Nikhil and Riya Read online

‘School uniform, I guess?’

  ‘It’s on Sunday.’

  ‘Well, then something else.’

  I only had one set of civilian clothes, so choice wasn’t a problem for me.

  ‘I don’t know what to wear,’ she said, chewing on her lip, playing with the sandwich that lay in front of her. Jeevan, I noticed, always put a plate of food in front of her, hoping, like me, that she would eat.

  In the bare living room, the sun was streaming onto a part of her face. I suddenly realized how thin she was, how sick she really looked.

  ‘Jeans maybe,’ I said, swallowing hard, looking away, hoping that she hadn’t noticed my expression. ‘You’ve got those nice dark jeans.’

  ‘They don’t fit any more,’ she said plainly.

  ‘Maybe you should eat that then,’ I joked weakly, pointing to the sandwich, avoiding looking at her tiny waist.

  She flipped her hair. ‘I’m not hungry.’

  ‘You never are.’

  She just rolled her eyes, clearly something else on her mind. I waited for her to continue, but she sat chewing the end of a straw. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking. It had never been easy in the past and nowadays it was near impossible. I looked at her struggling with her thoughts, something so familiar to me that I almost laughed. How many times had I seen her like this, chewing on the end of a pencil struggling with an easy sum?

  ‘I’ll have to get something new,’ she finally said.

  I grew even more confused. I had never known Riya to express the slightest interest in typically girlish pursuits like shopping or fashion. Occasionally, she got excited about buying a pair of new spikes.

  And then a thought struck me like a lightning. Even though, to me, Riya was above this world, as bewitching and beautiful as any girl who had ever lived, the truth was that she was just a girl – a lovely girl who liked to run and eat chocolates, a girl who couldn’t do mathematics to save her skin. Even though she seemed so strong and capable, she was human and she had human anxieties. She was concerned about the way she looked, and that I supposed was naturally how any girl would feel.

  The following day, I bunked school to go shopping with Riya. Who could have ever imagined that, but then again bunking school for me these days had become more or less a norm. Luckily for me, as a crumb of glory from my prefect days, the gatekeepers didn’t usually ask me for the exit pass. We went to the only option open to us, the town’s only department store, if it even warranted such a title – a small two-floor building in the centre of a crowded marketplace. I could tell Riya was in a good mood by the way she chattered nonstop but even before she stepped into the store, she was so physically tired that she could barely climb up the stairs. The chaos and the crowds almost immediately overwhelmed her, but she insisted that we press on.

  Part of me wished B.P. were here, as backup in case something happened. But I was desperate to buy her something that she would wear. We walked around the women’s section – party dresses, blue jeans, T-shirts in bright colours, salwar kameez embroidered with gold and silver. She walked past everything, sometimes touching a thing to two. Even just looking at things seemed to wear her down more and more.

  I suggested that we could start at shoes. ‘Shoes are easy,’ I said, ‘I can help you with those.’

  ‘What do you know about shoes?’ she joked tiredly.

  So we went to the shoes section and she didn’t protest when I bent down to untie her laces and take off her sneakers which, for a change, had no mud or grass stains. I told the salesman to get her size and then, for each shoe that he brought, I slipped them gently onto her feet, which seemed smaller and bonier than in the past.

  It was a deeply odd feeling. Ever since I had known her, she had been stronger and faster than me. She would always slow down to walk by my side, and I had always yearned to be faster, stronger, so that she didn’t have to always wait for me as I struggled to catch up.

  Now, as I helped her walk upstairs because she couldn’t do it herself, tied her shoelaces because she didn’t have the strength to bend down, I realized that I had always dreamt that one day I would be her strength. But today, I would have given anything to go back, for her to be stronger than me, like she had been in the past.

  When I caught her looking at me in an embarrassed way, I encouraged her the way I used to do with the sums that she couldn’t do. ‘It’s part of the process,’ I said, gently lifting her foot up as she leaned on me.

  We chose a pair of shoes that resembled sneakers but were apparently not – I clearly didn’t understand a thing about the clothes or shoes that girls wore. We were making our way back to the clothes section when I suddenly felt her fingers press hard into my side.

  ‘I have to sit down,’ she said in a trembling, weak voice. I could hear her breath clattering against her chest.

  ‘Now?’ I asked, looking around the crowded store.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you all right?’

  She started coughing, deep coughs, like something was trying to claw itself out of her.

  ‘I … I just need to … sit,’ she wheezed.

  I looked around desperately for a chair, a sofa, a stool but there was not a single place to sit – just rows and rows of clothes, and hundreds of disinterested people milling around.

  ‘Stay right here,’ I said. ‘I’ll go and find something and bring it here.’

  I left her standing by the shoe counter, pale as a ghost, and I limp-ran to the cash counter. But there was no place to sit. I bumped into what felt like a hundred people as I clumsily made my way to the entrance of the store where a guard stood. I begged him to help. He waved me away lazily, telling me that there was no chair here.

  In lieu of a chair, I desperately searched for water as if it were gold, but I couldn’t find that either, till finally one of the salesgirls gave me her waterbottle and I rushed back where I had left Riya quavering like a leaf. But I didn’t find her, not where I had left her standing next to a mannequin flaunting a florescent pink dress. I searched for her everywhere in the crowded store, my heart limping like my leg and in my panic, I felt revolted by my own heart, that pitiful weak muscle that pushed against my ribs.

  Where could she have gone? I fought my way between the long racks of clothing, pushing through sari-clad aunties, to many disapproving coughs and glances. But everything looked the same. I wanted to shout her name, but my voice was stuck in my throat so I went round and round, dizzy with worry, thinking every girl with long brown, hair suddenly looked like her.

  I’m not sure when – to me, in my mania, it seemed like hours but it must have only really been minutes – but a salesgirl came up to me, the same one whose waterbottle I held in my hand.

  ‘Are you looking for your friend?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, huffing frantically.

  ‘She’s over there,’ she said, pointing to a corner beneath a row of handbags.

  I found Riya sitting as still as a mannequin in a corner of the bustling store, her knees to her chest, her head on her knees, her head in her hands. I bent down and offered her the waterbottle, but she refused to take a sip.

  ‘What’s happening?’ I tried my best to keep the fear from my voice.

  ‘Give me a second,’ she mumbled. ‘I’m just taking rest.’

  ‘Let’s go home,’ I said, giving her my hand.

  When I touched her skin, I almost pulled it back – heat was steaming out of her as if she was cooking from inside.

  She had an expression on her face that was new to me. Her mouth was open, her eyes wide, she was looking nervously ahead, backwards, to the side. Is it possible, I wondered, that she’s afraid?

  Holding my hand, she tried to get up but she struggled and fell back. I realized then that she did not have the strength to even stand up. Because I couldn’t carry her myself, I asked frantically for help. A stocky man obliged, lifting her up as lightly as a doll. Riya would have hated being carried out of the store like a baby, but now she did not ma
ke a single sound of protest. The man put her on the back seat of the car as gently as one would a corpse, and she lay there, eyes open, silent as steel.

  ‘Specs,’ she murmured under her breath.

  ‘Should we go to the hospital?’ I asked, though it was silly, because of course I knew what she would say.

  ‘No, no…’ she groaned, squinting her eyes blurrily as if she was having trouble seeing me. ‘I just need to rest. I want to go home and rest.’

  I didn’t want to argue with her and I didn’t want to take this decision alone. So we drove back to school, me holding her head in my lap, as she meandered in and out of sleep.

  We were almost turning the bend that would put us on the road straight to Residency School, when she opened her eyes, blinking slowly as if her eyelids were made of lead and in a trembling voice she told me, ‘I think I’ll just wear my uniform.’

  73

  B.P. WAS LIVID with Riya and me, but because he didn’t want to say anything to her, he took out his anger on me.

  ‘She could have died,’ he shouted, stalking up and down his study, trembling slightly, as though bodily preventing himself from physically attacking me.

  I thought to myself: she’s going to anyway. But I didn’t say this out loud. I wanted to tell him that it was she who wanted to go, that I had tried to stop her, that she had insisted. But I didn’t tell him that either. I didn’t have the strength or the energy to defend myself. It was easier to sit there silently and listen to his rant. And so even though many words sat on the tip of my tongue, I ended up saying only two.

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ I mumbled every time he paused to take a breath in between his roars.

  Finally, when B.P. had yelled himself out, and I cautiously looked up from the spot on the floor where I had fixed my gaze, I saw that he had gone red in the face and there were tears streaming down his face.

  B.P. crying. How could it possibly be? I was so puzzled that I just stared. He was the strongest man I knew, the man who had twice the strength of ordinary men, and here he was standing in front of me reminding me of someone like me.

  We ended up cancelling the party. Riya was simply too unwell to go through the ordeal or so said the doctor whom B.P. was now consulting at the drop of a hat. Should she go for a walk? Should she wash her hair? Should she wear a sweater, or maybe two?

  And it ended up being moot, because the day after her episode, the news of her illness finally leaked. I wasn’t sure how it happened or when; I assumed that B.P. told the teachers, who then told some of the students, who then told everyone else.

  I felt angry but also quite sad. This was our secret, Riya’s and mine, and now the whole damn world was involved. I wasn’t ready for it, and I was sure that Riya wasn’t too. But I also knew that she didn’t have much time left now and we couldn’t possibly hide it any more.

  I was suddenly very popular – in a different way than when I was prefect. People with whom I had never interacted patted me on the shoulder and asked me in hushed whispers how she was. Suddenly everyone seemed to care about Riya, and people like Mrinalini, who had been jealous of her, who had even hated her, began expressing their concern. Once again, the Residency School rumour mills spun – leukaemia, a hole in the heart, TB, polio. It seemed Riya had all the diseases anyone had ever heard of all at once. I could have clarified it all, but everyone talking about her made me feel ill and I didn’t really feel like saying anything at all.

  Even Vikram came to ask me if what he had heard was true. Again, he leaned in the doorway of my study, as though unwilling to cross the threshold; wavering slightly to and fro.

  ‘Yes,’ I told him. ‘It’s true.’

  When I saw his expression, I couldn’t help but laugh: the big bully of Residency School, scared of something as ordinary as death.

  74

  RIYA HAD A lot of visitors. So many people came to see her – teachers, sports staff and students – that I wondered if the party would have been a good idea after all.

  I felt a little left out. I’d been coming to see Riya at the same time every day for months; now I had to wait in line. She was always so tired by the time everyone had gone that she fell asleep instantly. I ended up sitting by her bed and reading a lot.

  The visits became a blur, people came and went, but there was one visit I remembered in particular. It was a sad, splotchy, gloomy day and the sky was so grey that it looked like even the clouds were on the brink of tears. I was there, sitting on her doorstep, like I always did, when Vikram came to see her, looking greasy and pleased, holding a small box in his hands.

  He saw me and looked a little surprised.

  ‘Hi,’ he said with something that resembled a smile. ‘Can I see her?’

  He didn’t have to ask me, but I was glad that he had. ‘She’s inside,’ I said, without moving from my position on the stairs.

  He shuffled his feet and we both held our ground till finally I relented and made way for him. A part of me wanted to follow, to sit with them while they spoke. I could have easily done so, but I knew it would be odd, and I didn’t want her to think that anything was amiss.

  The clouds glowered and threatened while I sat on that stoop. They were there an awfully long time: far longer than anyone else had been. The hair stood up on the back of my neck and my skin crawled with irritation. I wished I had the courage to do what B.P. so often did, politely ask the visitor to leave, saying it was time for Riya to rest. But that was B.P. and this was me, and all I did was sit and shiver on the step, the dusk settling around me, the air reeking of rotting leaves.

  Eventually Vikram came out. His eyes seemed unnaturally red. I wondered if he was drunk. I had seen him like this sometimes when he had had too much to drink. I noticed then that the small box wasn’t with him. I realized with a start what anyone else would have immediately known: that it, of course, was a gift.

  He left and I stayed but I didn’t go inside her house. Instead, I pottered around outside, wondering what it was that they had spoken about for so long and what he might have brought her. I really hoped that it wasn’t a Walkman at least. I knew I could have asked her, and she would have told me too, but though I made some vague references, somehow I never did get around to it, and neither did she.

  75

  ‘ARE YOU PRAYING?’ I asked Riya one day, surprised to see what appeared to be a small temple in her house – a few brass idols, some flowers and incense whose too-strong scent wafted into the air.

  I expected some Riya-style remark: ‘Specs, you wouldn’t get it;’ or, ‘Specs, go back to chess.’

  But she just shrugged and quietly said, ‘I don’t know what else to do.’

  This made me pause and look up from the temple that I was examining.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Exactly what I said. The doctor says it helps and it kind of does. You should pray too,’ she continued after a pause, looking squarely and seriously at me.

  ‘Why? We’ve never prayed in our lives.’

  ‘I have.’

  I always felt slightly unsettled to discover evidence of Riya’s private existence, before I knew her. ‘You have? When?’

  ‘When I was very young, and now when I’m very old.’

  ‘Very old? You’re sixteen.’

  ‘Well, I’m going to die, Specs, and technically that makes me at the end of my life. So, in a way, I am very old.’

  There she went again. I had no response; this was a typical Riya-style remark.

  ‘Okay,’ I conceded, ‘I’ll think about it, this praying thing.’

  ‘No, Specs,’ she said, gripping my hand with an urgency so unusual that I realized that this was something serious.

  ‘Please listen to me.’

  ‘Okay, anything you want. I’ll pray,’ I sighed.

  ‘Why though?’ I wondered out loud. If I was going to do this, I might as well know why.

  ‘I don’t know, Specs, but I think it’s important. It just … it just feels like the right thing to
do.’

  ‘I’ve never known what that means,’ I said, doubt written all over my face.

  ‘You overthink things, Specs. Sometimes you’ve just got to feel. It’s sort of like, during a race, when I am about to win, and I’m running at the right tempo, it just really feels right.’

  So I began to pray. Riya handed me a small idol for my room and I slipped God in my pocket, wondering what I would do next. My first thought was people would laugh at me. The second was that I didn’t care. And the third that they wouldn’t actually laugh at me because everyone had these idols except for me.

  I hadn’t thought much about God, not since my parents died. Before that I had vague memories of my mother teaching me how to pray, sitting next to her on my knees, bringing my hands up to my chest. I remembered these things as I remembered almost everything about my mother: sweetly and sepia-tinted, like a long-faded photograph.

  The truth that I didn’t want to share with Riya was that I didn’t think much of this praying business. Early on in my life, I had realized that it was hard work that finally paid off. I knew that if I practised a hundred sums, I would get a hundred marks. Praying, I wasn’t so sure about. I saw the others pray – Vikram was particularly devout, especially before a game or a test – and it always struck me as deeply hypocritical and selfish. You only talk to God when you want something? Why would he want a devotee like that?

  But I wouldn’t be asking for anything. So I took the idol to my room and placed it on my desk, and then as I had once done with my mother, so many years ago, I closed my eyes, sat on my knees, brought my hands to my chest and I spoke to God, first tentatively and then with a little more intent. I told Him how I felt and then I systematically gave Him reasons why Riya should get better and why she should live. I didn’t ask him for anything; I argued and reasoned with him and occasionally raised my voice. Sometimes I did this for so long that my knees turned black and blue, and my leg ached so badly I couldn’t sleep. It actually did make me feel better. But she only got worse and worse.