Babyji Read online

  “Anamika, why are you smiling?” Mrs. T. asked me.

  “Nothing, ma’am,” I said, bending my head and sneaking a look at what I had written in my notebook. I was writing what she was saying verbatim without paying any attention.

  “What was I just saying?” she asked.

  I got up from my seat and repeated the line I’d just written.

  “Good, sit down,” she said.

  I sat back down, aware that my armpits had broken into a sweat. Most teachers cut me slack because of my position as Head Prefect. I was supposed to set a good example for everyone, which I sincerely did try to do, and if I slipped they preferred to overlook it rather than make a scene. But Mrs. T. made no allowances for me and in fact tried to hold me to more exacting standards specifically because I was Head Prefect.

  When geography class was finally over I was exhausted. We had to sit through two more classes. I doodled on the side of my notebook. I drew maps of India and wrote India in the center. I anthropomorphized the map by adding curls on the states of Gujarat and West Bengal. I imagined India’s body and the map of the country liquefying the boundaries between various states so that they could overlap. When Vidur wasn’t looking I added two breasts in the bang center of the map. I was itching to go home. It had been quite a day.

  In the afternoon I sat on the kitchen counter at home with my legs dangling and watched Rani do the dishes.

  “People would say that I am doing wrong by my husband if they knew this, but I don’t think there is anything wrong. I only want to be with you,” Rani said.

  She had a husband! Of course she had a husband. I had always known. No woman lives alone, especially in a slum. But I was aghast. It hadn’t occurred to me. I had seen her sindhoor again and again and simply blocked out the truth.

  “He tells me it’s wrong for me to work in your house washing dishes. He says I should work on the construction site with him. All the other wives work with their husbands.”

  “Do you love him?” I asked. That’s not what I had wanted to ask.

  I wanted to know if she slept with him. The Hindi word for sleeping implied the physical act of sleeping. I didn’t know the word for sex in my own language.

  “I don’t love him,” she said.

  “Do you do anything with him?” I asked. I used the tone one would for a servant. I knew she would answer then.

  “You mean that sort of thing,” she said, lowering her eyes.

  “Yes. Does he do that sort of thing to you?” I asked slightly harshly.

  “Sometimes.”

  “How often? Every night?”

  “No, some nights,” she said vaguely.

  “Do you like it?”

  “No.”

  Her response had been very quick, too quick to mask her shudder. He came to my mind, an ugly man with a pitted face and filthy hands. Laughing and taking her against her will. Lifting her sari and invading her. Groaning sharply and falling asleep. Just like in a movie I had seen on TV when my parents were away. I wanted to kill him.

  “Why don’t you like it?”

  “Sometimes he hurts me.”

  “Why don’t you stop him?”

  “Then he beats me.”

  “Why don’t you leave him?” I asked.

  “I don’t have money.”

  “Are you willing to do other work around the house, like washing clothes?”

  “Yes, and I can sweep the floor,” she said.

  I was making mental notes. “Maybe you can move in here,” I said.

  “Here, Babyji?” she said.

  “That way you can earn some money and save some money.”

  “Yes. I want my own money. That’s why I asked your mother for a job.”

  She was finished with the dishes. I took her to my room and asked her to remove her clothes.

  “All my clothes?” she asked, her eyes widening.

  “All.”

  “And yours?” she asked, addressing me with the form one used for equals.

  “I’ll take mine off,” I said.

  I felt terribly young removing my school skirt and emptying my pockets of loose change and a pencil and sharpener.

  I had never before seen a woman naked like this. With India we had been under the sheets. That was more of a tactile experience than a visual one.

  Rani was thin and lissome. Thinner than I would have guessed when I saw her half covered in her sari. I could see the knob of each vertebra on her back and the length of each rib on her sides. Her shoulder blades jutted out several inches from her body. She would have looked riveting in a dress. Her hips were full, however. And her breasts were perfect.

  “What kind of things do you like?” I asked. I wasn’t sure she would understand what I meant. My Hindi was restricted to mundane and decidedly polite conversations.

  “Have you ever enjoyed yourself with your husband?” I asked, struggling to be precise.

  “He’s an animal. Don’t pollute yourself mentioning him. Women are not meant to enjoy.”

  I wished I weren’t young and inexperienced. I had no idea what to do. There was no way to find out except trial and error. And the terror of making mistakes. I wished I had paid more attention to the technical details in Vatsyayana’s book.

  Just before my mother got home I called India to apologize for not having gone over. I studied and ate an early dinner and went to bed.

  The next time we had PT I dragged Sheela to the horse riding ground.

  “I wore bloomers today,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “Doesn’t your skirt fly up when you ride?”

  “Yeah. I wear bloomers. But it’s not because my skirt flies up. That you can handle by just tucking the skirt firmly under your legs. The bloomers ensure that the saddle doesn’t pinch the inside of your thighs.”

  The horses were tended by Nepalese Sherpa boys. We called them all Bhaiyya.

  “Sameer Bhaiyya, today Sheela will ride on Mina,” I said.

  “Has she come here before? Has she paid the fees?” he asked.

  “If anyone asks, just tell them that I said she can,” I told him with great authority.

  He went to the water trough where the horses were drinking and led Mina and Sugar to us by the reins. Sameer Bhaiyya and I held Mina, and he helped Sheela up onto the horse’s back. I saw his hand support Sheela’s thigh and looked at him. But he wasn’t paying attention to her thigh. He was worried if Sheela could handle the horse. He had one hand on Mina’s rump, and in the other he held the reins. I mounted Sugar and grabbed the side of Mina’s rein. He showed Sheela how to hold the reins and how to halt the horse.

  “Ready?” I asked, looking at her.

  She nodded.

  Perspiration had broken on Sameer Bhaiyya’s face. He was letting a novice on a horse; her parents had not signed the forms. He had let another student take over. Usually the Sherpas rode with us till we knew what we were doing.

  “Bhaiyya, don’t worry,” I said in Hindi.

  Then we set off. Sugar was the kind of horse that broke into a trot in seconds. And Mina, stubborn when all alone, would easily follow him. I wished they’d do the same today. We rode in a big circle in the horse riding ground. Sugar and Mina trotted alongside each other. I held Mina’s rein for a few circles before letting go and then turned around every few seconds to see how Sheela was doing. I could see her legs squeeze the horse tightly. She was clutching the saddle with one hand and the reins with the other.

  “Don’t hang on to the saddle like that. Let go. Relax and let your body move with the horse.”

  “I am trying.”

  Sugar was galloping and out of breath now, and Mina followed by his side. They both huffed and hawed and made beastly noises. Sheela let go of the saddle. We were cruising. I could see Sameer Bhaiyya turning in small circles at the center of our big circle so that he could keep an eye on us.

  “Are you liking this?” I asked her.

  “Yes, this is something else,” she said.


  “Good.”

  “You’re something else, Anamika,” she said.

  I chuckled to myself. I felt Sugar’s reins in my hands and a sense of control. If you can make twenty miles an hour on a horse and be in control, you can make a few inches a minute with a lady and be in control, I thought to myself.

  The horses were sweating profusely. I slowed Sugar down, and Mina followed. Eventually they came to a stop. I jumped off Sugar and patted his head. Sameer Bhaiyya was all smiles.

  “I’ll help her,” I told him as he walked toward Mina.

  Sheela brought her far leg over the saddle from the front. I could see she was off balance. I lifted my hands, and she slid down, firmly encased in the circle of my hands. We patted Mina.

  “Sameer Bhaiyya, I think we should ask Sheela to salute on the horse,” I said.

  “She doesn’t even know how to get on and off. How will she balance herself?” he asked.

  “She’ll be fine.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Sheela said to him convincingly in Hindi. Then she turned to me and asked, “What do I have to do?”

  “We remove the saddle, you climb on Sugar’s bare back without your shoes and socks, you stand on his back, let your arms drop to your side, and then bring your right arm up in salute.”

  “God!”

  “If I can do it, so can you,” I said.

  “You really think so?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  Sameer Bhaiyya looked tense once more. The Sherpa Bhaiyyas hadn’t let me do this till I had been riding for six months. But he complied. He unsaddled Sugar. It was understood that it had to be Sugar, who was the most cooperative and gentle of the horses. If Sheela went crashing down, Sugar wouldn’t buck.

  “Take off your shoes and socks,” I said to Sheela as Sameer Bhaiyya unbuckled the belt from under Sugar’s belly.

  Her feet were small and white. They were well kept.

  “First we’ll just make you sit on the horse,” Sameer Bhaiyya said to her in Hindi.

  She nodded.

  Without saddles, horses’ backs are smooth and slippery. It was a production just getting her up there. Once she had mounted and was sitting firmly on Sugar, we told her to stand up slowly. Sameer Bhaiyya and I stood on either side. We supported her legs and held her hands. I realized I was touching Sheela’s leg, but I was focused on getting her to balance. Her foot slipped, and she fell back on Sugar’s back.

  “Oow,” she yelped.

  “No, that’s fine, just do it again. You can’t get hurt. We’re both here. It’s not that high.”

  She tried again. This time she made it. The heels of her feet pressed on Sugar’s spine, and her toes curled on his back. We let go but stood by her side.

  “Now salute,” Sameer Bhaiyya said with enthusiasm.

  I didn’t watch her palm come up against her forehead or her thumb curl inward. I looked up at her legs and saw her bloomers. They stuck to her flesh where her legs came together and seemed like transparent cellophane paper.

  “Excellent,” Sameer Bhaiyya said clapping, his shapely Nepali eyes gathering into a smile.

  We helped her down, and I wondered how I had become more corrupt than twenty-year-old Sherpas who had grown up in the mountains.

  “Thank you for taking me horse riding,” Sheela said as we walked back to class.

  I nodded. My mind was elsewhere, weighing the pros and cons of having one more affair, with someone my own age, a girl without a husband or a son. A girl who was neither a servant nor an elder. Someone more or less my equal.

  “When you climbed that horse I looked up and saw your bloomers,” I said, making up my mind on the matter.

  On the way home in the bus I decided that three was the right number. With two affairs one was torn between two simple choices. There was something very linear about it. I was reading a popular book on chaos theory which said that three implied chaos. I wanted chaos because then I could create my own patterns with it. I saw the beautiful fractal diagrams in the book and could see Sheela and India and Rani inside one of those diagrams, getting smaller and smaller, the pattern repeating endlessly. I closed the book feeling sure I was doing the right thing with my life. Chaos was modern physics, it was the science for today.

  V

  All Men Are Alike

  Delhi is a dark city. The evening sky sags with heavy dust. Fumes the strength of twenty cigarettes burn your lungs every day. The night air is thick—nothing can be seen. Things happen in the dark. Men are killed. Their cries of anguish go unheard. If it is winter, the mornings are covered with fog, and corpses are discovered only after the shroud lifts at ten. Women are raped in the parking lots of movie theaters, often by many men in one night. They gather their torn dupattas and go home to avoid public scandal. Delhi’s crime, everyone complains, has gotten worse. This is not true. In Delhi nothing changes.

  When I was seven there was a kidnapping scare. Children were stolen and large ransoms demanded. If the parents did not pay, then the child’s ear or his little finger would arrive in a parcel a few days later. I was warned not to talk to anyone. Before long I was not allowed outside the house unless an adult family member was with me. If I complained about being locked in the house, my parents simply took me to wherever they were going. I developed a predilection for people thrice my age. For adults who were my parents’ friends.

  After a few years the kidnappings abated. People became less paranoid about their kids. I was allowed on my bicycle during the day. I celebrated by biking on the weekends. I never noticed that the city was polluted, turning my lungs dark, infesting my bronchial passages.

  School was already an important part of my life. It became important to my social life, too. After I decided to add Sheela to my list of lovers, I started to work toward my goal. I would use my academic reputation in conjunction with my official authority to complete my project. I decided to offer her help in mathematics and physics. It would be easy for me to make an excuse to my parents, since they knew that sometimes seniors stayed back after classes for extracurricular activities. After school hours, Sheela and I could have the classroom to ourselves.

  “You’ll really teach me? I can’t understand a word of what Mr. Garg says in class,” she said after she had found on Tuesday that she had bombed the test from the previous day, again.

  “Yes. It’ll help us both. I will understand things better, too.”

  “Okay.”

  “Tomorrow, then?” I asked.

  “I will ask my parents and call you at home to confirm.”

  “Call by nine. And tell your parents that we have to practice for Sports Day.”

  “Right,” she said, winking. As soon as someone is involved in lying because of you, your association with them takes on a slightly underworld shade of dark. Things become possible that were not possible earlier. If Sheela made excuses she would automatically feel that what was happening was wrong, and if she felt it was wrong she would do something wrong to cash in on it. Not that I thought anything was wrong. But she did. And what she thought was all that mattered.

  On the bus ride home I pulled out my school diary. It had a blue plastic cover with the school motto etched on it. In the diary we would write the date and then the homework given that day. I wrote Sheela as my homework for the next day.

  I also thought of Rani and India. I realized that with three lovers, I needed a set of rules to follow. It would be wrong to give one of my lovers more time than the others. As long as I saw all three of them equally, it would be fine. According to ancient myths, when Kunti had heard from Arjuna that he had brought something home, she had said simply, “Share it equally with your brothers.” And Draupadi, the bride he had earned at the archery contest, came to be the wife of all five Pandavas. They laid down rules on how to share. They would all have her equally, and she was not to be disturbed if she was with one of them.

  When I got home, Rani was squatting at the front door waiting for me.

  “Wha
t’s the matter? How come you’re early?” I asked. She looked deathly ill.

  “He beat me, little mistress,” she said and burst into tears.

  I stepped closer to her and slipped my arm under hers. She moaned.

  “It hurts,” she said.

  I put my hand into my skirt pocket, took out my keys, and unlocked the door. I gingerly led her to my bedroom.

  “Take off all your clothes,” I said and proceeded to remove my school shoes.

  Rani had stopped crying, but her eyes were still wet. She was unraveling her sari very slowly. Her pallu fell from her shoulder, and I saw black marks on her back. I unhooked my school skirt and let it fall to the floor. Then, stepping over it, I moved closer to Rani.

  “Just stand still,” I said.

  She let go of the half-undraped sari and looked at me. I lifted it from the ground and proceeded to remove the rest. Then I untied her petticoat from her waist and let it fall to the floor.

  Her legs were blue. There were bruises and scrapes along the entire length of her thighs. I touched one spot softly with my finger. “Ooww,” she let out.

  She was still wearing her blouse. I unhooked it and removed it slowly from her arms, taking care not to bend her arms too much. They had the same bruised look that her legs did. Seeing her injured skin filled me with feelings I’d never had before. Murderous and tender at the same time.

  “Lie down,” I said.

  “There?” she asked, motioning to my bed, her face taking on the look of a servant, of one who mustn’t overstep bounds.

  “There,” I said forcefully, in the tone used for giving orders.

  She lay down. I went to my bathroom and got a bottle of antiseptic and some cotton wool. Then I sat on the edge of my bed, only half-clad myself, applying the wet swab to her wounds.

  “You’re not going back,” I said.

  “He’ll kill me if I don’t.”

  I hadn’t thought before I’d spoken. It wasn’t up to me to keep her in the house. Moreover, if he came for her he could cause trouble. My mother would be against risking the wrath of a violent construction worker from a site next door. The entire colony of workers would be up in arms outside our house. There would be a riot. Delhi hardly needs an excuse for a riot.