Fishy Chronicles 97 – The Webs We Weave (29)

Joys of school
(Photo credit: A. Peter)

At lunch I managed to sit in the chair next to Jimmy (FC96) just as Mobby lowered himself into it. The breath squeezed out of me, I became lightheaded and things blackened as Mobby’s butt pressed my chest and stomach.

“Hey!” Jimmy pushed Mobby with both hands. Mobby jumped off – too shocked to be his usual rude self. Jimmy shook me, and I took in a deep quavering breath and the room stopped looking grey. Unfortunately, the incident only excited more looks of annoyance among some of the elders, notably my mother, grandmother and father’s sisters. I ignored them. A little body pressed into my side, and I groaned. Rita and Eva, Sarojmama’s daughter – a pestilential 11-year-old, sat beside me. But in the next instant, Roma hauled Rita off her chair and flopped into it. Rita protested and tried to pull Roma off, but it looked like she was trying to budge a massive bull. In the end, Eva scooted to the next chair and Rita sat next to her sister. This was awful, like a silent inquisition, a surveillance in progress – I felt like a fly knowing a swatter was over its head.

I couldn’t ask my questions. Despite Roma disliking Jimmy she wanted to know all that we were doing. Anjali had once suggested that Jimmy might be interested in Roma and so never looked at her because he felt shy. But he talked and joked with other girls – so bashfulness wasn’t the reason for his disinterest.

Then Anjali suggested that Roma might be interested in Jimmy and was miffed by his inattention. That was an interesting point of view, so I watched the two at Sunday School, until I felt cock-eyed and decided to stop. Stopping had to do with the realization that I was overanalysing everything and clearly barking up the wrong tree.

“Masticate your food,” Jimmy muttered.

“Eh?”

“Eat! You’re attracting attention.”

I wanted to tell Jimmy that cows masticated their food, not humans, but he was probably learning a new word with all the livestock at his grandparents’ home. I could see what he meant when I looked up, so I mixed the sambar into the rice, my mouth watering with the aroma, and waited till his mouth was full. “Who’s C?” I whispered in his ear.

I acted innocent until Ashok stopped slapping Jimmy’s back. He had choked on a piece of fish and was red in the face. He blew his nose into his brother’s handkerchief, because of course he hadn’t carried one or had lost his, and gave me a filthy look. That day in the church courtyard (FC95), when Nidhi whacked me on the head, I knew who had written the love letter that dear ‘love pigeon’ Nidhi ferried about the church and school courtyards. I just could not figure out who ‘C’ was or why Jimmy was calling himself a humongous lover T and writing such rot. Anjali’s theory was that Jimmy was fronting for someone else.

I didn’t think so. Could it be the impossible had happened and Jimmy had fallen in love with someone in school?

He was grim all through his meal, though it did not affect his appetite. But I was forced to keep quiet because all the adults’ radars were trained on me now.

I used the ensuing quiet to work on my strategy. Jimmy was going to fob off every question I had. I had lost the advantage of surprise by asking him at lunch – where there was no privacy. Now he would build his defenses in anticipation of my next set of questions.

Whenever I glanced at him, he was eating stiffly, and his brother Paul’s eyes darted from Jimmy to me, forcing me to stay quiet.

Maybe I could use the telephone tonight. I had finally discovered the code – Appachan had been making a call and I was standing nearby. I had spent the rest of that day memorising it and celebrating the discovery. 

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Anjali and I couldn’t figure out why Jimmy was using the initial ‘T’.  Was he using an alphabet from his surname. Was he writing the notes to throw off anyone who’d intercept them? It was all farfetched. Why would someone make Jimmy write a note that his girlfriend might not be able to read? Jimmy’s handwriting was worse than a doctor’s.

Plus, it was too elaborate for Jimmy, who liked to charge ahead first and then think. He wasn’t middle-man material.

And then the letter explained Paul’s interest in it. Did he think his baby brother had a love interest? Paul should never know. Jimmy would tell me. In his own time. Maybe. Maybe later. Maybe never.

At the gate, while bidding them goodbye, I told Jimmy, “So you’re going to act as if there are no C and T and that you don’t know what the note is about?”

“Shhhh!”

“Why? I have nothing to hide!”

“Shhh!”

“Don’t shhh me! Anyway, Paul’s been asking me about the note.”

Before he could reply, his father grabbed his arm and hustled him into a rickshaw. As the yellow and black rickshaw hurtled down the uneven road, he looked dismayed and did not wave goodbye.

“What did you say to Jimmy?” Roma said softly, her breath tickling my neck.

I turned and walked back to the house. A few steps from the doorway, a sharp pain shot through my shoulder – Roma’s fingers were digging into my flesh. She pulled me away from the door and slammed me against the wall, her arm jamming my throat.

“You idiot. You dare fool around with me!” Roma thundered in my face, her breath smelling of sambar and pickle. There was a bit of curry leaf stuck between her bared teeth.

There was nothing for it… I pinched her breast hard. She screamed and let me go, grabbing her chest but feeling embarrassed to rub it. I darted into the house, and looked for a hiding place. None was available, so I sat near Pilipochyan, and pretended to be interested in a Malayalam magazine. Roma rushed in and stopped. I looked up nervously. She gave me a dirty look, but seemed intimidated by Pilipochyan’s presence, especially when I held out the magazine and pointed at an article. Roma marched off. She would be waiting for me, sometime and somewhere, probably with her minions.

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“I tell you, Anjali, he’s hiding something! He’s probably T!”

“No way! There’s no girl in school who could make him interested in her.”

“What rubbish. There are hundreds of pretty girls in school. It’s a paradise for boys.”

“But you know Jimmy, na. He doesn’t like ordinary girls.”

“Kuch bhi. He talks only to ordinary girls.”

“Why are you whispering? And why are you calling me so late at night?”

“Everyone’s sleeping and I’m not supposed to be using the telephone here. They’d skin me if they knew I was making a long-distance call. Why haven’t you been replying to my letters?” My cries of desperation in longhand, I wanted to add.

“Er, I was busy.”

“Doing what?”

“You know Trevor?”

“Trevor Mascarenhas, your brother’s friend?” And Anjali’s latest crush.

“Yes. He’s got a new girlfriend.”

“What! Who’s your source?”

“It’s not important.”

“Of course it is.” It was the difference between reliable and unreliable gossip.

There was silence on the other side, so I asked, “How is Anita taking it?” Anita was Trevor’s erstwhile girlfriend. She was a year our senior in school and only became our focus because she and Trevor had become close walking up and down the shady corners of the school during recess. Their break-up had been a hot topic for days in our class, because many girls had a crush on Trevor. And, unfortunately for Anita, she was in our school bus. Not that she spoke about Trevor, although when she did speak to her friends about him it was in whispers. We tried to catch every word despite the sounds of whooshing air and Mumbai traffic coming in through the bus’s open windows. We closed the window next to us, and suffocated in the heat while listening to the whispered conversations going on in the seat in front of us. We heard snatches, mostly cuss words and expressions of sympathy from Anita’s friends.

For this privilege, we had to dislodge the kids that were already in the seat behind Anita, which led to a one-sided scuffle. One sided because we were bigger than the younger kids, although we had to get through some loud wailing and the occasional well-aimed kicks to our ankles. Things settled down soon, when the children couldn’t get a rise out of us – our efforts at eavesdropping meant we stayed hunched unresponsively in our seats for most of the long ride home.

“I think Anita has taken the breakup very well. She’s hooked up with Benny Wong.”

“What!”

“And Trevor took Sarita Kumar to Juhu Beach.”

There were too many things going on. Suddenly Jimmy was unimportant. Trevor-Sarita, Benny-Anita – the mind boggled. All the girls wanted to be friends with Benny, because he was clearly a foreigner, though his family – originally from China – had been in Mumbai for over 60 years. He was very cute and a flirt. A charmer, a girl’s boy. Anita was the unattainable hottie, and Trevor’s ex.

“So where are we on ‘T’…?” I spotted the bunch of keys dangling from Appachan’s drawer. He rarely forgot them at his desk. At night he dropped the keys into the top drawer of the chest of drawers in his bedroom. But tonight they were innocently stuck in a keyhole. I pulled the drawer’s handle – it was open. I moved the lamp closer to the edge of the desk – papers, envelopes, official-looking letters, printed pamphlets.

“You’ll have to try harder with Jimmy,” Anjali said, startling me. This was easier said than done. Anyway, I had probably run up a large telephone bill for Appachan. Would he ask the telephone exchange for a bill with all the telephone numbers listed, like the cops did in American TV serials? Or maybe he’d call all the telephone numbers and verify them for himself. “Will ring you another day, Anjali.” I hung up before she could reply.

Anjali would be annoyed, but there was Appachan’s desk to be explored. I listened for a sound around the house, then used the keys to open the other drawers – files, bundles of cash – 100s and 500s and smaller ones of lower-denomination notes, a little filigreed silver bowl containing small change, a pair of spectacles. In the lowest one, I found some dried flowers sticking out of a dictionary, big fat books that seemed to be encyclopedias but were ancient telephone books, some smooth white stones that I suspected were the ones that were found in the flower pot in Sarayumama’s room and had likely been in my jhola the day I damaged Bobby (FC72, FC73), and irrevocably spoilt relations with my eldest aunt at the start of my vacation here. In the lowest drawer, there were some albums, yellowing documents and leaves of loose paper, and… I gasped, feeling the adrenaline rush through me faster, the photographs from the loft – the ones of the handsome Sardar and Sarojmama (FC69, FC70). How had Appachan been able get up into the loft and retrieve them?

I pulled out the envelop and looked at the photos. They were a handsome couple. The colours in the photos were fading. There were some photos taken in a garden against a large flower bush. Sarojmama had a large red rose behind one ear and her long plaited hair rested on one shoulder. There was a photo of them holding hands with the Taj Mahal in the background, just one photo – a polaroid snap. I had a strange sad feeling looking at the pictures. I looked at them over and over, wondering what had happened to their romance, why they hadn’t stayed together. I put the pictures back into their cover reluctantly and then saw the letters addressed to Sarojmama, tied in a bundle, right at the bottom. I tugged one out from the side, but it was likely to tear. I knelt on the ground and reached in. My heart jerked at the sound of a door opening.

I shoved the envelop and its photos back on top of the bundle of letters and moved the rest of Appachan’s papers over them and locked the drawer as quietly as I could. I stayed under the table, switched off the lamplight hurriedly, and gently slipped the key back into the top right-hand drawer of Appachan’s desk. I wanted to come back and read the letters, but I didn’t want to risk taking Appachan’s keys – he would raise hell if he couldn't find them. But it was unlikely this opportunity would come again. I wondered if I should have kept one of the photographs, if I needed them. For purposes of blackmail or to put my aunt in her place in an argument.

The door to the bathroom in the corridor opened, and closed noisily. I keyed the locking code back into the telephone and ran back to my bedroom.

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The narrator makes a long distance call to her best friend and is apprised of new developments. 

This is a work of fiction and is the latest episode of the Webs We Weave series. You can read the earlier ones here   FC69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80,81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96)

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#younglove #jimmy #sarita #trevor #juhubeach #breakup #trevormascarenhas #love #cops #americantvserials #crimeserials #americancrimeserials #youngadult #fiction #keralastories #keralavillage #kerala #farmanimals #youngboy #younggirl #teenager #teenageescapades #teenagestories #fishychronicles #websweweaveseries #websweweave #bombaymalayalis #syrianchristianmalayalis #syrianchristians #bestfriends #friends #breath #rita #oldphotos #roma #oldromances #oldloves #brokenlove #lovestories #mol #paul #jimmy #oldphotos #loveletters #teenagelove #teenromance #teenagers #adolescence #romance #failedromance #sardarji #sardar #tajmahal #love #polaroid #silverbowl #filigree #coins #money #cash #bull #youngadultfiction #mumbaitraffic #mumbai #mumbailove #loveletters

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Fishy Chronicles 96 – The Webs We Weave (28)

As soon as we reached home and the pleasantries were done with, Sam Uncle went into my grandfather’s study and called his home.

I hung around the sitting room windows, while the ladies stood at the doorways. Soon enough I heard the steady ringing of a bicycle bell and then saw the lanky raggedy figure on it careening at top speed into our gate. I held my breath. He was able to brake just before he hit the gate’s grills. He hopped off, wheeled the ancient bicycle inside the compound and shouted.

“Mol, come out!”

“Appa, I’m going to meet Jimmy.”

There was sudden silence in the room. Jimmy, aka Chacko, was Paul Mathew’s (FC95) younger brother. I was always nervous meeting him because my family felt there was something going on between us because he was a boy. There wasn’t. But I got all the crazy looks. We had been good friends as children and Anjali and I hung around with Jimmy and his friends at recess in school. Plus we both didn’t care for his cousin Nidhi. We had the same friends, and almost the same enemies – Jimmy didn’t waste time hating anyone. Roma and Jimmy never saw eye to eye and she was annoyed whenever I preferred him to her.

I waited for Appa’s reluctant nod but kept moving to the main door. There was shock on Roma’s face and growing anger.

But Jimmy, a pet name he coined for himself as a child, was already at the door, dirt stains on his orange t-shirt and beige pants, a dark smudge on his pink face and a big smile for everyone. He marched in shook hands with all the elders, cracked a joke, and then grabbed my elbow.

“Mol is going to show me Kunjappachan’s animals… next door. We’ll be right back.”

“Can I come?” Rita demanded, blocking our way, and backed by some of the smaller kids.

“Say no, Jimmy,” I murmured.

“Sure, but I’m going to look for the snake that is behind the cowshed, where the manure is piled. You will have to dig holes in it with me. Are you okay with that… walking in it and carting the manure away?”

There were loud sounds of disgust from the children, and chuckles from the adults. The kids couldn’t back away fast enough. Only Rita looked suspicious and held her ground.

“Get the koondali (hoe),” Jimmy told her. She ran towards the kitchen to get to the shed outside, where we stored the farming tools. “Get two, Rita, and meet us at Kunjappachan’s cowshed,” Jimmy shouted at her back. He pulled my hand and we rushed down the steps of the house. He picked up his bicycle, and sat on it. I opened the gate and closed it after him, and sat sidesaddle on the back seat and we waved at the crowd at the windows. It was amazing how suspicious young people were too – my cousins were at the windows watching us.

Jimmy cycled at a furious pace, and past Kunjappachan’s place. He stopped at the side of the road further along. “Are you comfortable sitting like that?”

“Of course not.” I got off and sat astride.

“You remember the last time I took you on my bike? Dad gave me a lecture about love and arranged marriages. I tried not to yawn,” Jimmy said.

“I may keep getting the lectures for some time this vacation. I’ve got to tell you loads of stuff – a lot has happened this last month and a half. By the way, you holding my hand will tip them off balance.”

Jimmy laughed. “Do they really think we’re going to get married? I’m only 15. I have at least 15 or 20 years more to go.”

“Where are you taking me?”

“I’ve something to show.”

“What is it?”

“Secret. Wait for it.”

We cycled past lush paddy fields, the light glinting off the water in places, narrowly missed the speeding autorickshaws and tumbled into a ditch.

“Sorry, sorry. Are you hurt?” Jimmy asked after he pulled me up with some difficulty. I checked my dress to see if it was torn. I had heard a rip, but probably imagined it. But my left side was stained with mud from our fall. Jimmy tried to pry off the wet mud with a dried leaf. “Sorry, mol. I don’t know how we’re going to explain this,” he pointed at my clothes.

“We can tell them the truth.”

“They’ll stop you from coming out with me.” There was genuine regret on Jimmy’s face.

“I can have a wash before I go home. Tidy up my clothes.”

“Ya. Good idea. Come on.” We got on the bike, which was in cyclable shape, and sped on. I soon realised we were going to Jimmy’s grandparents’ house. I usually visited them with my parents towards the end of our vacations. But Appa visited them often.

As soon as we rode in through the open gate, both of us jumped off the bicycle, and Jimmy leaned it against the side of the house and showed me where the tap was. Most Kerala houses have at least three or four taps outside the house, mostly near the entrances.

He watched while I sluiced water over my left side, and tried to rinse away the drying stains. He brought me a grungy turkey towel to dry myself. Then he took me to his room and told me to take off my skirt, which he’d iron in another room. We closed the windows to thwart voyeurs and I handed him my skirt through the door. He returned in five minutes. Some of the stains still showed but the skirt was dry.

“Hold out your blouse and I’ll iron out the wet patches,” Jimmy said.

“You’ll burn me!”

“Let’s give it a shot.”

So I stood still, and stretched out my blouse while he tried to iron it suspended in the air. It was quite useless and so he gave up.

I knew he was an ace at ironing because his sister Marina had made him iron her clothes, until he managed to burn a nice dress. When I got to know I asked him if he had done it on purpose and he didn't answer. I didn’t know what it to make of it.

He took me to the storeroom, which was at the back of the house, and switched on the zero-watt light bulb. “Be quiet,” he whispered.

While my eyes got accustomed to the dark room, I heard squeaks. It came from the basket in the corner. He lifted the conical lid of the basket and a hen twisted her head this way and that to look at us. She allowed Jimmy to lift her and he kept her tucked under his arm, gently caressing the top of her head and murmuring to her.

“Can you hear the noise?” he asked.

“Yes. But what is it?” I couldn’t see any chicks – only eggs in the basket.

“The sounds are from the eggs. They are about to hatch.”

“That’s crazy. Are you sure?”

“Look here.” A portion of the egg was broken and a large hole had developed in the shell. “Can you see the chick moving?”

I looked in awe. I had never seen a chick hatch out of an egg. Jimmy put the hen down and slowly lowered the conical lid on her. He lifted the egg and peeled away a small bit of the shell from near the hole. We could see the chick trembling inside. It wasn’t fear, it was just the way new life happened.

The wooden doors behind us opened and Jimmy’s grandmother Kunjumaria Ammachi came in and watched us. After a few minutes, she told us to leave the eggs be. Jimmy placed the hen back on its to-be family and latched the storeroom’s doors.

Ammachi put her arms around us and listened to our chatter while we walked through the dark rooms to the kitchen. She served us tea and jackfruit chips and halwa, asked us questions, and seemed keenly interested in the family’s reactions to Rebecca and Roy’s marriage (FC92, FC93). Jimmy and I sat next to each other on the long wooden bench in the kitchen and sipped our tea.

When the phone rang, Jimmy said to his grandmother, “It will be for us.” He answered the phone and said yes three or four times. “Ammachi, I have to take mol back. Is it ok if I eat lunch there?”

A dimple showed in Ammachi’s cheek when she smiled. She nodded her head and held out an arm. We bent our heads to her lips for a kiss and I could smell the clean smell of a fresh cotton sari.

This time we cycled slowly taking in the sights of the village and when we reached Kunjappachan’s house Jimmy rode in, circled the front courtyard, rode behind the cowshed and stopped there. We waved at the aunt watching us suspiciously through the kitchen window.

“What’s going on, Jimmy?” I asked, eyeing the knee-high pile of stinking manure.

“We’ll need to say we were at Kunjappachan’s house.” He turned to face me. “We’ll come back of course, I want to see the animals here. You’ll also need to sit ladylike.” This I had forgotten. So I hopped off and walked to the front of the house. In a minute, Jimmy was with me and I sat sidesaddle behind him. We had to keep up appearances, there’d be any number of hawks at the windows waiting for us to re-appear.

In the end, our lone hawk turned out to be Rita – who was furious at us for not waiting for her. She claimed she had dug herself a hole in the cow dung behind the cowshed.

“Who told you to do that!” Jimmy said aiming to look shocked, although one side of his mouth twitched. Chuckles sounded behind us.

“You said there was a snake there!”

“But snakes are dangerous. You should have let me come and take care of it.”

That stumped Rita… but just for a few seconds. “But you weren’t there. I waited and waited and waited!” her voice shrill.

“Are you sure you went to the right place? I was there and didn’t see the hole… Do you think the snake filled it up? And normally you’d stink the place up if you were mucking about with manure.”

Roma stepped forward her arms akimbo. “Where were the two of you? You said you’d be next door but weren’t.”

“You were there with Rita?” Jimmy asked.

“No.”

“So basically you don’t know.”

Roma’s mouth flapped a bit, not knowing what hit her. Jimmy turned to Rita, “The truth is mol and I waited for you, but you took too long to show up. So I took her home to show her a hatching egg. I’m sorry, I had no patience. But if you like, we can go now and look for the snake. The snake may have gone off by now, but there may be some large worms.”

“Jimmy…” Sam Uncle said, shaking his head but his eyes dancing and his lips closed tightly – probably trying to rein in a laugh. My eyes darted to Paul and there was a cool look in them, no sign of a smile. I never had a chance with him anyway. Life was for living, and I’d rather do it looking at eggs hatching and falling in ditches with his cooler brother.

“I would have liked to look at the eggs too,” Rita said throwing a cold look at me. I suddenly realised I wanted Rita on my side… always.

“Yes, Jimmy, all of us would have,” Sarah said, leaning against the doorjamb of the dining room, smiling mischievously at Jimmy who looked away and blushed.

“Next time then,” he muttered.

Rita and Roma glared at Jimmy but he sat on the arm of the sofa his father was seated on. When he pointed at the stool next to him, I felt a hand pull my blouse from the back and I was hauled into the dining room. Amma ordered me to set the table for the guests, and Rita and Roma soon followed me.

                                                            *****

The narrator is spending the summer vacation with her grandparents in Kerala and an old friend drops by for a visit and serves up some intrigue. 

This is a work of fiction and is the latest episode of the Webs We Weave series.
You can read all the episodes here FC69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80,81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97)

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#younglove #jimmy #love #youngadult #fiction #keralastories #keralavillage #kerala #animalstories #eggs #hens #snake #worms #cowdung #cow #cowshed #ditch #bicycle #youngboy #younggirl #teenager #teenageescapades #teenagestories #fishychronicles #tea #websweweaveseries #websweweave #bombaymalayalis #syrianchristianmalayalis #syrianchristians #bestfriends #friends #hawk #sidesaddle #sari #freshsmell #rita #keepingupappearances #rebecca #roy #marriage #rita #roma #cousins #family #school #recess

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Fishy Chronicles 95 – The Webs We Weave (27)

 

A shadow fell on me. I belatedly realised it was a cloud.

My legs felt leaden but I pushed myself to put one foot ahead of the other. I felt I was crawling, but reached Appa’s side in a matter of seconds. I forced myself to look at the fair man standing next to Sam Uncle. He was handsome as hell, especially with his black hair slicked back. Sam Uncle’s son Paul Mathew took in my slow plod expressionlessly. His equally handsome cousin Ashok Thomas, who had a fan following (male and female), in school, smiled, looking embarrassed.

Some weeks ago, my cousin Roma, her best friend Serena Mammen, and I were watching a group of boys from a corner of our church’s compound in Mumbai. We mimicked an intense conversation, but our eyes and ears were on the group of boys-cum-men in front of us.

Evelyn John, a senior at school and from another parish, had started coming to this church and was often seen in the company of these boys.

“Why is she hogging our guys?” Serena groused.

Had the boys ever been ours in any sense?

“Beauty Verghese said Evelyn already has a boyfriend in her church. She was found out, but is still seeing him. Why is she coming here now? Do you think she’s broken up with him?” Roma said, looking at Serena.

“Is Beauty related to Kurian?” Serena said, referring to the tallest skinniest boy in the group.

“One of those guys is her brother or cousin," Roma said.

“Isn’t Ashok’s sister in your class?” Serena looked at me.

“No.”

Roma poked me. “She is!”

“No. She’s not,” I said with feeling. Nidhi made my life a living hell. She had hated me for no reason for years, had managed to isolate me in class, and made snide jokes behind my back.

“Why so hoity toity?” Serena turned her warm caramel eyes on me. It felt like a pool I could slowly drown in. Did girls like girls? Yes, they were called lesbians. I shook myself and continued to look at the boys. I saw Paul, now in engineering college, glance our way and a heavy sigh escaped me. Our eyes met and I turned around and began to walk to the other side of the church. I needed to go home and eat.

A hand grabbed my shoulder, and forced me to slow down. The arm attached to the hand quickly slid around my neck and Serena fell in step. “What happened at school yesterday?” she asked softly.

Roma was on my other side and they had me hemmed in. “Nothing.”

“I heard you got into a fight with Nidhi Thomas.”

I took a deep breath. These nosey, irritating girls. Didn’t they know a mob would set on me if I blabbed? I walked on, with difficulty. Both girls now had me in a vice-hold, forcing me to stop.

“No fight. I’m not talking to her and she and her… ‘friends’ … have been troubling me.”

“Why?” Serena asked.

“She thinks I’m interested in Ashok and warned me off.” Ashok was Nidhi’s older brother.

“Really?” Roma said with glee.

“I don’t know how she came to know this.”

“So you are interested in Ashok!” Serena said.

“NO, damn it! I’m not!”

“See, when you get so defensive it means something’s up,” Serena said.

“I agree,” Roma chimed in. They now had me pinned against a pillar near the church’s doorway. Roma started tickling me.

I laughed. I couldn’t stand it. “No. Noooo. No! Anjali likes him and I’m keeping tabs on him. But please, please, please it’s a secret.”

“She’s a Hindu and nobody would stand for it,” Roma said of my best friend.

“Who’s getting married? We just look at them. It’s not like they look back!” Those pretty, very hairy, boys only had eyes for the beautiful girls in school and in church. What chance did two 14-year-olds, that everyone looked through, stand at romance. Worse, Anjali looked Rastafarian with her curly hair, which resembled dreadlocks.

Nidhi and her group were giving me side glances and giggling. It was awful being near them. Worse, other girls had started ignoring me and keeping their distance.

Roma and Serena looked at the girls opposite us and murmured. I had been sharing my misery with Roma at recess everyday and even then my trauma didn’t lessen.

Nidhi’s pack began to swan towards us. One of the girls shoved me aside and walked into the church. I backed away.

Just then Santosh George, a boy two years my senior in school, waved at Nidhi and she went over to him. They had a short conversation and he passed her a piece of paper. She smiled like she had eaten a big bowl of custard and began making her way towards the church entrance. Most of her friends were now inside. One of them waited at the doorway. Nidhi wrestled with her fluorescent pink satchel, took out her pencil box, shoved the folded paper in and closed it.

But Nidhi didn’t notice it fall out and flutter to the ground. I walked past her and picked it up. This particular kind of blue paper note was being passed around by some older girls in school – they huddled in groups and giggled over it. Did people spray perfume on it, like in the movies? I felt a sting on the back of my head. I felt another harder blow and whirled around to see Nidhi’s face stretched into an ugly snarl. She hit me on the forehead, before a hand caught hers and Paul said angrily, “Stop it, Nidhi!”

Roma and Serena were now by my side, as were Paul’s friends. Roma babbled angrily at Nidhi and tried to press my forehead. I felt tears fall and pushed away. I slammed into my father.

“What happened, mol? What happened?” He tried to pry my hand off my forehead, but I couldn’t stop the pain in my temple or stop crying. He held me close and around me there were sounds of people coming nearer and questions from the parishioners. Serena and Roma were taking turns to tell Joychayan what had transpired. Appa pulled me backwards, to the side of the church, out of everyone’s view, and after a long time I let him look at my face. He touched what felt like a mountainous swelling on my forehead and I moved his hand to the back of my head to rub gently at the other nubs of pain, where that vicious, vicious girl had hit me twice more.

He massaged my head silently. My mother was by our side in a few minutes, asking questions and wiping my face with her sari pallu.

Appa disappeared soon, and Amma ordered me to stay put and rushed after him. I followed them, suddenly frightened for their well-being – Nidhi’s family were bigshots in church, and everyone either fawned over them or claimed they were related to them.

Nidhi’s father had his hands on my father’s arms and was talking to him, rather calmly considering the severity of his daughter’s crime. But my father was staring angrily at Nidhi, who was now conveniently bawling into her brother’s shirtfront. Joychayan tried to push away Nidhi’s father Joey, but seemed more interested in the conversation. Soon, Nidhi’s uncles and aunts surrounded her family and they all slid into their cars and evaporated. The remaining onlookers, mostly friends, were embarrassed at being caught watching. Joychayan made light of the incident – much to Roma’s and Serena’s indignation. Something was clearly rotten in the state of Denmark. So, so unfair.

I sat on the bench at the side of the church and felt sorry for Appa and Amma. We were as minute, invisible and powerful as an atom in the universe. And unfortunately Appa lacked even his brother’s loyalty.

Which is why I could not understand how Appa was being so friendly now to Joey Uncle’s brother Sam. They are good friends, the contrary voice in my head reminded me. But I lost my nerve looking at Sam Uncle, his son Paul and nephew Ashok, feeling guilty and embarrassed – even though I was the one who had been damaged. That word seemed most appropriate considering the overall harm Nidhi had caused me – the beating, the mental trauma, the intense humiliation. She was Satan’s spawn and I was breathing the same air as she in school, in church and as family friends… and I couldn’t do a thing about it. I fretted about her tyranny over me most days and it was affecting me emotionally. My only support was Anjali, who had a name for Nidhi – bully, or rather several – big bully, stupid bully, brainless bully, crack bully. Nidhi was scared of Anjali, and for good reason.

Nidhi, or one of her cronies, had locked Anjali into a school toilet one day, leading our class teacher to punish Anjali for loitering. Nidhi and her friends had laughed when Anjali was ordered to stand outside the classroom for the whole period.

But Anjali fought back. She locked the girls in the toilets or classroom several times after that, forcing all of Nidhi’s mean girls to be in a constant state of terror. Not just that. Their things disappeared. And sometimes they were found lying outside, on the ground below – probably thrown out of our classroom window. Even if Nidhi and her friends could see their belongings strewn on the grounds, by the time they raced down three storeys their things had disappeared. The crows took little things like sweets and shiny objects and tore apart small packets of chips and snacks, while the kindergarteners on the ground floor took whatever they could get to before the crows. Most of the KG class kiddies burst into tears and screamed if the big girls tried to prise their belongings from the little ones’ fists, pushing the KG teachers to complain to the principal.

The girls complained, and their parents did too, to the class teacher. But Anjali and everyone else denied all knowledge of what was going on. And when the parents became bold enough to approach Anjali’s parents, Narayanan Uncle, a well-known lawyer, suggested they advise their children that it was a crime to harass and beat children, even if their children were minors.

Also, Anjali’s siblings were popular in school and Nidhi soon stopped trying to bully Anjali.

Appa dragged me along with him, his arm firmly around me, and Sam Uncle and Paul fell in step.

“Feeling okay now?” Paul asked me.

“What do you mean?”

“Your head. Nidhi.”

“No, I’m not. How can I be?” I forgot how tongue-tied I got in Paul’s presence. “She’s a brute and was allowed to get away scot-free!”

Paul’s mouth tightened and his back stiffened. He hurried forward to join Ashok.

I felt something in me sink. I couldn’t remember a time when we ever conversed, and here I had driven Paul away by tearing apart his cousin. But Nidhi was someone who needed to be torn apart.

While I looked longingly at his bobbing back, my father whispered in my ear, “They are coming back with us for lunch. You know Sam is a good friend of Rajan. Your Upappan (paternal uncle) will be happy to see him.”

                                                            ******

All through our journey home I wondered how to handle things hereon. I didn’t want to spoil my relations with Paul or Ashok just because Nidhi was an unadulterated ass. We were all family friends and because of her conking me on the head with her metal pencil case relations between our families had become strained. This was why I was staying mum about how Nidhi was treating me in school.

We were never friends. I was too boyish and she too girlish and we did not care for each other from very early on.

As we got off our scooter at the house, I felt a tap on my shoulder and Paul murmured, “Hang back a bit. I need to talk to you.”

My spirits soared – what did he want with me?

I dawdled while Appa led the others into our house. I walked towards my guava tree and Paul followed. Most of my family had come into the sitting room to greet Sam Uncle and Ashok.

“What is it?” I said, trying not to sound hoarse. I felt nervous alone with Paul.

“What was in the note you read that day?”

“Eh?”

“The note you picked up in church last month.”

There was a kind of intensity in Paul. “Why do you want to know?”

He was taken aback. “Just… curious.”

“I didn’t read the note.”

“You’re joking! You spent almost a full minute reading it.”

It had taken me that long to read the six lines because of the shitty handwriting. Perhaps the reader had had to guess at things and imagine love. Perhaps that was why the notes were an ongoing affair.

“Did you forget that your cousin conked me on the head?”

“Who was the note addressed to?”

“I couldn’t make out. The handwriting was bad.”

“Bullshit! Stop toying with me. Be careful or you’ll have more to worry about from me than with Nidhi! Spill it out!”

I stared at the pink-faced fart in front of me. I couldn’t believe he was threatening me.

“Abhay sala, kuthe, kaminey. How dare you stand in my compound and threaten me. If I shout out my uncles will come and make mincemeat out of you and spread you under the tapioca trees like manure!”

I opened my mouth to recite this Bollywood-style dialogue I had just concocted. The swearing I had been practising for some weeks to lay it on whoever I could, after duly evaluating how far I could get with it of course. I closed my lips and licked them. As the air cooled my lips, I realised I was tossing away my fraction of a fraction’s chance to marry this man of my dreams. If I was an idiot and used my angry-young-woman dialogue, I would probably stay unmarried for life. Even though the voice in my head laughed at the idea and told me I had a better chance of marrying Brad Pitt, I wondered what Nidhi would do. Anjali’s voice sounded in my head, “She would act like a pathetic, whiny, sugary, twisty woman!” We had debated that often, watching older girls in action – the extra-wide coy smiles, unwavering eye contact, fluttering eyelashes, wild laughing at bad jokes, inability to smell the boy’s terrible body odour, etc, etc. Mostly it involved smiling and being constantly wide-eyed and blinking. It looked uncomfortable, but according to Anjali’s dad, who was listening to us while we watched a couple through a pair of binoculars, it would get easier in time. Anjali and I agreed he was joking.

The reason I couldn’t tell was that I was afraid of Nidhi. I had told only Anjali what was in the note. We knew it had to stay a secret.

“Well?” Paul demanded.

“Please believe me, I couldn’t read the note. The handwriting was very, very bad,” I said in a breathy baby-girl voice like Marilyn Monroe’s.

His nostrils flared, and he looked as though he was debating whether to believe me. “Who was it addressed to?”

I shrugged and began to hurry towards the main door.

In the whole minute it took me to read the note, I had chuckled at the rubbish in it but hadn’t been able to figure out who the “baby doll C” was or “your humongous lover” the writer T.

But one thing was certain. Paul knew more about the note than he was letting on.

                                                            ******

The narrator is remembering a long summer vacation at her paternal grandparents home in Kerala. Initially idyllic, the vacation soon takes a dark turn. (Please note this is a work of fiction and is the latest episode of the Webs We Weave series. You can read the earlier episodes at: FC69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80,81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94)

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