Miss Timmins' School for Girls Read Online Free PDF Page B

referred to as a “going to clubs and drinking sort of man,” and I always imagined such men to be mysterious and brutal, smelling of aftershave. Not like us. I spent that holiday reading Barbara Cartland romances, novels set in nineteenth-century England. Every morning I would set out with one of the ayahs, walk to Kamal’s Book House, and take out a romance. I read twelve Barbara Cartland books and a thick, fat hardbound romance called Thelma on that holiday. At night, I read with a torch under the mosquito net and listened to the dogs howling. There were nights when the dogs of the town seemed to be discussing the history of the entire universe.
    â€œShalini, what’s with that daughter of yours?” the aunts would ask. “All day she lies around and reads. She should learn to cook. How will you get her married?”
    How will you get her married? That was the refrain that always followed my mother and me like a tail on a dog. We had learned to ignore it. Ayi would smile and proudly say, “Our Charu is so clever, she wins so many prizes. English prize, chess prize, history prize. Charu, go get your report,” she would order proudly.
    As she sat gossiping with the women in the courtyard at the center of the house, I could see that she was apart from them all. Not only was she the most beautiful, I would think happily, she also had an inner grace. I do not know if it was the urine therapy, as she said, or if it was her sweetness and strength, but her skin had become more and more translucent over the years, and her face glowed with an inner light. Her soft green eyes were always ready to twinkle. I called them the Eveready batteries, because they were ever ready to light up with a smile.
    She had grown over the years from a spoiled daughter of a transport magnate to a strong and grounded woman shepherding her wounded family. She was our shelter from the storm. My father became quiet and retiring, rarely venturing an opinion. She, in turn, became cheerful and optimistic. She did it at first to hold our fragile lives together. We could always trust her to see the brighter side of things. “When you marry, you are together rowing the same boat through life,” she told me. “If one partner loses his oar, you just have to row harder; otherwise, the boat will sink.”
    She kept all her fancy saris, jewels, and purses from those days locked in a separate Godrej cupboard. Some evenings I would open the cupboard, pull out the saris, and finger all the brocades, silks, and chiffons. A faint perfume always clung to the saris, petticoats, and neatly piled lace handkerchiefs—the perfume of the flat by the sea.
    I got my period when I was thirteen. That night I heard my father firmly say, “Ata bus kar, Shalini.” Now stop it all, Shalini.
    Soon after, all the cures were terminated. My parents had always believed the blot would go away or at least fade a little after puberty. When it did not, my mother braced herself and set out to teach me to live with it. She taught me to be a stoic, to fold up my life and expect little, to live within the borders of my fate, to make my joy from small things, from incense and flowers and shining surfaces and delicately cooked food. I was raised to be happy in the graces of an orderly life.
    Her words washed off with the first rain of Panchgani, because they were a lie. She told me to be content with my lot, but she was not content with hers. She taught me to follow her, but she did not know where she would go.
    Because our life was a sham. Because while I lay in my room with my hair spread out on the pillow and dreamed of escape, I believed Baba behind his patient eyes was dreaming too. Of leaving us one morning, of walking out of Navjeevan Housing Society and turning the corner and becoming a man without a past.
    It was not a life without passions as I had thought—hearing them snoring in the room next to mine as the seasons passed and I