around my eyes, dotted my forehead with sandalwood paste and lined my tiny feet with alta , the red paste worn by brides. She carried me to the grove by the lily pond and tied me by my veil to a banana tree. She blew a conch, broke open a coconut, chanted prayers and sprinkled holy water, and left me there. A slanted drizzle fell straight through the afternoon. I was bitten by red ants and caught a death of a cold. I was discovered in the early evening by a neighbor.
My mother was also found at dusk, floating in the lily pond, facedown in the water. Her skin was waxy and cold, her lips blue, and her eyes had turned dull as mud. Her delicate hands bobbed by her side like the wings of dead birds. She had been dead several hours.
After my mother died, I was cared for by my maternal grandparents for a while and then I moved in with my great-aunt, Mitra Mashi, whom I called Mima.
Mima was a great big woman who wore her sari a whole foot off the ground, the tail end tucked into her waistband like a sumo wrestler. She was an earthy woman who laughed easily and was given to manly backslapping that made the elders cringe.
Mima stories abound in the family. My favorite one is about the time she laughed so uproariously that she accidentally swallowed a stinkbug. Another time she thumped an old uncle enthusiastically on the back and made him swallow his dentures.
To Dadamoshai’s great delight and approval, Mima earned a master’s degree and fought her way up the teaching ladder to become the first female vice principal of the most prestigious boys’ school in Sylhet.
Mima created a mild scandal when she fell in love and married the science teacher, Robi Das, a pigeon-toed young man with a nervous stutter, who was small enough to tuck under her armpit like an evening purse. She surprised everyone even further by giving birth to a healthy baby girl at the ripe old age of thirty-eight. Her daughter’s name was Moon.
Although Moon was only six months older than me, she was technically my aunt, a fact she rubbed in with exasperating frequency. Moon and I existed in the same house like two prickly cacti in a pot, too close for comfort, our thorns occasionally poking each other.
Moon had a round face and corkscrew curls that stuck close to her head, a gap-toothed smile and coal-black, starry eyes with lashes so thick that they jammed back into her eyes when she tried to look through her binoculars.
Moon took her profession as an explorer very seriously. She carried her binoculars around like a doctor carries a stethoscope and viewed the whole world through them. She studied the grass, the clouds, the fence and even her own shadow.
People stared at us both because we were so different. I was an oddity in our town of brown-skinned, dark-eyed people. I had delicate bones; dark, straight hair; and enormous, smoky, gray-green eyes that reminded people of sad, impenetrable things like forest fires and river fog.
Mima, on the other hand, saw no difference. She hugged and spanked us both at the same time. Mima’s policy was if one child was naughty, the other one got spanked, as well. It was a preemptive measure, a disciplinary vaccination, to ensure the misdeed did not reoccur in any shape or form. The same applied to hugs: always a double shot.
Mima’s child rearing defied all logic, but she had no patience for logic. “ Everybody mind your ways, otherwise there will be trouble for all ,” she would hiss fiercely, her eyes narrowed. Even my uncle Robi was terrified. He sat tucked into the sofa like a tiny brown cushion and looked at us sadly through his fat, foggy glasses. He was sympathetic, but of no help.
I fitted easily into Mima’s boisterous household and all its bosomy comfort. My tragic childhood was all but forgotten. Bits of my past emerged at times, pieced together by gossip and a significant amount of embellishment thrown in by Moon. She was fed stories by their garrulous housemaid, Rekha, a wisp of a girl with gap
My mother was also found at dusk, floating in the lily pond, facedown in the water. Her skin was waxy and cold, her lips blue, and her eyes had turned dull as mud. Her delicate hands bobbed by her side like the wings of dead birds. She had been dead several hours.
After my mother died, I was cared for by my maternal grandparents for a while and then I moved in with my great-aunt, Mitra Mashi, whom I called Mima.
Mima was a great big woman who wore her sari a whole foot off the ground, the tail end tucked into her waistband like a sumo wrestler. She was an earthy woman who laughed easily and was given to manly backslapping that made the elders cringe.
Mima stories abound in the family. My favorite one is about the time she laughed so uproariously that she accidentally swallowed a stinkbug. Another time she thumped an old uncle enthusiastically on the back and made him swallow his dentures.
To Dadamoshai’s great delight and approval, Mima earned a master’s degree and fought her way up the teaching ladder to become the first female vice principal of the most prestigious boys’ school in Sylhet.
Mima created a mild scandal when she fell in love and married the science teacher, Robi Das, a pigeon-toed young man with a nervous stutter, who was small enough to tuck under her armpit like an evening purse. She surprised everyone even further by giving birth to a healthy baby girl at the ripe old age of thirty-eight. Her daughter’s name was Moon.
Although Moon was only six months older than me, she was technically my aunt, a fact she rubbed in with exasperating frequency. Moon and I existed in the same house like two prickly cacti in a pot, too close for comfort, our thorns occasionally poking each other.
Moon had a round face and corkscrew curls that stuck close to her head, a gap-toothed smile and coal-black, starry eyes with lashes so thick that they jammed back into her eyes when she tried to look through her binoculars.
Moon took her profession as an explorer very seriously. She carried her binoculars around like a doctor carries a stethoscope and viewed the whole world through them. She studied the grass, the clouds, the fence and even her own shadow.
People stared at us both because we were so different. I was an oddity in our town of brown-skinned, dark-eyed people. I had delicate bones; dark, straight hair; and enormous, smoky, gray-green eyes that reminded people of sad, impenetrable things like forest fires and river fog.
Mima, on the other hand, saw no difference. She hugged and spanked us both at the same time. Mima’s policy was if one child was naughty, the other one got spanked, as well. It was a preemptive measure, a disciplinary vaccination, to ensure the misdeed did not reoccur in any shape or form. The same applied to hugs: always a double shot.
Mima’s child rearing defied all logic, but she had no patience for logic. “ Everybody mind your ways, otherwise there will be trouble for all ,” she would hiss fiercely, her eyes narrowed. Even my uncle Robi was terrified. He sat tucked into the sofa like a tiny brown cushion and looked at us sadly through his fat, foggy glasses. He was sympathetic, but of no help.
I fitted easily into Mima’s boisterous household and all its bosomy comfort. My tragic childhood was all but forgotten. Bits of my past emerged at times, pieced together by gossip and a significant amount of embellishment thrown in by Moon. She was fed stories by their garrulous housemaid, Rekha, a wisp of a girl with gap
Similar Books
