There was once a girl in my life. A girl I loved, a girl I envied, my best friend in an age when best friends are the world.

She was a beautiful girl. Not pretty; we were not the pretty crowd, we were just the geeky know-it-alls. It was ages ago,in quite another life-time, an age before M&B and Sidney Sheldon, an age before I mourned my lost innocence. In fact, it was not me, it was a silly looking kid with a large head and larger uncombed bob who talked her into starting a Jane Austen club. Yet we didn’t know Juvenilia and Lady Susan existed. We were that young, that sheltered, and that silly. We admired Shakespeare and talked about uncertainty principle. There were dreams; dreams of greatness, ideal world, happiness, friendship, and dreams of romance and love even though we wouldn’t admit it. I envied her heart, and knew greatness would find her.

After years of oblivion, I come across her. She is as bright, as silly, and she smiles the same way. But we are different. I wonder if we were always so different, and in my heart I know we were. She has grown up into a beautiful woman, and I admire her smiling face, her hands holding the vodka. Looking at her, I am thinking of how she would look in my canvas, if I could paint her, before she went away from my life again. I am still her twin, her best friend from a world where everything was beautiful, and she takes me back into her heart. She laughs when she tells me she is the greatest hypocrite she knows.

All I know is that I still envy this woman, this child, and I envy the broken pieces of her heart.

My brother is sitting on the verandah reading newspapers, and he didn’t hear the little boy come in till he was spoken to in Tamil-Malayalam.

“Count this, will you?”

He looked up, or rather down, into a handful of coins, and an eager yet arrogant face of a six year old. The gate was open? How did this little person come into the happy world of wars and politics? (Back then my brother was mortally afraid of any humans less than a meter tall.)

“AMMME…. Some kid here.”

“Where did you get this money from?” My mother asked as she was counting it out for the boy.

“I begged for it.” The boy is proud. He is proud of the money. Proud of the earning.

“Don’t you go to school?”

“My akka goes. Sometimes. Will you give me notes for it?”

“Well, where do you stay? Where are your parents?”

“We stay near the quarry. My amma works there. I beg.”

“She sends you out to beg?”

“My father beats her up.”

There is something about the boy. Something winning. He is painfully beautiful, and young. Not yet ashamed. Not yet broken. And my mother is won over.

“Do you want to stay here?” she nudges him playfully. “We even have a dog you can play with.”

He contemplates. Everything about him is serious. He scratches Tintu’s head. He is measuring up. He stays. He is talking to my mother. Making conversation over biscuits. Fearlessly, spontaneously. What my brother and I cannot do as near-grownups.

“It’s very late. I am going then.” He announces suddenly.

“Not staying then?” My mother is smiling at him. I know she is disappointed at heart, even though she didn’t expect him to stay. She wants her grown-ups back into kids.

“Ngu-huh.” Vulnerable, shy and just a child. At that moment there was nothing serious about him. The child is back. That is how I remember him.

I wish he had stayed.

“I want an airport in Bangalore”

You can buy this, then.

“I want to build a new airport. I will buy the land and get the labourers from Kerala. And there will be planes.”

Planes makes sense. So when are you building it?

“Well, I will come here for Christmas vacation. I like Bangalore.”

To build it?

“No no. That is when I am big.”

Airports cost a lot of money. How will you make money?

“I will get the money from Sini Aunty. And Achan and Achachan. And I will have a job, and put a card in a machine and get money. Then put it again and again and get lots more money.”

It is settled. I am going to be the main financier of a future airport in Bangalore. I think they should forget about Devanahalli for the time being.

“Hello. What is Bee’s phone number?”

0110-1-21-32-86.

“01-101-13-286?”

0110-1-21-32-86. Is that what you wrote down?

“01-101-13-286. That’s it?”

I don’t know. I can only say it the other way.

“Hey, this lady goes and makes a stupid statement with no purpose. Why doesn’t she talk about the farmers in Vidarbha? That is a real issue. Let her do something for them first.”

For lot of women in India, this is a real issue. You cannot assign the relative importance to issues from only your perspective.

“But what will her statement serve? People will start killing each other. The masses will not understand these things.”

Someone ought to tell them. And maybe people are not stupid, you know.

“In other countries, maybe they aren’t. But here it was a really stupid thing to do. Poverty is a bigger issue any day, and I don’t see her fretting about the poor.”

Incidently, my State’s chief minister once said there should be no IT parks till the poor sons of the land became richer.

“That is different. It is poor economics. Here it is women’s lib versus people dying of poverty.”

Ever hear things like empowering women empowers the society? You don’t have to wait too long anyway. When the revolution comes, you are all done for.

“Oh yeah? You are gonna take over the world or what?”

We are already taking over, blockhead. See India. The women rule. (No.. no.. not the Prime Minister again). Don’t you understand the Universal Sisterhood in play? Ha. Wait till Hillary gets in. We have this underworld thing in every nation, you know. It is the biggest conspiracy that you ever came across and it is real. Maybe it will begin to sink in with your last breath. We are going to get rid of the men of the species. Mwahahaaaa…

“Hmm.. well, wouldn’t the species end pretty soon too?”

Oh no. We are going to figure out how to get rid of the male chromosome requirements. Once we master that, the world will be a better place.

“So we all die?”

Yes. We are doing it in stages. The intelligent ones first. What do you think I am doing here?

“Well, I didn’t know you killed people too.”

No, silly. We have decided engineers could be a potentional stage one targets. I am marking them. We have got this volunteer corps you know…

“So you are here to mark me for annihilation?”

Oh no. you are safe. Till maybe the 9th or 10th stage.

“What??? no way. Hey…?”

Don’t thank me. I didn’t do anything. Really.

“So, monitor is actually this screen, right? ”

Yes

“And it is an output device?”

Yes. Whatever gives you the output is output device.

“Yes yes. Like a printer. Can the screen not be input?”

No. You have to be able to feed– I mean give input to the computer for it to be an input device. Like–

“Like a keyboard. But the 5 and 10 I gave to add program is there in the screen, so is it not an input device too?”

No. It is not. Whatever you gave as input to keyboard comes in the display. Output.

“Mouse is input?”

Yes. Why?

“Oh. I have to evaluate my IT class’ answer sheets.”

What??

“Hey, hey.. I have this list of input and output devices. And answers to all the questions I gave. I just wanted to know.”

So you are not supposed to love?

‘Oh you should. You should fall in love with your husband once you are married. ‘

Well, what if I fall in love with my husband before he is my husband?

‘That is okay too. I mean, you are going to marry him for sure, then you can fall in love. ‘

What if I do fall in love, and I don’t marry him?

‘Well, then you shouldn’t tell anyone about it you know. If you pretend it didn’t happen, it didn’t happen.’

So you never crush, never flirt or anything?

‘Decent women don’t do that. And they don’t talk about these stuff like you do now.’

You do procreate don’t you? There seems to be a helluva lot of you.

‘Oh my god! chi chi…’

I am waiting at the bus stop and a creepy man stares at me lewdly.

Am aware of his eyes on me, and I feel the shame.The shame of possessing a woman’s body. The shame of being a target to the dirty eyes and dirtier minds because I exist.

And I am scared. I try not to see his stare. There’s a wee chit of a girl next to me. It is a deserted afternoon.

I tremble with shame and anger. I picturise a hundred ways to exterminate all of them. Wistful thoughts of extreme violence. Applied slowly and methodically. But I still fume.

Then I suddenly get it. The laughter was spontaneous, and I am almost ashamed of being so bad.

See, it is not his fault. Afterall, he was born to dogs.

‘What?’

Born to dogs.

‘Say son of a bitch?’

Nah. The mother was a human female.

‘Ewwwwww..’