But Ira Said Read online

  There is a feeble applause for his ‘full marks’. While Ms Deepika calls for Roll Nos. 3 and 4, I start thinking about how great it would be if a big, disgusting snake came and gobbled up Ms Deepika like in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. In reality (the fictional kind) though, it petrified people and did not gobble them up.

  Which would be fine too.

  ‘Dude, are you okay? Did you flunk?’ Nim asks, slightly weirded out by my morose expression. ‘Chill, so did I.’ I look at her, give a weak smile and nod.

  Nim is staring at me, convinced that I have flunked. That’s the problem. No one understands. I haven’t flunked. I’ve written one of the best papers of my life.

  2

  A few weeks earlier

  I calculated the time I had to save my neck from the razor-sharp axe of the lethal geography exam. If I studied till one at night and woke up at four in the morning, leaving one hour for lunch and dinner, I would get thirteen hours altogether. That is, if I started right away.

  If you think about it, thirteen hours is more than enough time to study. Well, the catch was that I had fifteen chapters in geography. Hmmm, but you don’t need one whole hour for each chapter, do you? Any outsider, blissfully ignorant of the BIG BAD world of school, would have said this. What they don’t know is that I also have ten chapters in economics (yes, the IBSE is run by sadists). So, in all I had to mug up twenty-five chapters so that I could vomit them (neatly and legibly, of course) on the answer sheet the next day. In thirteen hours.

  Let’s just jump from the balcony instead.

  No worries. I am not suicidal. You see, just next to our building, the spot where I would land (if I decided to jump), there is this silver S-class Mercedes. (Silver? So original. I’ve already decided. When I become Mukesh Ambaniesque rich, my cars are never going to be boring blacks and silvers. One blood-red, another violet, the third navy-blue, the last forest-green and maybe a yellow Lamborghini. To match with the house colours! And of course, I will never live in an ugly monstrosity.)

  Back to the point. Now this big ugly black crow has a habit of relieving himself daily on the car. How do I know? Because my mother has a habit of putting out little cups of water for the birds (a ritual inspired by the ravings of a hardcore PETA activist she bumped into at a book signing). Living in a cement forest, I never see any peacocks (though I don’t expect them to fly up to the tenth floor), kingfishers or even parrots. Only some ungrateful crows. This one gets quite edgy if the water supply is not on time. The old dahi containers filled with water are dutifully put out by me as soon as I finish breakfast. Mr I-shit-on-the-Merc doesn’t condone tardiness (so what if Zee Studio decided to show The Godfather at 11:45 p.m.) and isn’t afraid to show it with acute rattling of the aluminium grills. As soon as this cacophony starts, I, like a submissive minion, rush out with the dahi container. After throwing me a ‘whatever’ look, I-shit-on-the-Merc gulps down the water, and in an ultimate act of ingratitude, knocks the container over, swoops down in this very Harry-Potter-has-just-spotted-the-snitch way and promptly shits on the Merc.

  All this in a mere five seconds (I’ve counted).

  Moral of the story: Don’t jump from my balcony. If you do, you’ll reach hell. Covered in deep shit.

  So you see, this option was out of the question. And of course, Rika won’t let me rest in peace if I die before her sweet sixteen party.

  I reached for my phone and saw that I had five unread messages and three missed calls from Ma and Rika.

  I deleted the first two messages without reading them (they would have been the Kya-aap-akele-hain types from my crappy mobile service provider). I skipped Nim’s ‘CALL ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!’, glanced at Ma’s ‘Are u home? Y didn’t u call me?’ and rolled my eyes at Shantanu’s ‘Hey ssup? Fnshd stdyin? Bet u hav nway call me.’

  Dismayed at his grammatically challenged and misspelled English despite my subtle hints (like joining Facebook groups called ‘Dear grammatically challenged people, we are here to get you!—The Grammar Nazis’), I contemplated calling him for a second before I stopped myself.

  We would jabber away for an hour. And tomorrow he would cheat and pass, while I would flunk. Not that I am a sati-savitri who won’t cheat, it’s just that I can’t cheat. I always get caught.

  Why? Because I have been brought up on a healthy dose of ‘You know, beta, once when I tried to copy …’ stories. And after hearing about my entire khandaan’s ignominies when trying to cheat, this shortcoming is most certainly embedded in my DNA.

  I have tried to cheat only twice in my fifteen years. Once, during a unit test in third standard when I wasn’t a hundred per cent sure of one multiplication sum and sneaked a peek into Asyut’s paper, keeping in mind that his grandfather was a reputed math tutor. When the teacher gave me my paper, I had scored 39/40. She told the class that I had lost one mark in a multiplication sum. Just then, from the back of the class, Asyut piped up, thrilled about our parallel mistakes, ‘Arrey, yaar! Me too.’ He followed it up even more enthusiastically with, ‘Did you also write 2186 instead of 2168?’ My very nosy partner sniffed and found her way to my paper and affirmed this with a resounding ‘YES!’.

  There was a moment’s silence.

  Everyone knew that I sat behind Asyut and, needless to say, I was greeted with suspicious stares for quite some time.

  I swear, for kids who found the word saxophone dirty, they sure caught on to stuff fast.

  As for the second time, I don’t mind it that much now. Though the memories still sting.

  New in Thoburn and Hurst and conscious of the fact that I was a total dihati next to the posh south Mumbai-bred student body, I decided that to fit in I would have to be cool (which I always was, Rika assures me now. Not cool. Just, you know, something like cool. According to Rika, only wannabes and dihatis use the word cool. People who are born cool don’t use the word cool. At least, not to describe themselves. Whatever that means.). ‘Cool’ in the sense of not collapsing when someone has BFs or adorns his/her speech with liberal helpings of ‘Fuck you’, etc.

  One day, while trying to be ‘with it’, I made the heinous error of asking Anamika Gopani for the formula to calculate the mode during a class test. Anamika was my partner and among the only two people who had made the effort to talk to me on my first day as I stood awkwardly next to the much-detested first bench. Now I know this was only because she brought baasi bhindi and roti for lunch and suffered from ghastly body odour that kept everyone away.

  Anyway, a victim to her sweet-talking, I had foolishly thought she would happily supply me with the answer. Instead, she gave me a horrified look and said haughtily, ‘I don’t cheat!’

  It was loud enough to make the teacher, who was (I suspect) BBM-ing outside the class, come in and hiss, ‘NO talking!’

  Infuriated, I shed all my dihati-ness and told Anamika to fuck off. Anamika, who was ready to launch another sneak attack, was shut up by Rika, who was sitting behind us. Rika sneered, ‘Shut your pie hole, Gopu!’ She then turned to me and whispered the answer to me. Apparently, my amateurish whispering was loud enough not only for her but also for the back-benchers. So was my ‘Fuck off’!

  Rika, pleased with my attitude, asked me to join her group during recess and that is how we became friends. All thanks to ol’ Gopu, our mutual nemesis.

  There was also a third time. It happened during my last year in DPS, Kanpur. That was the most mortifying cheating episode. The ultimate one. Strangely, I didn’t even cheat that time … But let’s not talk about that now.

  I’d been staring at the soft board in front of my study table for more than an hour. After what seemed like an era I had learnt the characteristics of Indian agriculture. Not bad. It was a really looong answer. Those very important types. Now that I knew it by heart, I liked it. It had to come in the exam.

  I shifted my gaze to ‘Mention the climatic and soil conditions required for the growth of rice’.

  Yuck.

  I had struggled for close to
an hour to learn this answer for a test in my tuitions. The thing is, it was an okay answer. Not exceptionally long. No Herculean task, as my math tuition teacher would say dismissively when assigning too much homework. What bothered me was that there were at least a dozen questions along the same lines for wheat, pulses, tea, rubber, etc. So I normally ended up answering the rice question with the favourable climatic conditions for cotton and the soil conditions required for the growth of wheat.

  ‘Arrey baba! How much will you study?’ Ma strode into my room with a glass of Bournvita. She puckered her brow at my usual whine for a hot cuppa coffee. ‘This is not the age,’ she muttered and swooped down on the exam timetable lying carelessly on my desk.

  Her eyes became huge. ‘Bhagwan! What kind of cheapda timetable is this, hmm?’

  I stifled a grin. Much to Nani’s fury, Ma had picked up words like ‘cheapda’ and ‘charbi chadh gayi hain’ and ‘bevda’ while she was teaching our maid English. Nani had almost suffered a cardiac failure when she realized that Ma had forgotten all her tehzeebs while desperately teaching the maid to spell ‘come’.

  ‘If you continue like this, all your English will go wrong,’ she said. ‘Then no one will publish your next book!’

  Wait, have I mentioned my mom’s book?

  I, Ira Bhatt, am proud to say that I am the daughter of Sujata Bhatt, bestselling author of The Mango Family.

  Take that, losers!

  This is something Papa and I wanted to say to every stinky publishing house that rejected Ma’s book, an eventual bestseller. Those rejections led to hour-long crying jags, with Ma proclaiming herself to be this awfully untalented, conceited loser who by virtue of being the topper of Lucknow University in BA English (Honours) thought that all and sundry would be dying to publish her book. These mid-life crisis sessions would conclude with her being positive that she should have gone to IIT instead and managed a half-dead dude’s stock portfolio instead of doing her BA.

  ‘Don’t tell me you are going to study everything?’ she continued conversationally. ‘Arrey, for my English Honours I did not even read some of the books. Horrible, depressing covers.’ She shuddered.

  ‘Of course not!’ I admitted miserably. ‘You know, I have eighteen chapters left!’ I slumped back against my chair with a groan. ‘And only nine hours.’

  And then it finally hit me that for the first time in my life I would have to resort to selective studying because I had not prepared well enough. Add to that the fact that I seemed to have forgotten every single answer I’d learnt. I looked at Ma and my lips began to quiver. Slowly, the sniffling and snivelling started and before I knew it, I was sobbing, bawling and howling.

  ‘Sujata, have you left the TV—’ Papa stopped mid-sentence when he caught sight of me, ‘on?’ He stood in the doorway awkwardly, punctuating my sobbing with ill-timed ‘Arrey betas’ and ‘errs’. He finally entered the room and started ruffling my hair.

  ‘Arrey baba, what happened? Not feeling well?’ He gazed at me in concern. ‘You want me to make nimbu-paani?’

  Nimbu-paani?!

  I looked up at my father and nodded. He was a sweet guy. He really was. He always cheered me up with frequent movie outings and pet goldfish (too bad they always died). Even though in the past year he had regretfully come to terms with the fact that our tastes weren’t the same any more, he gratified me with the surprise BlackBerry and iPad. He had tried his best to cope with me during the infamous teen phase. Alas, he hadn’t done very well. Waving aside the occasional teenage outbursts he, sadly, believed that he was still the father of a naïve and unsullied-by-the-modern-world nine-year-old me. So it was kind of hard to explain to him that nimbu-paani— his magic solution (once upon a time, mine too) to all the quandaries in the world—was never going to resolve the mess I was in.

  ‘Karthik …’ Ma sighed. ‘I am sure if Ira wanted nimbu-paani she would’ve told me. And she is completely fine. Just worried.’

  ‘About what?’ Papa asked, bewildered. ‘What do you have to worry about? Arrey, you are a teenager, roaring with energy, ready to take each day of life as it comes! You have so many nice friends and I even bought you a BlackBerry. Isn’t that what all of you want, hmm?’

  OK. I have to say this. Which silly teen serial had Papa been watching? 90210?

  ‘Papa! I have exams going on!’ I yelled. ‘You forgot, didn’t you?’ I stared at him accusingly. Trust Papa to forget.

  Instead of evading my glare and asking guiltily which exam I had the next day (as any other father would’ve done), Papa, shattering all my expectations, snorted.

  That’s right. Snorted.

  ‘Uff, that’s why you’re crying. Arrey! My Ira is a scholar. Don’t worry!’ He chuckled and slapped my back. Even Ma ruffled my hair, grinning indulgently.

  Seriously, which peculiar breed of parents had god given me? What happened to the ‘Beta, you have to get 98 percent and get into IIT/AIIMS’ variety? Was there a lack of that sentiment in my case only?

  Thankfully, my parents understood from my teary-eyed face that this crisis necessitated some vital counselling. And not giggling, back-slapping and snorting.

  ‘Ira, it’s all in your head, OK? Now stop crying. Go wash your face. And then finish your milk.’ Ma’s gentle but admonishing words had an oddly relaxing effect on me. But I guess that’s what a mother is supposed to do.

  ‘And you haven’t forgotten anything. You remember everything,’ Ma told me firmly, rubbing my back. ‘Anyway, this is just a stupid prelim, not the main exam.’

  Keeping that in mind, I tried to focus on the ever-daunting geography textbook when Papa asked suddenly, ‘Achha, tell me a state where copper is found.’

  ‘Jharkhand,’ I replied morosely.

  As Papa gave a triumphant grin, I cried, ‘But Papa, you find everything in Jharkhand!’

  He just grinned some more.

  ‘Prepared?’ Anamika asked me as I hopped into the car. I was half-tempted to snap back, No, Anamika, I do not like coming to exams prepared. Happy?

  But on second thoughts, it wasn’t as if I was fabulously prepared.

  ‘Listen, Ira, I don’t get the graphs at all!’ said Rika, furiously turning the pages of her Xerox-ed notes. ‘Do you think it’s fine if I bunk evergreen forests?’ She turned to me with expectant eyes.

  ‘Errm … not sure. But do deciduous forests properly,’ I muttered. She glowered at the geography textbook, as if willing it to automatically download into her brain. She had moved over a little to create space for me. I tried to squish myself in but, realizing my endeavours were futile, gritted my teeth and asked Anamika to move her bum. Finally properly seated, I looked around to find everyone else sitting on the edge of their seat looking panicky/ petrified/fidgety. Nerves, I tell you.

  ‘Ira, for god’s sake, can you please help me?’ Rika snapped, startling my fascinated observation of a troubled Nihar trying to mug up the entire economics textbook by reading a sentence and repeating it to himself twice, furiously scratching away the whole time.

  I turned to Rika. What was wrong with her? As much as I wanted to help her, she, of all people, knew I couldn’t. Furthermore, we weren’t even giving our exams in the same class.

  I voiced my anxious concerns only to be asked to shut up and stop being daft. Apparently, she was just asking me to revise with her. Whatever.

  ‘So, tell me a major shipbuilding industry,’ I said chirpily. Rika stared at me, dumbstruck.

  ‘Is that in the syllabus?’

  Wow.

  I couldn’t believe this.

  This had to be the simplest question. Not to brag, but I could have answered it in a heartbeat, even if I was woken at midnight. Strange, last evening had been so troublesome.

  In front of me, an audience comprising of Nihar, Hina and Anamika sat waiting, captivated. Anamika’s mouth hung open slightly, waiting for a mosquito to grace it. Rika, meanwhile, hesitated, opened her mouth, closed it and then stammered and stuttered a bit. Then she slumpe
d back and said, ‘OK, I don’t know.’

  ‘Kochiiiiiiiiiii,’ I squealed in delight. I started to say something else but stopped.

  Rika looked miserable. Nihar’s face registered utter gloom. He had even stopped scratching. Anamika shut her mouth, robbing any hovering mosquitoes of a convenient resting point, and tried to hide her Oh-shit-I-don’t-know-a-thing expression. I decided revising was a better option than quizzing.

  Or, to put it another way, better than showing off my intellectual prowess. Tee hee.

  ‘So, have you done sustainable development? I think that’s important,’ I murmured, trying to be all cool and calm like the chicks on Big Boss before elimination. Rika shook her head and frantically tried to find the notes on sustainable development while the rest of us buried ourselves in our textbooks.

  A strange knot formed in my stomach as we reached school. My knees shook. I felt queasy and nervous, but not fearful. A lot like Ma felt before any interview.

  I’ve always found this odd because Ma is confident about the fact that her book is universally (OK, at least nationally) liked. The idea of my being sure of my intellect, on the other hand, is kind of outlandish.

  ‘Best of luck!’ Rika’s driver called from behind as we piled out of the car.

  He grinned goofily, exposing his paan-stained mouth as we thanked him. Throwing a concerned look at Rika, he shook his head and drove away, chortling, ‘Arrey baby, phikar not! I didn’t go phor my prelim only. Tuition tha na.’

  I entered the classroom. It looked like a fish market. A blur of anxious faces buried in textbooks dominated my vision. Bumping into one hazy figure after another, I hitched my bag up and neared an open window. I peeped outside and swelled with pride as I saw wailing toddlers clinging to their parents’ legs for dear life; I was early. The timing for these wee mites was a few minutes before our exam started. Usually I had to battle through a stream of parents returning home, relieved that their kids had once again failed to damage their hearing abilities.