Book Uncle and Me (4 page)

—

Not Bad?

THUD! THUMP!
Crash!

That is more than the day breaking. It is Rafiq Uncle. I run out of my room to see what's going on. Rafiq Uncle's baggage, it seems, got dropped on the floor. That's why he is now yelling at the istri lady's son, Selvaraj.

“What do you think, this is a sack of onions? That suitcase costs money, my boy. Money!”

Selvaraj is straightening up the suitcase and trying to dust it off. He is trying to say it was a mistake and he is sorry, but no one can get a word in, once Rafiq Uncle gets going.

“Oh, Yasmin, is it?” Rafiq Uncle says, turning his attention to me.

Selvaraj makes a quick getaway, grabbing the rupee notes that Umma slips him to make up for my uncle's rudeness.

Wapa takes his big brother's bags into the extra bedroom. Umma puts out breakfast. I get a lecture on the evils of living in the big city.

Umma has made puttu for breakfast, which I love-love-love for its grated coconut and soft steamed morsels of rice that melt in your mouth.

We eat for a while in grateful silence. Even Rafiq Uncle is silenced by the dreaminess of that puttu. Soon the big plate is down to one last piece. Rafiq Uncle and I both stretch out our hands at the same time.

I meet his eyes. He opens his mouth.

“You have it, Uncle,” I say quickly. “I have to go to school.”

He snaps his lips shut, as if he is disappointed that he can't scold me for being greedy.

As I put my plate in the sink and wash my hands, I hear him saying, through his last mouthful of puttu, “Not bad, Nadira. Not bad at all.”

Not bad? My Umma makes the best puttu in the whole world. Now I wish I had grabbed that last piece. Rafiq Uncle doesn't deserve it.

—

Ten Whole Words

I AM HURRYING
down the stairs, happy to be away from my bad-tempered uncle. I'm almost all the way to the ground floor when I hear someone huffing and puffing up the stairwell.

It is Chinna Abdul Sahib of 2B. He's carrying a big box. He's breathing heavily. He's rounding the corner and now we are face to face.

Oh, no! The box slips.

I grab at it double-quick so it doesn't fall. It is heavy. I brace myself so I can hold it up. It would be terrible if I let it fall. From his face, I am sure it contains something very precious. Possibly a drum.

Chinna Abdul Sahib nods twice. I take that to mean,
Thank you, and will you help me carry this box?
Funny how I know exactly what he means even when he says nothing, while my uncle uses a hundred words and I can't find much meaning in anything he says.

I hold one end of the box with my two hands. Chinna Abdul Sahib holds the other end. I walk up the stairs backwards, and he comes up after me. Step by step by step.

There. We put the box down carefully outside 2B.

Then Chinna Abdul Sahib pulls out a bunch of jingly keys and opens his door. I help him lift the box over the threshold and place it on the floor.

“Is that one of your drums?” I ask.

He scratches his beard. He stares at the wall.

Then, “You want to see?” he says.

You could knock me down with a feather, which means that I'm very surprised. In all the time that I have seen Chinna Abdul Sahib coming and going, I don't think I have ever heard him speak a single word.

He opens up the box. I take a peek.

I was right. It is a drum. A giant pot-drum.

“What's that?” I point to the shiny flecks showing through the clay.

“Brass,” he says, “for a ringing sound.”

They make this clay pot with bits of brass? This is one thing I have never come across in a book.

He knocks on the pot with his knuckle. It rings. It sings. It has a voice all its own. I can see why Chinna Abdul Sahib does not need to say much. His ghatam does all the talking.

A clock strikes from somewhere inside the flat. Eight o'clock!

“I have to go,” I say.

I don't want to miss my bus.

“Very kind of you,” he calls after me, “to help me with my drum.”

That is ten whole words he's used up just for me.

—

Number Problems

AFTER SCHOOL,
Anil gets off the bus with me at Horizon Apartment Flats. His mother has a meeting, so she can't be home when he gets back from school. His aunty, who lives with them, has gone out of town for a few days.

Anil does not think he needs a grown-up around to keep an eye on him, but his mother disagrees. So here he is, coming home with me where Umma is in charge.

“I have an idea,” I tell Anil.

“What?”

I am all ready to throw our bags down and get a snack and then head out of the flat to carry out my great idea, which is all about being someone and doing something.

Umma insists, homework first. We get to work. We have no choice. Soon there is no sound from us but rustling pages and scratching pencils.

We finish our history homework.

Then Hindi. We finish reading our Hindi pages and then we have to answer questions about them. I decide that I like Hindi, with its lines on top so the letters hang down like rows of election campaign flags. My lines and strokes don't always come out even, but I like doing them anyway.

Anil is wriggly, but soon he says he's done, too.

That leaves a page of number problems between us and my plan. Ready? We work on these together. There is no sign between the numbers:

+ - x ÷. We have to fill them in.

“Go,” says Anil.

50 ? 32=18

“Minus,” I say. “Anil, your turn.”

88 ? 22=110

“Times?” Anil says.

“No, pay attention!”

“I am paying attention.” He looks again. “Oh, plus.”

Back and forth we go. Anil gets a few wrong and then a few more. Sometimes he seems to make wild guesses. Maybe he's just fed up. I know the feeling.

Then, hurray! We get to the end of the number problems.

“Want to go downstairs?” I say.

“Hiya!” says Anil, leaping up in joy.

We tell Umma we're going out.

“Come back before it gets dark,” she says.

“Okay, Umma,” I say.

“Okay, Aunty,” Anil says.

Umma hugs us both at the door, which makes Anil do a quick block-punch.

“Be careful, Warrior Anil!” says Umma, and he grins.

Anil wants to know what we are going to do.

“Wait,” I tell him. “Just wait.”

“Are you going to call Reeni?” he says.

I nod. “Yes. That's part of the plan.”

—

A Delegation

WE STOP AT 3B.
We invite Reeni along. And she says, yes, yes, she'll come and we are three again. Reeni has brought us sticky tamarind sweets. We pucker our lips over their mouthwatering sourness.

Our flip-floppy chappals
slip-slap-slap
down the stairs and into the compound, under the coconut palm and the frangipani tree that drops its pink and white flowers on top of the istri lady's booth.

“What's chasing you chickens?” she demands.

“Do you know where Book Uncle lives?” I ask.

She throws her head back and laughs out loud before whirling around to spit a stream of betel and tobacco juice at the ground behind her. She turns back to us with a red-toothed grin.

Wapa says that stuff can kill you. I don't see the istri lady ready to fall over yet.

“I know where everyone lives,” she says. Then she bellows, “Selvaraj!”

Her son runs back from the corner tea shop where he's been chatting with the autorickshaw drivers. He rushes to a smart stop, like a soldier reporting to his commanding officer.

Selvaraj takes over the ironing booth, and the istri lady marches us down the road and left at the petrol bunk. Past Celebration Sweets and the La-la-la Restaurant. Past the Mercury Medicals lab and pharmacy, three doctors' offices, a dentist and a phone repair shop which is also a phone-fax-Internet-copy place. All the way past blocks and blocks of houses and apartments we go, to a tiny little house that has almost disappeared under the leaning-down branches of a giant mango tree.

I knock on the door. We wait. Shuffling noises sound from inside the tiny house.

Then, “My goodness me.”

Book Uncle opens the door. His eyes blink at us from behind his fat glasses.

“A delegation. What a surprise. Come in, come in.”

The house is so small that when the istri lady and Reeni and Anil and I step inside, we fill it up. There is only enough room for Book Uncle, the four of us, and the shelves and shelves of books.

What a lot of books! Hundreds and hundreds of them. Boxes of books are stacked on the floor, with just enough room for a person to walk around and between them.

The book smell in the air turns me dizzy with joy.

When I grow up I will line all the walls of my house with books, just like this.

—

Notice

IN HIS TINY
house, over tiny glasses of tea, Book Uncle tells us how he got started with his books. He began collecting them when he was a young teacher in a village near the city, where the school was too poor to have any books.

“Once I started, I couldn't stop,” he says. “My wife and I, we both collected books.”

“Was she a teacher, too?” I ask.

“She was.” His eyes go to a picture on a bookshelf. It is a picture of a lady with a gentle face. She is wearing a shiny-bordered sari. She has flowers in her hair.

“Is that her?” Reeni says.

Book Uncle nods.

“She was a good soul,” the istri lady murmurs. “Kind and generous she was.” She narrows her eyes at us, so we can see that there is a sad story in that picture, and we know not to say anything more.

When he retired from teaching, Book Uncle decided to set up his free lending library, where you don't have to sign up and get a card or pay a fee, where even if you have no place to sleep, if you can read a little bit, there will be a book for you.

“And not only that,” the istri lady says. “You taught people how to read. You helped me open up a bank account so I could save some money, and you taught me how to write my name. You do kind things for so many people.”

That is the longest I have ever heard the istri lady speak without yelling at someone.

Book Uncle says, “People ask me, ‘Why don't you charge for the books you lend?' But you see …” He waves a hand around him. “What do I need money for? I have my little pension which comes promptly every month, and the landlady is kind enough not to raise my rent.”

“Only now they're not going to let you give your books away?” the istri lady says.

“Alas,” says Book Uncle. “The city has given me notice.”

Notice. It is a word that makes you sit up and pay attention. That pink paper was the notice.

It said that Book Uncle does not have a permit for a commercial establishment.

Therefore his lending library is an illegal operation and must be shut down.

If he wants to stay open, he has to pay a lot of money to the city.

I look around me now. I notice that the curtains are faded. The furniture is old. Book Uncle must not have a lot of money.

“That is not fair!” Reeni says. “You should complain.”

“To the mayor,” Anil says.

Book Uncle shakes his head. “The notice was from the mayor's office,” he says. “Maybe it's part of a city project. Catching up with uncollected fees or something like that. What can I do?”

I open my mouth. Because I know it's not part of any city project. They sent him that notice because someone wrote a letter of complaint. But I catch the istri lady's eye. It holds a warning glint. I say nothing.

Book Uncle sees us off at the door. He thanks us. I don't know for what. We haven't done anything.

As we walk home, I say, “I'm confused. Why did the city send that notice?”

The istri lady says, “It was that letter, of course.”

“What letter?” says Reeni.

I explain.

“What a mean person,” Reeni says, “to complain about Book Uncle.”

“Mean and nasty,” Anil agrees.

“I didn't tell him about it,” says the istri lady. “What is the use? It would only hurt his feelings.”