Tanya Tania (29 page)

Nusrat! Nusrat! Nusrat!

The woman throws herself on Nusrat and you shout at her to not do that because who knows, maybe Nusrat broke a bone and you have to be really careful about not moving broken bones and why isn't the woman listening?

Nusrat! Nusrat!

Why isn't Nusrat getting up? Why isn't she smiling at her mother who is crying stupidly in a way that infuriates you?

Nusrat! Get up! We have to go home, Nusrat!

Nusrat! My parents are on their way. They are coming to get us! Come on Nusrat!

Nusrat! NUSRAT!

Three men come from nowhere with a stretcher that is half torn. One of them pulls Nusrat's mother away and you see that Nusrat's back is red, bright red, a red you have seen many times today. The men lift Nusrat and put her on the stretcher. Her head lolls forward and one of the men closes her eyes.

Nusrat! Nusrat stop acting! Nusrat! Come on get up! I'll take you to a better hospital! Nusrat it's not funny!

One of the men turns to look at you. Go away, he says. This is not for you. Go away.

NUSRAT! Nusrat!

You stand there watching them take away Nusrat.

You can't stop screaming her name even as the stretcher turns a corner and you can't see her anymore. You can't stop screaming her name even when your parents find you and it takes both of them to prise your hands off the school gate and you can't stop screaming her name all the way home in the car and you can't stop screaming her name when you're in your room and you see the mattress where she had slept last night and you can't stop screaming as you take the picture of her and you by the sea that you had taken the last time you both had gone there to throw popcorn at kissing couples and while you're screaming, while you're holding the picture to your heart as if it can mend what has happened inside, someone slides an injection in your arm and everything is finally, blessedly silent.

It takes you a week to find my letter. It takes that long because you are heavily sedated. You lose ten kilos and are admitted to the hospital. Every time you open your eyes you scream her name and you pull all the tubes out, hurting yourself and etching large blue and green bruises all over your body.

You can't bear to see anyone. Not your parents not Neenee not anyone.

On the eighth day you decide you want to go home so you allow the IV to pump into your body and you allow your mother to feed you and you allow them to put clothes on your body and take you home.

When you find the letter, you pick up the phone and call me. You tell me that I've killed Nusrat. You describe to me everything that happened. You tell me thirty-seven times that if it hadn't been for the letter, Nusrat would not have left the house. You read out the note she left you. The one in which she said, I will always love you more than anyone else in the world because you are my best friend. You tell me that she always has been your best friend. That she always will be your best friend. You tell me I am dead to you.

Your voice is clear and does not break. You do not let me speak. You hang up the phone and don't pick up when I call you back. I called you back seventeen times. From my house, from Ali's house, from a public telephone, from my school. You never pick up the phone. By the time I come out of the hospital for mad people, you have changed your number. You sent me all my letters, cut up in pieces.

It takes you three months to go see Nusrat's parents. You're stunned by how much it hurts to go to that old building, to see the corridor lit by a tube light, to see the drugged baby crawling carefully outside his house. His mother averts her eyes from you and pretends she does not recognise you.

It hurts even more to see her parents. Her eyes, older and full of tears. Her chin, so sharp like an old beloved question mark. Her hands, sure and finely veined. Her house is full of her certificates all of which have been framed and jostle for space. You finger the pictures of her, from when she was a baby at a studio with thick black kajal in her eyes, her fearless smile and bright green dress she would have made fun of when she was older. You try to suppress the feeling that if you just concentrate hard enough, your fingers will touch her and she will touch you back.

Her parents give you her tahveez that she had worn since she was a baby. They tell you that you were her best friend and that she loved you and that you made her happy. You want to break down and cry, on the older, rounder Nusrat shoulder and be comforted. You want to tell them what had happened and you want them to tell you that she knew you loved her. That she knew she was your best friend. But you never ask. Instead you put the tahveez around your neck and promise the old couple that you will not forget them, that you will visit them.

It takes you a year before you can go down to the sea again. On her birthday (she would have been eighteen and you had bought little gold earrings, the same pair for her and for you) you go down to the sea, the tahveez hot against the hollow of your throat.

At the sea, everything is the same. The same couples, the same children, the same dogs, the same smell of shit. It has taken you a long time to stop looking for her over your shoulder, feeling her hand on your hair, smelling her breath on your face, opening up her notebook to see what she has written. But here by the sea it comes back, the desire to have her next to you and it almost kills you, the intensity of knowing that she will never be there when you turn around.

The waves are still the same and you sit down on the rock and finally the tears that haven't come all year, come slowly and then with gathering force until your face is a hot river and you wish more than anything to become that river entirely and disappear into the sea. You realise that it will never stop hurting. You realise that every birthday, hers and yours, you will welcome the sadness because it will be the only way you have left of having her again, just for a little while. You realise that you've already forgotten little things, little gestures, little expressions and you wish for the thousandth time that you had taken the large, unwieldy home video camera to her and captured everything about her so that you would not have to live your life feeling yourself forget little by little.

When the tears finally stop, you take out a notebook that you found by going back to Nusrat's neighbourhood and going to the store that she used to go to. It's just like the one Nusrat always had.

Dear Nusrat,

Happy birthday! You're eighteen today which is like totally an adult. I've been an adult for three months now which is awesome but it's really more of a feeling than anything else because it's not like anything is that different. I mean I can't even vote because my voter ID card has the picture of a GUY on it and he's not even cute. It's totally upsetting.

We sang Happy Birthday to you at our Peace Committee meeting today and your mom cried. The stupid school is again making noises about throwing us out because they are like worried that there will be more riots because you know the Shiv Sena is up to its tricks again.

But whatever, don't worry Nusrat. Because the riots won't happen again. We're doing this Peace Committee stuff in every sensitive neighbourhood which is what the police call any neighbourhood with a lot of Muslims in it. People play cricket and watch movies. I don't think the slum people even know what it's for—for them it's probably just like free cricket and movies and samosas and tea. But whatever, if it works who cares.

On your birthday there was a special match that your dad organised. I'm still a bit scared of him but he like ADORES me. He is so happy when I go to visit them. Anyway, today's match was with the police and everyone was laughing at how funny the fat ones looked running between the wickets but I didn't laugh because I was so busy trying not to FAINT from the body odour.

So remember how I like do a brave Nusrat thing every month? Last month I did my classical dance recital. You know. You were there. I know you were there. Didn't I look sexy? If only my mom had let me make my blouse a little lower. She hates me obviously.

My brave Nusrat thing for this month is to go down to our spot by the sea. I'm sitting here now. You can like probably see me. I hope so because I'm wearing that shirt you really like, the purple one with polka dots that made you laugh.

There's a new guy in college who is pretty hot. All the losers from the suburbs call him the Western Looking Guy. Can you imagine? So ridiculous. But he totally checked me out today. I mean he better have. I was wearing my new jeans that make my butt look so good.

Anyway, HAPPY BIRTHDAY! I hope you're having super fun wherever you are and just for you, I just stopped writing and smiled at the sky. Did you see? I'm wearing the earrings I got for you and me. I gave yours to your mom to keep.

I'll never know if you knew, Nusrat. I keep going over and over that day in my mind but I don't know if you saw me. I wish I had told you that you are my best friend. I wish I had told you. I wish I had told you how much I liked it when you put your hand on my head and stroked my hair. I wish I had told you that when you put your arms around me that day when my mom was beating me, I felt so happy I thought my heart would burst. I wish I had told you that I love you more than anyone, even more than my mom and even more than my dad.

Anyway, I'm going to keep writing to you, you know. It's kind of like having you here. I'm going to use a pencil like you did. It's nice here right now, sitting where we used to sit. It's like you are here. And I can put my head on your shoulder and you will put your arm around me. Your hands are so soft and your arms are so strong.

Nusrat, my Nusrat.

The sun is going down and I can't really see enough to keep writing so I guess I'll end here. I will always love you. Always have. Always will.

Yours,

Tania

PS—What do you think? It doesn't matter. I will still write to you. This is only a first letter.

Acknowledgements

Like every writer, I owe much to those who have supported this stubborn dreaming. To every writer I've read (especially the women writers), my grandfathers, my parents and my sister: thank you.

Thank you Himanjali Sankar, perspicacious editor and friend. Faiza Khan, Anurima Roy and everyone else at Bloomsbury India, thank you for your cheerful, canny support. I would never have inched beyond the idea without my wonderful friends who kept me going through innumerable bad starts and drafts. Strangers across the world have become mentors and friends in the writing of this book – thank you. Thank you Juthika Nagpal for being a sister to the girls, Nadia Majeed and Janice Huang for your needle-eyed reads amidst squalling babies and Chitra Ganguli, most exacting reader, whose memory of those days in 1992 kept it real. Thank you Shankar Ganguli for lighting the flame long ago and tending to it always. Every dreamer should have a champion like you.

Thank you Bombay and Karachi for being the beautiful, ugly, horror-ridden, life-giving cities that you are, stubbornly holding on to the banks of the grey Arabian, promising everything, giving everything and taking everything. No riot will destroy you and no one idea will overpower you. Here's to you and here's to the children who grow up in you.