I was settled into a corner, next to a friendly-looking couple, both in red T-shirts and given a glass of Old Monk and Coke.
‘Don’t be a snob about Old Monk, Tanmay,’ Saneru said, from across the room. ‘It’s the only rum that makes sense.’
‘How do you know our Saneru?’ asked a boy, sliding in next to me. The evening had progressed quite well, there was loud music, well, as loud as a laptop could get, and someone had just switched it to Bollywood, which inspired Saneru and the boy she called Tanmay to do a gyrating Bollywood dance, complete with dupattas wrapped around their waists.
‘I don’t really,’ I said, and explained my PG connection to her old family friend.
‘No way,’ said the boy. ‘Bidisha Kumar is your landlady? Wild! I used to have the biggest crush on her.’
I looked at him sceptically. ‘She was about forty when you were born.’
‘Oh, I know. I just used to like her old movies. I liked that thing she did with her mouth.’
‘This sounds interesting!’ Saneru said, out of breath and sweaty, plopping down next to us, wrapping one arm around my knee. I was glad to see she didn’t smell, only slightly, faintly sweet.
‘I didn’t know Bidisha Kumar was your mother’s friend!’ said the boy.
‘Oh ya. Poor old thing. Still stuck in her glory days. Must be quite depressing for you to live there.’ This last bit was directed at me, and the boy regarded me as well. I mumbled something, and she gave my knee a kind pat. ‘You have me now.’
It became clear to me a little later that this wasn’t the kind of party I had attended before. The people were wonderful, very nice and kind and left me alone if I didn’t want to talk but not in a hostile way. They sought my opinion, their eyes shining, but I soon became the Quiet Girl, as in, ‘Shh, don’t mess with the Quiet Girl. She’s being quiet.’ Saneru, particularly, was my defender, which was maybe because she was the host, but also, I think, because that’s the kind of person she is. She kept one eye on me all evening, proffering refreshed drinks to me, shaking her head at someone who tried to get me to dance and always, every half an hour or so, coming to sit next to me and see if I was okay.
But, besides the kindness of the guests and the host, it was also clear to me that there was an unusual number of not-straight people in the room. I didn’t know whether to call them ‘gay’, because it wasn’t glaringly obvious, besides, people’s sexual orientations are their own to define, but two girls who came in together were obviously together. I didn’t even need to watch one give the other a tender back rub to know that, I’d been that, with Aditi, so many years ago. One boy grabbed another boy’s face, between his large hands and kissed him straight on the mouth, to much hooting and catcalling, and when he pulled his face away, the other boy just grinned. And Saneru, drifting about, accepting love from everybody, also didn’t seem to lean one way or another. It was a touchy-feely bunch, lots of face-stroking and hair-behind-the-ears-ing, but all in the manner of expression. Instead of a comma, you kissed someone’s cheek, instead of an exclamation mark, you squeezed their hand.
‘You okay?’ asked Saneru, sliding in next to me. I was just watching the movements in the room, the smoke rippling across the surface, the flashes of lycra and cotton and skin as people moved restlessly.
I smiled in response, to let her know I was.
‘It’s not your normal kind of scene, is it?’ she asked, looking at me sympathetically.
‘Not really, no,’ I said. ‘But then, not many things are my normal scene.’ I told her about my walks, about the streets nearby that I had gotten to know—the first time I told anyone about those things—and she nodded like it was perfectly normal to take pictures of houses you didn’t live in.
‘You could do an art installation,’ she said and I laughed and shook my head. ‘I’m not an artist. I’m in Bollywood. I produce stuff.’
She wrinkled her nose at me, ‘Lucky you. I work with an NGO and I’d far rather have your glamorous job.’ Of course she worked with an NGO. She looks an NGO type, just like you with your shimmering ways look like you belong in high society.
‘What kind of work?’ I asked to be polite and like all people who work with NGOs, she was off and running, telling me about prostitutes and AIDS awareness and many other depressing things that made her light up. (I don’t mean the depressing things made her light up, I mean that talking about the work she was doing about them did.) I listened though. I like listening when someone is talking so hard. You learn so much about them, not just from the words they’re saying, but how they’re putting the emphasis on certain things, how their hands move (Saneru is a great hand-mover), how they have a certain, particular fidget (hers is a push-hair-behind-ear thing.) When she paused, she looked at me, expectantly, and I said the first thing I could think of, ‘Saneru is an odd name.’ And then I worried that that was a rude thing to say. It’s no odder than any other name, but it is rather masculine.
‘It’s unisex,’ she said, not looking at all perturbed by my change of subject. ‘It means “honouring”, I’m the third girl in my family, born quite late, my parents really wanted a son.’ She said all this so matter-of-factly.
‘Did that bother you?’ I asked. ‘I mean, does it?’
‘Eh,’ she shrugged, ‘not really. They’re old-fashioned. Also kind of old. My sisters are in their forties now.’
‘Wow.’
‘Yeah, my oldest sister was always like a mother to me. In fact, my nephew is only a little younger than I am.’
I didn’t know people still did that. I didn’t know anyone whose parents were grandparents. ‘What about you?’ she asked. I gave her the run down, parents, brother abroad, and so on, the basic details, I don’t like people to know too much about me. Aditi did, Aditi knew everything, Aditi knows everything, but she’s the only one.
That night, I got home late. I had a key for times like these, but I’d never had to use it before, the front door is always open, until Fazia and Aunty B go to bed. Aunty B sleeps quite early, but Fazia stays up late, watching TV uninterrupted. I heard her soaps going when I walked in, there was dramatic music and the sound of a woman crying. ‘Oh,’ she said, when I walked through. ‘It’s only you, you gave me a fright.’
‘Sorry,’ I said and walked on.
‘Had fun?’ she asked and I nodded and yawned. ‘It’s nice that you have friends now, I was just telling Madam that it’s sad that a young person lives in our house and we turn her into an old person.’
‘I don’t think I’m an old person,’ I said, sleepily.
‘Your habits are,’ she snorted. ‘You act older than we do.’ And with that, she turned back to her TV set, and I went to bed.
The next time Saneru called it was early Wednesday evening and she said without a preamble, ‘I need a haircut.’
‘Okay,’ I said. I was standing in front of a mirror. Whatever Aunty B’s faults in PG-running, one thing must be said, she has full-length mirrors all over her house and my room has two.
‘You need to come with me.’
‘I?’ I pulled up my T-shirt a little, looking at my stomach. I sucked it in as far as it would go and then stuck it out again.
‘Yes, you, you’ve lived in this city long enough, you must know a hairdresser.’
‘I don’t though,’ I said, ‘I’ve never had a haircut in Bombay.’
‘Then we’ll both get haircuts. Short? Maybe not short, how about a fringe for you? That would suit your face.’
‘I don’t want a haircut,’ I said. She laughed into the phone. ‘You do, trust me you do. You just don’t know it yet. I’ll be over to pick you up in about ten minutes.’ And she hung up and I put on a bra in preparation for going outside. I looked at my hair in the mirror. It’s normal hair, it doesn’t do much except hang limply around my ears. I’ve never liked it much. I’ve never actively disliked it either. Hair is like toenails, really. It grows, you cut it, it grows again. I’ve never understood the value women put on hair. I bundle
mine up when it’s hot, sometimes I brush it. It’s been the same style since I was fifteen.
Saneru belongs to a different camp, however. ‘I do like my hair,’ she said to me, as we sat in the rickshaw. She loosened it and laid it across one shoulder where it gleamed. ‘I know I’m not very attractive.’ I made mild protest, but she waved me away. ‘You don’t have to say anything, I know I’m not. But I have nice hair. Look, it’s so black and it shines so much and it’s straight and thick.’
Now that she mentioned it, she did have pretty hair, if that’s a thing. It was long and the way she held it, it looked like a rope, but a good-looking rope. ‘Why do you want to cut it then?’ I asked.
‘Oh, it needs a little discipline every now and then. Besides, since it’s my only asset, I feel like it’s my duty to make it look as good as it possibly can.’
‘How do you know which salon to go to?’
‘I looked it up on the Internet. This one had good reviews.’ She made the rickshaw stop, paid the driver and hopped out.
P!Nk said the salon sign and I felt a twinge of foreboding. ‘Don’t look like that,’ she said, taking my elbow and pulling me along. ‘It’s very popular. I promise.’
P!Nk was tiny, but clean, and packed full of people. The air had that particular smell of product and singed hair, and a receptionist looked at us and raised an eyebrow.
‘Haircuts. Two,’ said Saneru, following up with, ‘please.’
‘Take a seat,’ said the receptionist, sounding bored. ‘You want anyone in particular?’
‘Someone good,’ said Saneru.
‘They’re all good.’
‘Well, then someone better?’
The receptionist rolled her eyes and just then a man with bright orange hair and clips on his shirtsleeves came up. ‘Here, Raghu, you take them. Haircuts.’
‘Is Raghu good?’ asked Saneru and then turning to Raghu, ‘You’d tell me if you weren’t, wouldn’t you? Because my friend didn’t even want a haircut and I made her come and if you give her a bad haircut she’ll blame me.’
Raghu gave her a strained smile. ‘What kind of haircut do you want?’
‘I think a fringe and layers for her and something jazzy for me. Not too short though.’
‘You go first,’ I said.
‘No, you go, because then I can supervise it.’
Raghu looked like he was sorry he had strolled up just then. I was put in a chair with a plastic black wrap velcroed around my neck and then he went at my hair with a spritzer bottle. Saneru stood right next to him, holding my bag and nodding at me encouragingly whenever I caught her eye in the mirror. Raghu didn’t say much, just lifted bits of my hair and snipped, and Saneru provided directions every now and then.
‘A bit more fluffy, wouldn’t you say, Raghu?’ or ‘I think you should give her a razor bit for that first layer so it falls more sharply.’ To me, ‘I spend a lot of time in hair salons. I find it makes me feel better than going to a bar.’ I closed my eyes and crossed my fingers under the wrap. It actually felt quite nice, and this is going to sound quite pathetic, but it felt quite nice to have someone touch my hair. It had been so long since I’d had any human contact, and I wanted to press my scalp upwards into Raghu’s fingers. That would have been creepy though, so I resisted. ‘Open your eyes,’ said Saneru, and at first, when I opened them, I caught her eye again and she was beaming at me and then I focused on myself and I looked like the kind of girl who is cheerful and happy and pleased with her life, which made me feel cheerful and happy and pleased with my life. It was a miracle.
In the days that followed, I saw Saneru pretty much every day. I’ve never really had a best friend, well, I suppose Aditi counts, she was my best friend, but she was also my lover and so there was all that complication tied up with it. With Saneru, since I felt absolutely no sexual connection to her, I was comfortable and intimate in a way that I never was with Aditi. Not more intimate, but different. Every night, after dinner, I’d hear the door bell ring, and I’d go and answer it and there she would be, grinning all over her face. She’d usually have adventures planned for us to do: one Sunday, we went all over south Bombay. I even got into a local train for the first time—this might make you laugh, but I’d been here six months and hadn’t taken a train yet. Some days, we’d just walk down to the seaside promenade, not that you could see anything beyond dark, or smell anything beyond sewage, but it was somewhere to go. We’d walk, we’d buy ice cream flavours from our childhood—choco bars, with that plastic chocolate-tasting shell and the always-melting-too-rapidly vanilla inside, cola bars, which we sucked at, hard, till there was only the ice inside left, butterscotch cups, cassata, and we’d stroll cheekily past the ‘No Eating’ sign and she’d smoke a cigarette next to the ‘No Smoking’ sign.
She made friends with the stray dogs that roamed in a pack, who always intimidated me, and after the first day, she started carrying stale bread in a plastic bag for them and they clustered around, whining and wagging their tails low, for all the world like dogs in a living room. ‘All right Sheba, don’t push, Baadal, calm down, Gherkin, yes, Sweetie, there’s some for you as well.’ I liked listening to her litany of names, she invented them on the spot one evening and always matched the right name with the right dog. Or so I assumed. I couldn’t tell them apart, except the one called Baadal, who was all black.
‘Are your friends mostly gay?’ I asked her one night. She had asked me to take her along on my House Walk, and I had, and on the whole, she was good company, not talking too much, taking some pictures with her cell phone, but mostly content to stand on the street and look at the houses. My favourites were her favourites too, and she invented lives for the houses, when they were built, their feelings, the people who lived in them. It turned out better than it sounds. I was feeling quiet and peaceful, like I generally felt with her, I like that she didn’t push me to be someone else, she seemed to enjoy the fact that I was quiet and thought a lot, the name she gave me at her party, Quiet Girl, had become her nickname for me. Sometimes QG, sometimes Quiet, never Girl. ‘The ones at that party were, mostly,’ she said.
That’s another thing I like about her. She never seems to be surprised or taken aback by a change in subject or something out of context. She can even pick up a conversational thread we had dropped a few hours earlier. I stood there and watched the house for a bit, it was my favourite, I think because it was the only abandoned one. Half the balcony had fallen down and the whole house generally looked in disrepair.
‘I want to own you, house,’ I thought, ‘I want to own you and fix you, and everyone who looks at you will marvel.’ When I was a child, travelling on a train with my parents, sometimes we’d pass old railway buildings with huge ABANDONED signs across them, and even if they were in the middle of nowhere, I wanted to own them, and fix them and live in them. Abandoned house, abandoned girl. What a pair we’d make. Saneru was in the shadows, I couldn’t see her face.
‘I’m gay,’ I said out loud for the first time in Bombay and felt that same rush in my chest that I had the very first time I admitted it.
Instead of saying anything, she started to laugh. And then she laughed some more. I was getting kind of annoyed. I had made a big-deal announcement just then, and she seemed to find it hilarious.
‘What?’ I said crossly, after a while.
‘Oh, I’m sorry, QG. I’m just laughing because I’ve been having sort of a bet with myself about how long it would take you to admit it. At first I thought you were in the closet and in denial or something.’
‘You mean, you knew I was gay?’
‘Yeah, but don’t take it personally. I have a super strong gaydar. I told my friends that evening before you arrived that I thought you were gay.’
‘Oh.’ I didn’t quite know how to take this. I should’ve been angry, but I wasn’t feeling angry. I was just feeling, oh, I don’t know, sort of relieved and let down at the same time. I had been planning on telling her for ages now, the day we got a haircu
t I had almost leaned over and whispered it into her ear, but I didn’t, because I didn’t think it was the right time and now here I was, heart on sleeve, and there she was, being so casual about it.
‘You’re angry, aren’t you?’ she asked, coming up very close to me and putting her palm on my back. I shrugged.
‘But,’ she went on, ‘isn’t it nice to have it out there? To be able to put down that bit of your secret soul, let it go, and know that the reaction you’re going to get from me is not going to be me never speaking to you again?’ I looked at her, looked deep into her muddy eyes and she peered back at me, earnestly. ‘You must have told your parents, and they must have reacted badly, and I’ve seen people like you before. Either you don’t tell and that hurts you, or you tell and that hurts you.’ She reached out and took my hand from where I had it by my side. I didn’t realize I had it clenched in a fist until she began to uncurl my fingers. ‘Everyone I know, desi gays, have some variation of the same story. I’m sure some people’s parents are super liberal and super okay with it, but I haven’t met anyone like that yet.’ She took my palm and pressed it to her chapped mouth, a delicate friend-kiss. I could feel her eyelashes flutter against my thumb. ‘Don’t be mad,’ she said again.
‘Are you gay?’ I asked and she smiled into my palm.
‘Of course I am. You need to work on your gaydar, QG!’
‘Okay,’ I said, and then I too started to smile, and she dropped my hand and looked at me and giggled and that made me giggle and soon we were just standing there, in front of the abandoned house, laughing so hard that we started to cough.
‘We’re idiots,’ said Saneru, fondly. ‘Come on, I’ll walk you home.’ But we weren’t idiots, I thought, we were two people laughing at the marvel that, in this city, this city where you could meet anyone, where you passed a thousand people a minute, we had managed to find each other. I wasn’t alone any more, I’m not alone any more. And now, I have other things to think about besides you.
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