Tanya Tania (12 page)

My mother sat on the verandah and had tea with us. She talked to me about school and laughed at an excellent joke I made. We sat there for a long time, the three of us, drinking several cups of tea and even though I really needed to use the bathroom, I didn't get up until it got dark and my mother went inside. I sat by myself in the garden with the flies and the invisible birds and wished that every day would end like this, with my mother and my brother sitting beside me eating burnt samosas.

Love,

Tanya

March 14, 1992

Bombay

Dear Tanya,

Something bad happened at school today and I was a part of it. I don't know how to tell Nusrat. She's going to hate me.

I came home in a bad mood but it didn't help that my parents were arguing at the dinner table. Of course.

‘How can you blindly follow the Congress after all these years?'

‘What is the alternative? A goonda gang of thugs?'

‘That is so unfair! You're not even giving them a chance!'

My mom started shrieking. ‘So they will destroy a mosque? Destroy our culture, destroy our country?' A piece of spinach flew out of her mouth and landed in the daal.

‘Mom, can I have the vegetables?'

‘You're the only businessman—sorry, businessWOMAN I know who doesn't support the BJP Sraboni. Your hypocrisy is unbelievable! Do you remember when our country went BANKRUPT?'

‘Please Shayon, don't even pretend to know about the economy, you'll just embarrass yourself.'

‘Mom, can I have the vegetables?'

‘What you really mean is I'll embarrass you, don't you? Say it, for once just say it! Let's stop this pretence.'

‘Say what Shayon? I'm tired. I worked really late today.'

‘Say it Sraboni! Just SAY IT!'

‘GIVE ME THE FUCKING VEGETABLES MOM!'

I hadn't meant to but somehow I was standing up with a glass of water and my empty plate in my hand. My mom was staring at me, her mouth open and full of food. My dad was pushing his chair back from the table and I was so scared he was going to leave, so scared that it would be another night of their fighting. The glass slipped out of my hand and fell to the floor and smashed.

‘What's WRONG with you Tania!'

I started screaming. Everything! Everything was wrong! How could they not see it? How could they be so blind? Fighting about stupid things that don't matter when someone's life was destroyed in school today. Stupid BJP, stupid Congress, my parents should have them for children.

Of course it was my father that came to my room with a plate of food. He knocked on the door and peeped in with a big smile as if I was five years old. I wasn't hungry anymore but I let him sit down next to me. He stroked my hair and I let him.

‘Why are boys so mean? Are men mean like that?'

‘Was someone mean to you?'

I began to tell him what had happened. Even though I knew he wouldn't like it. Even though I knew his smile would disappear and he would begin to fidget and look anywhere but at me, I began to tell him.

I had always hated Aniket. Bopping around with his falling-off pants, thinking he is a hip-hop millionaire instead of a wannabe, gonnabe diamond merchant whose parents grew up in the village, pissing in the field. A loser who can't play any sports and only stopped wetting his bed last year. Do you think no one knows? Just because you threw a new year's party, you think people don't laugh at you behind your back? Everyone knows, Aniket, everyone KNOWS.

But I had never thought he would stoop as low as he did today.

He humiliated her. He made her into an outcast.

His girlfriend. Samara. They had sex last weekend. They have been together for two years now.

We were sitting around in the Assembly Hall at lunchtime like we always do. Aniket came in with a lassi moustache and Nishant made fun of him and Aniket said something mean about Nishant's parents not being rich and Nishant said that he'd rather have poor parents than parents who have to pay lakhs of rupees to keep their son in school.

And in like a weird coincidence everyone else stopped talking just then so everyone heard Nishant. People laughed. Samara laughed.

She should have known better. I had a bad feeling about it from the start.

Aniket asked her to go to the auditorium with him which is where people go to make out. And she said no. And again everyone heard.

Aniket's face was sweaty and scrunched up like he needed to go to the bathroom. But he was looking at her like a Hindi movie villain. And he said, ‘That's not what you said on Sunday.'

Samara said loudly, ‘NO ANIKET!'

That was a dumb thing to say. She's so dumb, honestly.

Aniket said again, looking around slowly at all the faces looking at him. He said, ‘That's not what you said on Sunday when you were naked on my bed and I was fucking you so hard you cried.'

Everyone heard that. Aniket knew everyone was going to hear that.

He jumped up on the steps and shouted, ‘She was NAKED! She was naked like a baby! She was high as a kite! Drug addict bitch in my bed!'

Who gave her the coke Aniket? Who took off her clothes?

He made it sound cheap. He made her sound cheap. How is it that the boys always get to decide? Arjun decides when we can tell people about our relationship. Aniket decides when to tell people that he fucked his girlfriend. And when did it become that? When they had sex, Samara said he had called it making love.

And she just sat there, on the floor, looking at him stupidly, blinking, blinking, not saying anything, not doing anything, just blinking and blinking.

And everyone got up and walked away from her, one by one, as if she was garbage, as if just moments ago, Gita hadn't sat with her arm around Samara. It was like Samara had sex and that was a cut-off point. Now she is no longer Gita's best friend. As if they hadn't been best friends since nursery school. As if nothing mattered except that Samara had had sex with the wrong person.

As if Samara had sex on her own.

My father got up. ‘I'll get your mother.'

I knew he was going to say that. I also knew that he understood but he didn't think it was right for him to understand. My dad has weird ideas about this stuff. I didn't want my mother. She would tell me to stop wasting my time with people who are not ‘serious'. That my problem is that I don't have any ‘serious' friends. She wouldn't like Samara. Samara should have been writing college essays instead of having sex.

After Lunch, no one sat next to Samara. She sat alone. She was so pale and the tears kept coming even though she had a handkerchief propped up right below her eyes to catch them. She looked so beautiful and so sad. She reminded me of a goddess, sitting there all tall and beautiful and pale except she looked so sad and everyone around her thought the worst things. Already the notes had gone around, already ugly cartoons were in pockets.

I felt a hand on my head. It wasn't my mother. It was Nusrat! She had stayed behind for me. She came and sat next to me and put her beautiful arms around me. I felt her, I smelt her. I started crying. She understood like she always does. She tucked my head against her throat and wrapped her arms tightly against me. I love how Nusrat smells. Lyril soap and detergent and something else without a name. She understood without my saying anything. She always understands. I cried and cried and cried until there were no tears left and my head hurt.

I had stopped no one from leaving at Lunch. I had said nothing. Everything I wanted to say and do was drowned under relief that it hadn't been me, that it hadn't been Arjun, that I was not Samara, that I was not sitting in class, beautiful, tall and alone.

I asked Nusrat if she was ashamed of me and she didn't say anything. She would have stood up for Samara. She defends people. She takes care of people.

Halfway through the class after Lunch, Samara couldn't take it anymore. She began to put her books in her bag, crying loudly. The teacher didn't know what to do. He just stood there, twisting the chalk round and round in his hands until everything was white, including where he touched his brown pants. But no one laughed. We watched Samara leave, crying, her bag open and a book almost falling out of it.

I felt so bad for her but I also felt so glad that it wasn't me. So glad.

I told Nusrat that. She held my hand tightly.

The thing is, Tanya, if I'm so glad it wasn't me, how come it feels like it was?

Love,

Tania

March 23, 1992

Karachi

Dear Tania,

Chhoti Bibi was really upset with your letter. She thinks you should have marched up and reported everyone to the teachers including Samara because of course she also thinks it's awful that she had sex before marriage. She kept saying it over and over again until I got really irritated and told her that school teachers are not like the police to whom you go report crimes so they fix everything. She looked at me and said very seriously, ‘Of course not Baji, teachers are actually good people, right?'

I am less surprised that you didn't say anything. I've always thought it must be hard to be popular. I stay clear of such things. Keep your head down and focus on the work, my dad had told me once when I was nine years old and hadn't been invited to a birthday party.

I have some good news. Some really good news. I'm actually very excited but I don't want to come across as insensitive but really, it is very good news.

First, I got Head Girl. I mean it was a foregone conclusion for the most part. I have been told I'm going to get Head Girl ever since Class Five. The only thing missing from my portfolio in Middle School had been sports and I've cultivated that in Senior School. No one is surprised. But it feels great. Perhaps my father will want to take us all out to dinner?

The other really good news is that Chhoti Bibi has agreed to take a correspondence course with an NGO that provides remedial support to students to get their school leaving certificate. Although her English is still terribly weak, I have some hopes for the other subjects. She's allowed to fail one you know.

My friends are happy for me about making Head Girl. Perhaps if they had been surprised, there would have a party or a dinner or something. But everyone expected it. No one throws parties when you are expected to get it.

My pre-applications are all here and so are Ali's. I sent for his because he would have never remembered them on his own. The Harvard brochure is breathtakingly beautiful.

Are you going to throw a tantrum if I ask you if you have received your pre-applications?

Love,

Tanya

April 1, 1992

Bombay

Dear Tanya,

You get mad at your family for not talking about stuff but it's not like you're different. Every time I send you a letter that has hard stuff in it, you ignore it.

Things are still pretty bad for Samara, thanks for asking. But at least I talk to her. None of the other girls talk to her. And there are only twelve of us in the Commerce section, the rest are all boys. And before you ask, no I did not want to study Commerce, my mom made me. It was either Commerce or Science and I didn't have the grades for Science.