Boats on Land: A Collection of Short Stories Read online

  ‘Why can’t you be more like your sister?’

  I’d look up and feign surprise, as though I didn’t know what the conversation was about.

  ‘Because,’ said Grace, ‘she’s boring.’

  And hurt as I would be, I knew it was the truth. I liked reading, wore my hair cropped short, couldn’t tell, or care, what clothes looked nice on me, and unlike her, I didn’t have any glamorous, aspiring rock star companions. Instead, I hung out with Anku, a plump kid from next door who was my age, wore spectacles, and liked to play cricket. He was Assamese, and since the situation in Shillong didn’t seem to be getting any better, I was in constant danger of losing my only friend. The thing that saved his family, he told me in one of our many over-the-hedge conversations, was that his businessman father had arranged benami with many Khasis.

  ‘What’s benami?’ I asked.

  His dad, he explained, paid the locals handsomely to set up shops in their names instead of his own, and thus far, nobody had dared lay a finger on him.

  Apart from Anku, I didn’t really get along with the other colony children, who played frightening physically demanding games and scaled pine trees as though they were nothing more than flights of stairs. I could hear them sometimes, rushing down the road, stealing sour red soh lia from our trees, shouting out rude nicknames in Khasi, returning slippery-slick from swimming at the old abandoned water tank in the forest. My sister’s friends, on the other hand, were all the popular kids—the athletic basketball stars, and cool, pretty girls, the ones invited to all the parties, who played guitar and smoked real cigarettes—not the sweet Phantom ones Anku and I puffed on cold winter evenings and then exhaled pretending our foggy breath was smoke. Her friends streamed in and out of the house like a colourful, exotic parade, and I kept out of their way, while desperately longing to be included. My sister’s closest friend was Sarah—a rather dopey-faced girl with a definite smattering of Anglo genes somewhere in her recent ancestry. She had impossibly light hazel eyes, a glossy tangle of almost-blonde hair and a spray of attractive freckles on her nose. She’d also kissed every boy in town, mostly in our house, and I’d often encountered these passionate embraces at the bottom of the stairs and at the top, in the loo and on the roof, in my sister’s room and mine.

  While Sarah’s fleeting suitors came and went, there was a steady group of boys that waltzed through our doors much to my parents’ mounting chagrin. A long-limbed Manipuri guitarist and a couple of Anglo-Khasi boys with boyish charm, bold, loud voices, and lips stained scarlet with betel nut juice. The handsomest of them all was Sarah’s brother Mike, who had perfectly gelled hair and wore immaculate white T-shirts, tight, skinny jeans and polished black boots.

  ‘Hiya, kid,’ he’d say, making my young heart leap into my mouth, and my stomach flutter in the most curious manner. For him, I could easily enough scale those skyscraper pine trees. Or jump into an icy cold water tank. Sometimes, he’d sit himself down on the sofa, close enough for me to smell his hair gel and Old Spice, and wrench a book out of my hand.

  ‘Whatchya reading?’

  My mouth would go dry, and I’d stutter. ‘N-Nancy Drew.’

  ‘Hmmmm…’ He’d glance at the cover. ‘Cute chick. Just like you.’

  I fell madly in love.

  In those days, my sister’s parties (‘better at home where we can keep an eye on her than anywhere else where we can’t,’ was how my parents relented) were held during the afternoon. The curtains drawn to create the illusion of night, Shakin’ Stevens booming out of tinny Philips speakers, and Gold Spot and Thums Up slugged out of dusty glass bottles. If the drinks were spiked, which I’m sure they were, it was done with the utmost discretion. I wasn’t allowed into the room, but wandered in from time to time with messages from my mother regarding the volume of the music, or the lateness of the hour. Nobody seemed to notice I was there, lost as they were in each other’s arms, floating around to Air Supply. Once, I saw Mike and Grace kissing, and ran out with tears in my eyes. Anku, clueless when it came to matters of the heart, didn’t quite know how to help.

  ‘They were kissing? That’s gross.’

  After that I encountered them everywhere. Draped across the sofa, walking hand in hand in Laitumkhrah, or giggling at the gate where they spent a million light years saying goodbye and goodnight. But it was bound to have happened. Don’t beautiful people gravitate towards each other? Like proverbial moths to a flame? And don’t the less attractive have to make do with leftovers? Mine, I decided, wasn’t going to be a happy life. Grace and Mike were in love. I was left with Anku and my books. Suddenly they too seemed irrelevant and dissatisfying, the worlds I conjured up while reading. Even my mother’s secret stash of Barbara Cartlands, that I found in a drawer and devoured, could hardly appease my discontent. There wasn’t much to choose from, I decided, between this life and the one imagined. Until, that is, the Manipuri guitarist brought Chris over to our house one evening.

  Chris belonged to Shillong’s oldest, wealthiest Chinese family who’d immigrated to the hills from Calcutta in the ’60s. They owned a string of restaurants and shoe shops in Laitumkhrah and Police Bazaar, and lived in a sprawling bungalow in Laban. Chris, the elder son, had been studying in Bangalore all this while, but was back now, in these troubled days, to help with the family business. The first time I saw him, he roared up on a Yamaha, helmet in hand, leather jacket in the other, and I thought he was the hippest person I’d ever laid eyes on. On his back was a hardback guitar case, casually slung across as though it weighed no more than a feather. I saw my sister’s face when she was introduced to him; I don’t know how to describe it, except I’d never seen her look that way at Mike.

  ‘I’m a guitarist in a band,’ he said, flicking back his dark, spiky hair. ‘I’m on lead, my brother Melvin is on drums.’

  Melvin was a shorter, stockier version of Chris, with none of his sharp, angular features and charm. He stood silently at the back; clearly he was used to his brother taking charge. When they entered our living room, I heard Chris rifle through Grace’s cassettes and say, ‘Air Supply. Foreigner. Roxette. You listen to rubbish. Have you heard Hendrix?’

  That evening all that drifted through the door was the electrified twang of a guitar and a husky voice singing songs I didn’t know. It was music I’d never heard before—angry, raspy sounds that emerged from inexplicable rage.

  The brothers didn’t leave until almost midnight, when my parents protested and they were bundled out of the room like a pile of laundry.

  ‘It’s not safe to be outside so late…’ my mother warned them. ‘Things are getting worse…’

  The brothers were respectfully silent while gathering their things. At the door, though, I heard Chris mutter to my sister—‘We know everyone who’s roaming the streets…’

  From that evening on, my sister and Chris were inseparable. I’m not sure what happened to Mike—although there was a time he stormed in, threatened to beat Chris, and then stormed out not to be seen again. I watched him from the window, strutting down the garden path and to the gate where a couple of his friends were waiting. He gestured to them and then to the house; I wondered what story he was making up to explain my sister’s sudden change in affections. One afternoon, Sarah too left my sister’s room in tears, saying how she’d hoped some day they’d be sisters-in-law, and that Grace had treated her brother most unkindly. I don’t think my sister cared.

  We didn’t see her for hours on end. She was usually at Chris’s house in Laban, doing, as my mother said, ‘God knows what’. If Mike was what she called a ‘khynnah dakaid’—a bad boy—it was highly unlikely she approved of Chris. This town, according to my parents, with its constant unrest and wanton youth, was headed for nothing but disaster. They couldn’t understand it, where had it gone? The peaceful little place they’d grown up in, with its quaint British ways and pretty bungalows, its safe streets and pine-dappled innocence. They’d watched it transform before their eyes. My sister and Chris tore around on
his motorbike, paying little heed to reports of trouble, growing ever since the government had refused to meet with the KSU for talks. There were rumours that curfew would be enforced again, harsher this time, with anyone seen outside threatened to be stoned or assaulted. On certain evenings, the news on the radio would be drowned out by Chris’s guitar, as he played for Grace in the living room—on occasion their bassist would also join him, while Melvin sat in a corner tapping his drumsticks on the table. I don’t know if my parents noticed but Grace changed in those months—she dressed differently, in darker, more grown-up clothes, she let her hair hang loose and tangled. She took down the posters of Debbie Gibson and Jason Donovan in her room, and replaced them with the ones Chris gave her—Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, The Who, Jethro Tull, The Beatles.

  ‘What’s happened to you?’ my mother once asked in exasperation.

  My sister smiled. ‘I discovered rock ‘n’ roll.’

  ‘What’s rock ’n’ roll?’ asked Anku.

  ‘It’s a type of music,’ I said wisely.

  ‘What type of music?’

  ‘Oh you know, electric guitars, cool drums.’

  Anku looked doubtful and decidedly unimpressed, so one afternoon, I snuck him into the house. I allowed him to peer into Grace’s room. He stared around in awe. I think, secretly, like everyone else in the world, he had a crush on my sister.

  ‘This is…amazing,’ he whispered. ‘Like being allowed into the inner sanctum of a temple you’d only worshipped from afar.’ I told him to stop being idiotically melodramatic and pulled him to the living room.

  Since I hardly knew what rock ’n’ roll was about, I randomly picked a cassette from an untidy pile lying on the floor. It was a Led Zeppelin album, I’ve forgotten which, and although we didn’t catch, or understand, most of the lyrics, Anku and I listened transfixed.

  To seek the man whose pointing hand/The giant step unfolds

  With guidance from the curving path/That churns up into stone

  I hadn’t turned the volume up high, but we still didn’t hear my sister and Chris walk in.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ my sister yelled.

  We were too frightened to reply. ‘I’m sorry,’ I blurted, ‘I was just…’

  ‘Hey, relax,’ said Chris. ‘They’re listening to music.’ He sat cross-legged next to us. ‘Do you like Zeppelin?’

  Anku and I nodded.

  ‘See, they have better taste than you.’ He grinned at my sister who threw a cushion at him.

  ‘If you like this,’ he said, pressing the red STOP button, ‘you’ll love these guys.’

  He fished a cassette out of his pocket; the cover had a baby on it, swimming in water. I thought that seemed quite bizarre, but didn’t say so. I was grateful to Chris for diverting my sister’s anger.

  ‘This is what I wanted you to listen to, Grace…’ he said, pressing PLAY. Then he turned to my sister and pulled her close to him. They seemed not to care that Anku and I were there, and halfway through the song, amid a mad crashing of percussion and guitar, and the voice of a truly anguished soul, we left the room.

  After that day, I didn’t see Chris or Anku for a while. There’d been trouble in town—a massive shoot-out between the CRPF and the KSU—and an endless bandh had been called. ‘You go out and get killed, we won’t even be able to hold your a funeral,’ my parents told Grace, and even she couldn’t help but obey this time. We were stuck indoors for days, and while I amused myself by penning down entries in my diary, Grace fared much worse. Either she listened to music at the highest possible volume—as though to say to our parents ‘if you make me stay in this is what you’ll have to put up with’—or prowled around the house like a caged animal. I must admit, though, by the end of the week, I was also restless. Looking out of the window, I could see the colony curiously still and quiet; the roads emptied of cars and pedestrians. There seemed no end to this ‘trouble’. When would life go back to being what it had been? Right now, I wasn’t sure if that could ever happen.

  Later in the month, when curfew hours were shortened, people were still cautioned about being outdoors. So while Chris and Melvin often dropped by, my sister was warned against leaving the house. The worst news came from over the hedge when Anku told me that there was talk in his home of his family leaving Shillong.

  ‘But why?’ I cried, even though the answer was obvious.

  My friend looked miserable. ‘It’s my mother,’ he explained. ‘She says she’s had enough, that she wants to be with her own people. She said to abba it was either her or Shillong.’

  There was an air of disquiet that hung about our town and our house. It was only relieved sometimes when Chris and his band were jamming in the living room. One afternoon, I almost bumped into Chris while coming down the stairs.

  ‘Sorry,’ I mumbled.

  ‘It’s not your fault.’ Chris put his hand on my shoulder. ‘Don’t say sorry when it’s not your fault.’

  ‘You guys sound good,’ I blurted.

  He looked pleased, even though I thought my opinion could hardly count.

  ‘Thank you. While cooped up at home these days we worked on some songs; we’re thinking of putting an album together.’

  ‘Wow.’ More than anything else, I felt tremendously important that Chris was telling me this. ‘What’s the name of your band?’ I asked, a little bolder now.

  ‘Empty Ceremony.’

  I looked impressed.

  ‘Next time we rehearse, come check us out.’

  I nodded.

  He winked at me before vanishing through the door to my sister’s room.

  The clearest memory I have of Chris and his brother is when we all went to Laitlum. It was a quiet Sunday afternoon and our parents had gone to visit an ailing relative at Nazareth Hospital. As usual, we’d been cautioned to stay home.

  ‘Anywhere,’ I could hear my sister say to Chris. ‘I don’t care. I’m so tired of these four walls.’

  He and his brother had come over on their bikes; I’d heard them roar up to the gate.

  ‘Alright,’ said Chris, ‘let’s go for a drive.’

  In those days, when Shillong had no fancy cafés, restaurants, gaming parlours, or shopping malls, ‘drive’ was a magical word. It offered time away, however briefly, from a small town filled with people you knew or who knew your parents. ‘Drives’ were an escape. And on that particular afternoon, against our parents’ orders. Grace shrieked in delight. I could hear them gathering their things. I had never been on a drive, or been invited to one either; it would have been pointless to ask if I could go along. Perhaps, I thought gloomily, I could blackmail Grace. ‘I’ll tell mei and papa if you don’t take me.’ And she’d probably laugh and toss her long, black hair over her shoulder, saying she didn’t care.

  ‘Let’s take her.’

  I looked up. They were on their way out and Chris was gesturing at me.

  ‘What? No,’ said my sister immediately.

  ‘Come on…’

  I held my breath.

  ‘…she’s been stuck at home too.’

  There was little she could say no to when it came to Chris.

  ‘She can ride with Mel,’ she said grudgingly.

  ‘Really?’ I found it almost impossible to believe. ‘But papa and mei…’

  ‘Will get home and find us not there,’ Grace interrupted, ‘and we’ll get into trouble. Do you want to come or not?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Put something warm on or you’ll freeze your ass off.’

  I ran up to my room, two steps at a time, before they could change their minds.

  They say you don’t ever forget your first love, your first kiss. I don’t know it if applies to your first motorbike ride. It didn’t change my life. But it gave me the first tremulous hint of how things could be different. Yes, that there were other ways of experiencing the world. So far, for me, that had been from the security of being on the inside—a car, a book, the judicious guidance of my parents. Cocoone
d in plastic and metal, in parched pages, within the arms of a suffocating love. And everything goes by, scenery and life, unfurling at a safe and careful distance, a flat democratic haze. Being outside is a step away from safety. On a motorbike, the world rushes up at you from all sides, so do the wind and the colours of the trees and the sky. You are exposed. The sunshine hits your back, your face, the air flies down your throat, and you are nothing but a single, glorious movement.

  We wove our way out of our neighbourhood and into Laitumkhrah, usually a busy area with people bustling around the shops and large meat and vegetable bazaar. Today, the streets were almost empty, and we raced through them, weaving around traffic cones and a few clusters of pedestrians. I clung to Melvin madly, laughing out loud. We passed children playing games of football and cricket on the road, and grown-ups who looked at us with the greatest disdain. ‘Khynnah dkaid,’ I could almost hear them say and it thrilled me. This was better than any book, I thought. It was real. The roads were more desolate as we hit the outskirts of the town. I held on tight to Melvin’s leather jacket, trying not to let slip that, for me, this was as scary as it was exciting. I couldn’t wait to tell Anku; and then I remembered that the house next door lay empty. Suddenly, I wanted Melvin to go faster, and for the world to turn into a dazzling blur. In front of us, I could see Chris and Grace; her hair streaming in the wind, she leaned in to whisper in his ear. Then she half stood up and raised her arms in the air like an angel. She had her eyes closed. I would have liked to do the same but was afraid I’d fall off. Soon, we were far out of town, driving through rough, barren countryside marked with slabs of dark, layered rock. There were stretches of harvested fields and rows of thatched huts from where children would run to the side of the road and wave at us. I had no idea where we were headed, but it didn’t seem to matter. We were away from the disquiet that hung over Shillong, away from the confines of home and the watchful eyes of parents. All these years later, I look back on that day and know it was the afternoon I grew up.

  Finally, the road narrowed and changed to a dirt track flanked on either side by tall, graceful bamboo. We took a sharp turn and stopped by an iron gate.