Mango Chutney: An Anthology of Tasteful Short Fiction. Read Online Free PDF Page A

long kurta and a
salwar. All in cotton, neatly ironed and sturdy. Slack-sleeved and mounted
with a duppatta, to assure you are vaccinated against the skin. A pair of
socks and shoes to be prepared for an athletic sport at any moment of
life-threatening emergency. I was allowed a pen now. I sat in the girls’ row
of benches in the room and that was a foot away form the boys’. The
skirt, when I returned home, was no longer short. My grandfather’s shirt
could not drown it.
    The peculiarity of this shirt is only for a tuned eye. Specially designed for
certain humid summers, I discovered that only certain tailors were ca-
pable of producing it. And these people were made invisible by their an-
tique, loyal pool of customers and a board at their shop that read ‘Gents
tailors’. I guess they might have denied copyrights to large manufactur-
ers; they refuse to talk about politically unsanitary issues to unwelcome
little girls. This shirt could take any shade of brown, black, khaki, serious
blue, maroon or grey. It was made of cotton, usually: very fine weave and
tough. It intensely contrasted my grandfather’s daily dose of laughter.
It was sleeved a little more than the usual slack’s. It had two mirroring
pockets on its left front-half, right beside the wearer’s heart – one outside
and one inside. It was buttoned left over right. It was huge.
    The shirt was cut in such a manner that any minimal wind was allowed
entry. This ventilation, I believed for the longest time, was how a sufferer
of the skin could dupe the benevolent vaccinators. I wore the shirt over
long skirts so that I could suffer the skin. I was a rebel.
    Then came the experts who told you exactly how being a woman func
-
tioned: probiotic curves that do not show, well-vaccinated attire insured
with duppattas, teflon skin of a uniform shade whose visibility is not
interrupted by any out or ingrowth, hair groomed to prescribed lengths
in restricted regions such as over the skull or above the eye. A mellow and
polite smile increased your chances of procreating.
    I still wore my grandfather’s shirt on a long skirt. “Why does your daugh
-
ter dress like a eunuch?” “You really like being androgynous, don’t you?”
I only smiled, the flat kind, at what the experts deemed insults. My grand-
father still lent me his shirt to wear over my long skirt. He either was ag-
nostic to the experts or did not deem me a woman, they said. “He knew
I had contracted the Skin,” I scribbled in my diary.
    On the third of March a year ago, I was to gather with a flock of ten
women in a house. ‘Sleepover’, the invitation mail proclaimed in bold,
pink letters sounding suspiciously of abnormal or illegitimate adolescent
sleeping practices. Yes, I knew the person who called me over like I knew
my mirror. Her address was the tricky bit:
“Waltersingam road?”
    The guy in khakhi sitting in the front-half of a yellow-black auto rick
-
shaw rose from his mobile phone. He panned a gaze at me vertical and
horizontal to decide which language he should coin his reply in. An an-
kle-length wrap skirt; a stiff cotton shirt that was clearly not cut for me;
plaited hair with oil; a dot of a golden pin on the left nose; ear studs; a
black-blue cloth sling bag that meant business; a streak on the forehead
was not sufficiently religious; ‘singam’ pronounced just as he would have;
‘walter’ sounded more towards his ‘quarter’. He seemed to search for
some version of a universal sign language. He nodded as he bent down
to start the engine.
“Meter?”
    He nodded again, this time with his eyes to the road. I slid into the back
half of the yellow rickshaw. A quarter past eight at night, we reached
this place. I verified the door number and stepped in. Food and music
were served in abundance alongside conversations that are privy only
to the bench-neighbours whom you whispered to. About you, me and
the colleague-acquaintance-friend