Jerry Pinto - Em and the Big Hoom

Why didn’t we see her as a writer? Her parents had an excuse; they needed money. Why didn’t we?

But then there’s equally this: How could we have seen it when Em had not seen it herself? And even if she had wanted to turn to writing in those years, would her condition have allowed her the space and concentration to do so?

Or was the writing a manifestation of the condition? It often seemed like it was, the letters growing larger and larger until there was barely a word or two on a page. If we had cared to, we could have mapped her mania against her font size.

There’s nothing in Em’s diaries or scattered notes about the first time she went out with The Big Hoom. She never hesitated to talk about it, so I wonder if this means something. Or maybe I’m reading too much into it — maybe she did write something and sometime over ten years, or twenty or thirty, that piece of paper was lost. Or it’s still in one of her cloth bags and I’ll find it if I look hard enough.

The Big Hoom’s version was that he had come right out and asked her. She looked frightened, he’d said, and I presume the vulnerability had attracted him.

‘The Paranjoti Choir is singing Christmas carols at the American Consulate tomorrow. Would you like to go?’

‘I would like to,’ said Em. She maintained that she’d meant that she’d have liked to go but not that she’d wanted to go with him. But, she said, it was already too late: ‘Before I knew it, he was saying, “We leave the office at seventeen hours tomorrow. Dress up.”’

• • •

When Em talked about that first date, she seemed to remember her own panic most of all. That single casual instruction — ‘Dress up’ — had thrown her into a flurry. She had four dresses, all cotton, and one Sunday suit — a coat and skirt with a white lace shirt.

‘Surely, you had your Sunday best?’ Susan said.

I remember that afternoon clearly. There’d been a scene because Susan, in her first year of college, had announced that a young man had asked her out for a coffee and she’d said yes. Em had shouted at her, asking who the boy was and what business she had saying yes. For a while I feared that Susan had triggered something and Em would soon be in one of her terrifying manic rages, but Em pulled back from the edge. By the time Susan got dressed, Em was calm. Susan waited for the right time to leave. Em sat in the cane chair by the balcony door and lit a beedi. ‘I was your age,’ she said, and began to talk of her first date. The tension eased as she told us of her panic, about having nothing appropriate to wear, and Susan asked about her Sunday best.

‘Yes, but it looked okay in church. I hated it but it didn’t matter once you got to the hall because all the other girls were wearing the same kind of stuff. You fitted in. But I knew I couldn’t wear that to the American Consulate.’

‘They would laugh?’

‘No,’ said Em. ‘The Americans I met were always polite. They would never laugh. But you knew that if they weren’t polite, they would be laughing at you. That’s where you’re embarrassed. Inside you.’

Finally, Em had consulted Gertrude who had shrugged off the whole sartorial nightmare in a single word. ‘Sa-ari,’ she had said, drawing out the two syllables to indicate how obvious the whole thing was.

‘Such a relief,’ said Em. ‘Of course, a sari.’

It was a minor matter that she couldn’t tie one.

‘I would stand in the middle of the room and stretch my arms out and someone would tie it for me.’

There was another problem.

‘I could not go to the bathroom. I never did learn how to take a pee in a sari. I mean, the sari and the ghaghra and the pleats and the panties and the seat. It’s just too much of a mess.’

Her solution? A total fast.

Gertrude liked the idea. ‘It’s a good thing to suffer in the beginning,’ she said. ‘Laugh in the beginning, cry at the end. Cry in the beginning, laugh at the end.’

‘He thought I was very bored because I kept sighing. I wasn’t sighing. I was trying not to burp. Fasting always makes me want to burp. And there I was, sitting next to the Office Hunk.’

‘The Big Hoom?’ Susan sounded doubtful.

‘What do you lot know? You don’t even think I’m pretty. But I am, even now, if you would just get that familiarity thing out of your eyes. But I was a looker then, thin waist, big wounded eyes, and the bloom of innocence all over me. And Hizzonner was also quite something in a suit, deep black, and white shirt and glowing sapphire tie to match his eyes.’

‘You remember what he wore?’

‘He didn’t wear that tie. I gave it to him some time later. That day it was a maroon tie. But when I think of him as the hunk, I think of him in a blue tie.’

At the end of the concert, The Big Hoom suggested dinner. Gertrude had assured Imelda that it was her duty to refuse. ‘He’ll ask. Say no. You must say no to everything on the first date or he’ll think you’re easy. Say no, no, no. But let him take you for coffee and then let him order dinner.’

‘I would have done exactly that,’ Em said.

‘Didn’t you ask Granny?’ Susan sounded a bit forlorn.

‘Mae? Ah, yes, Mae. She was no use at all,’ said Em, a little cryptically, and fell silent. Then she looked at Susan, as if noticing her properly for the first time. Susan was wearing midnight blue.

‘Is that you? You look charming,’ said Em and took her beedi out of her mouth.

Susan looked startled. Compliments were rare at any time. When Em was high, they were oases in the desert.

‘Come and sit by me,’ Em said.

‘Go, go,’ I urged Susan in my head but to give her credit, she didn’t even hesitate, though Em had refused to bathe or change for three days and had been smoking incessantly. She smelled unbelievably high.

‘Only one word of advice,’ said Em. ‘Do what your heart tells you. It doesn’t matter if you make a mistake. The only things we regret are the things we did not do.’

Susan grinned.

‘So you’re saying I should sleep with him?’

Em did not miss a beat.

‘If you love him. And if you want to.’

‘It’s a first date.’ Susan’s insouciance began to crumple slightly around the edges. ‘How can I know?’

‘Then chances are you don’t,’ said Em. ‘But it’s a sneaky thing. It can grow on you slowly. One day you’re thinking what does his chest look like under the banny and the next day you can’t bear the thought of anyone else wondering about his chest. As if you can ever stop people’s minds.’

All of which seemed to be going extraordinarily well. Then Em said, ‘But if anything should go wrong…’

‘Like what?’

‘Oh, if he should try and rape you…’

‘Em!’

‘It has been known to happen,’ said Em. ‘Pretend you’re trying to stroke his swollen cock and then give his balls a twist. Then run.’

Susan got to her feet.

‘I’ll keep that in mind.’

Em retreated too.

‘You do that,’ she said and lit another beedi.

‘Don’t look at me like that,’ she said when Susan had gone. ‘I have to do my duty as a mother.’

She inflected the word with all the rage and contempt she felt for it. It came out mud-dh-dha .

Em did not have the standard attitude towards motherhood. She often used the word with a certain venomousness, as if she were working hard to turn it into an insult. On one occasion, when we were chatting about a terrifyingly possessive mother, she suddenly broke into a chant: ‘Mother most horrible, mother most terrible, mother standing at the door, mouth full of dribble.’

Suddenly, now, she began to chant the line again.

It had the ring of a litany this time, but also something else.