Babyji

Delhi is a city where things happen undercover. A city where the horizon is blanketed with particulate pollution and the days are hot. A city with no romance but a lot of passion. You ask how passion without romance is possible? The same way sex without a nightlife is possible. Delhi churns slowly, secretively. What emerges is urgency.

In the Delhi I grew up in, everything happened. Married women fell in love with pubescent girls, boys climbed up sewage pipes to consort with their neighbors' wives, and students went down on their science teachers in the lab. But no one ever talked about it.

I used to be innocent, driven solely by the ambition to do something great for my country, something that involved physics. My knowledge of the facts of life was based entirely on books, and clean ones at that. I read nineteenth-century classics by George Eliot and Emily Bront?. These books never went into any details. To remedy this I decided to read Vatsyayana's Kamasutra. I had to do this while standing in the scooter garage, which had been converted into a storeroom. I would sneak out with a flashlight after my parents had gone to sleep. The Kamasutra that I force-fed myself seemed completely of another world, alien and absurd. After I read it, however, magical things started to happen. In particular, I met a woman. We first met in my school. She had come to attend the parent-teacher meeting. I was the Head Prefect.

"Where are the teachers for Class I?" she asked.

"In the Pushkin Block, ma'am," I replied.

I was susceptible at that age. I had been reading The Citadel by A. J. Cronin, in which the main female character was described as particularly handsome. I fancied for a moment that she was that handsome woman.

"I'll take you there, ma'am," I offered.

"What's your name?"

"Anamika," I replied.

"I like your tie," she said.

"Oh." I tugged and fiddled with my polyester number while we walked, suddenly conscious of the ridiculous figure I must cut in my school uniform of red socks and shirtsleeves. Like most schools, mine had a strict dress code. The girls wore gray box-pleated skirts. Boys up to the age of fourteen wore knickers. Everyone wore a striped red and silver tie except for the Prefects. We wore a silver and blue one.

I hated the ageism of Delhi and its antediluvian norms, which required you to address anyone older as Uncleji or Auntyji and anyone younger with diminutives. It precluded serious bonding with people older than you. I did not have the courage to ask this woman her name. She was of another generation; that sort of thing was just not done.

After I left her in front of the Pushkin Block, I felt my heart overflow with some kind of knowledge I could not immediately identify. I had imagined so many times how Newton must have felt when the apple dropped on his head and the weight of gravitational forces clicked into place. I fancied I felt that way, that a great discovery had just been made and all I had to do was write down its formula. I wished a simple object like an apple had been involved, something tangible that I could contemplate and hold, smell and bite.

I felt the urge to call her something. Something that no one else was called. A word that was not a name and that was still proportional to the immensity of the revelation unfolding within me. "India" was the first thing that slipped silently from my lips.

I hung around that part of campus so I could catch her on the way out. Eventually she emerged from the same doors that had earlier swallowed her. I pretended to look elsewhere. She came up behind me and tapped my shoulder.

"Do you like this school? I am thinking of putting my son in it," she said.

"Yes. Extracurricular activities are encouraged. We have horse riding."

"Do you know how to ride?"

"Yes, I've done it since Class II."

"I've always wanted to ride horses. But with so many extracurriculars, will you still do well on the board exams?" she asked.

"I probably will. I love to study."

"You'll do well no matter. You are obviously exceptional." She looked at the Head Prefect badge on my left breast pocket and smiled.

I shrugged. I was embarrassed but didn't want to show it.

"I have to go now. Drop by if you want to chat. Ride your bike over."

"How do you know I have a bike?"

"I've seen you bike around. I live in B-63. Come for a cold coffee on Saturday morning."

"All right."

"That's tomorrow," she said, squeezing my hand, and left.