do you mean a hermaphrodite?’

  ‘Her-ma-fra-dite?’

  ‘A child that is both – a girl and a boy together?’

  ‘Yes. Like that Sweetie-Cutie. Munniamma told me this was what happened when a brother did it to his sister.’

  Cary said, ‘Rubbish! A girl will get pregnant only when a man does that stuff to her.’

  ‘What stuff?’

  ‘You don’t know?’ Grace asked.

  ‘What parents do?’ Cary said.

  I was confused. But Tara seemed to understand. She trembled with unknown, unfelt, delight.

  ‘You will know next week in Philipose Sir’s class,’ Cary said grinning right at Grace.

  But she was not looking at him. She had pressed her hands together with the palms facing up and the lines on them aligned. ‘My boyfriend will be handsome,’ she said.

  ‘And how do you know this?’ Cary asked, his eyes twinkling.

  ‘Because I have a deep, curved heart line. That’s why,’ Grace giggled. ‘Had it been flat I would have got an ugly boyfriend.’ Then standing on her toes she plucked a hair from Cary’s head. He screamed. ‘Stop screaming,’ Grace said as she took off the ring from her finger. She tied the hair to the ring and held it over his left palm. ‘Be still now,’ she said as she watched the ring. It began to circle. ‘Ah, you’ll have a boy! Now do it for me.’

  Cary held the ring over her palm. The ring started to move back and forth. ‘I’m going to have a girl,’ Grace squealed.

  ‘So we’ll have a girl and a boy,’ Cary said looking intensely at Rebecca, ‘and we will play the Piggy Game with them.’

  Rebecca’s face went red and she started to giggle. ‘You know the Piggy Game?’

  ‘Sure. Mummy played it with me.’

  ‘My mummy too.’

  Tara’s heart was pounding in my stomach. The lump in my throat had become a hard knot.

  I had a crazy dream that night, most wonderful: Cyril, Rebecca and I were on the beach. The sea before us was like a big field with cloud-like frothy flowers. Hand in hand Rebecca and Cyril ran into the blue field of flowery froth. He pulled at her hair and spread it around her shoulders. Clouds began to tumble and roll gently and they drizzled on Rebecca’s face. She had rainstars on her skin and hair. The waves lapped at her body and her small breasts under the damp frock were pushed up. A knot of warmth quivered under my chest. Something stirred in me, a feeling I had never felt before: I felt as though the sand below my feet was sucked into my legs, swirled in the pit of my stomach, crashed against the walls of my heart, and then gently poured out from my pores, dribbled out of my fingertips. I spun around like a piece of paper in the wind, then ushered by the breeze, moistened by the seaspray, I ran to Rebecca. Water lashed up my thighs and spray splattered on my face. I licked my saltlaced lips. The colluding breeze blew Rebecca’s hair all over her face. Thus veiled, I gathered her in my arms, even as Cyril stood watching us. I clutched her hair in my hand and yanked it back, and then reaching up to her face I kissed her on the lips. Just the way Cary Grant had kissed Grace Kelly in To Catch a Thief.

  Why did you do that? Cyril said, and I woke up.

  I trembled as I lay in bed. I caressed my face and my arms; I rubbed my chest, I stroked my ribs, my hand moved over my belly and beyond. I breathed hard. I felt giddy. Luminous colours swirled in front of my eyes: Zzzzinnng-Zzzzinnng-Zzzzinnng. And deep inside my body I felt the twinge of something. What was it? Was it love? What was love?

  ***

  God is love, Sister Mary Edwards always said. But this was not the kind of love I was concerned with – all holy and so pure. I needed more practical answers. So I asked around. ‘Love’ could be very ‘Questionable.’ I gave marks and re-marks to each of their answers.

  True Love is the only feeling which is its own cause and its own effect – Appa. (Not clear. 6/10)

  Love is the answer to all our questions – Patti. (Not true. 5/10)

  You will know love when you find it – Munniamma (Not bad. 7/10).

  If you would be loved, love and be lovable – Benjamin Franklin (From a textbook. Nice. 8/10).

  The road to self-discovery is paved with Love. (Don’t know who said this. Vague. 6/10)

  Can’t Buy Me Love – The Beatles. (Interesting. 7/10).

  All You Need is Love – Ditto. (Ditto)

  When you’re in love it’s the most fantastic two and a half days of your life – Tommy Gonzalves. (only 2 ½ days! 4/10)

  Love is a sickness. It eats away at your heart – Vishnu-thatha. (Really? 5/10)

  Was love really a sickness? So I decided to ask Dr Kuruvilla. I chose an appropriate time to call on him: midday. The doctor didn’t have too many patients then. I told the doctor I was working on a school project and I needed a scientific explanation. This is what he told me, scientifically:

  Love is nature’s cunning plan. It is what keeps the human species alive and reproducing. Love happens because of chemicals in the body. Scientifically speaking, it takes up to 4 minutes to decide if you love someone. Love-struck people are affected by three main neurotransmitters: adrenaline, dopamine and serotonin, and two hormones: oxytocin and vasopressin.

  Adrenaline: makes you sweat; your heart races, and your mouth goes dry.

  Dopamine: increases your energy and helps you go without sleep or food for some lengths of time.

  Serotonin: makes the loved-one constantly pop into your thoughts and gives you a rose-tinted view of him/her.

  Oxytocin: increases the bond between two people – mother and child, and lovers. Mothers with low oxytocin could reject their own child.

  Vasopressin: nourishes a long-term relationship.

  Dr Kuruvilla summed up love as an exhilarating roller-coaster ride that could last for a considerable length of time with all the ups-downs, swings and turns, gasps and cries, and a great deal of rattling. ‘Banana and dark chocolate are very good for love,’ he said.

  I drew my own conclusions: Amma had oxytocin deficiency as regards to me, and where Tara was concerned she had an overdose of vasopressin. I had a lot of adrenaline, dopamine and serotonin. I was sick with love.

  I should eat bananas.

  19

  Students of class X were abuzz that morning as Philipose Sir was coming to talk to us. Sister Mary Edwards told us that the lesson was about evolution. But Rebecca had told me it was a lesson in You. Know. What.

  WHAT?

  We were all gathered in the assembly room. Sister ordered the students to close all the windows. ‘You are going to be told a secret,’ she said in her morning assembly voice, ‘so you have to be enclosed.’ Then she made the girls sit on one side of the room, and the boys on the other side. She ensured there was a considerable gap between the two sides. ‘Today Philipose Sir will tell you the difference between a boy and a girl,’ she said with a secret smile.

  Philipose Sir was an old man, almost bald; a silver lock of hair flowed like a tidal wave from one side to the other, covering half of his forehead. He was dressed younger, in corduroy trousers and a bright blue T-shirt, to make up for his oldness. He was thin, tall, a deeper shade of brown, almost like burnt coffee. He clasped his hands b
efore him and started: ‘When boys and girls get older the season changes in them.’ He stared at the floor for a moment, then picking up a chalk from the table he turned around and scribbled on the blackboard: XX and XY. Over XX he scribbled the word Girl enclosed in brackets (GIRL), as though clothed, and over XY, Boy, unbracketed, naked. He faced us once more. ‘Who can tell me what a chromosome is? Anybody?’

  Only a hush of collective breathing could be heard, like the hush before a secret is told.

  ‘Chrome’ means colour,’ Philipose Sir said, ‘and ‘some’ means bodies. Chrome + Some means – the colour of bodies. It is really a list of instructions for the reproduction of the body. For example: the colour of hair, eyes, skin, the shape and size of the body and a thousand other characteristics. Chromosomes are found in the centre of all our cells. They are like twisted staircases of D-N-A. DNA is like a workbook. It holds the instructions. Chromosomes come in pairs. Normally, each cell in the human body has 23 pairs of chromosomes. Half come from the mother; the other half comes from the father. Two of the chromosomes, the X and the Y chromosome, determine if you are born a boy or a girl. Girls have XX chromosomes and boys, XY chromosomes. Women’s eggs provide the X chromosome. Half of a man’s sperm will be carrying the Y chromosome and the other half, the X chromosome. Therefore, it is the father that determines the gender of the child.’ Philipose Sir rubbed his hands together. ‘Any questions?’

  A boy stood up. ‘Does the X sperm look different from the Y?’ he wriggled his finger through the air and the boys laughed.

  Philipose Sir said, ‘they look similar, the X and Y sperms, but they are different in other ways. The Y sperms are faster, but tire more easily. The X sperms are heavier and slightly slower players, although they have greater stamina.’ He crossed his arms and asked with a conspiratorial smile and a wink, ‘Any more questions?’

  I stood up. I started to speak but stopped when the boys began to giggle.

  ‘Go on son, don’t feel shy,’ Philipose Sir said. ‘Don’t mind the others.’

  ‘What about boy-girl?’ I asked. ‘What chromo-some do they have?’