VI. Living Things #2
“Oh?” she said, but didn’t open the door again.
This time, being in Gita Miss’ apartment felt different.
I saw it through Ganesh’s eyes, the refrigerator humming all the time, the smooth tile floors.
This time I grasped what it was about Gita Miss’ apartment that was truly different from our home.
There was an emptiness in it, but not gloomy.
It was a place that carried no history, had only the things that reflected who she and my father were at this moment in time.
It hadn’t seen life, hadn’t seen what life can do to people.
In my house there was so much furniture.
Diwans, sofas with long histories. The television remote and the deck remote from when having a remote control was a novelty.
The old cassette player sitting on its own table; the table itself covered with a pale pink crochet throw that my mother had knitted when she was pregnant with me.
Gita Miss’ apartment carried no such history.
I was not a polluting presence. Here, I could be anyone.
Not the Arjun who did not want to cut down the papaya tree, live at home, go to school, the gymkhana.
Even the Arjun who was happiest around Ruhee.
Here, in Gita Miss’ clean apartment, I liked myself, I was a nobody.
Gita Miss went to the fridge and got two bottles of almond milk. But she did not ask us to sit, or attempt any conversation.
“Do you want to go up to the terrace?” she said. “The view is terrific. They’ve put up new furniture.”
Then she put on her shoes and went downstairs.
Gita Miss’ apartment was on the fifth floor, so it was only a short flight of stairs to the terrace. I held Ganesh’s almond milk bottle while he opened the terrace door.
The view from the terrace, like Gita Miss said, was terrific.
We were on the outskirts, and we were higher than any nearby buildings.
Beyond us there were only undeveloped grassy lands, deciduous thornbushes, massive Deccan boulders perched atop one another in formations.
And as far as the eye could see was only the big blue sky and the tops of trees, touching each other in the far away hills.
I was taken aback, if anything, because of how clean the air was; I’d gotten so used to the grungy atmosphere of the Red House’s terrace, the noise of people living closely together.
I could see that the train tracks ran quite near, almost behind the building.
There was cane furniture placed under a striped awning, artfully surrounded by flowerpots.
The water tank was on the far end; here, unlike the one on the Red House, the water tank wasn’t built directly on the slab, it was built in the new style; raised on tall pillars and accessible by a freshly painted, wrought iron staircase fastened to the side of the tank.
Though it was still early in the afternoon, the sun was bearing down on us. It was windy. Ganesh and I went to look over the parapet wall, at the scene Priya was making outside the gate.
Gita Miss was crouched on the balls of her feet in front of Priya; whose hands were firmly tucked under her armpits, heading off any chance that someone would hold her hand and drag her.
Gita Miss was saying something with an understanding expression on her face, pointing down the street with her index finger.
Despite herself, Priya leaned forward, arms tucked, to look down the street.
When Gita Miss offered her an open palm, Priya, tentatively, held it.
Ice cream―that could be the only reason Priya gave up the tantrum.
I turned to look at him, to see what Ganesh saw. “It is nice that you have two families,” he said.
It had never occurred to me that our family’s situation could be put that way.
When Ganesh went to the water tank, began clambering up the iron stepladder, naturally I followed him.
He left his slippers at the bottom of the stepladder, so all the way up, the soles of his feet were all I saw. The stepladder was hot to touch, it burned my fingers, but Ganesh didn’t seem bothered by it, so I didn’t react either.
“Hey!” he shouted from above, over the gust of wind that was whipping our clothes this way and that.
“Hey Arjun! It’s unlocked!” he yelled, his face breaking into gleeful, mischievous laughter.
I pulled up beside him, sat on the edge of the tank while Ganesh drew open the metal covers.
The sun, bright and hot and yellow, dazzled us up here, the wind got into our shirts and whipped them around.
My grin mirrored Ganesh’s. For no reason whatsoever, I felt utterly euphoric.
It was the happiest I’d ever felt in my life.
Ganesh, still grinning wildly, pulled his shirt over his head and threw it down the stairs.
He jumped into the tank. I followed and didn’t tell him that I could not swim.
What else was there to do? There was no other place in the world I’d rather be.
The water was chilled, and because the lid was long and narrow and split into two, I could see two hollowed out sections of the bright blue sky.
A lone eagle cut across the sky soundlessly.
There were metal bars around the sides, presumably for when the tank was cleaned, and I held on to one and watched Ganesh dive under.
“Hey!” Ganesh yelled, when he came up for air.
“This is terrific! God!” He dove in again and disappeared for a few seconds and came up for air again, “My god! This is terrific!” his voice chimed against the walls.
Inside the tank, it felt like we were the only two people in the world.
It smelled thickly of clean water and chlorine.
The walls were gleaming wet, the water splashing about and echoing noisily.
I could not reach the bottom with my feet, so I gripped the support bar tightly and went under, letting the water flood my vision.
I came up, my heart hammering forcefully, thrillingly.
It was thrilling and ridiculous, what we were doing, where we were doing it.
There came a moment, when we both came out of the water at the same time, and our gazes fell on each other and there was nowhere else to look, nothing to say, keep looking.
Did a minute pass? I don’t know. A minute is too long. Then he went under and did not come up.
I felt the water move beneath my feet, the surface ruffle and foam. And nothing.
“Ganesh!” I yelled.
Did a minute pass? I don’t know. A minute is too long.
In my panic I let go of the support rail and went under.
Water flooded my vision, I swallowed a lot of it.
Then he came up and pushed me forcefully towards the support rail.
“You can’t swim, you stupid boy,” he said.
It felt like that moment in the grounds with the light from the overhead lamp falling around us in a circle.
I wondered if he would kiss me again. I told him we should get out now, someone will catch us out.
The sound of water chimed against the gleaming wet walls, and beneath his palm, my heart pounded and pounded.
He held the support rail behind me, the green tattoo on his forearm inches from my face.
No one will catch us out, he said, and grinned in his mischievous way.
He climbed out, and the water that fell off his body was warm, not chilled like the water in the tank.
It was so hot that morning, the cotton shorts we’d worn while doing the gardening chores dried and turned stiff to touch, like fresh laundry, in no time at all.
Still we continued sitting on the cane furniture, talking about nothing.
How that wicket was lost the other day, what I should have said when Sugunakar Rao made a sniping comment about my father, the coincidence of him and I having scars on our left ankles from falling off a bike, and stepping on a garden implement respectively, the eagle that was still soaring above us, skimming air.
On the patio furniture, a bit in the sun and a bit in shade, I remembered my holiday homework.
I couldn’t ask him about his holiday homework because he wasn’t in school.
So instead I asked, “Which school does your brother attend?”
“Clover,” he said.
“Clover!” I said, a little rudely surprised.
Ganesh acknowledged my surprise with a flattened smile.
Clover was what we called a ‘posh’ school.
It was nowhere within reach of someone who went to a school like my own, and most certainly out of reach for those at the gymkhana; someone like, say, Arjun Wadhwa.
Ruhee went to a posh convent, I suppose, but that was a girls’ school and we knew very little about them.
Nobody went to Clover by walk, or public transport.
They got dropped off in German cars. Suddenly I saw that Ganesh, someone who looked like him and behaved like him, would have fit into a place like Clover.
Afterwards we went downstairs. Priya, my father and Gita Miss hadn’t returned yet.
So we locked the door and left the key under the doormat.
We walked home, the feeling of good spirits and Sunday happiness evaporating from my mood the closer we got to my house.
When we turned in to my street, I felt jumpy and threatened, realizing too late that I should have remained at Gita Miss’ place, returned only when my father brought us home.
Why did Ganesh have to come along? If he hadn’t, I would have done just that, waited outside Gita Miss’ door by myself until they came back.
Without the papaya tree hovering over the gate, it took me a second longer to recognize my house. A piece of my home had disappeared. I understood what Priya did now. When we came up to my house, I too sat on the pavement outside. I didn’t want to go in.
“Do you want to come to my house?” Ganesh said.
I looked up at him.
“Why not?” he said, gesturing towards the end of the street.