Tanya Tania (4 page)

At first I thought it was easy to talk to Nusrat because she can't speak. But the thing is when someone doesn't speak, you also speak less. I think words confuse things. Sometimes at school you look around and all the mouths are opening and closing around you and everyone is just talking to talk and you want to stand up and scream at everyone to shut up. Just shut up.

With Nusrat you don't need to say it. You don't need to say anything. You can just sit and look at the sea. She doesn't look at me and I don't look at her. Sometimes we hold hands without looking at each other. With Nusrat, it's damn peaceful.

Love,

Tania

May 20, 1991

Karachi

Dear Tania,

I'm happy to report that there has been some progress from my side. Not a huge amount but definitely, some progress. Baby steps, I say to myself. Chhoti Bibi got 9 out of 10 on a Mental Math test. Granted, it was from a Class III workbook. Granted there was no long division. Still. Baby steps.

I went to tell my mother about it but her door was locked. She's been spending a lot of time in her bedroom except when she is in the garden. She loves plants. Had I told you that? That she loves plants?

The city shut down twice this week because of strikes. I find that short-sighted of our authorities and let's face it, quite rude. What if we had school and had to miss it?

Do you think the passive voice is better for a college essay?

So, is it that you don't want to go to Harvard and Wellesley or is it that you don't want to go to college in America at all? Are you worried that you will miss your family? I can't wait to go back to America. There will be more people like me at Harvard. Plus, my mother's parents live there, of course. We call them Grandma and Grandad. I always feel awkward calling them that which I shouldn't because after all, I am part American. My grandmother wears jeans which is, of course, perfectly normal in America. I suppose I will spend all my college holidays with them. They have a big house. I've spent all my previous summers there. Sometimes when I look up at my grandmother, I find her staring at me. Is it because I'm Pakistani?

I don't really have much else to report so I'll end here.

Best,

Tanya

June 1, 1991

Bombay

Dear Tanya,

Did you even read my letter? Here's your Selfish Letter back.

Tania

June 13, 1991

Karachi

Dear Tania,

I was going to pretend that I didn't know what you're talking about. But I do. Of course I do.

Truth: Nusrat made me feel claustrophobic. With her carpenter dad and 4
^th
standard Urdu mum and her adversity and her drive and listening to you on the rocks of the Arabian Sea. She would get into Harvard without even trying.

And yet it's not just that. I imagined you and her sitting on the rocks of the sea and it was a physical pain in my chest. When we had first moved to Pakistan, my father used to take us to the beach. It was the first place I loved in Karachi although I used to be scared of the waves. My father would laugh at me and hold me up high above his head, the sea around his knees, and I loved feeling his hands banded around my waist, the sky and sea whirling. But we stopped going to the sea. I don't know why. Sometimes I think my father doesn't recognize me when he looks up from his morning tea and sees me at the breakfast table.

During the monsoons, I like to ask Salim Bhai to drive down that road on my way home from school, even though it is not on the way at all. He parks near the beach and switches off the engine and we sit there, the rain like a drum on the roof of the car. The windows become opaque and disappear. The sand and the sea merge. I sometimes think this must be what taking a drug is like. To be violently distracted. To not exist momentarily.

You think I am not cool but I am. I always have been but it's only because of my golden hair and white skin which is not even mine, it's my mother's. It's much worse than not being cool because you're plagued by thoughts of how you should be a lot cooler given the deadly ammunition of being white in brown people land but at the same time, you are terrified of waking up one day looking as ordinary as you actually are inside.

People think I'm pretty because when I play hockey my face flushes. My hair shines in the sun. Boys have crushes on me because of it. I just feel hot and silly. As if I'm watching it happen to someone else. Is it not better to be poor but have a space in the world that's meant exactly for you?

You don't have to tell me it's pathetic. I have never been this way. I just need to get out of here so badly. I have nightmares of not getting into college in America and I have nightmares of not getting a full scholarship. I can't afford to go otherwise. Do you understand that kind of pressure? How can you.

I know what people say about hormones and teenagers. But what if it's not hormones? What if we are only just realizing that this is how the world is and that's it, we have to live in it? Half the time I want to stop feeling the things I feel and half the time I'm terrified of what will replace them when I grow up. Of becoming one of the people I see around me, ambling along, blind and deaf to everything that is wrong, everything that can't be explained, everything that is bad and hurts.

Nusrat's story makes her place in the world so very clear. I don't know my place in the world. And I've never understood whether that's because of me or because of the world.

Best,

Tanya

June 15, 1991

Bombay

Dear Tanya,

Dude, that was super intense. Nusrat says to tell you she thinks you're a good writer. I think your sentences are too short and not like pretty. Don't get mad, I'm just being honest.

But I have something super, super important to tell you! Like the most important thing ever! Arjun gave me a ring! Like a real ring! I think it's made of gold. It's got a big diamond. He said it's like a pre-engagement ring because he wants to spend his whole life with me. It was super romantic. We were in his car and it was late at night and it was raining and we were like hugging in the backseat (I had quite a lot of my clothes on) and he just took it out and gave it to me and I started crying and I think even he teared up although I couldn't tell because he's going through this phase where he wears sunglasses all the time. It is the most romantic thing that has ever happened to me.

I have to hide it from my parents because they'd flip out. And I can't wear it to school because rings are not allowed which really sucks because I'm dying to like literally rub it in everyone's face but I can't because he made me promise not to show it to anyone. Haha, he may have stolen it.

Do you think we're like engaged?

I'm going to post this right away so you'll get it faster.

Love,

Tania Malhotra nee Ghosh

PS—Do you think we should meet before I get married?

June 26, 1991

Bombay

Dear Tanya,

I told you Nusrat doesn't like Arjun. I told you that. You don't listen.

Today I had a really deep conversation with Anahita Boriwala. Did I tell you she has no friends? We talked about suicide and parents drinking and wanting to shave off all your hair like Sinead O Connor. She wears two plaits, you know. Even if she hadn't been fat and ugly those plaits would make her ugly. I told her at the end of our conversation that we should talk more but I didn't mean it even in the second when I was saying it.

You're thinking I'm a bitch. Except you're the one using Chhoti Bibi to get into college.

My parents had a big fight today. It sounds like such a cliché but they really have been fighting a lot. I mean, there's always a lot of yelling and shouting in my family but lately it's gotten out of control. My mom says it's because we're intelligent people who enjoy debate but I know she's not talking about me. I'm not intelligent.

I mean she doesn't say it but when she's super mad at me she can't stop herself and she says stuff like she doesn't know what she did to get a daughter like me.

Then my dad gets really mad at her and starts yelling at her and then they forget about me and I go to my room and call Arjun from my own phone line that my Dad got me for my sixteenth birthday. Which my Mom says was with her money. She keeps threatening to disconnect it.

Sometimes when they fight a lot my dad sleeps outside on the couch and sometimes I go and sleep next to him. He puts his arm around me and even though I hate the smell of whisky on his breath, I love how it feels. His stubble tickles me and his arm around me feels like nothing can get to me.

But the last time he made me go back to my bedroom. He said I was getting too old for this. What is ‘this'?

My mother locked me into my room which sounds awful but it's such a joke because I can climb the railing of the window and slip out over the top. That's the great thing about being skinny. Other than of course being able to wear whatever I want without bras.

I'm sitting outside right now, writing this. I have Arjun's cigarettes and I am going to smoke all of them so that the box is over because right now the only person I hate more than I hate my mom and my dad is him.