Drenched in sweat, I sat by a grove of guava trees. It reminded me of my grandmother’s sprawling farm in Panvel. My father lifting me above his shoulders till I managed to pluck some fruit. He would feed them to me, cutting the guava into long slices, sprinkling them with salt and chilli powder. The memory of that tangy sourness filled my mouth and I was tempted to grab one from an overhanging branch but I stopped myself.
In Shanthamaaya you could only eat when the big bell heralded mealtimes and have just the simple fare that was placed on the brass plates. A strict regime, one that was difficult to adhere to. No wonder my sister always refused to come.
Mandira, two years older than me and her voice two notches higher than mine, but close enough for us to pull pranks on our extended family, had called while I was driving here, starting off abruptly as always. “Mummy just told me you are going to that Kerala place again for the hundredth time! Did she call you?”
I replied, “Yes, Mandy, she called me, but it was mainly to complain about Manisha Tai and how fed –”
Mandira usually had a reason for calling and there was very little anyone could do to derail her. You could yank at the chain incessantly but this hurtling train would only stop at its destined station.
She cut me short saying, “But what I still can’t understand is what do they charge so much for in that hellhole? You keep saying there isn’t even a TV in the room, no swimming pool, and not even bloody room service!”
Mandira would have just returned from her regular ladies’ lunch. I could see her, sitting upright on her grey couch, a cigarette in her hand, overdressed in her stifling, overdecorated flat in Punjabi Bagh.
I took a swig of water from the plastic bottle in my bag and then a deep breath to control my irritation, as she went on, “Mummy was saying, ‘If Anshu only took half that money and spent it at Dr Chandra’s, then she would also be tip-top like you!’”
“Mandy, I don’t know why Mummy and you keep talking about me constantly! I never discuss you with her!” A guilty pause. Then my sister tried to mollify me.
“We just worry about you, that’s all. Listen to me, Anshu, forget all this holistic hocus-pocus. What you need is to just get some Botox done! If you fill in the cracks in the plaster and give the building a fresh coat of paint you find it easier to get tenants. It’s the same with us women, you know!”
Barbed retorts flew from my mind and banged against the wall of my gritted teeth. I took another deep breath and reminded myself that while blood is thicker than water, it has a tendency to congeal unpleasantly.
“Mandy, everyone is not desperately trying to hold on to their crumbling youth. I’m fine the way I am.”
And to blunt the sharp edge of my tongue before it ripped into my sister further, I said, “You do get more comfortable in your skin as you get older but that is probably because the poor thing is also not as tight as it once used to be. So you are partially right there.”
My sister laughed, a short, guttural bark, and I added, “Come here with me at least once, Mandy, you will feel a big shift.”
“Anshu, I swear I would rather go off to Tihar jail!”
But as usual she didn’t know when to stop. “I’m just concerned, that’s all. All you seem to be doing these last few years is working obsessively or taking these odd trips to your beloved santhalam, shantalam, I can’t even pronounce it! Mummy says that you hardly go out and she has to remind you to even thread your upper lip, for God’s sake.”
I could imagine their hour-long conversations, a washing line tied at one end in Bombay and the other in Delhi with me left to hang and dry in the middle.
“Mandy, I am fine, you and Mummy have just made it a point to find faults in me. I am sick of this ‘poor Anshu’ business. So what if I have been focusing on the school? You think businesses just run by themselves? Before giving me lectures ask yourself what you have done in the last few years aside from depleting your bank account and inflating your dermatologist’s? Stop getting on my case.” Only sisters can hurl nuclear weapons at each other and come out unscathed.
Our conversation was mercifully cut short because Malini, the senior teacher at my preschool, was on call waiting and, as I soon discovered, rather anxious. An abnormally strong preschooler-cum-sociopath had tried to strangle his classmate with the strap of her Chhota Bheem water bottle within a day of my being away.
Mandira would never understand why I liked coming to Shanthamaaya. She didn’t like regimentation, while I revelled in the fact that I did not have to think about what to wear, when to eat or even what to eat. The freedom of a mind unchained from the mundane worries of should I put on a peach lipstick or do a matte beige, should I make butter chicken or should I grab a sandwich. At Shanthamaaya, all the shoulds were replaced with musts, as if we were part of a cult, Scientology, Children of God, the Manson Family. This freedom from our own urges, safely cocooned in rules.
Excerpted with permission from Pyjamas Are Forgiving, Twinkle Khanna, Juggernaut.