Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line - Deepa Anappara Page 0,71
tell Faiz.
“Let him try,” Faiz says.
The other Muslim students in our class squirm in their seats as if they have done something wrong.
“These people don’t mean what they say,” Pari tells Faiz. She doesn’t look angry with us anymore.
Faiz flattens the pages of his notebook. His hands are trembling.
CHANDNI
Gods were good, demons were bad. Spinach was good, noodles were bad. Yesterday was good like gods and spinach, but today was bad like demons and noodles. Chandni could tell because all evening Nisha-Didi had stomped around the house instead of walking, and Didi had chopped the head of a cauliflower as if she was cutting down a tree, and she had rocked Baby too hard while putting him to sleep. Just now when Chandni tried to sit on her lap as she did every night, Nisha-Didi pushed her off and said, “Go do something else.”
Chandni didn’t know what something else was. Every night, after the too-noisy, too-small baby fell asleep, Didi asked their brothers to do their homework, switched on the TV with the sound sponge-soft, and watched a serial where a woman slept in a hospital room for weeks and didn’t wake up even when her husband came to see her. First he went to see her every day and then he visited her hardly ever.
Nisha-Didi wouldn’t put on Chhota Bheem or Tom and Jerry, even if Chandni begged please-na-please-na-please-na. But Didi tickled Chandni and pretended to eat Chandni’s hands, whispering tasty-so-tasty until tears streamed down Chandni’s cheeks from holding in the laughter to keep Baby from waking up and crying. Baby was always crying, sometimes even when he was drinking milk from under Ma’s blouse, and then the milk got into his nose and he coughed and cried even more. Ma said Chandni had done that too when she was a baby, but Chandni liked grown-up things now, Kurkure and Kit Kat and aloo-tikki, and even the sight of Ma’s milk wetting her blouse was e
Now their house was quiet and all Chandni could hear was the scribble-scribble sound of her brothers’ pencils on paper, and the low voices on the TV. Didi sat with the remote in one hand, turning the volume down when the men and women shouted on TV, and turning it up when they whispered. Then Baby started to wail. Chandni stuck her fingers in her ears. Baby’s poo smell got into her nose. Baby’s poo was stinky like old fish.
Didi took Baby outside to wash his dirty bum. Her brothers stopped studying and swiped the remote and changed the channels until cricket filled the TV screen. They pulled Chandni’s hair and laughed when tears filled her eyes. She got up and went to the doorstep and watched Nisha-Didi hush Baby. Baby’s mouth clung to Didi’s sweater and made a circle of wet.
Chandni held out her hands, asking to hold Baby. Didi put Baby in her arms, but Baby kicked and tried to break the pretty pink plastic necklace that Chandni was wearing. Didi took him back and said shush-shush, shush-shush. Didi tried to put him down on the bed but he wanted Didi to hold him. He was cranky, so Didi was cranky too.
Her brothers talked about cricket. They spoke at the same time, two voices, same words. They were born a year apart but Ma said they behaved like twins. Didi snapped at them to be quiet. Her brothers told Didi to stop behaving like their boss-lady. Baby bawled. “Can we mute his sound the way we mute the TV?” the brothers asked. Didi muttered words Chandni couldn’t understand. “Don’t swear,” the brothers said, pressing a button on the remote until the TV was louder than Baby.
“All of you will drive me mad,” Didi shouted, marching around the house, swinging Baby as if she wanted to chuck him out into the alley. Didi’s feet clanged against a pot of yesterday’s dal that she had reheated after adding water. The pot shook. The dal spilled onto the ground.
Chandni didn’t like it when Didi was angry. It happened almost never. Every day, Didi washed their clothes, made their lunches and dinners, and threw stones at the dogs that came to take big bites out of their bums when they pulled down their pants or rolled up their skirts to pee or poo at the rubbish ground. Didi did all this without scowling or shouting.
Chandni knew a way to make tonight better. She stood on a footstool and reached behind a framed photo of