Tanya Tania Page 2
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?
Best,
Tanya
April 20, 1991
Bombay
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.
2
February 18, 1996
New York, NY
Dear Tania,
Today I went for a five-hour walk. You can do that in New York. Just finish your homework, put on your jacket and go outside and walk and walk and walk and walk. Train your gaze on the sidewalk, watch it come, watch it go. Soon you develop a rhythm, soon you start to feel warm, soon your footfall becomes a soundtrack, soon the crowds dissolve and the constant blur of faces is like the wind, a companion. Winter in New York is beautiful.
I needed to go for a walk because I was thinking about Jake. And you. I was luxuriating over this second letter. What will I say? What to pick from the last three and a half years and set out like ingredients for a meal I’m going to cook slowly and carefully for you? What not to say in case I offend you. I’ve decided to ask you nothing.
The most important thing to tell you is that my mother is much, much better. I wanted to write that she is a different person now but I can’t in all honesty say that. She is still very thin and some days she doesn’t leave the house. I wish she would take up a job instead of volunteering at the library. My grandfather left her everything when he died. And she was already living in their house. I asked her if it feels good to not have to worry about having money anymore but she looked at me blankly. I don’t think she notices having it any more than she had noticed not having it in Pakistan. Then what was it that made her leave my father and our life in Pakistan? She hasn’t gone back once in three and a half years.
Guess what I’m majoring in! Well, I have two majors but this one is purely fun. No really, guess! You can’t? Alright, I’ll tell you.
My second major, my FUN major, is English Language and Literature. I bet you didn’t see that coming, did you! My professor used to be Robert Frost’s star pupil. He’s grumpy and sarcastic and exacting and is the only professor who doesn’t make me conscious of being depressed in snowflake land. He is also the only professor other than Amrita who wasn’t surprised when I opened my mouth and a Pakistani accent came out. Professor Pritch asked me no questions other than if I thought Macaulay was racist. I told him I did.
This semester I have to take a class that I’ve been avoiding. It’s integral to my serious major and really, I should have taken it before. Today Amrita made it clear to me in her supremely gentle yet iron way that I don’t have a choice. Amrita is my thesis advisor. She’s a professor of Political Science, specializing in Post-Colonial Studies. Amrita is brilliant and kind which is not common among professors. Amrita looks at me as if she knows everything. Paige says she has eyebrows of empathy.
Incidentally, it turns out Columbia is quite full of Boring People. You would have hated it. I wonder how you’re liking Xavier’s College. I have tried to imagine it. According to Mala, a lot of film stars go there. You should be a film star, Tania. You’re gorgeous.
But anyway, I’ve made some friends. Two of them, Shahana and Mala, are Indian and I can’t tell if you would love them or detest them. It drives me mad not being able to tell. Every friend I make, every boy I kiss, every party I go to, I want to know instantly what you would think. Sometimes I imagine the things you would say and they make me laugh. Other times I argue with you. Some days you don’t speak at all. Then the dreams come at night with fire and smoke and my familiar friend, the dead naked man, lying across the steps of a burnt bakery in Bhendi Bazaar.
I go to a shrink here at the college. I asked her how it is that I can have nightmares when I wasn’t there, never saw any of it. She says it’s called transference and it’s coming from my guilt. She says I shouldn’t feel guilty because it wasn’t my fault. But she refuses to free me from seeing her although three years of seeing her hasn’t helped at all with the nightmares.
Anyway, I didn’t mean for this letter to get dismal. Overall, I have had a good time of it in Columbia. I almost think I’m happier here than I would have been at Harvard. Although that is an impossible thing to know for certain, isn’t it? What life would have been like if one thing, just one thing had been different. If I step out onto the road one moment before the light changes (no, I am not suicidal, they certify it in writing every year). If we hadn’t moved from America to Pakistan. If my father hadn’t met my mother. If I hadn’t broken my leg. If the police had never come.
I’m going to pretend now that you’re going to write back to me. That you’re going to write and tell me about Xavier’s College and your friends there and your current boyfriend who is a total asshole but oof the way he looks at you. And that you hate your classes because they’re all full of Boring People and because of that you’re quite sure that I would have loved them.
I probably would have.
Your most Boring Person friend ever,
Tanya
May 1, 1991
Karachi
Dear Tania,
Your letter made me laugh. You’re like a spoiled six-year-old. Didn’t your father teach you not to throw tantrums? Mine would send me to my room and lock the door every time I cried. Navi also used to throw tantrums when we lived in America but he stopped when we moved to Pakistan. He stopped eating cereal for breakfast when we moved to Pakistan. He also stopped playing baseball and he stopped sleeping in the same bed as me. Just like that.
Yesterday, Chhoti Bibi and I sat down for her first lesson. There is no escaping it: the news is not good.
Her Math is poor although there is a quickness about her because when I ask her basic division questions I can almost see her arranging oranges in a row and calculating the price for half a dozen minus one. Although maybe that’s not quickness. Maybe it’s just experience in shopping for oranges.
Her English is zero. Her Urdu is just a little better than that and I was treated to an impassioned defence of Punjabi over Urdu. She has a loud voice and she spits.
Her attention span is problematic. After we went through arithmetic, I decided to have a long talk with her about her future and I painted pictures of what her future could look like if she applied herself and got a high school degree, maybe even went to college. She lis
tened to me carefully and I thought she was impressed. I asked her what she wanted to be (bank teller, shop clerk, teacher). She said without hesitation that she wants to be a servant.
It was a blow, I won’t lie. But I will persevere. I think with some people ambition has to be taught.
My leg still feels numb. Isn’t it supposed to itch by now? You must be wondering why I can’t ask my father these questions when he is a brilliant neurosurgeon (the most difficult of all the surgical careers), but it is only because he is so busy building a new hospital in Karachi. This is the reason we moved back to Pakistan, so my father could start a new hospital. We are proud of him.
School closes this week for the summer. I’ve missed eighteen days of school. If someone had told me even a month ago that I would be able to live through eighteen days of not going to school, I wouldn’t have believed it. And now two months of summer. I hate summer. I hate the encroaching ways of the sun, everywhere all the time, impossible to escape.
I hate summer. I really hate summer.
Have you had one of those nights when you can’t sleep and even the walls around you begin to seem sinister? Your mind crawls with unhappy thoughts and you begin to obsess over what happened that day. You know, she said, he said but what did he really say, what had she really meant, that sort of thing. And then the most innocent word and the silliest things from the day begin to seem manipulative and cruel and you wonder how you could have been so stupid that you hadn’t seen that before. I feel like that. The skin on my back feels so tender, I imagine it sliding off smoothly like the skin of a ripe mango. And there would be my body—all muscles and fat and blood and bone. Nothing like a mango.
Chhoti Bibi was supposed to be here five minutes ago but she is late. I wish she was more like me. The branches of the gulmohur tree outside my window look like mechanical arms, going up and down in the breeze. Before you know it, the evening crows will be here, knocking their beaks stupidly against the glass.
Please tell me. Who is Nusrat?
Best,
Tanya
May 10, 1991
Bombay
Dear Tanya,
You sound DAMN depressed. Good thing I’m punished and can write to you. My mom punished me because I didn’t make Distinction in the quarterly exams. I never make Distinction in the quarterly exams. Once my dad even said that to my mom but it didn’t make a difference. She just said that Sammy got it every time so I should too. If only I paid attention. If only I focused.
This morning I had another punishment even though it was an invisible punishment. I had to sit next to Anahita Boriwala in Assembly. She is on top of the list of Boring People in the whole school, probably the whole city actually. Her parents made her sign a pledge to only sit in the front row and never, not even by mistake, do anything cool.
Anahita Boriwala smells. Once we were in a play and I was backstage with her and I almost fainted. It’s one thing to not be cool but to be uncool AND smelly…control what you can control you know. I am PARANOID about smelling. I smell my armpits at lunchtime every day even though I shower twice a day and use two brands of deo. I tried putting deo down there once for Arjun but it got itchy. Maybe you should also check for Mr Naqvi. I’m just saying it as a friend, don’t get mad.
The first thing you need to know about Nusrat is that she’s totally normal. If she wore regular clothes no one would be able to tell.
She had an accident when she was a baby and it damaged something in her brain. So she can’t speak. She can hear, she can do everything else, she just can’t speak. She makes these sounds when she’s really excited but that’s it. The sounds are really weird.
Her parents are poor-ish. Nusrat works at our house after school, washing the dishes because she wants to save up her own money to get into medical college. She’s really, really sure she wants to go to medical college. Her parents didn’t want their daughter to work in people’s houses but she’s like damn stubborn and so finally they had to let her. But she’s only allowed to work in our house because her dad built all our furniture and so he knows us like really well.
But anyway, if I ever meet Nusrat’s dad and mom I’m going to tell them not to worry because she’s DAMN intelligent. I mean I know you’re smart but imagine being able to read really fast and write really, REALLY good English when your parents don’t even speak it and your mother has only gone to school till the 4th standard and that too in an Urdu-medium school. She doesn’t have any siblings which my mother tells everyone at parties as evidence that not all Muslims have lots of kids. And then my father says something mean about Muslims. This is one of their favourite arguments. They also like to argue about drinking, money, how late my mother comes home, how little money my dad makes, my poor grades (whose fault it is), Sammy’s money-spending (whose fault it is), the Congress party and this new party that has come up called the BJP or BNP or something.
I tell Nusrat everything. I don’t make up good parts. I don’t leave out bad parts. When I come home from school and before she has to go home, we go sit by the sea on the rocks where people go to shit in the morning. But it’s always clean by evening. The sea takes it away every day.
Nusrat has a notebook and writes in it when she wants to say something. I’ve asked her to teach me sign language but she says it’s silly. I don’t know why she thinks it’s silly. I mean, do you think it’s silly?
Nusrat doesn’t like Arjun. I don’t want to talk about it.
Yesterday she told me that it wasn’t cool of me to ignore Neenee’s phone calls. But Neenee calls me four times a day. And when I pick up she gets so excited I just can’t help it. I imagine her oily face with all that curly hair (I mean even her moustache hair is curly) and I actually feel the vomit in my mouth. Sometimes I feel like I should tell her. Neenee, don’t be so easy. Neenee, wait for me to call you back. Neenee, don’t let me make fun of you. But then I hear the happiness in her voice when I call her and I want to slap her.
Neenee is my best friend. We’ve been friends since we started taking the school bus together when we were in nursery school. She still takes the school bus. I would pick her up in my car on my way to school but her father won’t let her. It’s really selfish. I mean, just because you’re not successful don’t make your daughter suffer, right?
At first I thought it was easy to talk to Nusrat because she can’t speak. But the thing is when someone doesn’t speak, you also speak less. I think words confuse things. Sometimes at school you look around and all the mouths are opening and closing around you and everyone is just talking to talk and you want to stand up and scream at everyone to shut up. Just shut up.
With Nusrat you don’t need to say it. You don’t need to say anything. You can just sit and look at the sea. She doesn’t look at me and I don’t look at her. Sometimes we hold hands without looking at each other. With Nusrat, it’s damn peaceful.
Love,
Tania
May 20, 1991
Karachi
Dear Tania,
I’m happy to report that there has been some progress from my side. Not a huge amount but definitely, some progress. Baby steps, I say to myself. Chhoti Bibi got 9 out of 10 on a Mental Math test. Granted, it was from a Class III workbook. Granted there was no long division. Still. Baby steps.
I went to tell my mother about it but her door was locked. She’s been spending a lot of time in her bedroom except when she is in the garden. She loves plants. Had I told you that? That she loves plants?
The city shut down twice this week because of strikes. I find that short-sighted of our authorities and let’s face it, quite rude. What if we had school and had to miss it?
Do you think the passive voice is better for a college essay?
So, is it that you don’t want to go to Harvard and Wellesley or is it that you don’t want to go to college in America at all? Are you worried that you will miss your family? I can’t wait to go back to America. There will be more people like me at Harvard. Plus, my mother’s paren
ts live there, of course. We call them Grandma and Grandad. I always feel awkward calling them that which I shouldn’t because after all, I am part American. My grandmother wears jeans which is, of course, perfectly normal in America. I suppose I will spend all my college holidays with them. They have a big house. I’ve spent all my previous summers there. Sometimes when I look up at my grandmother, I find her staring at me. Is it because I’m Pakistani?
I don’t really have much else to report so I’ll end here.
Best,
Tanya
June 1, 1991
Bombay
Dear Tanya,
Did you even read my letter? Here’s your Selfish Letter back.
Tania
June 13, 1991
Karachi
Dear Tania,
I was going to pretend that I didn’t know what you’re talking about. But I do. Of course I do.
Truth: Nusrat made me feel claustrophobic. With her carpenter dad and 4th standard Urdu mum and her adversity and her drive and listening to you on the rocks of the Arabian Sea. She would get into Harvard without even trying.
And yet it’s not just that. I imagined you and her sitting on the rocks of the sea and it was a physical pain in my chest. When we had first moved to Pakistan, my father used to take us to the beach. It was the first place I loved in Karachi although I used to be scared of the waves. My father would laugh at me and hold me up high above his head, the sea around his knees, and I loved feeling his hands banded around my waist, the sky and sea whirling. But we stopped going to the sea. I don’t know why. Sometimes I think my father doesn’t recognize me when he looks up from his morning tea and sees me at the breakfast table.