-Nighat Gandhi
In a more amazing and less absurd world, thin boys
wouldn't carry sand for a living and fat girls wouldn't be ashamed of their legs.
when she finally shot the ball into the
basket for the first time in days, she couldn't help crying out: 'Oay! Yes!
Yes! Yesssss!' She clapped and twirled. The others who never acknowledged her
existence, joined in half-heartedly, half-surprised, half-snickering.
A boy at
the construction site nearby was lifting a basket of sand and turned to stare
at her.
In that moment his gaze met hers. She had
never noticed him before on any of her mornings at the court. It was a cool
morning, the last one in October, and Diwali, the one time when Mummy would
perhaps not yell at her for eating too
many sweets, was just around the corner.
He was dark and thin. Very dark. Very thin.
His sleeveless vest had holes and his shorts hadn't been washed in a long time.
His thinness repelled her, filled her with envy. His stick-like legs,
dust-coated and dark, plunged themselves deep into her shame-filled heart. He was skinny but he moved nimbly, like a
dancer, like a butterfly.
She, whose friends called her Fatty and said
they were only joking, longed to be like him.
Not as dark as him, but as thin, because then they would stop calling
her Fatty.
'Beta, no boy will want to marry you if you
don't control your weight,' Mummy repeated this warning on most days and throughout the long, tedious days of summer vacations
when she often found herself lurking near the refrigerator in boredom or frozen
anger.
Mummy would always catch her at the wrong
moment. 'Are you looking inside the fridge again? For more gulab jamuns! Don't
you feel ashamed?'
The boys in salsa class were always
reluctant to partner with her. 'I know it's because I'm fat,' she broke down before
the instructor after class, and finally he said from now on he'll decide who'd
partner with whom. She concentrated on her steps, ignoring the boy the
instructor foisted on her. Mummy's words rang louder and louder: 'Beta, no boy
will want to marry you if you don't watch your weight.'
She walked over to the sand pile where the
skinny one stood. Next to him an old man was shoveling sand into baskets. A
radio atop the sand pile was playing bhajans. The skinny one had just returned and was waiting for
the old man to fill his basket for the next round.
'Why are you working so early in the
morning?' she addressed them.
'We have to lift 100 jhawwas before 8. The
thekedar's orders,' the old man replied without lifting his head. 'The sooner
we finish, the sooner we eat. We start again at 9 and go until 5.'
'Don't waste time talking! We have so much
work,' the skinny one with stick-like, chocolaty legs reprimanded him.
The older man snapped. 'Who's wasting time?
I haven't stopped working, have I?'
At this moment the writer ducked behind the
bushes to make herself even more inconspicuous. She didn't want them to think
she was pulling their strings or shaping the course of their story.
The
skinny one grew impatient. 'Hasn't she been watching us for weeks? Why
does she have to bother us?' he muttered. 'I know what this is all about. It's
her story. We're trapped in a story. The
story needs to go on. It's her fault for making the girl interrupt us,' he
remarked disdainfully, steadying the filled basket on his head.
'Whose fault?' the old man asked.
'The writer, don't you know, who else?'
'Oh, the writer. The one hiding behind the
bushes?'
'Yes!'
'I wouldn't worry about her.'
She tried to follow their conversation but
she couldn't understand what the old man and the boy were talking about. All
she wanted to ask was if she could try just once, try carrying just
one of those jhawwas, just like all the
boys were doing, just to see if she could walk with a heavy load on her head,
but she felt too afraid to try and too shy to ask.
Then as the skinny boy was returning with
his empty basket, she grew bolder as his feet and his worn out slippers and his
narrow chest and the large and small holes in his vest came in closer view. He
wasn't much taller than her or much older. And though he was rude to her, his
rudeness was of no consequence to her. His legs entranced her. She couldn't contain
the longing for lean legs like his. There
was music in the way he and the basket moved, as if they were one, and she
liked that very much.
As
he started to walk towards the building with another load, she caught up with him.
The firmness of his calves, his poverty, his neediness, all of it emboldened her to speak. 'Listen,
can we talk?'
'I have work to do. We have to carry 100
jhawwas, don't you know.'
'I know. This won't take long. Can we
exchange legs? You take mine and I'll take yours.'
'Can't be done!'
'Why not? Anything's possible. All we need
is the will.'
'Why should I? I don't know what it would
be like to live with your legs.'
'I think you would like my legs. Look!
Touch them! See how soft they are. You could turn them into muscle in no time
because you walk so much every day. You need to give your old legs a rest. They
look tired and worn out.' The
benefits that would accrue to her
through this exchange, she decided not to elaborate on.
The boy looked suspiciously at her. 'What
if I don't like your legs?'
'Try them out for a week. If you don't like
them, I'll take them back.'
'You're not trying to trick me, are you?'
'Do I look like the kind of person who
would trick you? I'm only trying to help.'
'Will you bring me back my legs if I don't
like yours?'
'I will. Promise.'
He
agreed! She couldn't believe how easy it was to convince the poor and get what
you wanted. Watch me glide in salsa
class! Under the large and leafy peepal they exchanged legs. The sun had
climbed higher by then and the sky was losing its orange glow and it was time
to head for school. She snapped on his legs to her hips and gladly parted with her
own. She pranced to school, her borrowed legs hidden under her shalwar.
Back
home, she buried herself in her room with
her smelly old blankie, so
ecstatic was she and in such a state of dreamy disbelief that after several
hours, she still had to clutch her new legs and stroke them to believe they
were hers. Their brownness was several shades darker than her own creamy skin.
She sat on the toilet seat and soaped the legs lovingly and shaved the tough,
black hairs. She pulled on her light skin-coloured tights to conceal their brownness.
Afterwards, in front of the mirror in her room, she practiced her steps,
lifting her skirt above her knees to show off her shapely, newly acquired wealth with one hand,
and balancing a bowl of warm, swimming-in-syrup gulab jamuns in the other.
There
was no question of returning the legs now though she vaguely remembered she had
promised the boy she would if he didn't like hers.