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My mother looks delighted at this unexpected
bonanza. ‘Top of the water tank? In the bathroom?'

He nods.

‘And how does she get there?'

‘A stool. She puts the stool in the bathroom
and stands on it and catches the rats.'

‘And then she feeds them to you for dinner?'

‘Yes, yes. Feeds me rats for dinner. From
the tank, yes.' And the chest heaves again.

My mother suddenly looks exhausted. She lifts the
top end of the mattress and tucks the cane underneath it. Tenderly,
she pulls Bomi toward her and kisses the top of his greasy head.

‘Come here, you stupid boy. Now tomorrow,
come here knowing all your spellings, understand? And if someone asks
you what you ate for dinner, say you ate rat meat, okay?'

For the rest of the afternoon she is in a good
mood, laughing even when Bomi makes a careless mistake in a math
problem.

When Bomi's dad comes to pick him up later
in the day, she kisses the boy again. Bomi smiles his open smile.
‘Thank you for the tuition lesson, aunty. Bye.'

That evening, as she is pulling me alongside her
as we go on our daily visit to her mother's house, we run into
Bomi's mother. As always, the woman looks haggard and rushed.

‘Did some maja-maasti with your son today,'
my mother says with a wink. ‘He told me you force him to eat
rat's meat for dinner every night. Said you catch the rats from
the top of the water tank.'

The woman looks shocked and embarrassed. ‘Such
a dhaap-master he is becoming. God knows where he's learning
such tall-tall stories. Probably at that school of his. I'll go
home and give him a pasting for telling such lies.'

My mother looks solicitous. ‘No, no, no
beatings. Poor chap, I already gave him some caning today for not
doing his homework. Besides, all children tell lies at this age. Look
at this one here. Same problem.'

I look at my shoes while the woman pinches my
cheeks and tells me I should be a good girl and make my mummy proud
and didn't I know how much my mummy loves me?

My mummy loves me, she loves me. Everybody tells
me so.

I know about my mother's blinding,
all-encompassing, all-sacrificing love because the neighbours tell me
so. And all my mother's friends tell me so. And the grocer who
owns the little shop down the street. And the old woman bent with
osteoporosis who lives a few streets away and whose name I never
learned. I know because everybody pulls me into private corners,
because everybody's hands, bony or strong, pull at my shirt
sleeves, everybody's eyes are sad and accusing, everybody's
mouth opens to speak the same words: Why do you treat your mother so?
Why are you just like your dad and the rest of them? Why don't
you go out alone with your mummy the way you do with your aunts?
Don't you know what a sad life she has, the poor thing?

All my life I have heard about my mother's
sad life. All my life I have known that she is a Poor Thing, somebody
to be pitied and felt sorry for. Everybody I know has told me so.

Worse, I have seen it for myself, for haven't
I witnessed that abrupt bursting into tears, the open-mouthed gasping
for air, the terrible, gulping sobs? And haven't those sobs
entered my heart like a needle, haven't they floated like black
balloons, like poison gas, into the very inner-most chambers of my
heart where they have settled like soot, darkening my days,
blackening my own feeble stabs at happiness? Haven't I watched
in wonder and dread as my all-powerful, strong mother with a tongue
that can sting as hard as the cane she uses on me, haven't I
watched her face crumple like paper under the force of her animal
grief? Haven't the sounds of her unexpected and furious sobs
made me want to slink away like a small animal, to lie down still and
quiet and pretend to be dead? No, to crave death, oblivion, just to
get away from the heart-breaking sound of her sobbing.

My mother has had a sad life and somehow, I'm
to blame.

My mother has a bad marriage and somehow, I'm
to blame. She tells me so herself, in a tirade of words that I hear
over and over again but still they do not lose their ugly power to
destroy me. You are the reason for my bad marriage, she says, and I
believe her. You can't stand to see me and him happy, she
cries, and I believe her. I didn't give birth to a daughter, I
gave birth to a snake, she says, and I imagine myself with scales and
fangs. I should've had an abortion instead of having you, she
swears, and I think she's right. All my life I will have a
wish, bright and urgent as a freshly minted silver coin: that I had
never been born. Not a death wish, not a suicidal wish but something
lazier than that—just a desire to have never existed.

Sometimes I have a sense that my mother is wrong
in blaming me for her bad marriage. I remember how, when I come home
from school, Mehroo often opens the door with the words, ‘Daddy
is in a bad mood. Go cheer him up.' Still in my green uniform,
I go into the bedroom and rub dad's head and kiss his broad
forehead and tickle his ears and rack my brains to say something
funny until he finally smiles. That small, faint smile is like a
trickle of honey dripping from his lips and then I feel an insane,
absurd sense of accomplishment.

I want to tell my mother this, how I hate it when
they have their silent fights, how hard I try to help them get along,
but her assertion is stated so flatly it brooks no dissent. Also, I
think, because she's older maybe she knows something about me,
about my secret desires and weaknesses, that I don't. And so I
say nothing.

When the neighbours, family friends, relatives,
teachers and strangers—all the people that my mother complains
to—give me advice and wise counsel, I never say a word. I look
away, I shuffle my feet, I focus all my energy on swallowing the
blood clot that forms in my throat. I use every ounce of
self-discipline to not let the betraying tears spill like the monsoon
rains. It is very very important for me not to cry in front of other
people.

It is very important to be a smart- aleck, a wise
ass, a clown. It is essential to be praised by the adults for being
sharp and witty, essential to be the first one among my peers with a
pun or a quip. Otherwise, the whole thing crumbles and falls apart.
Self control, perfecting the art of keeping a blank face, is very
important when you are a spy in someone else's country. And I
have secrets, oh yes, I have state secrets, I know things that could
topple countries, that could destroy the established order. I play
imaginary games, where I am a prisoner and bald-headed, faceless
strangers are torturing me for what I know. And still I do not speak.
To test my resolve, I pinch myself hard, bend my hand behind my back
until it hurts, stand on one foot until it begins to ache.

Finally, I am satisfied that I am up to the task
of facing my adult interrogators.

The hardest is when they say untrue and awful
things about my dad. Then, my silence doesn't feel brave and
noble. Then, my throat gets red and raw from the lump that forms in
it and I am ashamed of my silence, my cowardice. Then, I want to
scream and claw at their pious, self-righteous faces because I know
that an injustice is being done. I want to tell them the truth, about
how I have seen my father cry silently, his shoulders shaking, after
my mother has said something particularly cruel. I want to spill all
the family secrets, but my spy's code of honour will not let
me. On these occasions I feel a self-loathing so strong, it has a
taste and smell to it.

‘So will you be nicer to your mummy now, for
my sake?' some well-meaning neighbour asks me, after lecturing
me for a half-hour. ‘Promise me you will side with your mummy
against your daddy?'

Somedays, I nod. Somedays I pretend not to hear
them. All days, I mutter dark things about them to myself.

A
FTER DINNER, MEHROO AND I often go for a
walk. Around eight p.m. we leave the house and walk up to the main
road.

Then, instead of the usual left turn, we hang a
right. Dressed in their sleeveless white jerseys and plaid lungis,
the waiters at the old Muslim restaurant at the corner exhale their
bidi smoke and greet us as we walk by. This is the restaurant from
which we sometimes order mutton biryani (despite the rumour that they
use beef instead of goat meat). ‘Salaam wa'alaykum,
memsahib,' they say to Mehroo. ‘Hello, baby,' they
smile at me. ‘No biryani order in many-many days, what?'

Nodding our heads in greeting, we walk by
wordlessly without making eye contact. We are never sure if the men
are being polite or overly familiar. So we treat them the way we
treat all working-class males—we acknowledge their presence and
act as if they don't exist, in the same gesture. We show our
indifference to them, we restrict our own greetings to a curt nod,
lest they misunderstand our smiles or greetings.

I want to tell Mehroo about the cruel things mummy
said to me today but I am too scared. Even if I make Mehroo promise
not to tell, I am afraid it will slip out the next time she quarrels
with mummy. And then mummy will turn on me with that wild look that
she gets when she feels betrayed or hurt. Or worse yet, maybe Mehroo
won't mention it to mummy at all but she will remember my story
tomorrow morning when she gets ready to leave for the factory and
just before leaving she will bend down to hug me and whisper,

‘I hate leaving you all alone like this.'
And then I will feel the sting of her abandonment even more deeply
than I normally do. No, it is best not to 'tell.

Then I forget all about this because we are
moments away from the textile mill and my heart races in
anticipation. The mill is an old stone building broken up by the
tall, arched iron gates. A narrow, slanting stone ledge runs under
the dark, grated windows. I turn to Mehroo with beseeching eyes and
wordlessly, she helps me climb onto the ledge and then keeps her hand
on the small of my back to keep me from sliding backward. Holding
onto the window grates, I peer in to see a sight that never fails to
enthral me. Dark-limbed men, many with their shirts off and their
skin gleaming with sweat, work in a huge cavernous room. They look
tiny before the large, ancient machines that churn out
brightly-coloured fabric.

Sometimes, one of the men looks up and sees me and
sends a quick smile my way. Protected by the grated windows, I smile
back. But mostly, I take in the busy scene and the smell of the dye.
The sight of people working as a team makes me feel absurdly happy
for no reason I understand. All I know is that it is the same feeling
I get when I watch the workers at my dad's wood factory lift
the huge logs of timber and glide them through the various machines.
Then, I breathe in the clean, scented smell of wood and sawdust (a
smell I will forever associate with my dad) and feel the excitement
of witnessing the birth of a product, something that will be of use
in the world.

Years later, as a journalist in the U.S., I will
walk down to the newspaper's press room and feel the same sense
of joy—at breathing in the scent of printing ink, at watching a
team of men working closely yet independently of each other, at
seeing something being created—that I used to during my walks
with Mehroo.

Mehroo tugs at me. ‘Chalo, ma, time to go
home. They will be worried.'

‘Two more minutes,' I plead and
invariably, she gives in.

On the way home, she lectures me: ‘You're
getting too big now, to be watching those people everyday. People
begin to get the wrong idea…'

I'm unsure of what she means but her tone
tells me that this is an embarrassing topic. Best not to ask too many
questions.

Besides, if I don't know what she means,
then I can request her again to let me watch. As we walk home I
savour every moment of walking in the cool, breezy night, slowing
down as we get closer to the house to make the walk last longer. I
like how the world looks when the sky goes dark, I decide.

When I am older, I will go for a walk every single
night, I resolve.

When we get home, I'm still wound up and not
ready for bed. ‘Play a game with me, Mehroofui,' I say.

‘No. Everybody's getting ready to go
to bed. Time to sleep.'

‘Please. There's no school tomorrow.
Just for five minutes, please.'

She relents. She always relents.

Ah, the sound of the small, pink, hard rubber ball
rolling across the smooth stone hallway as we sit on our haunches and
roll it back and forth. I want to throw it, want to throw as hard as
the street urchins who play cricket on the main road during the
city-wide strikes, but Mehroo won't let me. The thump of the
ball may wake the other family members and anyway, the passageway is
too narrow for rough play. I may break a light bulb or something. So
I content myself with rolling the ball and soon I'm caught up
in its mesmerizing rhythm. It rolls along the length of that long
hallway, making a soft whirling sound. Given the repetitive, dull,
singular nature of the game, I have to use my imagination to imbue it
with whatever excitement or suspense I can. So I wait till the last
possible moment before I let my hand touch the sweaty, sour-smelling
rubber, trying to produce a fake lurch in my stomach by telling
myself that it almost got away from me. Or I pretend that I am a
prisoner and rolling this ball is a way to surreptitiously
communicate with the prisoner in the adjoining cell, while all the
guards stay sleeping.

Finally, my imagination fails me and I see the
game for what it is. For a second, I gain a startlingly clear picture
of myself—a bored, lonely, only child making up stories to
bring some legit-imacy to an embarrassingly tedious game. The minute
I begin to think this, I yawn. Mehroo jumps on that yawn, taking full
advantage of it. ‘Let's get up, time for bed,' she
whispers.