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Arré, seth, this woman has been like a
mother to you. Raised you the way a cow raises a calf. And this is
how you repay her? Shame, shame, even Allah would find this hard to
pardon.'

My father looked confused. ‘What did I do
wrong? I was only trying…'

‘Wrong, seth? What you did wrong? Yelling at
your poor sister because she bought some expensive clothes? I say,
sir, what's wrong if she spent some money on herself?
Womenfolk, they have their shauk and desires. Business is going good,
In-shallah. And all because she keeps the books for you. And you yell
at her for spending some of her own money…'

My father began to laugh. ‘Saala, bevakoof,'
he said. ‘I was yelling at her to go buy some new clothes,
idiot, not because she went shopping. See the same rags she wears
everyday? I was angry because she refuses to take some money to go
shopping. I was telling her the same thing you are saying, that this
is her money too and she must spend some. You don't believe me,
go back in and ask her.'

The kamdar looked mortified. ‘Praise be to
Allah and please to forgive, seth. All these years I've known
your family, I should've known. Mehroobai is lucky to have a
brother like you. God Bless all three of you. Your old father will be
proud of you even in Heaven.'

We are all chuckling as my father finishes telling
this story.

‘Shame on you, Mehroo,' mummy says.
‘Getting my poor husband in trouble like that.' I tense
for a moment, waiting to detect an edge in mummy's tone but
there is none.

Mehroo smiles self-consciously and offers a light
shrug.

I relax and allow myself to enjoy the moment. If
only every family meal could be like this.

It happens.

I haven't tasted a scone yet and I know now
that my many neuroses, my fear of heights, will never allow me to be
a carefree tomboy like Georgina, but at least one of my Enid Blyton
dreams has come true.

I am now the proud companion of a golden cocker
spaniel who looks exactly like Scamper from the Secret Seven.

I come home from a party one evening and our
street is shrouded in darkness. The power is out in the entire
neighbourhood. Dad meets me at the bottom of the stairs with a
flashlight in his hand. When we arrive at our apartment, the entire
family is waiting for me at the front door. There are candles in the
passageway in the apartment. ‘Come,' dad says. ‘There's
somebody waiting for you in the living room.'

So my first look at my puppy is in the glow of a
flashlight.

He is curled up and lying in a lined box, his eyes
shut tight.

His golden ears are almost as big as his body, his
tail is absurdly short and his cute-as-a-button nose shines like
black leather. He is fat and tiny enough that dad can hold him in one
hand.

There is a kind of happiness so strong, a
gratitude so pro-found, that there are no words for it. I look at dad
and then at the puppy, who is now awake. Although it is dark, I take
in the expectant look on the faces of all the adults. They are all
waiting for me to say something but there are no words to express
what I feel. No, nothing will do except this whoop of joy and this
mad dance that I am performing, hopping from foot to foot. The adults
are grinning now and I go on dancing my happiness until the puppy
gets scared by all the noise I'm making and begins to whimper.
I stop immediately.

I have waited so many years for this dog, have
shed so many tears for him while I pleaded and begged for a pet, have
seen him in my dreams so often, that it does not occur to me that he
will be named anything other than Scamper. From the first moment that
I hold this wriggling, sniffing, squirming piece of golden fur in my
hands, I think of him as Scamper. ‘Hello, Scamp' I
whisper. ‘Hello, boy.'

But the next morning, Mehroo pulls me aside. ‘You
have to think of a different name for the puppy,' she says.

I am aghast. ‘But why? I have always wanted
to name a dog Scamper. Everybody knows that.'

‘Well, there is a problem. You know, the
servants won't be able to pronounce his name. Better think of a
less complicated name.'

In the end, we name him Ronnie. So much for East
meets West. The gap between the life I lead in my head and the life I
actually live, yawns wide. The Enid Blyton dream lies forgotten in
the pages of a Secret Seven book.

T
WO EARTH-SHATTERING REVELATIONS IN two
days. This is almost more than I can bear.

The first revelation involves Mehroo. Dad and I
are on our way to Crawford Market to buy some fruit when he lets slip
about Mehroo's dead fiancé. The world stops for a
moment. I had not even known that Mehroo had ever been in love, much
less that she was once engaged to be married. I am twelve years old,
I want to say to dad. How come nobody ever told me about this until
now? But instead, I simply listen as he relates the whole sad story.

A few years after her mother's death from
TB, Mehroo herself contracted the dreaded—and often
fatal—disease. After her recovery, my distraught grandfather
sent her away to a sanitarium in the hill-station resort of Panchgani
to recuperate. My dad was heart-broken. Since their mother's
death, Mehroo had become both mother and sister to him. And
more—often, she was the only one who could reach their father,
whose grief had made him as distant as a star. My grandfather, a
gentle, scholarly man, found his boisterous, active sons too much to
take. Without knowing it, he grew resentful of their loudness, their
jokes, their laughter, because it felt like a disturbance, a
violation of the silent world he had built for himself. And so,
dreading the long silences of the house, my father didn't want
his sister to leave.

In all the years that I knew Mehroo, she never
once talked about the months in Panchgani. But my father recalled not
recognizing his sister when the family went to visit her a few months
later. Looking at the young woman with thick brown, braided hair,
with cheeks red as strawberries and smooth as cream, he mistook her
for an Englishwoman. So he watched with astonishment when my
grandfather enveloped this stranger in a hug. ‘Hello, pappaji,'
she said. Oh my God, it's Mehroo, my father thought.

The glow on her cheeks was from more than the good
food and the clean hillside air, the family soon found out. Mehroo
was in love. At the sanitarium, she had met and fallen in love with
another TB patient. His name was Rumi and he was twenty-five and an
engineer in the airforce. He lived in Karachi, hundreds of miles
north of Bombay. Decades later, I saw an old Technicolor photograph
of the two of them together. Rumi is tall and slender and has a lush
dark moustache over full lips.

He is wearing a dark suit. Mehroo is shorter but
her eyes are ablaze with youthfulness. Neither one is smiling in the
picture but despite the formality of the studio portrait, there is a
closeness between the couple that is palpable. They look very much in
love.

For the first few days that Mehroo was home, my
father felt shy and awkward around his sister. The familiar older
sister who, after their mother died, had bathed him, cooked for him,
later, dressed him for school before she herself got ready for
school, had been replaced by this serene, slightly mystical stranger.
Mehroo herself marvelled at the change in her brothers. ‘Look
how big you two got while I was gone,' she'd say almost
to herself. But after a few days, as Mehroo took over the household
responsibilities again, after she resumed care of him from the older
aunts who'd been keeping an eye on the boys, it was as if she
had never left.

But the three males in the house felt another loss
approaching and feared that this time it would be permanent. ‘I
don't want you to go,' my dad said fiercely after Mehroo
had explained the situation to him. ‘If your Rumi is so great,
he can move to Bombay and live with us.'

‘Try to understand, brother,' Mehroo
said mildly. But he was inconsolable.

My grandfather was equally adamant. He feared for
his daughter's health and the separation from her family. His
mind was made up by the time Rumi's maternal aunt, Perin, came
to press Rumi's case for marriage. ‘A good boy from a
good family, he is, Hormazdji,' Perin said. ‘Your Mehroo
will be like a queen in our family, I tell you.'

But Hormazd was not convinced. ‘Two TB
patients marrying each other,' he demurred. ‘Any doctor
would advise against it. What if there are problems later on, God
forbid?'

‘Nonsense, nonsense, Hormazdji. Both
children are healthy now, by the grace of God. I have faith Ahura
Mazda will keep them safe and sound.'

Hormazd tried a different track. ‘Mehroo has
run this family since my dear wife's demise. I am a widower,
with two young sons to raise. With my bank job, how will I manage on
my own? Karachi is so far away, the other end of the country. Who
knows when I'll see my Mehroo again?'

Perin was ready for him this time. ‘Rumi has
told me to inform you that he personally will bring Mehroo to Bombay
at least once a year. He is having a large family in Bombay; they can
stay with us—or with you,' she added hastily.

But the fear of tuberculosis haunted my
grandfather. It was bad enough that his only daughter had come down
with the same disease that had killed his young wife. He couldn't
allow her to marry a man who carried the same dreaded germs. He
refused to allow Mehroo to marry Rumi. Mehroo was heart-broken but
marrying against her father's wishes did not occur to her.

But for two years, she corresponded secretly with
Rumi.

Letters addressed to her from Karachi would arrive
at her best friend's home and be delivered to her at college.
She would reply to the letters before she got home from college that
evening. Her brothers knew about this exchange and conspired to keep
the secret from their father.

I am not sure how my grandfather ultimately found
out about the letters. But that night, father and daughter talked.

Nobody knows what they said to each other. But
after two years of breaking his daughter's heart, Hormazd
suddenly caved. Mehroo was free to marry Rumi.

The preparations for the wedding, which was to be
held in Bombay, began immediately. Perin aunty helped Mehroo pick out
saris for her wedding and her engagement. Clothes were purchased for
the groom's family. My dad and uncle also got into the act,
almost delirious with excitement at the thought of a wedding in the
family. Despite the shadow of the imminent separation, a rare sense
of joy and fun engulfed them all.

My dad still remembers the day the bad news came.
It was exactly two months before the wedding. The doorbell rang and
Rumi's aunt—the same woman who had a few weeks ago helped
Mehroo pick out her wedding sari—came in hurriedly.

‘Where's Mehroo?' she asked my
father. Then, before he could answer, she lurched toward the kitchen.

Mehroo looked up from the kitchen counter, where
she was chopping onions. Her eyes were red from the onions and her
face flushed in the Bombay heat. ‘Su che, Perin aunty?'
she asked. ‘What is the matter?'

The woman took a step toward her niece. ‘Mehroo,
Rumi's dead,' she blurted. ‘He had pneumonia for
two days only…'

The rest, I have to imagine. Dad does not recall
what followed after the awful moment when grief and death walked into
their lives a second time. Scenario #1: For a second, Mehroo keeps
chopping the onions, mechanically, much like those bodies that twitch
and move even after they've been beheaded. Scenario #2: the
knife falls from her shaking hands, so that she has to jump back to
avoid its sharp descent. Then, she starts screaming, so that for a
moment, Perin thinks that the knife has struck her foot. Scenario #3:
Mehroo stares at Perin in mute horror. Her eyes widen as the words
seep their poison through her body. Then, she drops wordlessly to the
floor.

Dad finishes telling the story. I'm not sure
if he has any idea about how it affects me because I do what I always
do when my heart is breaking: I rearrange my face to make it go
blank.

I don't let the pain that I feel show in my
eyes. I ask careful questions that show no hint of the turmoil and
confusion I feel.

I tell dad I'm going to wait in the car
while he shops at Crawford Market. After he leaves, I allow my jaw to
sag in disbelief, let my eyes well with unshed tears, permit myself
to feel the sting of betrayal and shock

Confession: At first, I mostly feel sorry for
myself. As the youngest member of the family, as someone Mehroo has
cared for from my days in the cradle, I had simply accepted as fact
that Mehroo loved me more than anyone else in the world, that her
life had basically started after my birth. Oh, I knew she doted on
her brothers, knew how much she had adored her father, but that was
different. Those people had always been part of my life, were known
entities and therefore no threat to me. They were not competitors;
they were family.

Therefore, they didn't count.

But this strange man who has stepped from the
mists of the past into the fields of reality, what am I to do with
him? This man who has been created by my dad's storytelling,
this dead man who has been made alive again by the power of words,
where do I bury him now? This man whom Mehroo had loved before I was
even born, why do I think of him as a rival? Why do I feel as if
Mehroo has cheated on me, betrayed me somehow? How am I now supposed
to think of my small, spinster aunt, this one-dimensional,
black-and-white figure I had believed existed only to love me? Now
that she is suddenly restored to full colour, now that I have to
recognize her full humanity, her right to love whoever she chooses
without asking my permission, what am I to do with the cardboard
image of her that lies tattered at my feet? And why am I jealous of a
man who died years before I was even born? After all, he is dead and
I am alive. Isn't that revenge enough?