Cracking India Read Online Free PDF Page A

crack to let out a long khaki caterpillar. Centipedal legs marching, marching, it curves, and as it approaches Electric-aunt’s gate it metamorphoses into a single German soldier on a motorcycle. Roaring up the drive the engine stops, as I know it must, outside Electric-aunt’s doorstep. The siren’s tee-too tee-too is now deafening. My heart pounds at the brutality of the sound. The soldier, his cap and uniform immaculate, dismounts. Carefully removing black gloves from his white hands, he comes to get me.
    Why does my stomach sink all the way to hell even now? I had my own stock of Indian bogeymen. Choorails, witches with turned-about feet who ate the hearts and livers of straying children. Bears lurking, ready to pounce if I did not finish my pudding. The zoo lion. No one had taught me to fear an immaculate Nazi soldier. Yet here he was, in nightmare after nightmare, coming to get me on his motorcycle.
    I recall another childhood nightmare from the past. Children lie in a warehouse. Mother and Ayah move about solicitously. The atmosphere is businesslike and relaxed. Godmother sits by my bed smiling indulgently as men in uniforms quietly slice off a child’s arm here, a leg there. She strokes my head as they dismember me. I feel no pain. Only an abysmal sense of loss—and a chilling horror that no one is concerned by what’s happening.

Chapter 4
    I pick up a brother. Somewhere down the line I become aware of his elusive existence. He is four—a year and a month younger than me. I don’t recall him learning to crawl or to walk. Where was he? It doesn’t matter.
    My brother is aloof. Vital and alert, he inhabits another sphere of interests and private thoughts. No doubt he too is busy picking up knowledge, gaining insights. I am more curious about him than he about me. His curiosity comes later. I am skinny, wizened, sallow, wiggly-haired, ugly. He is beautiful. He is the most beautiful thing, animal, person, building, river or mountain that I have seen. He is formed of gold mercury. He never stands still enough to see. He turns, ducks, moves, looks away, vanishes.
    The only way I know to claim his undivided attention is to get him angry. I learn to bait him. His name is Adi. I call him Sissy. He is too confused to retaliate the first few times I call him by his new name. At last: “My name is Adi,” he growls, glowering.
    The next day I persist. He pretends not to notice. In the evening, holding up a sari-clad doll I say, “Hey, Sissy, look! She’s just like you!”
    Adi raises his head and looks squarely from the doll to me. His jet eyes are vibrant. His flushed face holds the concentrated beauty and venom of an angry cobra. And like a cobra striking, in one sweep he removes a spiked boot and hurls it at me. I stare at him, blood blurring my vision. And he stares back communicating cold fury and deathly warning.
    It’s not that he doesn’t want to play with me. It’s just that I can’t hold his attention for more than a few seconds. His unfathomable thoughts and mercurial play pattern absorb him. Squatting before comers or blank walls, head bent, fingers busy, he concentrates on trains, bricks, mudballs, strings. Quickly he shifts to
another heap of toys and garbage in another corner; or out the doors into the garden, or vegetable patch, or servants’ quarters at the back of the house.
    At night he’s into his nightsuit and fast asleep while I’m still soaking my chilblained toes in scalding salt water—or standing on a stool brushing my teeth. We sleep in outsize elongated cots. Like our loosely tailored clothes with huge tucks and hems, our cots are designed to last a lifetime. (My brother outgrew his cot. I still fit into mine.) Ayah tucks in the mosquito net and switches off the faint light.
    Is there anything to compare with the cozy bliss of snuggling beneath a heavy quilt with a hot-water bag on a freezing night in an unheated