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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