How do you break free from fear within the family?
“I knew that the brothers were still my friends even though they too had become stars. I knew they were smiling at me from the sky along with Ma, but still, I missed them a lot. I couldn’t stop crying for days. Illustration: Ita Mehrotra
“Hello, Didi?” I run into our bedroom and grab the phone that sits on the table between our beds. Didi went off to university a while ago, but her bed still has her patchwork kantha, just like mine. Ma had got the two blankets stitched for us from her old saris the year before she became a star. Our beds still smell of Ma.
“How did you know it was me?” I can hear my sister smile. She sounds so much like Ma, except when she sings. “I’m just around the corner! Are you all packed? I should be there in one… two… no, exactly three minutes!”
“Ek, dui, teen! One, two, three! Bhooter Raja dilo bor!” I sing from Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne. Quite out of tune, as always. I’m the one who inherited Ma’s tone-deafness while Didi had got Baba’s deep Tagore-Song voice. “Oof, that’s ENOUGH!” laughs Didi. I can totally imagine her covering her ear with her free hand. Then, as if to say sorry, Didi hums a line too. “Jobor-jobor teen bor, ek dui teen!” Totally in tune, as always. She hangs up.
My favourite Satyajit Ray song seems pretty perfect right now, as I start packing my Dora case. It does feel like I’ve got three blessings – though not from the King of Ghosts, as in the song. Well, at least two amazing, jobor-jobor blessings. Number One – Didi is coming home for dinner after a very long time. Number Two – we are going on a holiday together! Not terribly far – I’m going to spend a week in the sunny seaside apartment that Didi and her best-friend Rahnuma share. It’s in a place called Seven Bungalows. They live in a very tall building, not a bungalow at all, but it has a lovely garden with orange swings overlooking the greyish sea.
“They live in a very tall building, which has a lovely garden with orange swings overlooking the greyish sea. Didi has been trying to take me away for a stay-over all year, and Baba has finally said yes. Her road is lined with colourful cafes, ice-cream parlours, flower shops, pet-grooming salons, and restaurants that stay open late and play all kinds of music – even karaoke!” Illustration: Ita Mehrotra
Didi has been trying to take me away for a stay-over all year, and Baba has finally said yes. Didi’s neighbourhood is not at all like the part of Navy Nagar where we grew up. Her road is lined with colourful cafes, ice-cream parlours, flower shops, pet-grooming salons, and restaurants that stay open late and play all kinds of music. They even have karaoke nights! I’m very excited to spend a week there with Didi and Rahnuma.
I really like Rahu, though the first time I saw her I thought she was a little scary. I met her on Didi’s 21st birthday. We had all gone to the white building where my grandmother lives with other nice old ladies. The first thing I noticed about Rahnuma was the Kaali on her forearm, with a necklace of dead men’s heads and a spikey blood-red tongue. Along with the fierce tattoo, Rahnuma had reddish hair broken into thick ropes of jata. But unlike Goddess Kaali, Rahnuma is not fierce at all. She has the biggest smile, and always smells of sandalwood. When our grandmother had offered to use a bottle of coconut oil and a bucket of reetha bubbles to rescue Rahnuma’s matted hair, Didi had got quite upset. “They are dreadlocks, Dimma, not jata, and her hair is perfectly clean!” she had cried, while Rahu simply smiled her calm, soft smile, without a word.
I’m happy that Baba had, after a whole year, agreed to let me stay over with Didi and Rahu, though the reason he did so is such an unhappy one. It was only when I got so very, very sad two weeks ago and wouldn’t get out of my bed, that Baba thought a change of place might be good for me. I was sad because my friends Akshansh and Abhay had got into a terrible accident while they were bicycling over to my place. They were run over by an army officer’s wife while he was showing her how to drive their new car. Of course I knew that the brothers were still my friends even though they too had become stars. I knew they were smiling at me from the sky along with Ma, but still, I missed them a lot. I couldn’t stop crying for days. So Baba finally called Didi.
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“Nikki!” Didi walks in briskly, her boy-cut hair (as Dimma calls it) glossy as always. “Aren’t you too old for Dora? I must remember to get you a new case. Hey, have you packed your favourite books?”
“But I’m only going for a week!”
“Yes, but what if you decide to stay longer?” Didi smiles. “And better pack Ma’s kanthas too. Bombay can get quite cold in January.”
I add Heidi and Abol Tabol to the pile, and the beautiful Harry Potter set that Abhay and Akshansh had given me on my birthday.
“Oh, do make sure you take your games too… Now, let me check about dinner.” Didi pops out of the room as quickly as she’d popped in.
Didi is right. I might as well take my Trivial Pursuits, UNO and Snakes and Ladders to her place. These were Ma’s favourite games with me, but Baba never plays them anyway. In fact, he hardly watches any films or shows with me either. Sometimes we do watch “I Love Lucy” because Ma loved that show, but he never laughs out loud even when Lucy is tummy-splittingly hilarious. Come to think of it, Baba pretty much stopped smiling too, after Ma became a star. It’s not like he is super grumpy, but he’s just not the smiley kind. Ma used to tease him that he lost his sense of humour in Car-Gill.
I don’t know what kind of a car that was, and why it made Baba all serious, but I suppose he did lose his sense of humour somewhere. I remember the time Didi dressed up in his three-piece suit for fun, and I wore my best party dress, the fluffy one I’d inherited from Didi – which she had not even worn once, by the way. It was a little too big for me still, but I loved it because it was blue, Ma’s favourite colour. And it had lots of sparkly bits on it. Giggling together, Didi and I started waltzing around our room. That’s when Baba walked in. He was furious. “You’re not a boy, Sharmila!” he yelled, and poor Didi got a terrible thrashing that night.