March 20, 1991
Karachi

Dear Tania,


I wasn’t going to respond to your rude letter but I admit, my curiosity is smitten. If your boyfriend is trying to have sex with other girls, why is he your boyfriend?

Let me take this opportunity to clarify some of your misconceptions.

One, it’s really none of your business whether I have a boyfriend or not but just to set the record straight, I do. His name is Ali Naqvi. He is extremely good-looking. He is a painter and is very creative which is a good match for me because I am logical, rational and unemotional. I’m going to be a lawyer.

Ali Naqvi has never ever tried to have sex with me.

Two, having a twin brother is far worse than having a big brother. When your twin brother is Navi, it is like having no brother at all.

Three, no we do not play hockey in salwar kameezes. We play in shorts. I suppose now we are much cooler?

And finally, no, my mother did not start an alumni association. My mother is not one to start things.

Your letter demonstrates a sad lack of intellectual curiosity. I admit I am disappointed. Is it not at all interesting to you to consider a correspondence with your mother’s daughter’s best friend? How could you not consider how helpful it would be to go over your college plans with someone with fresh eyes? We could find out from each other what our mothers were like in college. Do you have any pictures of them from that time? All the pictures in our house are from after we moved to Pakistan.

Chhoti Bibi is here so I must go. I’ve taught her to play chess with me. She’s terrible but it’s better than nothing.

March 30, 1991
Bombay, India

Dear Tanya,


Your boyfriend sounds gay. You better send me a picture.

My boyfriend is the best looking boy in school. I’m saying that objectively. Even my mother thinks he’s good looking and my mother hates him. There are a couple of boys in the 12th who are better looking but they’re boring good looking you know? Like I can’t deny Arjun has a weird nose. His eyes are scary because he’s the intense, staring type. His hair stands up and he won’t let me touch it because he spends hours punking it up.

He punks it up damn well.

It was quite hard to get him to fall for me. I have lots of experience in making guys fall for me. It usually takes two months, three if he’s already with someone. But with Arjun, it took six months. Sometimes I think that he purposely made it that way so that I’d be stuck.

Sometimes I wish I hadn’t done it.

When Arjun dresses up, he looks like a model. Every morning I wait to see him stride into class, always late, always hair half wet, always looking like the world is a joke and only he knows the punchline. He keeps our relationship a secret in school. I’ve thought about breaking up with him a thousand times. I’ll tell him, look baby either we’re together in front of everyone or we’re not. But then when no one else is watching, he looks straight at me and I can’t breathe.

What’s Mr Naqvi’s story? Is he also reading the correct writers for college admissions? Do you do homework on your dates? Do you even have dates? Tell me the truth did you make him up?

So Nusrat said I should say sorry for my first letter. I mean I didn’t think it was that bad but whatever. Sorry.

So who is this Chhoti Bibi chick? Your dad’s first wife? Ha ha.

Love, Tania

PS – Seriously man, I was just kidding about the first wife thing.

Don’t get your panties in a bunch.

April 9, 1991
Karachi, Pakistan

Dear Tania,


It is a testament to how bored I am that I continue to write to you. But my options are limited. I choose you.


Chhoti Bibi (thanks for the unnecessary translation) is the niece of Bibi. Bibi is our servant. She runs our house and all of us, including my mother which is odd, now that I think of it, because I remember when my mother used to run the house and Bibi.

Chhoti Bibi showed up at our house three months ago. She ran away from her village because she was married off to someone she didn’t like. She bit him on their wedding night. Then she broke a window and escaped. It took a week to find her. By then the husband’s family wouldn’t have her back so they sent her to us. She’s learning how to be a servant.
Chhoti Bibi comes and sits with me twice a day. I suspect she does it for the air conditioning. I don’t really mind. There’s something about her although I can’t say what it is. She is a big girl who likes to wear green and yellow salwar kameezes with huge nylon flowers on them. Her hair is always oiled into fat, tight plaits with a fluorescent pink ribbon threading through them all the way up to a narrow river of scalp at the exact centre of her head. If Chhoti Bibi has ever heard of colours that don’t give you a headache, she has shown no indication of it yet.

I suppose it’s strange to discuss a servant quite so much. It’s the broken knee. I don’t see anyone these days other than Chhoti Bibi.

But still. There is something about her. Her first day here, she strode into the house and walked straight to the kitchen although there’s no way she could have known where it was. She caused an uproar that morning by letting in a strange dog who relieved himself on the hall carpet that she then proceeded to wash with great enthusiasm, not realizing it was a fragile heirloom and Bibi almost had a heart attack when she saw it hanging on the line between our panties and pyjamas.

The other day, the gardener tried to be fresh with her and she slapped him. Right across the face. He lost his balance and fell into the pond and she went in and saved him which was quite unnecessary as the pond is only about three feet deep. The gardener was so insulted he tried to quit three times and had to be given the weekend off to drink and recover his self-esteem.

And was she embarrassed? No, not Chhoti Bibi. She came to my room and squatted in front of the AC, flinging her plaits over her shoulders so the air plays over the nape of her neck and asked me to tell her the story of how my parents met. This has now become a daily ritual. Her conclusion to it is always, “And then Baji was born, looking like a fairy doll.”

Baji of course is me. Fairy doll is courtesy my mother from whom I have inherited golden hair and pale eyes. Chhoti Bibi is obsessed with my hair. She spends hours combing it and building it into fanciful styles. It doesn’t bother me. I’m resigned to how I look. Besides, it’s nice when she plays with my hair. Nice to be touched. But I can’t wait to go back to America where it was normal to be me.

Chhoti Bibi is my ticket to America, Tania. I’ve been wrestling for years with the problem of how to stand out in college applications and I think I have finally found it. You see, she dropped out of school in Class Eight. So she doesn’t have a high school diploma. Don’t you think if I managed to get her to pass the correspondence course equivalent of a high school degree, Harvard would find that impressive?

What do you think? Wouldn’t you be impressed if you were an Admissions Officer at Harvard?

April 20, 1991
Bombay, India

Dear Tanya,


You’re damn boring. You’re one giant college application. It’s DAMN boring. Your letter sucked. Everything today sucked anyway but your letter sucked the hardest because it forced me to realize that even when I graduate from my stupid school which seems to attract Boring People like a magnet, I will still be surrounded by Boring People.

My mother is the world’s biggest Boring Person. She fights with everyone. With me, with my dad, with the driver, with the cook.

I want to run away to an island somewhere near Goa and live there alone. Or maybe with Nusrat. Except I don’t even want to mention Nusrat to you because of the way you talked about Chhoti Bibi which clearly shows that on top of being a Boring Person you have no class because you don’t know how to talk to servants and my mom says that class is about how you talk to people especially poor people like servants.

Peace, Tania

PS – Nusrat is not a servant.

Excerpted with permission from Tanya Tania, Antara Ganguli, Bloomsbury.