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For this reason, my mother felt it necessary to
keep our restaurant visits a secret from the rest of the family,
especially from Mehroo, who, she told me, would consider this to be a
frivolous expense. I found it hard to believe that Mehroo would
be-grudge me a snack in a restaurant but I was not up to challenging
my mother. So I promised her not to reveal these outings but somehow,
the secrecy took the joy out of them.

The legacy of that year lingers. It has made my
mother think of me as a frail and sickly child and I have obliged her
by regularly falling ill ever since. As I am now.

I know that the instant I am better—the day
the fever does not spike after sundown, as it usually does; as soon
as I can sleep through the night without coughing—all this
tenderness and demonstrated affection will vanish, will be pulled
away from me like a retractable arm. In fact, that is how I will
actually know for sure that I have indeed recovered, by the first
harsh word that my mother will say to me. Usually, it plays out like
this: her relief at my recovery takes the form of berating me for
getting sick in the first place (by not swallowing my daily egg/by
walking slowly in the rain without a raincoat/by not eating well/by
eating an orange or sweet lime despite doctor's orders to the
contrary/by not having any stamina). Knowing that things have gone
back to normal, I further aggravate the situation by asking to be
moved back to my bed in Mehroo's room.

My mom calls me ungrateful, matlabi, a snake,
reminds me how she hasn't slept in four whole nights while
attending to my fever and implies that my father and Mehroo are only
available during the good times while she has sacrificed sleep and
rest for my sake. ‘We all know how much he is around when
you're sick,' she says. ‘He's so worried
about you, ask him why he didn't even come home till nine
o'clock day before yesterday.'

My father overhears this and feels compelled to
point out that one, she has only done what every mother in the
history of the world has done for her child and two, he was in a
business meeting and someone has to work to keep the house running.
My mother waits for my dad to rush out of the room after his little
speech and then she looks at me. ‘It's all your fault,'
she says bitterly. ‘Always coming in the way, between the two
of us.'

Two days after I've recovered, Babu comes
home from the factory with a gift for Roshan and me. It is a little
baby bunny.

A few months ago, one of the timber merchants had
presented Babu with two female rabbits, one black and one white. My
soft-hearted uncle had taken one look at the creatures and fallen in
love with them. He would raise them at the factory, he decided. The
next day, dad drove the entire family to see them. Growing up in
Bombay, I had never seen a real rabbit. At the factory, the foreman,
who for some mysterious reason was resentful of the animals, declared
that Roshan and I should not stand too close to the rabbits because
everybody knew that if a rabbit blew into your eyes, you'd go
blind. We ignored him. Babu put an arm around Roshan and me and told
us that we could each name and adopt one of the two. Everybody went
gaga over the white one, which prompted me to declare that I wanted
to adopt the black one. I was the one who ended up giving them their
brilliantly creative names—Blackey and Whitey.

I was utterly in love with my new pets. ‘Happy?'
Babu asked me and I nodded vigorously. The rabbits were the first
pets I'd ever had and I went to school the next day with
stories about how Blackey and Whitey had eaten lettuce out of my
hands and how they'd slept in the wooden cage my dad had built
for them. Even Mehnaz, whose brother used to pick her up from school
in his Jeep with his pet monkey sitting on his shoulder, was quiet
and looked suitably envious.

Babu, too, established an immediate bond with the
animals.

Even the foreman marvelled at how they soon
recognized his footsteps so that they came racing to the door as soon
as Babu walked into the factory each morning. ‘Hello, hello, my
babies,' he'd coo and head straight for the lettuce to
feed them.

‘Dammit, Pesi, at least get settled at your
desk first,' dad grinned but Babu just fixed a stern look at
his younger brother and told him that these poor creatures had been
waiting all night for him to feed them.

Then, a surprise. The merchant had lied to Babu.
It turned out that Blackey was a male and one day, as sudden as a
meteor shower, there was a litter of baby rabbits. ‘Saala
liar,' Babu yelled at the merchant but the man simply grinned
and shrugged and said who knew with rabbits? But the baby rabbits
were too cute for Babu to stay angry for long. He decided to raise
them until they were old enough to be adopted out. He even made the
merchant promise to take one. ‘After all, you are the bloody
grandfather, head of the household,' he said and the man
acquiesced.

I was in ecstasy. I went to the factory as often
as I could and if the thought occurred to me that one of these days
these babies would be gone, I didn't linger on it. I was just
happy to stroke and play with the tiny creatures while their parents
hovered nearby and kept an eye on things.

In our excitement, none of us had thought about
the stray cats that roamed around the timber market. But one day a
subdued foreman met Babu at the entrance of the factory and said he
had some bad news. A cat had killed several of the babies. Babu let
out a cry of pain and indignation.

When Blackey and Whitey came up to greet him that
day, he imagined that they moved slower and heavier than usual and
that Whitey looked grief-stricken. Babu could not look her in the
eye.

A few days later, despite everybody's best
efforts, the cat struck again. As it turned out, only the runt of the
litter had been spared. The baby rabbit was almost all white with a
big patch of black on its back. To Babu, its colouring was a sign
that this rabbit, the only one that survived, was destined to carry
on the family line. This baby rabbit bore the mark of both its
parents and it was Babu's duty to see that it lived. So he
brought it home with him that evening. He presented the rabbit to
Roshan and me and told us how the cat had struck again killing all of
the little baby's brothers and sisters and that it was up to us
to take perfect care of this little one.

We put the rabbit on the dining room table and
crowd around him. Mummy has the brilliant idea of telling our
neighbours and soon the doorbell is ringing and different people come
in to coo at the rabbit and stroke its little head. I am bursting
with pride and happiness. I can't wait to go to school the next
day and tell my friends that we now have a pet
at home
. I am
even allowed to carry him but knowing my reputation for clumsiness,
all the adults are tense while I have him in my arms. ‘Careful,
careful,' Mehroo murmurs. But I am as tender as Mother Mary
with Jesus. After a few minutes, Babu takes him from my hands and
sets him on the table. ‘He must be tired. They need a lot of
sleep,' he says. ‘We should let him rest.'

‘But we haven't named him yet,'
I exclaim. It seems preposterous to have a pet retire for the night
without naming him first. But when Babu asks me to come up with a
name, my mind goes blank. ‘Blackey-Whitey?' I say but
even to my ears, it sounds so lame that I don't wait for the
adults to respond.

Mehroo says. ‘The poor thing will be
sleeping tonight anyway, so he doesn't need a name. Now, let's
let him rest.'

We set the nameless, siblingless baby rabbit into
a small cardboard box that Freny has lined with rags. He falls asleep
almost immediately. I feel something move in my chest, a feeling of
such tenderness that it is a physical sensation. Perhaps I will name
him Angel. All of us take turns wishing him good night. ‘Good
night, God Bless You and welcome to your home sweet home,'
Mehroo says when it is her turn.

I wake up early the next morning and my first
thought is for the rabbit. Everybody else is still asleep, the sound
of their breathing and snoring filling the house. I head directly for
the cardboard box and peer in, hoping that the rabbit is awake.

I look and all I see are the covers. I lift the
corners, even while I realize the impossibility of the rabbit having
slipped between them. My hands grow more impatient as I run them all
across the box. The rabbit is not in there.

I head toward Babu's room and wake him up.
He gazes at me sleepily. ‘The rabbit,' I say urgently.
‘He's not in his box.'

Babu leaps out of bed. ‘Did you disturb him
during the night?' he asks me sternly.

‘No, I swear. I went to see him two minutes
ago, only.'

Babu checks the box, too. No rabbit.

By now, the entire household is awake. Lights go
on in each room as we rub our eyes sleepily and begin searching for
the missing rabbit.

‘Let's check under the beds,'
dad says. ‘He's probably hiding. We should've not
allowed so many people to visit last night. Probably scared the poor
fellow.'

Since I am the youngest member of the family and
the most agile, I volunteer to slip under each bed to look. Freny
gives me a flashlight so that I can see better. No rabbit.

I am in the living room when I hear Babu let out a
cry. He is on the balcony and is half-leaning over the railing. He
has just spotted something white and black on the street, looking
like a ball of crumpled paper. I begin to rush toward the balcony but
Babu stops me. ‘No,' he says. ‘Don't come
here.

Just…stay in, that's all.' I
halt in my tracks. A feeling of dread is climbing up my limbs and my
heart suddenly feels as heavy as cement. Babu does not wait to put on
his shirt. He goes down the stairs and into the street in his sadra
and pyjamas.

Minutes pass. Dad goes to the balcony and when he
returns he flashes a quick, warning look at Mehroo that I know I'm
not supposed to see but I do. Everybody has fallen quiet and the
frenzied activity of the last few minutes has ceased completely as we
wait for Babu to return.

We hear his heavy footsteps climbing the stairs.
When he walks in, his eyes are bloodshot and his shoulders sag. ‘It's
him,' he says. ‘God knows how but he climbed out of the
box and made his way to the balcony. In a million years, I didn't
think…' He stops and shudders and we all know what he's
thinking, about the poor creature's sickening flight down two
storeys and the dreadful thud with which his flight had ended.

I want to wail, to throw up, to beat on something
until my hands bleed, to hurt myself in some way. I can still feel
the rabbit's softness under my fingers. Perhaps I had
frightened him by carrying him, scared him so much that he looked to
escape from my clutches by hurling his soft body into the
un-trustworthy air. Perhaps it was my vanity, my plans to brag about
him at school that had caused this to happen.

As if reading my mind, Freny says, ‘It's
my fault. I should've picked a deeper box. If only he'd
not been able to get out none of this would've happened.'

‘It's nobody's fault,' dad
says. ‘It just happened.' But we can all tell his heart
isn't in it.

Babu leaves the room and heads for his shower.
When the garbage woman rings the doorbell, he gives her an extra five
rupees for picking up the rabbit's battered body from the
street.

‘Pick it up gently,' he tells her. ‘He
was our pet. Treat him with dignity, understand?' The woman
nods, amazed at getting paid for something she would've done
for free.

Dad and Babu leave for the factory without
breakfast. I am not so lucky. I am still made to swallow my eye and
glass of milk before I head downstairs for the school-bus. I decide
not to mention to my friends what has happened. I cannot risk one of
them saying something mean or smart-alecky. If Olga or one of the
others were to make a joke of it, I don't know if I'd be
able to control myself. Best not to say anything.

When Babu gets to the factory, Blackey and Whitey
do not rush up to greet him. Blackey makes his way toward Babu a
little later but Whitey does not come even when he calls her to come
get her lettuce. When he goes up to her, she stares at him for a
moment and then closes her eyes. Babu is devastated.

‘She knows,' he whispers to dad, who
dismisses the notion and tells Babu to use his commonsense.

‘How could she know?' he reasons.
‘She's a
rabbit
, for God's sake. And anyway,
it was an accident. You had the best of intentions.'

But Babu is inconsolable. And the fact is
indisputable—this is the first day that Whitey has not come up
to the entrance to greet Babu. Her rejection cuts like a knife,
making his guilt ten times stronger.

By the afternoon, Babu has made up his mind. He
calls Shantilal, another timber merchant whose ten-year-old son
adores Blackey and Whitey, and makes a deal. If Shantilal wants the
rabbits, he can have them. There are just two conditions. One, he
would have to take them home, not raise them in the market. And two,
he'd have to come for them right away.

I am dumbfounded when Babu comes home that night
and says he has given the rabbits away. ‘But they belonged to
Roshan and me,' I want to scream. ‘Whitey and Blackey
were our pets, not yours. You should've asked us first.'

But there are many reasons I can't say any
of this. First, I am excruciatingly aware of how much pain Babu is
in. I know how responsible he feels for the baby rabbit's death
and how deeply Whitey's rejection has hurt him. I know that
even the act of giving the two rabbits away is actually an act of
love, although I'd be hard-pressed to untangle the whole messy
web of betrayal and sacrifice and guilt that makes it so.