Who I Am Now

Yesterday was one year since Fahad’s death.

Today, Sahar and I are cleaning the mess our guests left behind at the party we had in his memory. Indistinct lo-fi EDM plays in the background as we fill in trash bags, saving us from silence.

Before we’re done cleaning, the doorbell rings. It’s 8-fucking-am, and Ahad, our bhaiya, is here, with his wife Razia and our nephew Shaan.

Razia sits on the edge of our sofa, one spindly leg crossed over the other so tightly that it coils all the way around and comes to rest on the other foot. Shaan perches on her thigh. She bobs him up and down ‘cos she’s a perennially pulsing Pilate bitch. I wish I could get a peek into her bedroom. I’m sure she’s got the words Rest Productively printed on her mirror in cursive bubble gum pink and a unicorn farting rainbows next to it.

“To what do we owe this rare pleasure?”, I ask, handing them glasses of water.

“Mehr don’t be rude”, Sahar says, still looking at them. “You should have called first. We’d have made breakfast. Razia, how are you? Shaan has grown so tall!” Soft and pliant Sahar. Good host. House trained. They named me to rhyme with her, be the feet that follow her beat. I do anything but.

The cats decide to play at this moment and Sahar shrieks like she’s been caught with her pants down–a thing that’s unlikely to ever happen with her. I am glad about the commotion, of course. I am also glad that our new place looks a bit like our childhood home–like it did before Razia slapped her taste all over it. The old divan and crockery cabinet she wanted to throw out, sit proud in their upcycled glory, revealing the wood grains underneath the paint. The bead curtain I always wanted demarcates our open kitchen from the living room. And two of my paintings, framed in gold–a private joke between Fahad and me.

Ahad clears his throat to tell us that Shaan had been crying for his two buas, so he thought he’d surprise us. His next thought was, he says, that he could risk turning up unannounced at his own sisters’ home on a Sunday morning. Ahad has many thoughts and he enjoys signposting them for us. I top up their glasses of water because chai will be made only when I find out why they’re here.

“Naukri theek-thaak, Sahar? Promotion milegi iss baar?” Ahad, the diplomat, asks as he drums fingernails silently on his knee.

“I hope so, but we never know what Corporate will say. You know how it’s been since the pandemic.”

Sahar always plays straight into his hands. She never sees the crumbs he lays out.

“You’re right about that. I, myself, need help. Shaan is almost ready for pre-school and the EMI…” Ahad breaks into English whenever he, himself, is saying something important.

“Didi’s been working so hard,” I intervene. “And with two of the cattos being sick, it’s not easy.”

“Pets are expensive. What about you, my independent, free-thinking sister? Do you have a job?”

Sahar chirrups for me, “Oh yeah, our little Moomoo is doing very well. She is now full-time in the art team.”

“Nice, nice. Good to see how close you sisters are. Always having each others’ backs. Anyway, look, I’m stretched to my limit. Maybe if you hadn’t left bhaisaab…”, Ahad trails off, but his finger points towards Sahar.

He did not just use that word.

“Bhaisaab?!”, I shout. “Does it not matter to you that he stole her savings? He even beat her. Bhaisaab, it seems. Do you kiss your wife with that mouth?” Of course that comes out wrong. So many American dramas, but comebacks will never be my thing.

“Now, there is no need for that. Take it back,” Razia hisses. He’s trained her well.

Sahar changes the topic by asking after ammi. They assure us that she is doing fine, thanks to the excellent care they provide. I sit with them, ignoring Sahar’s glares for me to make chai. I’m busy guesstimating how much Razia spends on her hair and nails. Anyone this well put together has to have help. Or be a vampire, a theory I wouldn’t totally dismiss. More importantly, how much would ammi’s caretaker cost?

They leave without mentioning Fahad. None of them want to.

#

We were four siblings–Fahad, Sahar, Ahad and I. Maybe my parents liked the symmetry. Two boys, two girls. Four peas in two pods, reared to echo each other’s lives. Four until Fahad, our eldest, killed himself and left us to discover our inheritance. Baba’s debt.

After Fahad, I had no reason to live in our family home, so I got out. I felt bad about leaving ammi with them, but it was either that or being squashed between Ahad, the newly crowned family patriarch, and Razia, with her princess-cut solitaires. Ammi would manage. She was someone who grew where she was planted. Married off at nineteen and following the path laid by all the women before her ever since. I, by virtue of not being a plant, moved in with Sahar. She needed my support. She’d been struggling with her divorce proceedings.

Sahar and I are not alike. Like, not at all. She is long-limbed, and willowy and wears a haunting melancholy to match it. Thirty-six, doing well in her career, hair not thinning yet, ass pert as ever. I am twenty-eight, stodgy and with cankles. Sahar is successful in every sense, minus a marriage. And for her, that’s a big minus. I’ve got a brand-new job and, therefore, I’m adulting like a boss. Minus nothing.

Sahar hasn’t quite recovered from the divorce. She picks up strays wherever she goes—cats, neighbours, other divorced women, men. Brings them home straggling in her wake, eager for the sunlight she pours into them. She plies them with mathri and shakkarpara, and brings out her best gosht stew recipes for the especially catatonic ones, willing the spiced hot fat to melt some of their woes.

On good days we have three cats at home. The number goes down when one of them runs away, probably to escape Sahar’s rampant affections. Our dog Puchku never runs away. He is needy. Besides, his aspirations of being an alpha have been permanently squashed by the cats.

When she isn’t resuscitating others’ lives, Sahar drowns in a soup of her own emotions. Like her favourite paaya, viscous and overfull with flavour. My sister is intense. Not to say I’m not intense, but I’m not mushy, or nurturing. I consume things. I don’t cohere. I splay out like a graceless woman in a pornographic display. All orifice, thoughts and emotions oozing out.

Of course, we’re always at war. She wants me to pull my weight at home because I’m ‘not a child anymore’. Take care of the three-limbed cat, walk the dog, feed the blind streeties outside. She wants me to worry about Gaza the way she does. Prove that her indignation isn’t superior to mine. That I can care as deeply as she.

“Do something. Anything!”, is her favourite refrain.

The more she yells at me, the more I stall. Zag to her zig. It’s easier to be a disappointment. Unmarried and unmoved by life’s callings. I wear my stereotype well—the youngest child. Sabki laadli, thodi si nalaayak.

#

My office is a sea of improperly finished grey laminate undulating in Bombay’s humid air. One permanently wet wall offers a steady supply of mould and damp to the ACs that circulate the same air. No windows, of course. How dare we expect them?

I’d prefer a corner seat, but those are all taken by the senior employees. Elderly art directors who squint at the screen, eyes permanently damaged from the poor, harsh tube lights. I walk in everyday to an already buzzing office, old printers wheezing out artwork while servicing folk wait by them in servile forward-leans, grey-black hair upright with static like severe crowns. The only way anyone can get out to get some fresh air is if we choose to eat our lunch in the gully outside, right next to the tapriwala, the shop that is always crowded with the chai-and-sutta folks whether day or night.

My boss is a fluty-voiced woman named Nancy who wishes everyone goodmorninglovey, afternoonlovely, nightlovey regularly. Nancy declares her love for animals on every surface of her desk–the calendar, mousepad, cushion, backrest, pen, screensaver and wallpaper. She probably hired me because I told her about the cat we rescued during my interview. To end up like her would be dreadful, but also comfortable. She doesn’t look unhappy. Colourless, perhaps, but financially secure.

“What did you want to become when you were younger?” I make the mistake of asking her today.

“Eh? What’s wrong with what I do now?”

“No, I meant… if not for an art director.”

“It’s a good job, lovey. You’ve just joined, so you don’t know what it’s like out there. Much too much magajmari. I don’t like. This is almost sarkari job,” she informed me, patting my arm in her motherly fashion. I smile, trying not to look at the red lipstick she applies over the corners of her lips to make them seem larger.

“But… this isn’t true creativity, is it? I mean… there is no pride in how well you’ve airbrushed hair, or how perfect the kerning is. I’d die if… I mean to say, I want my contribution to be more than this.”

“Aye dreamer, kaam pe lago,” one of the eavesdroppers who sits behind us pipes in. “No one will pay you for your hatke designs. Keep that for your Tumblr. Here just do your work and go.” It’s impossible to ignore a man like him because if you don’t say anything, he will roll his chair around to face your desk and watch you as you work. I make a show of sighing and get up. He’s not even moved into the Insta era. Why am I working in this prehistoric office?

“Cheer up, lovey. Next week partyyy!” Nancy raised both arms to show me what partying entails.

Sahar would fit right in here with these people, but Fahad would have probably never had such a dull day in his life. That’s why he chose the navy. Good money, he said, but I knew he craved the adventure of it. ‘A job as unlike baba’s as possible’, he’d said. I could see what he meant.

#

Fahad was the brother I loved more. The one whose secrets I kept squirrelled away—like the day he smelled like raisins and rum, the day when smoke came out of his mouth in perfect rings. The day when he kissed that girl, the girl with the blue pixie and a cigarette on her lips and no roza to keep ever. I wanted to be Fahad. He would have chuckled if he saw that I’d chosen to go as a T-rex for the Halloween party.

Sahar hasn’t talked about him since. I am not sure if she is sad or angry. Angry that he left us the mountain of debt, angry that he chose the high seas, angry about that pic with a white girl on his lap and the pork sausage on the plate.

I know this sounds bonkers, but Fahad has been visiting me. When he’s around, I can smell the sea, and the sea doesn’t enter bedrooms with AC on at 15 for six hours.

He usually announces himself by kicking or breaking something. Typically, one of our things. Today, it’s the palm-sized bamboo hookah we’d picked up in Ho Chi Minh. The stem that protrudes from its side is broken. Splinters of bamboo cut into my skin as I pick it up.

Why did you go?

No answer.

Why did you come back?

How many virgins? The yellowed calendar on my wall fluttered, its bottom right edge curling in a papery wave.

Ha ha ha. Thirty? Really? It fluttered again and I ran to it to hold the paper down. To hold him down.

My phone trills, reminding me about the Halloween party. Time to get dressed.

I unwrap my green dino suit and squeeze my arms into its little holes. Our digits fit perfectly. I wear my favourite fluorescent orange crocs. Fully hidden in dino-face, I’m ready to shake my booty. Fahad would have joined me. My plus one for life. The only one worth having.

I drive. Perks of not drinking.

After the third pothole in the bylanes of Chakala, with its onlookers spitting, hunched women asking for alms, hijras clapping, and mongrels spraying with one leg up, it hits me that Bombay is a kind of permanent Halloween. It’s ridiculous to celebrate it here.

Why did you leave me? I ask aloud, but he doesn’t reply. We used to talk about running away somewhere where no one would know us. Maybe Rio de Janeiro for mardi gras. Or somewhere else. Places that sound like dessert–Adelaide, Wisconsin, Tbilisi.

I park my car and head in. The party is another tableau. Many of the usual suspects–catwoman, batman, shaktimaan, dracula. I walk up to the bar, my T-rex turning heads. Conversation stops as if to pay attention to the swishing of my thunder thighs. I know no one likes me already. The world is run by Sahars. I merely live in it.

Nancy’s nowhere to be found. I stand in line between Chacha Chowdhury and Maya Sarabhai in a blinding orange organza.

“Do you drink, darling?”, Maya asks. She’s gone full method.

“Just Diet Coke.”

“Aha! I knew I recognised you. Mehr, right? The newbie in Studio?”

“Guilty!”

She cackles like I’ve said something original and spits her red wine all over my three-thousand-buck T-rex. That too in the general vicinity of my crotch. I spend the rest of the party looking like I’ve forgotten my tampon. I can see others are embarrassed for me, but I’ve been this person for so many years that I don’t remember how public shame feels anymore.

I dance on the floor, right under the grand disco ball. All of my favourite moves–the robot, the rope pull, the horny pregnant mama. When it gets too hot, I unzip and pull my arms out. Poor Rexy deflated into synthetic lettuce. I’ve got another green-dino tee underneath, of course. I planned this.

It feels like Fahad is on the dance floor with me. The two of us co-ordinated, mirroring each other’s movements. The world forgotten.

I realise, only too late, that there is someone dancing with me. Someone not Fahad. He follows me out as I leave the party, and corners me in the parking lot. I try to shove him off but he is stronger than he looks.

“Come on, darling. You know you want it.”

I kick him in the balls, but all it does is make him angry. He yanks my hair and shoves my face into the side of my car. I can see the strap of my purse peeking from under the driver’s seat, where I’d put it so I don’t accidentally forget it at the party. I think of the can of pepper spray tucked inside it.

Later, I imagine Fahad sitting next to me as I speed away, my hands shaking.

We’re allowed to go to work late the next day on account of the party, so I email my resignation, hoping I have some time before shit hits the fan. But, dear ol’ Nancy is already at work. She calls me within two minutes of hitting send. I don’t pick up. I decide to paint instead, true to the “dreamer” that I am.

#

As a wordless response to Razia’s perfection, Sahar has begun slapping her limbs every morning since the day of their visit. To ‘wake them up’, apparently. She also kneads her thighs, simultaneously alternating between pouts and grimaces. Face yoga.

Today, I join her. A smile grows between us through the choreographed slapping. The animals in our little zoo shake their heads and whine, querulous. Once both our skins are tomato-red and smarting, I go to my bed and fall face down.

“Do you want to talk about why you’re not going to the office?”

I don’t say anything, so she puckers her lips and whistles a part-lullaby, a song from our grandfather’s days that she claims Fahad loved. Main zindagi ka saath nibhaata chala gaya.

We’re both sobbing before she’s done with the mukhda.

“What a fuckall song, yaar! There’s no way he liked it. He grabbed life by the horns,” I declare, blowing my nose on my paint-smattered t-shirt, ignoring the look I know Sahar is giving me.

“Bah! It’s a lovely tune. He was too cool to say he liked it, but I know he did. We grew up hearing it every evening. Dada would…”

“I know I know, Vividh Bharati or whatever.”

From somewhere under the bed, the broken half of the hookah rolls out.

“You talk to him, don’t you?”

I’m suspicious about who she means, but it’s not wise to ask, so I say, “What do we do about Ahad?”

“Ahad Bhaiya!”, she stresses. “Look, he is right. It’s a lot of debt and with his growing responsibilities, it’s hard.”

“Listen, I don’t care for his problems. I never want to talk to him again. And I want to slap Razia.”

“How come you defended me?”

“Do you think he smokes? He was so restless when he came the other day.”

“No, Ahad wouldn’t. Don’t change the topic.”

“I defend the truth.” I can hear how pathetic I sound. The hookah rolls again.

“What’s that?” Sahar leans over the side of the bed to investigate. “Awwwleee, come here my baby.” Of course. It was never Fahad, just one of her cats.

Before leaving, Sahar says I needn’t worry about contributing to the loan.

#

One of my colleagues, not Nancy, pings me when he hears the news. He wants to meet for coffee, probably to dig up the goss. I can’t handle interacting with anyone in person, so I suggested a phone call instead.

“It was that servicing guy, wasn’t it? That lambu with the bad haircut?”, he asks.

“What do you think happened?”

“Well, some creep tried something and you ran off, no? That’s what I heard.”

“From whom?”

“I don’t like spreading rumours. Anyway, better you tell HR if it’s that Anirudh guy. His name has come up a couple of times in the past.”

I thank him and hang up. It was the lambu, in fact, and knowing it has happened to others before makes me feel guilty for not speaking up. And yet, the call was annoying. The last thing I want is greater focus on me.

So I pick up the gouache set, the one I’ve been saving for Allah knows what, and begin painting.

It turns out to be an aquarium of dead, or dying, things–hedgehogs, my mobile phone, dejected bluebirds–floating around listless. Much symbolism, of course. True to my brand.

Maybe they are right. Maybe who I am now deserves to be mocked. The way Ahad calls me ‘independent’ as if it’s an insult–because I don’t really know what I am doing, do I? No real adult would quit their job the moment things got tough. And they definitely won’t wear dinosaur costumes.

#

Sahar doesn’t get the promotion, which means we’ll have to break the news to Ahad at Shaan’s birthday party. We ought to have a strategy, but we don’t. We don’t discuss it at all, not even as we are wrapping one of my paintings.

“No two-year-old cares for paintings,” I tell her.

“We should have thought about it before today. They’ll not open presents. It’s fine.”

“Umm… Razia is wannabe American enough to do it.”

At the party, it’s easy to hide our gift behind the giant boxes others have brought for him. Razia’s entire family is there, lounging and talking loudly. It’s almost as if they’re actually happy. Razia is glowing. Ammi has vanished into nothingness. She sits too close to the dining table with the cake and paper plates as if she’d keel over if she didn’t have something to block her from the front. I watch her–placid smile, palms folded, eyes vacant-looking thanks to glaucoma. For a brief moment, I wonder if leaving her with the ‘ek maa ki jagah uske bete ke paas hai’ is doing her a disservice. She’s shrivelled, like crumpled parchment. Old skin with old woes.

Razia helicopters around Shaan as Ahad makes important calls. There is a selection of neighbours and fellow trophy housewives with their kids. I marvel at how perfectly they blend being polite with being obnoxious.

“So, what is your excuse this time, huh? Boss expected you to stick to the deadline? You made an inappropriate comment about HR?” Ahad jeers at me.

“Ji, not before cake-cutting, please.”

For once I am grateful for Razia, but images of Halloween night flash before my eyes and I rush to the loo.

When I come out, Sahar is waiting for me by the door. She puts an arm around me and whispers ‘once the guests leave’ in my ear as if she’s invented a plan. I am grateful for her Sahar-ness.

I wheel ammi to the sofa where everyone is seated. Ahad is prepared to hold court, but before he says anything Sahar speaks up.

“Ahad, I know it’s very hard for you to pay off the loan yourself. It’s not fair, but Mehr and I are struggling with our own bills.” Her voice is clear, rehearsed.

Ahad’s response is to lash out. He bangs his fists on the glass centre table. Flings his phone on the ground. It’s an old performance of anger. Disproportionate. Just like dad. Only this time there is no Fahad to check him.

Ammi looks up, her eyes focussing on the scene in front of her, like an old TV flickering until the images clarify. Razia picks Shaan up before his birthday is completely ruined and walks away. Sahar and I don’t say anything. We know our part in the performance only too well. This is what we did with baba’s episodes, and what we’re continuing to do with Ahad. Maybe we still are four peas in two pods, only not in the order they planned it.

They don’t invite us to, but we stay the night. The home we grew up in. Our place.

At 3 am, I wake Sahar. Her eyes widen as she sees ammi in the wheelchair by the bed.

“AMMI… what’s happening?”

“Yeh piyo.” I hand her a mug of black coffee. “We’re leaving. With ammi.” I’ve packed all of her things by then.

“But…”

“Screw Bhaiya!”

Sahar closes the door behind us with care and tiptoes to the two of us. It is such an unusual look on her face that I giggle and she rushes to cover my mouth with her hand. Just like that, we’re kids again.

The ride back to our place is almost pleasant. I buzz the window down and sit at the back with my arm around ammi. She leans her head on my shoulder. We should have taken her with us when we moved out. The streetlamps wink at me every 30 seconds and Sahar puts the radio on.

#

Three days and multiple unanswered calls later, Ahad sends Razia to retrieve ammi. It was probably her idea, to avoid another fit.

“Kaisi hain aap?” she asks. Her voice too dry, too soft.

At first, ammi doesn’t say anything. She waits until Razia sips her tea before she takes her hands in her own and says, “It is a gift for a mother to get more years with her daughters. Tell Ahad I left by my own choice.”

The exchange between them is a little too tender. I place a palm on ammi’s shoulder.

“Show Razia your paintings,” she instructs me. The fuck! Why’d she…?”

I take her to my room and pull out the two most outrageous ones, the ones I’d never show anyone. Razia doesn’t bat an eyelid, as if she knows what I’m doing. Then, she spots one I never wanted her to see. I’d painted an old photograph in technicolour, garish and joyful. The six of us in our garden. We’re still kids. I was in my No Pants phase then. Fahad had stripped to give me company, the two of us—oldest and youngest—naked and delighted, standing in attention for the camera. Sahar already bore the look of her older responsible self and Ahad looked, well, bored.

“I’m sorry about what happened, Mehr. Ammi seems happier with you two. Take good care of her.”

What the fuck is she on about?

“That’s it? What will you tell Ahad?”, I ask, adding ‘Bhaiya’ as an afterthought.

“I’ll handle him. I’m assuming you girls will take care of ammi’s expenses?”

The next day, I throw my Rexy into the trash and file a complaint with the HR of my former employer.

A couple of months in, nothing useful has come of my HR complaint, so I take up a new job and begin contributing to the monthly expenses. It’s not nearly enough, but it’s a start. Sahar and I take ammi to visit Shaan once a week. On one of these trips, we take a new selfie in the garden – Ahad is grumpy as ever, but Razia and Shaan look sunlit.

I sneak into Fahad’s room to return the injured hookah to its original place behind the bed.