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‘Chalo, go do your business and let's
go to sleep.' I grumble as any self-respecting child would but
she can see my heart's not in it.

When I'm in bed, Mehroo comes and sits by
the edge. She kisses my forehead, smoothens my brow, lightly runs her
hand across my whole body. Then, she kisses me again.

‘Good night,' she says. ‘Say a
quick Ashem Vahu and then go to bed. God bless you and sweet dreams.'

I go to sleep. But not for long.

I feel Mehroo grabbing my shoulders and turning me
around and I wake up for a few minutes before I fall back to sleep.

You see, I am a bed-wetter. I wet my bed every
night, sometimes several times a night.

My family, in a desperate attempt to help me, has
tried every cure anyone has suggested. There are ayurvedic powders to
swallow and prayers to mumble. A few months ago, dad took me to
Victoria Gardens, where he paid one of the zoo-keepers ten rupees for
a tiny bit of camel's pee.

Dad looked grim-faced as the dark-brown urine was
brought to me in a small paper cup. In a soft voice, he asked me to
smell the hot liquid. I refused indignantly. My embarrassed father
cajoled and begged and finally, I agreed.

I took a whiff and gagged immediately. ‘Okay,
okay, that's enough,' my father said quickly. ‘Let's
hope it works. Desh-mukh told me it did wonders for his nephew.'

There was much anticipation when I went to bed
that night and much disappointment the next morning when the brown
outline on the bundled sheets confirmed my nocturnal failure.

I, too, was crestfallen until dad gathered me to
his side. ‘It's okay,' he said. ‘So sorry I
made you go through that yesterday.'

I have been sleeping in Mehroo's room for
years. When I was younger, I used to sleep in my parents' room
but mummy was a heavy sleeper and resented having to wake up to the
smell of urine and changing my soaking bedsheets in the middle of the
night. Sometimes, she would sleep through the night and I would lie
on the wet sheets all night long. On the nights that my mother did
wake up, she'd grab my arm and yank me out of bed, her unspoken
anger and resentment running like electricity through my arm. And if
I refused to roll out of bed, she spoke harshly to me, thereby
upsetting my father. All the anger in the room made me so nervous, I
peed even more.

Finally, Mehroo intervened and I moved into her
room.

Every night, Mehroo places a rubber sheet—blue
on one side, red on the other—on the bed under my waist and
then covers the rubber with a horizontal cotton sheet. She also sets
the alarm to awaken her three to four times a night. Crossing the
tiled floor silently in her white-and-blue Bata rubber chappals, she
bends at my bed and feels the sheets for wetness.

If they are wet, she lifts my body, heavy with
sleep, props me up in my bed so that I sleep standing, somehow
undresses me, cleans me, dresses me in new pyjamas and then carries
me to her bed while she changes the sheets on mine. I don't
make this any easy for her, sleeping as I do through most of the
exercise. When she does wake me up, I grumble and whine under my
breath. A few hours later, the ritual starts again.

(Years later, when I am thirteen, a kindly
neighbour whom my mother had complained to about my nauseating habit,
pulls me aside one evening and asks me whether I know what
auto-suggestion is. I have never heard the term. ‘Before going
to bed tonight, tell yourself over and over again, “I will not
do soo-soo in bed tonight. I will get up when I feel the urge,”'
he suggests. ‘Just imagine yourself not wetting the bed.'

So I do. With more fervour than I've ever
mustered, I tell myself: ‘I will get up before I soil the bed.'
There is a fierce desperation in me as I repeat the message to myself
before drifting off to sleep.

It works. Since that night a problem which is the
source of much friction in my house, which had left my family feeling
helpless and ashamed and angry, for which my parents had tried to
blame each other's side of the family—the problem simply
vanishes. Vamoose. It is the triumph of mind over bladder.)

But that day is still many years away. Sometimes,
Mehroo gets lucky because when she wakes up, the sheets are dry.

Then, my aunt, who weighs less than hundred
pounds, lifts my sleep-laden body and carries me down the long
passageway that leads to the bathroom. I protest at being awakened
but she shushes me into silence. ‘Quiet, quiet. Others are
sleeping,'

she says. ‘Go use the bathroom like a good
girl and then you can go back to sleep. But sit for a minute after
you think you're finished, samji ne? Empty your bladder fully.'

Ah, my Mehroo. What generosity of spirit, what
irrational impulse made you love me so unconditionally? But wait,
your love was not unconditional at all. I still recall my shock the
day you candidly told me that if I wasn't your beloved
brother's daughter, that if I had just been a girl who lived
down the street, no telling if you would've still loved me. For
a minute, I was mute with disappointment. We all flatter ourselves
that we have earned our love, paid for it with our dazzling
personalities, our irresistible charms and our noble characters. That
love is more than an accident of biology and geography. And so, I was
disappointed that the gift of your love had been bestowed because of
chance and not because of the irrefutable logic of my magnetic
personality. But then, I thought, Well, the fact is, I
am
her
niece. Nothing can change that. Why worry about What Ifs and If
Onlys?

And since we were linked by the ties of blood and
destiny, you loved me as fiercely and fearlessly as a teenager in
love for the first time. I can only imagine what needs taking care of
a young child fulfilled in you. Perhaps it made up for the early
death of your mother. Perhaps it helped take your mind off the joke
life played on you a few years later.

This I know: You resisted my mother's
constant complaint that you had stolen me away from her, that you had
taken over her birthright, brainwashed me into loving you more than
her.

You withstood my father's daily beseeching
that you concentrate more on the business than on me, that you leave
me to the attentions of my mother. (No, no, no, Mehroofui, I would
pray to myself. Don't do it. Don't do that.) You were an
unwavering soldier, a straight line, the North star, your stout love
as constant as the slow rotation of the earth around the sun, your
devotion as reliable as the ebb and flow of the tides.

My earliest childhood memory: It is late at night
and I am hot and restless from being unable to sleep. My
four-year-old body is tired but I'm unable to relax, my body
twitching and fluttering like a dying fish in Mehroo's arms.
She carries me across her shoulder and walks the length of the long
balcony.

A cool breeze comes in from the open balcony and
lands like kisses on our faces. Mehroo's hand is on my back,
rubbing it and thumping it in a rhythmic motion.

Thump, thump, thump goes her hand, light but firm
against my hollow back. The rhythm is strangely elemental and
comforting, like the purring of a cat. It soothes me, makes me
languid and sleepy. A great sense of peace, different from the
fevered restlessness of a few moments ago, descends on me. I know
that this light woman with the brown, wavy hair who is pacing the
balcony while she is holding me, I know that this woman loves me.
That she is sacrificing her sleep, letting her arms go tired under my
weight, stopping only occasionally to look at the half-moon, because
she loves me. Her hand on me, thumping my back, begins to feel like a
hum. Or maybe it is my body that's humming, that's
vibrating with joy and peace.

I fall asleep, knowing that I am loved.

A
LTHOUGH I GET TEASED BY the other girls
and despite the fact that Olga D'Mello is the bane of my life,
school is my escape from home. Although all my grade cards say that I
am fidgety and that I daydream too much and have a hard time sitting
still, I like the sense of order and lack of chaos at school.

Here, the adults do not fight with each other
every morning and Mother Superior does not storm out of morning
assembly, the way dad leaves the house at least once a week.

But tomorrow, mummy is coming to school and I
sense that my two worlds are about to collide. On my way home from
school I plan when to give mummy the note that says Miss Bharucha
wants to see her tomorrow, just how much I'm going to tell her
about what happened earlier today and whether to explain how and why
things spiralled downward so fast. Or will trying to defend myself
make mummy even more angry?

How can I possibly explain to her the absolute
terror that I feel around Miss Damania and how it was that terror
that made me do what I did?

I'm in third-grade and the gym teacher, Miss
Damania, is a tall, bony, ostrich-like woman with a beaked nose and
long, thin, claw-like fingers. I live in mortal fear of her. I am a
dis-mally poor athlete, an ungraceful, sickly child and
unforgiv-ingly absent-minded. Miss Damania's mode of punishment
is particularly cruel and psychologically terrifying in a way that
punishment from the other teachers is not. Miss Davidson, the
Anglo-Indian piano teacher, for instance, throws us across her knee,
lifts our green uniforms so that it exposes our underwear and then
smacks our buttocks with a ruler. The nuns use the ruler to rap us on
our knuckles and arms and occasionally, they slap us. But Miss
Damania's punishment is different and I'm her favourite
target. She comes at me with her claws outstretched, like a witch
from a bad theatre production. The time that it takes for her hand to
shape itself into a claw and grab hold of the fleshy part of my
throat, lasts an eternity. She then shakes my flesh, so that my head
moves slightly from side to side. It is the most peculiar pain, being
clawed at the throat, but what's worse is the sensation it
arouses. It feels like drowning, I think, but am not sure why.

Perhaps it is that feeling of being tossed around
by a force stronger and more powerful than you. But even weeks after
the last shaking, I find it hard to swallow and can feel the im-print
of Miss Damania's fingernails on my throat. The other beatings
I can laugh off, boast about even, but this one feels dirty and
humiliating to me. I can get off Miss Davidson's lap with a
swagger, can take a blow across the arm without flinching and without
tearing up, but being shaken like a rat makes my eyes well up no
matter how hard I try. The shaking does exactly what it is intended
to do—it makes me feel small and powerless and rodent-like. I
want to hide from the flashlight gaze of Miss Damania's eyes;
want to burrow deep into the safety of the rows of girls in their
green uniforms (‘Green parrots,' the kids from the nearby
school tease us) who stand around me. And I hate her with an
intensity, a rage that only the powerless and voiceless can muster.
Because by coming for my throat, she is literally rendering me
voiceless, is freezing the explanations, the excuses in my mouth
before I can voice them. ‘But…but…' I
begin, ready to give her what seems to me a perfectly reasonable
explanation for whatever crime I'm guilty of but I can never
get past this single word before I am being clawed. And I know, sure
as I know anything, that she is enjoying this. Miss Davidson spanks
with a certain gusto but there is always a wink behind her actions, a
sense that she is playing a role—of the bullying, loud-voiced
teacher who nevertheless has a heart of gold. Mother Superior hits
and slaps wearily, sighing as she does, shaking her head at our
unfathomable behaviour. She hits with a sense of obligation, as if
she is burdened with the duty and responsibility of turning a bunch
of wild, untamed, Indian hooligans into polite, smart, obedient
girls. But Miss Damania loves terrorizing us. She salivates at the
sight of a cringing girl, she licks her lips with the anticipation of
tears rolling down a cheek, she enjoys towering over us, thin and
distant as a skyscraper, as we whimper and plead and try to squirm
out of her grasp. It is not enough to punish us for our sins; we have
to be broken first. So I am panic-stricken when I realize in the
second period that I have forgotten to pack my gym shoes. I have on
my black patent leather school shoes but where are the white keds
that I have to wear to gym class? I look in my blue school-bag two
times, three, as if looking will magically produce the shoes.

Just two weeks ago Miss Damania had warned me
about not forgetting my shoes any more. She had warned me in front of
the whole class and I have now disobeyed her. That is how she will
see it. I know better than to even try to explain the situation to
her and to ask for her understanding. My throat constricts at the
thought of the torture to come.

Then, a thought so perfect that it feels like a
gift. Only last week, I had mastered the art of writing my ‘r's
like my mother does, rolling them instead of having them stand alone.
It had felt like a rite of passage, an entry into the guarded
fortress of adulthood. Practising her ‘r' repeatedly and
finally getting it made me feel adult and accomplished. Now, it
suddenly occurs to me that I can disguise my handwriting to make it
look exactly like my mother's. My grammar is good and I know I
can imitate my mother's phrases perfectly. For instance, my mom
begins her sentences with Kindly instead of Please. ‘Kindly
excuse Thrity from…' I can write a note to be kindly
excused from carrying my keds and can sign it as my mother. The idea
feels like inspired genius, a divine inspiration. Excitement replaces
terror.

During lunch recess, I sit alone and painstakingly
write the note. I have to make sure none of the teachers see me at
work.