Tanya Tania (6 page)

August 9, 1991

Bombay

Dear Tanya,

I guess I was like the girl in the movie. I don't know man it is so hard because you love him so much and really want to make him happy and yet it feels so terrible, like something awful has happened to you. And yet it's not like he hit me or tied my hands and forced me. His hand was on my head and he was gripping it hard. But that's bullshit really because I'm like stronger than him I swear. He's a skinny little piece of shit really. So I don't know. I don't know I don't know. I love him. He loves me, I know he does. Not in school and not in front of people but in private he really loves me. He got me all these condoms the other day you know all in like different colours and said I could pick the one I wanted for when we have sex. He's really sweet like that.

I don't want to talk about it any more.

Love,

T

PS—I didn't mean the things I said about Chhoti Bibi. I hope you didn't tell her.

PPS—I haven't told Nusrat.

August 20, 1991

Karachi

Dear Tania,

My mother came to see me yesterday. She sat with me for a bit. We talked about Chhoti Bibi. She agreed that helping Chhoti Bibi get a diploma would look good on my applications. I thought I should mention this.

You haven't told Nusrat. Interesting. I was wondering what she would think about it. And no, of course I didn't tell anyone. Do you think I read out your letters at the dinner table?

We don't actually have a dining table anymore. Or rather, it's there but we can't use it as one because it's full of my father's books. He had stacked them there ready to take to his office in the hospital but five months ago, construction stalled.

My father spends a lot of time at the hospital. It's his pride and joy. I think he thought it was going to be all about medicine but from what I understand it's more about money. My father doesn't have much of it. He works very, very hard though. Stays late every night and sometimes he even sleeps there. On weekends I sit with him for breakfast. We don't talk or anything but he reads his paper and I read my book and he lets me serve him his tea.

I don't actually know when my mother eats dinner. I should find out. She has become very thin lately. But she has always been rather slender so maybe I'm just noticing it now since I don't see her every day. You know, because of the knee. Tomorrow I'll find a way to go to her room. I won't be able to ask Chhoti Bibi because of something that has happened but I have resolved to not talk about myself in this letter so I'm not going to even though it was a pretty big thing that happened. A significant thing. A very significant thing. Let me put it this way. School started this week but that is nothing compared to this significant thing.

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 yellowed 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.