The Blue Notebook (5 page)

With Puneet unwell, I had anticipated that I would receive more of Mamaki’s attention than usual. My prediction was right, but I had failed to fully calculate its impact. “My darling, I have more time to love you now” was her way of expressing this state of affairs. I had overheard several of Mamaki’s conversations with Master Gahil and I realized that Mamaki was expected to generate the same income from the six of us, regardless of Puneet’s indisposition. One afternoon I heard Gahil say to Hippopotamus, “I know, dearest Mother Briila, how difficult it is with the boy out of commission, and I appreciate very greatly how you dedicate your life to your little ones. But you have to understand that I run a business and I have many responsibilities and obligations. Even I have had to cut back on my essentials with the boy out of action … and so, dear Mother Briila, you may have to also.” Within ten minutes of Master Gahil’s departure, Mamaki was on the street cajoling men with promises of unheralded pleasures. She doubled her money gifts to the taxi drivers to bring us business, often sweetened with a free excursion or two on our beds. We have been busy. Thank goodness Puneet is returning to work.

Initially, making sweet-cake was not something I tried to excel at. I viewed my baking as a means of survival. Man came upon my throne; I defrocked him and
boom
, all was done. Next please. However, as I matured I realized the fault in this approach.

Look at it this way. Say your mother makes you clean the clothes for yourself and your brothers and sisters. You want to get the job done as quickly as possible so that you can go and play. So you grab the clothes in your arms and run down to the river with a soap bar. You throw them in the water and clean them as quickly as possible. You wring out the clothes, throw them over the hot afternoon rocks to dry, and an hour or two later, you gather them up in a bundle and bring them back to the house. You then throw them in a bundle on the floor in the middle of the room. The clothes have been cleaned! Job done! But then how Mother scolds you. “You are not playing tonight, they are still filthy,” she screams. The slap on your face lingers long after the hunger fades from another missed supper.

Now look at it differently. The objective is the same. “Batuk, go wash the clothes.” But this time I decide to do this with excellence. (Why? you may ask. Wait and see). Off I go. I walk down to the riverbank and sort first through the clothes. I identify those with particularly nasty stains and put them in one pile, and identify those that are particularly fine and put them in another pile. I then wash all the clothes and make an extra effort with the stained ones; I am more careful with the delicate ones so that they do not tear. After an extra rinse and wringing the clothes out, I lay them on the rocks and nap for a couple of hours. I then carefully fold all the clothes, organize the trousers in one pile, shirts in another, and bring them up to
the house. “Mother,” I say, “look! I really tried to get that dirt stain out of this blouse …” Mother looks at the neat pile and cannot help but smile, squeeze my cheek (in love), and kiss my head. Furthermore, I notice an extra dollop of dahl at supper-time and harmony in the air. She says, “Darling, why don’t you go and play tomorrow. Your sister can wash clothes.”

Now you understand. In both cases I completed the task. In the first case, I had to wash the clothes twice. I was slapped and went to bed hungry. In the second case, I washed the clothes so slowly that I napped on the rocks all afternoon and went to bed with a full tummy and a kiss. I got to play all the next evening. I hate cleaning clothes (hate it) but in the second case it was less hateful than it might have been.

So too with man. On one hand, you can view my objective as being purely functional, the sole charge being to make sweet-cake without any care for its appearance or taste. Here you are! Sweet-cake—one hundred rupees.

On the other hand, say you carefully prepare the ingredients, make them enticing, colorful, and varied, and then let the student only taste the sugar one crystal at a time until he is salivating and desperate with hunger. Say you then show him how to knead the dough, and guide him to slowly roll in a little egg white, sugar, and color. He then is taught that the longer the kneading, the tastier the sweet-cake. Soon, he is relaxed and kneading away, buying more and more different types of ingredients and taking longer and longer doing it. There is a harmonious feeling from the cooking, which smells good. With all this time in preparation, he is happy to patiently watch the dough rise and wait out a longer baking time. Sometimes the baking process itself becomes so beguiling that man does not
even wait until the sweet-cake leaves the oven, as he is satisfied enough. For those who wait it out, when the sweet-cake comes from the oven, how happy they are and how grateful. The sweet-cake melts in their mouth and swamps their emotions with its warmth. They leave with smiles. Later, they return for more enchanting sweet-cake and they are prepared to pay greatly for it so that they may cook the finest sweet-cake of their lives. By enhancing the sweet-cake experience as I do, I make Mamaki so happy with me that she smiles and kisses me, gives me finer clothes, fresher makeup, and richer food. Most important of all, I end up having to make less sweet-cake overall—for I hate making sweet-cake for man, hate it.

In fact, that is how I came to write today’s note in ink. One of my favorite students comes on the same day each week, as regular as clockwork. Like many of my students, he regards me as if I were a favorite niece or even one of his daughters. Knowing Mamaki’s current predicament regarding our income, we cook the longest, most delicious (most expensive) sweet-cake you can imagine. Afterward, I brush his hair, the little that there is, and he slides on his jacket, ready to leave.

I see it in his pocket, the blue pen. I gasp. He inquires, “What is it?” I explain. He is shocked. “A simple Biro, really? You want it?” “Yes … yes, please.” “Of course, take it.” A kiss. He leaves. Hide pen in mattress. It is mine. Mamaki pours in. A pause. A gigantic smile. “Batuk—darling—you are the greatest of my loves—I do so love you.” A kiss. A sniff of her rancid body. My pen—safe.

I can hardly claim that I am exhausted as a result of Puneet’s indisposition. However, of course, I have been pretending that I am. Puneet is back at work and we are all reaping the benefits. What is more, he seems happy again, having reaffirmed his position as number one. As the only boy of the six of us and, in fact, the only long-term boy on the street, Puneet is worth two or three of us. Bakers will sometimes stand in line to wait for him; he is a magnet. He is also stupid.

Puneet has less history than I do. He came from the fields with his whole family when he was tiny; he was the youngest of the children (I am the second oldest in our family but the eldest of the girls). He told me that he was always beautiful, even as a baby, which I can well believe. He lost his family when his father was caught stealing from a building site. His father had pilfered some lumber (forty-seven planks by hand!) and resold it to another builder, and when he was caught he was sent to prison. Puneet’s mother only had her looks to support her three children with; she did not have enough money for the bus fare back to her village and so became a friend to lonely men to feed her family. One night she went out with a wealthy regular friend of hers and never returned. Puneet remembers that her friend wore a white suit and had a shining silver belt buckle and gave the children sweets whenever he came. Thereafter, Puneet was an orphan.

Perhaps it is because his parents were stupid that Puneet is so stupid. For at least a year Puneet has begged or even stolen extra favors from his clients. He told me that sometimes he just
asks them, “A little something extra, master.” On other occasions, he will take the wallet from a sleeping baker, lift a hundred rupees, and then return the wallet. Of course he always tells me; he says that when he has saved a thousand rupees he will run away to England or America. I laugh. “Probably in an airplane you buy in the Street of Thieves,” I tease him. “Ooooh, princess,” he will say, “boys with my talent make a lot of money in America. You just watch me.” He has told me this dream so many times, I know it better than he does.

Pah! The ending is always the same: Mamaki finds his hidden stash every time. Mind you, where are you going to hide bundles of money in a cell the size of a single ox? Where in your body can you hide a coil of bank notes? Does he not realize that it only takes one client to tell Mamaki and she will raid him? He is so predictable that I bet she just waits a few weeks and raids him anyway. Either way, he is always left with nothing.

What I find difficult to understand is that Puneet stays—for he does not have to. He is a fourteen-year-old boy with muscle and a beautiful way about him. He can outrun Hippopotamus, the other matrons, and Ranjit, the sadist guard. Once loose, he will never be spotted among the thousands of boys in the city. Were he to leave Mumbai, he would disappear.

In general, the only time Puneet is sad is after he has been raided and has had his cash stripped from him. That is when I say to him, “Why don’t you run—you could do it.” He always answers the same. “But, princess, how can I breathe a breath without you beside me?” He is stupid and a coward. Just as he is afraid to face freedom, he is also afraid to end the cycle he and Mamaki are caught up in. He knows that she will find his
hidden money, just as she knows he will hide it. He knows that she needs him and I guess at least that is something.

After the policemen ripped his brown hole, I thought that once he recovered, Puneet would finally be ready to run. The opposite transpired, perhaps because they ripped his mind apart too. He seems happier now than he ever has been. He is puffed up, bedecked in his scarlet, gold-trimmed sari, his pale blue eye makeup, and his cherry-red lips. I watch him draped against the entranceway of his nest welcoming a novice as if he were an old friend. I hold my breath waiting for him to lash out, but somehow he does not. Puneet’s beautiful boy body has melted into his nest. Like a piece of used furniture, he belongs there, but he forgets that used furniture can be cast out in a second to be replaced with the new.

That was last night. The world can change in a day, or even a second.

While Puneet was recovering from the policemen’s assault, Master Gahil and Mamaki had engaged in a series of quiet conversations, most of which I overheard, as neither of them has the capacity to speak softly. Although most of the talk related to the lost earnings due to Puneet’s illness, one late night, after business, when Gahil came for the night’s takings, he spoke for a long time with Mamaki about Puneet. It was clear to Master Gahil that Puneet’s advancing puberty could prove problematic, although Mamaki was less concerned.

The outcome of these meetings became clear last night. Just before dawn, I was awakened by headlamps shining into my nest. Puneet yelped as he was thrown into a dark blue van. It happened in seconds. I understand that his castration also only took seconds.

Puneet returned five days later, an empty vessel. Destruction hung over him like Father’s khukri knife poised over the swirling head of a snake trapped under his foot; the end was upon him. He had bandages wrapped across his groin. I knew, now, that he would never run away.