The Blue Notebook (2 page)

Two streets down from my nest is the Street of Thieves. Here you can buy everything from an airplane to a cloak that makes you invisible—or that’s what they say. One of the barrow boys who carts goods to and from the Street of Thieves I call Bandu. Bandu the barrow boy passes in front of my nest at least twice a day. I know when he is coming because the barrow’s wheel is steel and it makes a terrible racket, which I can hear from streets away. In the early morning, when he passes by, his barrow brims over with bits and pieces, and in the evening when he returns, the wooden box is almost empty. There are occasions too when he makes extra trips, presumably for special deliveries.

Bandu is about my age and fine to look at. Even over the last year he has become more masculine and taller. He has large oval eyes that stare at me every day and, without fail, stare away whenever I catch his gaze. I think he sleeps with me in his mind from time to time.

As my pencil became blunt I, the sly girl that I am, started smiling more avidly at him. I would tilt my head and show my lips. As I ensnared him to my will—like the lizard—his stare would linger and sometimes he would hold my gaze for a full second. On occasion, his eyes flicked, like the lizard’s tongue, to
my thighs or my small breasts. I sat in my nest as I had sat on my rock many years earlier, waiting for the barrow boy to sun himself under my shadow. He began to slow down as he approached my nest, and a few days later he grunted at me in that primal way shy men do.

After three days of grunting and my feigned embarrassment, I beckoned him to me. My gate’s lock does not drop until after Hippo’s first morning tea and cake, but I lowered my head below his, looked at him through my locked gate, and said, “My name is Batuk. I desperately need your help.” I paused and smiled. “You could get me a sharpener for my pencil.”

I was a little annoyed that he took a full two days to bring the sharpener to me. But when he did return, late, after Hippo’s third tea, with it clasped in his street-worn hand, I smiled as if he had brought me a ruby. I then kissed him. There was no gate between us. I had intended to peck him on the cheek because I felt that was all he deserved, but instead I kissed him straight on the mouth. I searched my tongue for his and felt his tongue flee to the back of his mouth like a cowering dog about to be beaten. He started to push his tongue forward to meet mine, but I thrust him away with both my arms. This whole exchange of thanks took less than a few seconds but I knew that my taste would linger in his mouth all day. His want of me would soak his mind for far longer than that.

I do not know why I behaved in such a disgraceful manner, but I have my pencil sharpener and I never spoke to or acknowledged Bandu the barrow boy again.

The doctor came again yesterday to see Puneet and left after only ten minutes. This is probably because of the stench of Mamaki at close quarters and because Mamaki only pays a quarter of the doctor’s fee. This doctor comes here frequently though, Princess Meera being his first choice when it comes to topping off his bill.

The news from the doctor was good. It is only four days after Puneet’s visit from the policemen and he is free from danger. I knew that I was being overdramatic! On a break, I leaned out of the entrance of my nest and called to Puneet, as I have been doing constantly, knowing that he is not working. He called back to say that he feels his strength returning. He did not want to say that he feels good because I know he fears the ears of Hippopotamus and wants to stretch out his recovery as long as possible.

Puneet will soon mature to manhood and I can see this in his body. His shoulders are becoming defined and his muscles more obvious. His thighs are bulging more and there are a few hairs on his shiny chest. His voice occasionally crackles. Although we have laughed about this we both know what it means. Soon a decision will need to be made about Puneet and he will not be the one to make it.

If Puneet is to lose his bhunnas they will need to do it soon (I thought that while the doctor was here, they would go right ahead and do it). If he is allowed to enter manhood, they will need to train his bhunnas and give him a new style. It is possible that as a man he may become more beautiful but there is
also a chance he would become ugly and in that case he would need to be discarded. My vote would be to remove his bhunnas now. He will then always be as beautiful as he is today and he will always be there for me. There is no one who can make me laugh as hard as Puneet.

Regardless of what transpires, Puneet’s eyes will be constant. I have looked into his eyes and there I see his laughter and his mockery of the nest, Hippopotamus, and the Common Street. As I stare deeper into him, I watch his disdain for those who adore him and a red splash of evil. Deeper still, I see a bottomless well of cool water that is love.

My nest is a womb of gold.

Picture me illuminated in white light. This light, if you could put some in a bottle and examine it, is composed of a dervish of all color but also of laughter and joy. As you hold the bottle and peer at it, your hand is warmed and you feel my grace. Should you open the bottle and be nimble enough to pour its contents into your mouth, you will never hunger again but instead catch fire—and so be light too. From my face emanate rivers of brilliance that seek out all specks of darkness, and this is how I light my nest. My nest is glowing in my light, for there is no other light.

My nest, as I call it, is my throne room. For all the many ravines and indentations within its interior, its external shape is simple—a rectangle. Stone, and a blue gate; that is all.

As I contemplate my physical surroundings, I can never
reconcile how Father allowed me to come here. For all his tales, for all his wild laughter (where he would throw his head so far back I sometimes thought it would fall off), and for all his self-assurance that a bountiful destiny was mine, how could he let his silver-eyed leopard land here, laid upon this sacrificial altar?

That is unimportant for now. Look carefully at the walls of my throne room and you will see gold leaf hammered over every inch of brick. Where there was once gray brick, the foundation of the Common Street, here all you see is gold sparkling and winking at you in my bright light. Moreover, if you look carefully at the gold on the walls you will see the most intricate carvings. The craftsmen have depicted my life in its every detail. Look! There to my right are carvings of my cousins and sisters and strong brothers (except for Navaj, who is a year older than me and who was handicapped at birth). Look! There on the left toward the ceiling you see my family seated in the robes of the Spring Festivities. Look up on the roof—there! I am carved swimming at the river’s bank, a naked unashamed six-year-old, and look, there is Grandpa, whom I barely remember (my goodness, he looks so thin). Around me, beaten and etched in the gold of my walls, is my likeness. The intricacy of the craftsmanship stands equal to the intricacies of my life, except there is no carving of slavery.

Against the innermost wall of my rectangular nest is my throne. The dim-witted say that I should have a throne of gold with pearl inlay and legs of ivory and they ask why I chose instead the simple wood of the daruka tree to sit upon. This wood is said to be a thousand years old and has seen cities built and destroyed. The wood whispers the tales of warriors, of the great teachers and princes—you only have to ask it. Daruka wood
may be strong and dense, but remember that it can be destroyed by a single match, just as a life of a thousand happenings and a million memories can be extinguished in a second.

Carved behind my throne in purest ivory is a silver-eyed leopard. Its white coat is speckled with diamond dust. The leopard’s eyes shine like polished silver coins.

Man comes here to worship from every kingdom, and from my throne I cast dominion over my subjects. You cross my threshold and I welcome you at the gate, but ultimately it is my throne you seek to lie upon.

Simple as my throne may be, magnificent are its adornments. Its long cushions are filled with the under-feathers of a hundred fledgling eagles, which carry the young’s flight of innocence. The feathers were collected from far-off lands, the names of which I do not even know. The cushions are encased in the hand-weaving of the youngest Kashmiri children, who performed this act of servitude with smiles and laughter, for they knew that upon their hands’ work I will lie. The sunshine they work in is captured in the essence of the weave; the cushions are the orange-yellow of the last light of day. Woven into the cushions are patterns sewn with thread dyed in the blue blood of a secret sea creature; their ancient shapes convey mathematical and mystical meaning for those who understand them. I do not understand because I am a simple baker of sweet-cake.

You see, I lie on a bed of everlasting youth, and those who lie with me taste youth. It is not a bed of eternal life, for my life will only be eternal when I die.

Sometimes I pretend that I am deranged; it simply comes out of me. When I was a child, Mother would often harshly
scold me for the tiniest of sins. “Did you steal your brother’s milk?” “Why did you not clean as I told you?” “Where is that sash you borrowed from your sister?” I would love to just stare at her as she screamed at me. I would look up into her eyes, look beyond her eyeballs, and stare into the emptiness that I knew left Father lonely. My eye-locked silence enraged her even more. She would then turn up the scream volume, increase the speed of spit coming from her mouth, deepen her breathing, sweat a little bit more, and, before me, become more putrid. All because I saw her for what she was.

Mother would often swipe me because my resilience was too great. Her red palm would slap my face with such vehemence that I felt she might break my neck. Before I howled in pain at these quite frequent assaults, I would try to hold back my scream because I wanted to build up my ability to reside within myself. Nowadays the strikes are not with the open henna-reddened hand of Mother but from the pounding of man’s hips on mine. Mother trained me well, though, for now I do live within myself.

No! I am not deranged. I do not believe for a second that I lie each day in a nest of gold with attendants and creamy foods. My cell, with its steel bars, is the size of a toilet. That is my home. I wait for the gray concrete night to become day—not that it matters a speck, for the walls never change. The dirt slowly accumulates with each entrant. When man makes sweet-cake on me, my bedding is so thin that I feel this notebook’s staples against my back. The only reason that I am fed is to keep my breasts filled and my bottom rounded and desirable. Man thereby feeds me.

I am not deranged, for I know that man spends a hundred rupees to have his bhunnas in my face or in my legs, or two hundred in my brown hole.

I am not deranged. I do not really see gold on my ceiling when I look up and I do not smell perfumes in the air. Neither do I smell the rancid stench of my cell or my bed because I am accustomed to it. I do, however, smell man’s smells. No man who visits me is clean; on some I smell their wives’ cooking and on others, their perfume. On some men I can taste the lipstick of other kisses that have been placed on his lips hours or minutes before mine.

I am often confused. I am confused as to why day always follows night when there is so much variability in everything else. I am confused about why beauty resides in variability rather than in constancy. I suppose that there must be forces that exceed my ability to understand them. But that is neither delusion nor insanity.

I am not deranged, but there are countless days I wish I were.