Strictly within limits
How do you know where to draw the
line? Time out of mind you have been
hearing it, “Play nice. Take turns.
Share.” And honestly? What choice is there when you are the eighth
child? True, treated a little special initially
because eighth children are special, particularly if they are sons. Well, you know the story about Lord Krishna
being the eighth child. But you are the youngest,
and resources are stretched, your father’s business of jute sacks is failing
because there’s a growing world of plastics out there. You learn from the very
beginning to make do. With
hand-me-downs. Books and shoes. Coats with holey pockets. You make do with sharing spaces.
Affections. Attention.
The job of raising you is delegated
to your elder sister, a child herself. Your
mother is often tired, she works two shifts that add up to more than the sum of
their parts in exhaustion. Your father is mostly away resurrecting a dying
product. The insecurities trickle into
the family somehow. Holey pockets, worn
soles and stretches of loneliness surrounded by the sea of an extended family; sharing
things that are never enough. You don’t
know any other ways of growing up.
There are others like you at school,
but you don’t know them either. You always feel the weirdest, most impoverished,
clinging onto some precarious pretence at normal life. You furtively compare your books with the
crisp new ones that some students buy, and yours look the most dog-eared, with
so many generations of scribbled annotations in the margins as to be useless
and illegible. You never make any
annotations yourself. You are a passable student with a meagre scholarship that
guarantees you will finish school, no matter what destiny decides about jute
sacks. You volunteer little of yourself
in classes, blend in between the last bench and the first somewhere.
A couple of students bully you. You deal with it. Do exactly as asked with aloof
impassiveness. You volunteer nothing of
yourself here either. It is an effective
defence and makes the bullies, and other people as well, quickly lose
interest. You get by with a carefully
constructed carapace of self-sufficiency over a jelly-like self-esteem.
The jute business finally crashes,
your father is now at home, frustrated, boiling with rage and seeking the softest
target available. That of course is your
elder sister, who is also your mother. Your real mother takes on some more extra
hours at work, that makes her practically disappear from home and your father
angrier than ever. He spends most of his
time yelling at everybody within earshot.
Worse things than yelling happen too, which you witness from the shared
bed, pulling the tattered covers over your ears. The bread becomes chewier, the lentils more
watery, the beautifully rounded scoops of steamed rice are shaped with smaller
ladles. You’re always hungry, there is
never enough food. The hand-me-downs
hang looser on your frame. Your carapace
becomes harder, your self-esteem more fragile.
An older brother escapes with the
housekeeping money, no-one hears from him again. Another goes away to the Gulf to work,
promises to send money home. But he
tumbles off a twenty floor high scaffolding, and then it comes out he was
illegally there so there’s no compensation.
A sister escapes too, elopes with a much older man, one of your father’s
former customers who’s transitioned now to modern packaging. This makes your father incandescent with fury.
He is openly violent with the women, when you try to intervene he cuffs you so
hard that you have to be taken to the hospital.
Home becomes intolerable, you hang
around the street corners and the old park more than you need. The park particularly, the grass there is
balding in patches, the benches are either bent or broken, only a couple of
lights work. Petty crime and clandestine romance are what mostly go on there. But it’s comfortable - no-one will disturb
you - you don’t carry anything that could lure pickpockets or prostitutes.
On a day of feeling especially raw
and fragile, a stranger asks if she can share the bench where you are grappling
with your maths, and then offers to split her parathas in exchange. You have to suddenly blink back embarrassing,
unmacho tears. She doesn’t pay any mind
to your efforts at brushing her off, insists you try some. So you do, just to
shut her up. She watches you wolfing down a paratha
at top speed and then offers you another in silence. Your mouth is too full of saliva, and your
guts twist too tightly to articulate a refusal.
You take it and wolf it down again.
She doesn’t ask many questions.
She is back the next day. You are
reading – “Yond Cassius has a lean and
hungry look. He thinks too much.” -
and trying to pretend you’re neither hungry nor thinking too much about her or
food. The pattern repeats. Some kind of shaky friendship results; it will last
till you graduate school, and the park, and the city.
A few weeks later she lights up a
cigarette and passes it to you, ”Try it, it’ll help you focus,” and you cough
and cough in the beginning but it does feel good. It’s just another thing to
share, you think nothing of it when she offers another. Because isn’t that what you’re supposed to
do, share and take turns? During a
slightly murky dusk, the light above the broken bench flickers on and then a
long off - the couples have withdrawn into the shrubbery, and the pickpockets
haven’t yet descended on their beats - she offers you a syringe. “Try it. Bloody wicked, man.” Your fingers fumble, you have never injected yourself
before. She takes it from your hand and
plunges it into herself first and then into you in one swift, practised movement. You wait for it to kick in and you think
nothing of it. Only remember it years
later at a clinic as a piece of paper flutters in your trembling hand and your
world comes crashing down. How do you
know where to draw the line?
WC -1025
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