Book Uncle and Me (2 page)

—

Just a Slogan

THAT DUSTER IS
a weapon. Umma uses it against dust, clutter and all signs of untidiness. I retreat to my room, which is what you might call a strategic move. Just in case she takes it into her head that I need to be dusted off, too.

In the safety of my room, I try to make sense of things. Something is bothering me about that book, and it's not just the story.

It's Book Uncle, I decide. Why did he give me that funny look before he handed me that book? As if he would like to say something but couldn't find the words. He seemed distracted. That's it. As if something was on his mind.

Is something wrong? Maybe I am just worrying for no reason.

I turn to the story in the hope that I can unravel its puzzle. How strange that such a skinny book can leave so many questions in my mind. I flip the pages to see if maybe there was something I missed.

Doves. King. Trapped in a net. Hunter. Get help. Get free. The end.

“So what?” I say out loud.

“So what about what?” says Umma, brandishing the duster over my head.

“Help!” I say. “I surrender.”

“No need, silly girl,” says Umma. “How about you help me instead?” She points to a pile of books on the floor by my bed. Then she points to the shelf.

“Get my drift?” she says.

“Umma,” I tell her. “I get your drift. I get it fine.”

We get to work. She whisks the duster over my shelf. I put the books away. While I do that, I tell her the story of the doves and the hunter.

“That's an old Indian story,” Umma says.

“I know. Book Uncle told me. But Umma, what's the big lesson in it? For me, I mean?”

“I can't tell you that,” she says. “I can tell you what something means for me. How can I tell you what it means for you? Only you can know that.”

I tell her about Book Uncle's motto. Right book, right person, right day.

“So why was this such a great book for me?”

“That's just a slogan,” she says. “Right book and all that. He just likes to say that. Don't take it too literally.”

“What does that mean?”

“Taking something literally?”

“Yes.”

“As if every word of it is true,” she says. “You know, it's just a catchy slogan. It gets more people to pick up a book. Nothing wrong with that. Don't take it too seriously.”

Then Umma looks around my room, nods her head and moves on with her duster to the next target.

Too literally? Too seriously? Is that how I'm taking it? Is it just a slogan?

I don't think so. I think Book Uncle really does find the right book for the right person. On the right day. That I am pretty sure about.

Before I can arrive at any conclusions, Wapa comes back with enough toothpaste to polish up the teeth of the entire Indian army.

—

Hiya!

AND SO THE
weekend gets dusted off. On Monday we're off to school again, which is just the way things are, one day after the next after the next. It's a bit like folding T-shirts, when you think about it. Folding-folding-folding is not so different from wheels turning-turning-turning.

The bus driver honks his horn. He sticks his head out of the window and yells at a man on a bike.

“You think you own the road or what?”

The man on the bike yells back, “You think you run the city?”

“Hey, Yasmin,” says Reeni. “Look at that!” She points at something outside the bus window.

I look where she's pointing, but I don't see anything so great, and anyway, I am still all tangled up in slogans and taking things literally. Maybe I am taking the dove story too literally, as if every word is true. Maybe instead I should be looking for some other meaning in it. What have I missed in that story?

“You missed it,” Reeni says.

“Are you reading my mind?” I ask her in surprise. “I was thinking maybe I didn't get it but how did you know that?”

Now Reeni looks puzzled.

“Get what? What are you talking about? I was trying to show you the poster for the new Karate Samuel movie.”

“Is that all?” I say. “I thought you were going to help me work out the story in this book.”

“How can I help you work out the story in your book when I haven't even read it?” Reeni says.

“Reeni, you can't read it,” I say. “I have to give it back. Today. Remember? I'm reading one book every day — ”

“Fine,” she says. “Don't share. You never share.”

“I do,” I protest. “I share a desk with you in school. I share this seat with you in the bus and when you come over I share ...”

I stop to think what it is I share.

“Everything,” I end up.

Reeni gives me the kind of look that tells me she is not impressed.

“You should see Karate Samuel's round kicks,” says Anil. He is trying to change the subject to stop Reeni and me from arguing. I don't like it, either, but who started it? Not me.

“Karate Samuel is just a movie star,” I say, turning pages. But now the words are bumping up and down. The bus has turned under the flyover by Gemini Studio and is going
gada-gadaa
over the potholes, past the circle where the lights have stopped working and a policeman is dancing around, trying to control traffic.

“Hiya!” Anil's karate hands fly past my face, quick-block punching. I manage to catch the dove book before it falls down.

“Stop it,” I tell him. “Have you lost your marbles?” The minute the words are out I wish I could take them back but it's too bad, because you can't hit Delete that way.

Anil looks puzzled, so I rush to explain. “Not real marbles. It means, Don't be crazy.”

Now I want to hit Delete-delete-delete, and I can't. What have I done? Will Anil be upset because I called him crazy? I don't want both my friends to be angry with me.

But Anil only says, “What's wrong with being a little crazy? It's fun!” And he trades air-punches with the boy sitting across the aisle.

“Birdie, little birdie, do you know my sad story?” the bus driver sings as we turn into the schoolgrounds.

Is he singing about those doves?

No, he seems to be singing a sad song because he is happy, which makes no sense at all.

—

Word List

MRS. RAO IS
walking up and down between the desks. She is keeping an eye on things.

Just my luck, she catches me sneaking a quick peek into the dove book to see if I can find whatever it is I'm missing.

“Yasmin,” says Mrs. Rao. “Will you please put that book away and work on your word list.”

Are word lists more important than me searching for important clues? More important than reading?

“Mrs. Rao, ma'am,” I say. “I'm just reading.”

“Not now, Yasmin,” she says. “I know you like to read — ”

“I do!” I say. “I've read more than four hundred books in the last — ”

But Mrs. Rao does not want to hear about my reading marathon.

“Don't interrupt me, Yasmin.” She is now interrupting me and how is that all right? “I want you to work on your word list now,” she says. “I want you to use those words in sentences.”

I give up.

“Yes, ma'am,” I say, and now I am staring at the word list trying to make sense out of it.

Sometimes the words on Mrs. Rao's lists share vowels.
Ground. Proud. Aloud. Resound.
Sometimes they share consonants.
Flower. Fleeting. Flamingo.

This is one weird list. These words don't seem to share anything.

Plan. Election. City. Office.

I stare at the words until they begin to fly around before my eyes as if they are birds flapping their wings.

Reeni nudges me and nearly makes me drop my notebook.

“Write your sentences,” she whispers.

“Okay,” I whisper back. Is school not supposed to be a place where you learn to think? Nobody is letting me think today.

Reeni lets out a hissy sound as if she is — what's the word?

Exasperated, that's what. With me.

“Yasmin, Reeni,” says Mrs. Rao, who now looks exasperated with both of us.

“Yes, Mrs. Rao,” we say together.

Reeni starts to write. She writes fast. From the corner of my eye I can see Anil getting to work. He is writing slowly, but he is writing.

I'd better start writing, too. So I do, letting those words fly around my head in circles.

This is how they come out on the paper:

The king of doves and all his subjects are caught in a net. Who will get them out? Quick, make a plan! Call everyone in the city. Don't sit there in your office. Hold an election. Help!

Mrs. Rao walks between the desks again and now she is looking over our shoulders and she is reading, reading.

“That's … very interesting,” says Mrs. Rao when she gets to me. “What does it mean?”

How did I know she would ask me that? I have no idea. The words just came out that way.

—

Posters

I THINK ABOUT
Mrs. Rao's words all day.
Plan. Election. City. Office.
And I think about my words, too, the words in my letter. I am still thinking about them on the way home from school.

Looking out the bus window, I see something. I see the movie poster that Reeni and Anil tried to show me before, when I was too busy reading my book.

Only it is not a movie poster.

“That's an election poster,” I say.

“It is?” says Reeni. “You're right. It looks like it. But that's Karate Samuel. What's a movie star like him doing on an election poster?”

“Movie stars run in elections all the time,” I say. “Don't you know anything?”

Reeni stares at me. Suddenly I hear the words I have just spoken as if they are echoing all around us in the bus.

Don't you know anything? Anything? Anything … thing … thing?

Oh, those words! I didn't mean to say them. Well, maybe I did mean to say them, but not that way. I didn't mean them to be mean. They flew out of my mouth on careless wings and I wish-wish-wish that I could take them back.

But it's too late. Reeni has heard them already.

She says, “Fine. You know everything, don't you, Miss Yasmingenius?”

Anil rolls his eyes and makes little punching gestures at me. I wish he had really punched me. Before I said those words. But what can I do now? It's too late.

Umma says sometimes it's good to think twice before you speak. Sometimes I forget to think even once.

It never used to matter with Reeni. I could say anything to Reeni and it would be all right.

Suddenly it matters, and I don't know what has changed.

The traffic is so busy now that the bus can only go very, very slowly. The driver is not happy this afternoon. He does not sing. Instead he honks his horn. He yells at cars, scooters, autorickshaws, other buses and even a man driving a herd of goats across the road. The goats don't know about traffic lights, so the bus has to wait until they all cross.

While we wait I notice something that I could have pointed out to Reeni, if she was still speaking to me, that is.

People are slapping posters on walls and lampposts. They are slapping posters on everything they can find. I'm sure if I was standing still, reading by the side of the road, they would slap a poster on me.

That is a lot of people all wanting to be mayor. Every poster has a logo for all the different parties the candidates belong to — a hand, a wheel, a tree, a star, a hammer and sickle, a camel and more.

This is going to be a crazy busy election.

“The star! That's Karate Samuel's party,” Anil says.

“Of course,” says Reeni. “He
is
a star.”

She's talking to Anil, I see, but not to me. There is a row of posters with the picture of the present mayor, S. L. Yogaraja, telling everyone to reelect him. Mayor S.L.Y. Some people say his initials suit him fine.

Other candidates have posters in clumps here and there, urging us to vote for them. Well, not us. Not kids. I have never understood why they don't let kids vote. This is another thing I would like to discuss with my friends, but I can't exactly talk to them about anything right now.

Karate Samuel has lots and lots of posters. He is leaping and punching and kicking all over his posters. His posters scream in giant letters:
BEST CANDIDATE! A-ONE HERO!

Strings of Karate Samuel's posters hang between the trees on both sides of the road, like flapping lines of washing. They get smaller and smaller as our bus goes faster.

It would be exciting, if only Reeni was excited along with me.

But Reeni is wearing a frown on her face.

I swallow my words. I say nothing.

—

Hello, Everyone

I RETURN THE
dove book to Book Uncle.

“Did you like it?” he asks.

“It was … interesting,” I say. “But why was it so perfect for me?”

I don't mean to sound ungrateful, but I can't help myself. I am puzzled and it just comes bursting out that way.

“Ah,” he says. “That is a very good question.”

“Thank you,” I say. “But what is the answer?”

“Sometimes you have to let the perfect book sit in your mind for a while before it begins to mean something.” He hands me two more books. “One for now, one for later.”

When I thank him, he smiles and nods at me, his Number One Patron.

That afternoon my mother gets ready to go shopping. She has cleaned the house until she is satisfied that it is spotless and ready for Rafiq Uncle's visit. Now we need to buy vegetables and fruits, so he will not think for a minute that we don't eat properly. Our usual bunch of bananas and enough veggies for a quick curry will not do.

Umma picks up her purse and shopping bags.

“Come on, Yasmin,” she says. “Let's go.”

As the door of our flat clicks shut behind us, the one across the hall flies open. That's Reeni's flat, 3B. Out comes Shoba Aunty, Reeni's mother. We say hello to her but she barely nods back. She seems to be in a big hurry. She must be on her way to the TV station to work the evening shift.

On the way downstairs we say hello to Chinna Abdul Sahib of 2B who has popped out to look in his mailbox. He nods back, which is more than he usually does.

Chinna Abdul Sahib is a drummer. He plays a big round ghatam made of clay. He is in big demand to play that clay pot-drum at concerts and weddings. Wapa says it takes a lot of strength to play that kind of drum. I wonder if that is why Chinna Abdul Sahib wastes no energy talking.

We say hello to the newly married couple in 1B. They are standing outside their door, admiring the new doorbell that the electrician has just fixed. They say hello together. Then they look at each other as if they have never seen such a beautiful sight before.

We say hello to the electrician.

We say hello to the flower seller who is just arriving, and to the istri lady in her little booth downstairs. She's filling her big heavy iron with hot coals so she can press and fold the clothes of all her customers in Horizon Apartment and the neighboring flats.

“Can I put some money in Book Uncle's tin?” I ask.

“Hurry,” says Umma.

I run over to Book Uncle. My coins clink in his tin.

“Thank you,” he says.

We cross the road.

“You're very quiet,” Umma says.

“Mmm,” I say.

“Is something wrong?” she asks.

I mumble, “No. Not really.” But my voice sounds guilty, as if it's trying to escape from telling a total lie because maybe something is not wrong, exactly, but it's not exactly right, either. How can everything be right when my best friend Reeni has gone all huffy and quiet and it's all my fault?

“How are you?” says the fruit man, when we get to his stand with rows of fruit all neatly stacked. “I have nice bananas and guavas for you.”

Umma picks her fruit — guavas that are green on top but they will be pink inside when we cut them open, and tiny bananas from the hills. The man puts them all in a bag and hands the bag to Umma. The guavas settle to the bottom, with the bunches of little bananas on top. They all jiggle into place, just the way a perfect book settles in my mind.

Something roars behind me.

“Yasmin, watch out!” says Umma.

Just in time, I leap out of the way.