The Laughing Link

Nirupama Dutt's story for a friend of her youth

When one is feeling just a wee bit lost, lonely and low, then just delving into one’s past and reliving happy moments can well boost the spirit. I find myself doing this all too often. I go back to the days that were full of laughter and more often than not start laughing as I recall them.
In the hubbub of the urban jungles, laughter has indeed become a rare commodity. Thus, some body-and-mind healers have started organising laughter workshops where people can laugh their hearts out. My research on laughter says that nothing can quite match the quality of the laughter of youth and the link of laughing together is indeed a strong one. The purest form of laughter thrives in friendship, never have I laughed so well, and so much as I did in the company of my female friends in the good old days.
So during a recent visit to hometown Chandigarh, I was shell-shocked when I learnt that my friend Ritu had developed a serious medical condition and it could mean anything, any time. My first selfish reaction was that it could not be because we still had some more laughing to do. The next thought was that her daughter was much too young. Then I reasoned to myself that cancer is now curable. But I kept putting off my visit to her. We hadn’t met for many years and I found it difficult to face the situation that was suddenly no laughing matter.
I recalled how we laughed when we pocketed the coins left by our teacher of journalism, Mr Tara Chand Gupta, as tip for the waiter in the university coffee house so that the afternoon cup of tea was ensured. During our month of training in Delhi’s Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg we made it to the World Book Fair at Pragati Maidan. For this we took a crazy detour across the railway track and crawled under a back-gate to save spending a rupee and a half on the entrance ticket. How we had laughed at our own wild feat. Once roaming around in the inner circle of Connaught Place, some silly sight triggered our laughter and we laughed for nearly an hour.
And here I was bracing myself on how to meet her under these uncalled-for circumstances. Well, I did go and there I found Ritu at her charming cheerful best. Chemotherapy had taken its toll on her beautiful shock of auburn hair but with a colourful scarf tied on her head there she was holding forth on her recent reading. Playing the ideal host, she was arranging a cup of tea for this one and a cold drink for that one. When I begged off a drink because of my blood getting a bit too sugary, she let out that old belly laugh of hers and said, “Ah! What alluring things we talked of in the past! And now we talk of diabetes and cancer!” That got me laughing too.
As long as there is laughter, there is hope. I know one day we will be sitting together and laughing our guts out as I tell her, “Ritu! You clever girl. You have beaten the big C too.”



Post script: And she did beat the Big C by going away with a smile on a cold day in January some years ago.

Lady from Cambellpore

A painting by Prem Singh



A story by Nirupama Dutt

She looks ancient. She may be seventy or even eighty. Her wrinkled face, yellowing white hair, broad frame and sagging breasts make it difficult to pinpoint her actual age. She squats on the floor of the bus shed, her legs draped in a salwar wide apart and her flabby belly hanging in the middle, waiting for a bus.
She grumbles as she waits, cursing the buses for their erratic habits. She seems to know these buses well. She is going about all the time in buses. Sometimes to the grain market to get her groceries. Or to her daughter's house. Or to her nephew's house and to reach there she has to change two buses.
She carries on her monologue, oblivious of the people around. Her Punjabi is not of the local dialect. She speaks in sing-sing notes and a lingering drawl peculiar to the Punjabi spoken in West Punjab, left behind in Pakistan. My mother used to speak just thus till we teased her out of it.
I interrupt her monologue by asking her where she comes from because her accent is familiar. She is very pleased that her boli has been recognized and says with pride that she comes from Campbellpore and is overjoyed to know that I have a distant association with her land.
After that she all nostalgia. Campbellpore was like this and it was like that. They had a big house there ad plenty of cattle. Those were good times. She is scornful of Chandigarh. This is no place to be in but what can one do. Her Campbellpore she says was the real Punjab. The partition snatched away all her joys.

Her ramblings are interrupted once again by a woman, obviously from her neighbourhood, who asks her if she is going to the grain market and if she can bring some vegetables for her. The lady from Campbelpore gives a curt `no' and turns to me once again.
See what kind of people one has to meet here? They will talk to you only if they want something. Campbellpore was different. The people there were good. Whether they were Muslims or Hindus. They were the real Punjabis. Here the folks are so mercenary. Her daughters-in-law are from these parts. And what mean wenches they are! They have snatched away her sons and now want to polson her. So she stays separately in the annexe and cooks her
own food lest they poison it.
And then it is to Campbellpore again. The fields of corn, sugarcane and `saag'. The Muslim farmers were so good. We could go to their fields and take what we wanted. They turned bad after the partition. They got our houses and cattle. We had to leave our land to them. And, she adds in a hushed tone, the `Angrez' caused it all.
The buses will not ply in the city today, we learn. There have been clashes and some buses have been burnt.
The lady from Campbellpore is worried again though she decides to walk down a distance with me. It was just like this, those days. She has seen it all. She has known death and loss. Hed `Lalaji' was killed in the riots of 1947. She calls her husband `Lalaji' because she is not shameless like her daughters-in-law. Who call their husbands by their names. What have her daughters-in-laws seen of life! They have youth and think it will last forever. Their brothers and nephews are alive so they think there is no death!
She is angry with everyone –her daughters-in-laws, the partition, the people who kill and loot. Only her sons are good but poor fellows they are in the hands of the witches they have married. And now buses are being burnt. People are being killed and there is curfew at nights. She shudders saying that it is so much like that time when a bullet went through `Lalaji's chest and she had to leave her Campbellpore.
She trudges along with me, looking sometimes to her left and sometimes to her right. Her wrinkles look puzzled. What is all this happening to Punjab again? The `Angrez' have long left. So who is the culprit now? This is the only answer she has sought so far. Till now she thought she knew everything.
As we part she tells me that if I come to know of the culprit. I must tell her. And then adds that she hopes she will not have to leave Chandigarh as she left Campbellpore. Her daughter-in-laws would only be too glad to see her off. But she is old now. After Campbellpore she lived in Amritsar for a few years and then came here. She is too old to leave Chandigarh. And for a moment the city becomes as dear to her as her Campbellpore.

Playing Ellie Henderson in Delhi

A playful little tale by Nirupama Dutt

I reached there carefully watching every jump of the meter of the auto-rickshaw. Those were the freelancing days in Delhi I was going to a party held in celebration of a prestigious award to a journalist friend who had gone a long way from the wooden benches of the Department of Journalism in Panjab University.

I had known that the function would be a grand one, but had I known just how grand it would be, I would have stayed home which was a mezzanine-floor room with a bathroom without a door.

Fun and frolic in a known familiar crowd is fine, but grand parties studded with the rich and the famous or even the unknown have always scared me.
At 14, I was on a holiday with my brother in a tea garden in Assam. Those were the days of Burra Sahibs and the Memsahibs. I tried to escape a party which was being forced upon me by my brother and mother with a view to develop my social graces for we were then members of ``impoverished aristocracy’’. I swallowed a jug full of saline water hoping that I would fall sick and would be excused from the ordeal. But I digested it all and ended up having a very good time because it was a ‘bohemian’ theme.

I though such an exercise had ended when the fight against social graces was won with studies and a rough-tough job. And even if some in the family still liked to consider them selves the proud impoverished aristocrats, I was a worker in a newspaper claiming night allowance and getting a bonus every Diwali.

But no it is not so easy to escape it all and there I was at a party once again. There was a good enough reason though. Only a few weeks before I had nearly been given up by an artist friend because I did not land up at her award celebrations. Never having received an award I could be dumb once, but not twice to the sensitivity of awardees.

Since 14 the results of the few odd parties of the kind had been always the same. While others had their fun and games, I ended up making polite conversation to some lonely old lady: And I had felt that it would have been better to stay home and talk to my mother who was both old and lonely and then I could also be impolite at times.
But there I was again and being heralded into a palatial house near the Lodhi Gardens by a Gurkha Durban, I suppressed the desire to run and take a bus back to my room. Passing the exquisitely carved Chinese screens in the lobby, I entered the hall which belonged to aristocracy that was not impoverished.

There were chandeliers hanging from the ceiling and on the floor were Persian carpets and tiger skins. I had read of Cinderella’s glass slippers, but my eyes popped seeing a three-piece sofa of cut glass and silver.
There was no going back now for this was something to tell my mother who still proudly displayed on the dinner wagon a few odd wine glasses, a decanter with a chipped top and a pair of candle-stands.

Walking from the long hall to the lush green lawn strewn with rose petals and a tall jasmine garland wall on one end, I know that what my role would be that evening. I would be playing Ellie Hendreson straight out of the chapters of Virginia Wolf’s ``Mrs. Dalloway’’. Ellie is the poor cousin, out of place in an all-wrong dress who stays on, however, to report every detail to her ailing companion, Edith.

I was even dressed up for the role. My pale blue lucknowi chicken suit and Kohlapuris bought from Janpath that day were as alien as Ellie’s poorly-cut black dress with cheap pink flowers pinned on to it. But I stayed on there in the midst of national and international celebrities, clinging chiffons and sequined silks. And to be in tune with the stream of consciousness, downed a couple of gins and drunk in details of the cut glass sofa upholstered in Jamawar. I forgot that it was rude to stare and gaze at the Indian pop-singer who had made many headlines abroad in topless sari.

There was plenty to write home about. I picked a piece of carrot from the salad and it turned out to be smoked salamon, a delicacy I had only read about. And predictably I found myself sitting near a lone Parsi lady whose son had got a similar award last year and was now in the USA I was all politeness and she extended an invitation for tea for the next day.
So I returned home with a little trophy in my bag. It was a plastic flower stolen from a massive arrangement in the bathroom. This was the only digression from Ellie who didn’t bring back keepsakes. But then there is always a scope for an innovation or two while doing a role!

All of Them are Cads

All of Them Are Cads

A mother’s monologue with her daughter in this story that traces lives of women over generations by Nirupama Dutt

Yes, go on blowing smoke into my face and consider yourself lucky that your father is dead. He was a strange one. All his morals were only for the women of the house. He never exercised these strict standards on himself. And don’t think your husband will stand all your waywardness either. But it does not matter to you, does it? You are independent and can ask him to get lost. At least you can earn for yourself and be happy.
To be independent and happy was not my lot much as I wanted it. Had I been able to earn for myself, I would have bid an early farewell to your father would never arisen. But I was never given a proper education. My brother was sent to a mission school and I to the Arya Putri Pathshala. That too after much thought. Mission schools were ruled out for us girls. They said we would forget our religion and tradition in these schools. As though religion and tradition is meant for girls alone.
And what is tradition after all? Just a whole lot of balderdash. If I had the choice I would have taken up a job and never married. Of course, I would have had a child. You see I always loved children. If I had been ostracized for it, so much the better. In fact I would have taken the lead by putting a sign of my door — “Relatives and dogs not allowed.” For relatives are such a pain. I was married at 23 and in those days it was considered late. I did not care but the relatives were most concerned: “How do your parents sleep at night? “Have they no worry that a hulk of a daughter like you is still unmarried?” This old Parvati was a great one for such talk. I would like to ask her how she sleeps now with her own daughter still unmarried at 32. But now times have changed.
People, however, will always talk whether times change or not. Do you think that must not be talking about your smoking or your refusing to get married? But do I care for them? Not that smoking is any good but if I can’t stop your brothers how can I stop you? Die coughing if you like, and burn your mother’s heart. What do you know of a mother’s love? I know it because I lost my mother when I was not yet eight. Ha! Don’t compare yourself to me by saying you lost your father when you were as old. What is a father’s love? Fiddlestick! If the father dies, the mother takes twice as much care of the children. But a man forgets his children and starts forget his children and starts looking for another wife. I know it because my mother died young.
My mother had to die. She was just 14 when she had her first child and then six more till she died at 31. Only three of us survived. Excessive child-bearing finished half of her and the other half was destroyed by my dear father’s behaviour. Not only did he drink too much, he even went around with other women. Most men are like that and especially he handsome ones. Now, don’t you go about falling for a handsome man. It would be better never to marry. I hate these good-looking men. Didn’t you see the picture of that officer who murdered his wife in such a cold-blooded manner? He is something to look at but see what he did. No, your father was not handsome but was he any better? But at least he did not murder me or pack me off to the grave early. I was the one to see him off. He died of a heart attack. I should have been the one to die of heart trouble considering the shocks he gave me all through my life.
I have indeed become shockproof. Nothing surprises me now. Even you don’t take me unawares when you try to be so modern and liberated. I know full well that you will come back crying to me from what you think has been a massive heart-break. Crying indeed! Save your tears for something better and be happy that you are rid of such rascals. But you won’t listen to me, will you? I am just an old fool of a mother. Why should you learn from my experiences? You have to go through it all yourself. Never mind, you will know one day. Then you will remember your mother as I do mine.
When I recall the little I say of my mother and much more that I heard of her, I wonder at her wisdom. Well, not every realised her worth when she was alive. When she was alive, my grandfather would say: “My son was a diamond but this girl has turned him into coal.” After her death, however, he realised his mistake and knew for himself which was the diamond and which the coal. Then he would weep. All my father’s deeps were discovered when my mother was no longer there to cover up for him. She was the one who kept on good terms with all the relatives. Left to himself my father broke off even with his own father and brother. Only his sister stuck to him till the end but that was because of her own goodness.
You cannot imagine how good-looking my father was. It seems such handsome men are not born any more. Only my sister took after him. He was tall, well-built and his complexion could match that of any British man. When he would come out of his bath, one could see his pink skin through the clinging white kurta. But his temper was like the devil. My sister, brother and I lived in mortal fear of him. We would be fighting like cats but when we heard his voice we would slink away like mice. For if he caught us quarreling, he would scream: “I will send you to separate hostels and then you will not be able to see one another’s faces.”
He did not send us to separate hostels but nevertheless separated us cruelly in his lifetime. Circumstances extended the curse after his death. My sister died in Pakistan and my brother fled from his unhappy youth and settled in England. Yes, we are not able to see one another’s faces. You don’t know how I long she was alive. But my brother is a man after all. He forgot all the love of childhood. He is happy with his wife in England and never a thought for his own sister. No, why should I write to him? A great one you are to ask me to do that. You, who fight with you brothers who love you so much. I will not write to him. If he doesn’t bother to find out whether I am living or dead, why should I? Let him be content with his white woman and half-breed daughter and I am content with my own children. It is a different matter that my children, except the two of you who are not yet married, have no need for me. They are now busy with their own children. This is how life goes on.
Now don’t give me that non-sense about you being different. Let me see you once you are married. But no! Daughters are different. God ble4ss them! Even though I am an old woman I still look with love at the remains of my parental home. My step-mother was step only in name and her two sons mean more to me than my real brother’s. Yes, girls do care more. Look at your elder sister. She was not born of my womb but will anyone say she is my step-daughter? And then look at her brothers. Did I give them any less love? Was I ever a step-mother to them? And now they drag me to the courts at this age. They even grudge me two decent meals a day. The younger one was always strange and the older one could never forgive me for marrying his father. As though I did it out of choice.
You, who make so much of fuss that you won’t marry this one or that one, will never understand that in our days there was no question of choice. Marry the man your father picked for you and be damned. And a fine man my father picked for me. An ageing widower with three children. My father was only interested in getting rid of me, for an unmarried daughter is a burden. My mother was long dead was long dead and my poor step-mother, a village lass, had no say. Why didn’t I say no? You have got into the habit of asking stupid questions. Women were meant to be seen, fondled, cast aside but never to be heard. The only way out would have been to drown myself in the well in our courtyard. I did think of it many times but I couldn’t do it. Anyway now I am glad I am alive.
Life is too good to be cast away for any man. And you better get this into your head. I am shocked at these girls committing suicide because their husbands’ relatives trouble them for not bringing enough dowry or because their husbands treat them badly. Foolish girls. Things are so different today. Must the lives and happiness of girls depend solely on their husbands? Can’t they do anything worth-while with their life rather than just end it? What good is their education? I would like to ask.
Had I been educated well, I would have been a different person. Then I would not have borne all the nonsense of your father or mine. But my father would withdraw me from school at the slightest excuse. Sometimes the school was too far away from our house or my father would be transferred to some village which had no school for girls. Somehow I managed to do my matriculation. I wanted to be a nurse but my father would not hear of it. Nursing, he said, was not a respectable profession. I consoled myself by thinking that one day my daughter would become a nurse. But even that could not be. Nursing is not good enough for her highness.
Ah, don’t give me that rubbish that I wanted to be a nurse just because my brother-in-law was a doctor and in my sub-conscious mind I loved him. True, I loved him but not as you think. He gave me the affection I never got from my own father. I worshipped him and thought him next only to K.L. Saigal. Laugh if you must, but a voice like Saigal’s will not be heard again for a century. And when you try to mimic him in nasal tones, you only degrade yourself. Not jut his singing, his acting was marvelous too. You should have seen him as ‘Devdas’. That is why I still keep his picture. Yes, I have my brother-in-law’s picture too but what is so funny about that? They were both great.
No, I am not contradicting myself when I call them great. When I say I hate men, I mean it. You are always ke4en to prove me wrong. But when you see what I have seen of men, you will know that I couldn’t be more right. Saigal and my brother-in-law, I admire as human beings; I never knew them as men. Ask their wives and you will know what they were really like. You think Saigal’s wife must have been pleased to see him drinking himself to death. And, perhaps, he never used his golden voice to say soothing words to her when she was sad. And my poor sister she was so beautiful but let any woman patient come and my brother-in-law would not let go of her wrist. Pretending to read the pulse, of course. But my brother-in-law gave me a lot of affection. After my mother’s death, I lived for 11 years in my sister’s house and not once was I made to feel an outsider.
In fact, I was an outsider when I went back to my father’s home. He took me back not because he loved me but because people were talking that he is not marrying off his grown-up daughter. So his intentions were simple to get rid of me. Finally, after all that fuss he picked your ‘father’ I did not even murmur a protest. I wanted to be away from my father’s house. I thought of jumping into the well just before the wedding but I did not. It would not have been fair to my mother’s memory or to the sufferings of my step-mother.
Coming from my father’s house to the house of your father was like jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. Yes, yes, don’t tell me your father was an intellectual. Actually these intellectuals should never marry. But they do and some like your father marry more than once. I think men like the feeling of leaving a widow who will weep for them. Now I was 17 years younger than your father. He already had three children. The oldest was just five years younger than I. He left home in anger just before our marriage. I don’t blame him. It is not nice to see your balding old father suddenly turning a bridegroom. Anyway, I reconciled myself to fate and decided to be an ideal wife and mother. Not a step-mother, mind you.
But a step-mother can never become a real mother, no matter how hard she tries. The oldest boy ran away from home. The girl was fine. It seemed that she too had been weeping before the marriage saying that she did not want a step-mother. But the moment I into the house, she ran into my arms and called me mother. The youngest boy though only 10 was quite a complex character. He was all right when he was alone with me but he could not beat to see me with his father. You know he slept with us even on our wedding night. But I was glad for it. It would not have been much of a night for you know what present that intellectual father of yours gave me on the first night? He brought me a copy of the ‘The Taming of the Shrew’.
Well, taming is too mild a word for what happened in the months to follow. I felt sad that the elder boy should have left the house just because of me, so I went and brought him back like a great mother would have. I thought it would please your father that his 18 year-old innocent son was back. But may your father’s soul rest in peace, he started accusing me of having illicit relations with his first-born.
A woman has to walk through fire all her life. Why did I tolerate it? Well, what else could I do? I had no job to fall back on. And when a girl left her father’s house, she was told that she was to remain in her husband’s house till she died, come what may. I stood it all, but I could never forget the humiliation. True, he cared for me in his own fashion. He would buy me expensive presents but he would also leave me with a child every other year. If men could do it they would keep a woman perpetually pregnant so that they could be free for their philandering. Yes, even then there were ways of birth control but your father would not hear of them. I aborted myself twice but I could not make abortions a habit. I bore four sons and two daughters.
Children are indeed a blessing I forgot all my sorrows bringing up all of you. I did all that I could do for my children. I am not the only one. All mothers are like this. But children are different. They need you only when they are small. Look at my own sons. What am I to them? They are so busy with their lives and wives that they don’t get time even to drop a line to their mother for months together. Now don’t laugh at the tears in my eves. I am not contradicting myself by crying. I am not crying for men but for my sons, who are my flesh and blood. But then they are men too. And it is foolish to expect any consideration from men — all of them are cads!
_______

I Will Never Dance Again

A story by Nirupama Dutt on an adolescent girl's first heartbreak

The greatest challenge before 11-year-old Anu was the dance show to be held after the December examinations. Not because she was bent upon becoming a great dancer but because she wanted to prove to Inder uncle that she was better than the others.
Veena had come to live there with her parents recently and when Inder uncle saw her for the first time, he said, “You are very pretty.”
Veena had blushed a pretty pink and covered her eyes with her dainty eyes while Inder uncle went on, “Why are you feeling shy? When I told Sunita this, she did not feel shy”.
Anu sitting on the still swing was a witness to this tete-a-tete. She realised with a heavy heart that only she had been spared that compliment.
Inder uncle was the unacknowledged here of all the young girls in the army officers’ hostels where Anu lived. He was the only bachelor living there and so dashing at that. He was slim, fair, with regular features and a soft smile. The girls who were waiting impatiently for their teens to start, were drawn to him by an attraction they had yet to identify.
Veena and Anu learnt Kathak for an hour every day in the hostel club along with some younger girls. When Guruji announced that there would be a dance show for the entire hostel, Anu made up her mind to do her best and beat Veena. Then Inder uncle would like her more. He made it a point to join the girls in their play in the evenings. He would skip with them, play hop-scotch and tell them stories of his own school-days. Anu would be there all the time but her heart was set on the show. What if she had a squint? She would dance better than Veena and he would like her then.
About three motnhs before the show, two things happened. Anu’s chest was no longer flat and her mother bought her two bras with tiny pink bows. The bows were so pretty that it seemed a pity to hide them under a chemise and a blouse. Anyhow Anu felt more and more confident with the knowledge that there was a pretty bra beneath her blouse, chemise and all.
The second happening was that Inder uncle’s sister, auntie Roma, came from America with her two little daughters, Sherry and Cutie.
One day Anu overheard Auntie Kapoor talking to her mother. She was saying, “Roma has come from America to look for a girl for Inder. But isn’t she fussy! I suggested my niece but she showed no interest. I think they are looking for a lot of dowry. They want a working girl too.”
Just like Auntie Kapoor, thought the annoyed Anu. Just because her husband was not here, she had all the time in the world for gossiping and backbiting. How could she talk against auntie Roma who was so wonderful? He would open a bottle of coke for Anu and together they would keep the little ones amused. Anu saw more of him than did Sunita or Veena. But still he had not told her that she was pretty or that he liked her even if she was not pretty.
The day of the show was approaching fast. It was quite an exciting event. All the members of the club were contributing money for the dinner. The girls who were dancing would get free dinner and a small present each. The dances would be followed by tambola and even the children would be allowed to play.
And finally the much awaited day came. Just before the show Anu felt her knees going weak and she prayed feverishly that her squint should not let her down and Inder uncle should like her the best. She felt better on the improvised stage and danced away looking at the heads of the audience seated below. After the dances were over, presents were given to all the participants. The hall was full and the stage was being taken over by the tambola announcers. She had no wish to join the tambola. It was suffocating in the hall. She received the kisses of her parents and ran out to the lawn for a breath of fresh year. Tables were being laid out in the lawn for the buffet dinner and Inder uncle was standing in a corner puffing at his cigarette. Suddenly she felt shy facing him in all her finery. But he came up to her smiling a different smile. Caressing her shoulder gently he said:
“Anu, I’ll tell you something if you promise not to tell it to anyone.”
Breathless, Anu looked at the little twinkle in his eyes and said, “Promise.”
“I liked you the best in the show but don’t tell anyone. It will be our little secret.”
Little secret! It was the greatest and most precious secret entrusted to her young heart. She went through the dinner telling herself over and again that he liked her the most. She did not care that during the dinner he was standing in a corner of the lawn talking to Veena. What did it matter! What did anything matter! He liked her the best!
That night she stared at herself in the mirror. The squint was absent and her large eyes were sparkling. With her fingers she felt the soft satin of her blouse under which she wore her pretty bra with a pink bow. She decided against changing into a drab cotton night suit and went to bed as she was. In the morning her mother was surprised to find her sleeping all dolled up. At school the teacher scolded twice for day-dreaming but she had no care in the world. She almost danced her way back from school, changed her dress, had her lunch and got ready to go for the Kathak class. Veena called out to her and together they started for the club jingling the anklets which they carried in their hands. On the way Veena stopped for a while and said:
“Anu, I promised not to tell anyone but you are my best friend so I’ll share my secret with you. After the show last night, Inder uncle told me that he had liked me the best.”
Anu stared at her in disbelief and started talking about school pretending not to have heard the secret at all. When they reached the hall, Anu said, “Veena, I think I’ll go back home; my stomach is paining. Tell Guruji that I won’t be able to dance today.”

She is Sixteen

A story of forgotten innocence by Nirupama Dutt

Purva is sixteen. She is beautiful. She has a lovely new watch and she is in love. She has the new watch as a present from her brother on her sixteenth birthday and she is in love because it is obligatory to be in love at this age. Actually, Purva and her best friend Lata are in love with the same boy — the handsome Harsh. It is a different matter that neither of them have exchanged even a few pleasantries with him.
These days to the sorrow of both Purva and Lata, Harsh is not in town. They have not set their eyes on him for a long time now. Purva glances at her watch which shows the dates and has a slick black leather strap. There are still twenty days to go for the annual school fete. Time moves ever so slowly before the fete and Purva counts every second on her new watch.
Walking down the school with her heavy hag on her shoulder, Purva stops a while at the chapel which she crosses twice every day. Closing her eyes for a moment she mumbles a hasty prayer that Harsh should come back before the fete. She is sure that her prayer has been heard even though the chapel houses a Christian and not a Hindu God.
In the moral science class, Lata passes a chit to Purva asking what sari will she be wearing for the fete. Both have decided to wear saris because they are grown up girls now. Instead of passing a chit back, Purva whispers, “I will wear Neela Didi’s peacock blue silk with a red border.” She likes to mention Neela Didi as often as possible to Lata because Neela, her distant cousin, has known Harsh’s family for many years. This is Purva’s edge over Lata. But then all the trump cards are with Purva. She is more beautiful. And she even has a photograph of Harsh stolen from Neela Didi’s album. It is a faded snapshot of a picnic party of thirty odd people taken eight years back. The ten-year-old Harsh is sitting amidst other children in the front row.
Mother Marina is talking about boy-girl relationship. At this age boys and girls, she says, have a passing attraction for each other. This attraction should not me misused. Girls have to be more careful for men don’t like wives with a past. Listening the Mother Marina’s lecture, Purva thinks that God — whether a Christian or a Hindu — has been very unfair to girls. For Mother Marina says that if a girl makes one mistake, it sticks to her for the whole life whereas a boy can get away with ten mistakes. Purva looks down at her watch to see how much time there is for the recess. She will have to bear with Mother Marina’s warnings against making mistakes for ten minutes more.
Purva knows that loving Harsh is no mistake. Even Lata loves him. After all, he is not their boy-friend. Amla is the only girl in their class who has a boy-friend. He is a boarder in the boys’ school. They dance close together at the socias because they are going to marry after they finish college.
It is not like that with Harsh. They have not even spoken to him except when he came to their stall at the last two fetes. Purva knows that he likes her more that Lata so she does not mind Lata loving him. At the last fete they had the “Hit and Win” stall. Harsh had come up to the stall and had stood quietly for a long time. The Lata had gone to him and asked if he would try his skill. He had pointed at Purva and said that he would try only if she asked him. Purva had not asked him for she wanted him to know that girls like her are not won so easily. Not now but may be many years later he will be my boy-friend, thinks Purva.
Right now she loves him as much as she loves her new watch. The watch is super and better than that of any other girl in the class. And Harsh is handsome, far better than the awkward school boys they dance with at the socials. What is Amla’s boy-friend before him! Harsh is tall and grown up. He is not a school kid but in the second year of college.
In the recess, Purva and Lata peck at their lunch and dream aloud about the fete. They have been given the paper horse race stall. It is not much of a draw but Harsh will surely come to it. He won’t be able to resist it seeing them in nice sarees. Lata will be wearing her mother’s mustard georgette with a thin silver border.
The two had discovered his two years back when they got the stall for the first time. Only the seniors were allotted stalls. Theirs’ was the “Kill the Rat” stall. Harsh came to it a number of times and always returned with a prize. Mother Marina who was keeping an eye on the stalls told them not to let this boy try again or they would run short of prizes. But what did Purva and Lata care about losing the prizes for they had lost their hearts to him. Their feelings had remained unchanged through these years for loving from afar is: loving the longest.
They saw him sometimes walking up to his college, at his father’s cloth shop and at fetes held by other schools. But now they had not seen him the last six months. Purva did not ask Neela Didi about him but it would be a pity indeed if he did not come to the fete. It was their last year in school and their last fete. She decides to pray for full five minutes every morning and evening for him to come to the fete. Mother Marina always preaches the powers of prayer.
Purva is true to her word. She times her prayers daily on her new watch. But ten days pass and there is no sign still of the handsome harsh. But with the optimism of a sixteen year old she is certain that her prayers will make him turn up even if it is at the last moment.
A week before the fete something terrible happens. Her lovely watch with the smart leather strap suddenly decides to imitate Harsh and does the vanishing trick. She leaves it on the dressing table after her evening prayer but it is not there in the morning. The whole hose is searched, the maid who comes to do the dishes questioned but the watch is not to be found.
Purva goes to school with a bare wrist and a heavy heart. Lata joins in her best friend’s sorrow. At recess, they talk only of the watch until an idea strikes Purva. She asks Lata, “Tell me truly Lata, have you been praying for harsh to come to the fete. Lata nods a yes and wants to know how Purva got an inkling of it.” Because I have been doing the same,” Purva replies. The two laugh and all worries are lost for sometime in the laughter.
Back home in the evening, Purva looks at the strip of un-tanned skin on her wrist where the watch was once strapped, folds her hands and says her prayer, “Dear God, I know I must not ask you for too many things for that will irritate you. So I withdraw my prayers about Harsh. Lata’s along will do. You please make me find my watch.”
The prayer over, Purva pats herself for handling God so tactfully. Both the problems are solved. Harsh will come in answer to Lata’s prayers and the watch will be found in answer to her own. For the fete would be sad without the watch and miserable without Harsh. Happily, she walks down to Neela Didi’s house to borrow the sari for she is sixteen and full of hope.