Nine By Nine

By Daman Singh

In a world in which you only have a space of nine by nine to call your own, where you share inedible meals and improbable dreams, and think you know each other inside out, how do you draw the line between private and public, discretion and transgression? For Anjali, suffocated by her mother's unspoken demands, Tara - brilliant and eccentric free spirit - becomes both shield and shoulder, while tranquil Paro, with her unapologetic ambition to get married, represents a completecontrast to their restlessness. So, as Anjali furtively applies to universities abroad and Tara struggles with her doctoral thesis, Paro gets engaged to a suitable boy.Except, the engagement doesn't last long. Paro's return to the hostel signals a sudden disruption as relationships crumble and a sequence of disturbing eventsransforms their lives. For ever. A beautifully nuanced story of friendship and loss, Nine By Nine walks the tightrope of emotion with skilful restraint.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Dec 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9789350292716

Daman Singh

Daman Singh graduated in mathematics from St Stephen's College, Delhi, in 1984. She went to the Institute of Rural Management, Anand, for further studies and worked in the field of rural development for twenty years. In 1996, she wrote The Last Frontier: People and Forests in Mizoram. Since then she has written two novels: Nine by Nine (2008) and The Sacred Grove (2010).

Book preview

Part 1

1

THE BELL RANG, AND WITH IT THE GLOOMY CORRIDOR CAME ALIVE. Doors banged, keys turned in locks and mindless chatter mingled with the slip-slap of chappals. Some in crumpled saris, others in skirts hastily pulled over forbidden shorts, the inmates strode forward purposefully, armed with bottles of achaar and chutney.

They were the Early Birds.

Anjali closed her books gratefully. She had been sitting at her table for almost four hours without a break. It was something she normally did easily. But she had not got her glasses repaired and the strain of reading without them was almost unbearable. Pressing sweaty palms over tired eyes she collapsed face down on her bed, which squawked in protest. She lay perfectly still for about two minutes. Then she got up, peered around her criminally neat room, fished out a bunch of keys from the pen-stand on the table, and left.

Skilfully avoiding the bodies hurtling down the stairs, she climbed up to the third floor, on the same side of the quadrangle as hers, and stopped at the first room on the left. She knocked on the door and went in without waiting for an answer.

It was dark inside. She flicked on the light, and grimaced. Books lay scattered on the bed, some wide open, their pages flapping wildly in the havoc created by the fan whirring at full speed, lurching drunkenly this way and that. The table was an avalanche of paper pinned down with assorted stones. A half-eaten bread pakora sat balanced on a glass that was placed on the only chair in the room. A figure lay on the floor, head covered, stretched out under a thin sheet, small feet sticking out for air.

Anjali nudged the inert body with her foot.

‘Dinner time,’ she said brusquely. The silence was broken only by the crazed drone of the fan. She waited the mandatory minute before prodding a little harder. This time she elicited a response.

‘Go away.’ The low growl from under the sheets was muffled.

Unmoved, Anjali yanked off the sheet, turned off the fan, and perched herself gingerly on the edge of the table, careful not to move the chair. She never attempted to restore this room to a semblance of sanity, though her hands often itched to do so. On principle.

The figure on the floor moaned pitifully: ‘Couldn’t sleep… head full of exclamation marks… mosquito buzzing in ear…’ The white sheet paused, then mumbled hopefully: ‘Ten minutes?’ Then, ‘Five… please?’ – without hope this time.

Anjali looked out through the window impatiently and pulled the trailing curtain back inside. ‘Listen, I’m starving. If you don’t get up now I’m going.’

They both knew she would not do that.

‘And I’m not bringing your food up here,’ she continued in response to the unspoken plea. ‘I got into trouble last time, remember?’

Anjali never got into trouble, but she was sensitive to the slightest hint of harshness in the voice of authority.

Tara lifted her head from her pillow, untangled her arms and legs, and stared vacantly at the ceiling. ‘Some people are just mean,’ she grumbled as she stood up, a slight boyish figure in a crumpled kurta and crushed jeans. The kurta was much too large for her. The shoulders drooped and the ends hung, weighed down by the odds and ends crammed in the pockets. She put on sandals without bothering with the straps.

Anjali waited in the room while Tara shuffled to the washroom to thrust her head under a punishing jet of cold water, shaking her head like a dog, unmindful of the spray of water in all directions. Then she combed back her hair with her fingers.

Thus, miraculously revived, she returned to her room to collect Anjali.

They went the long way rather than down the adjoining stairs, strolling through each of the three wings of the Maheshwari Devi Hostel for Women that overlooked the central courtyard, and headed for the staircase on the far side, directly opposite Tara’s room at the other end of the corridor.

The mess was on the ground floor, next to the admin office and below the warden’s flat. That was the front of the building, facing the road. The rooms were discreetly shielded from the gaze of men on the street by an imposing concrete wall that circled the hostel. However, from a height above the wall, an enterprising person using binoculars could look right in. But the descendants of Maheshwari Devi had thought of that as well. A row of poplars stood guard around the perimeter, their slender branches, impossible to climb, linking arms to form an evergreen screen that shut out the world.

Taking their time over the stairs, Tara and Anjali compared notes on the events of the day. Sustained by several packets of biscuits and half a stale bread pakora, Tara had stayed up all night to finish writing the synopsis of her thesis, after which she had slept through the day.

She would have slept through the night as well if Anjali had let her.

Anjali had attended three classes, washed a bucketful of clothes, written a letter to her mother, and battled with the Radon-Nikodym theorem.

On the ground floor, they were joined by others headed the same way, singly or in groups. The entrance to the mess was knotted with jostling women. They stood back to let them pass. The Early Birds were emerging from the dining hall. They were the ones who always rushed in first, harrying the waiters to hurry up, engaging in a frenzied tackle of elbows.

Now the Big Cats stood calmly by. They waited languidly at the counter and, without their even asking, were served the plum portions. Nobody, not even the waiters, could resist the charm of the Big Cats. Meanwhile, greasy tables were being wiped clean and careless spills were deftly swept away.

Now the waiters moved about serving hot chapatis that were neither lumpy nor burnt. No longer plagued by plaintive squawks of ‘Bhaiya, Bhaiya,’ the waiters were pleasant, even courteous, stopping now and then to crack a joke. Especially the dangerously handsome Ashok, smugly aware of the admiring looks he received from successive batches of residents.

Mrs Mathur, the warden, always chose this time to show anxious parents around. The civilized air helped dispel their dread at having to abandon their innocent daughters here, to this world in which anything could happen.

Unhindered by the lack of a spoon, Tara slurped her dahi from a katori. A generous blob had found its way to her lap but she ignored it.

‘Nice kurta.’

That was Alka, known for her sarcasm.

‘Thanks,’ Tara mumbled with her mouth full. ‘It’s my father’s.’ She looked at her empty plate with satisfaction before smiling at Alka. ‘Nice T-shirt,’ she observed politely.

Alka was disconcerted but pleased.

‘Really? Thanks, yaar. I got it from Chor Bazaar. Guess how much it cost? You’ll never guess.’ She could never wait for an answer. ‘Only fifteen bucks,’ she announced dramatically. ‘Fifteen only, amazing, no?’

Nobody exclaimed at this, but she carried on, regardless, ‘I buy all my summer clothes from there only, always. All of them know me. Didi take this, didi take that. The man asked fifty for this, but I got him down. I know how to handle them.’

‘Didn’t they have your size?’

That was Pinky, in very much the same league as Alka. She looked pointedly at Alka’s generous chest tightly encased in green and orange stripes.

Alka pretended not to hear the suppressed titters.

Having made her point, Pinky got up, picked up her plate, and began to walk away. But not before she stopped just behind Alka and leaned over.

‘Your strap is showing.’

She lifted Alka’s bra strap two inches before letting it twang back onto her defenceless shoulder, and left in triumph.

An award-winning exit.

Anjali had had enough. She always wore a salwar kameez, mostly vegetable dyes, inky blues and maroons, straight and unadorned. Cheap T-shirts that ran colour, and shapeless trousers held up with bits of string – the fashion of the eighties – did not interest her. Neither did the savage sniping that was one of the prime sources of entertainment at the hostel. Knowing that Tara was now wide awake and could look after her own interests, she deposited her plate in the smelly sink.

Her heavy ponytail, thick and shining, the only vanity she allowed herself, swung as she walked out.

Someone she didn’t recognize bumped into her as she strode out of the mess, but she was too tired to stop and snap.

Clutching a white purse in one hand, the new entrant looked around the almost deserted mess.

There was not much food left. It was ten to nine, time for the Foragers.

Rationed treats like salad and dahi were over. The dal was cold and congealed. The sabzi had turned into a striated mush of indeterminate origin. Rejected chapatis, lumpy and burnt, lay in a forlorn heap. The waiters darted across the room, tossing steel glasses noisily into the overflowing sink, and furiously scrubbing tables.

The girl moved uncertainly to the counter, and picked up a dripping plate, tilting it so that a little rivulet ran down to the floor.

At the first table, two women dressed in flowery nighties were engaged in intimate whispers. A few tables away, another sat eating alone, hunched over a book. Further down, two teams were playing a raucous game of ice hockey on the wet table with a katori for a puck.

She skirted them and walked across to the last table. A sprinkling of heads turned to watch her progress. Depositing plate and purse on the table, she stepped delicately over the bench and sat down.

Clearing her throat she said, ‘Hi, I’m Paromita.’ Her voice was low and smooth, like that of a radio announcer.

Tara was still eating, but the others had stood up, ready to leave. Anjali invariably managed to put an end to needless prattle. They stopped to size her up, taking in the dangling earrings, the big bindi and the exquisitely embroidered kantha dupatta.

‘Sunandini, Alka, Geeti, Shalu. Anjali just left,’ Tara said expansively, indicating her hovering friends, whose faces made it clear they had more important things to do than initiate a new inmate. Especially one this polished. ‘I’m Tara. By the way, don’t sit there. Geeti just spilt some dal on the bench. They cleaned it, of course, but you never know.’

The new girl carefully inspected the back of her kameez, and moved her plate and purse over to the place vacated by Shalu. Her dupatta slid off one slim shoulder. She rearranged it daintily with a slender hand that bore three rings.

‘Po-ro-me-ta,’ Tara pronounced slowly. ‘Never heard the name before.’ She drummed her fingers absent-mindedly on the table. ‘Nice name. But I suppose we’ll have to call you Paro. Paro is nice too. A little old-fashioned, of course, Devdas, and all that. But nice. Suits you, too, I think. In a modern sort of way. You haven’t met Pinky, have you? No, you haven’t. But you will. Her real name is Harminder. Harm-o-hinder, actually.’ She shook her head sadly. ‘Harmohinder… doesn’t suit her. Not at all.’

Paro examined her plate doubtfully.

‘See that lady there?’

Paro turned around and nodded.

‘Mrs Mathur. The warden. Looks like a dragon, doesn’t she? What can she do? Her first name is Promila. I have this theory. People tend to live up to their names. If only she was called Abhilasha. Or Urvashi. See that guy?’

Paro twisted around the other way.

‘Ashok. The happiest man I’ve ever seen. Honestly.’

Ashok raised an eyebrow in a debonair fashion.

Paro returned to her plate, broke off a piece of chapati, and touched it to the dal.

‘Awful, isn’t it?’ Tara remarked sympathetically. Then she sat back and warmed to the task of explaining the finer qualities of the hostel watering hole to Paro, and the obvious benefits of enlisting with the Big Cats.

‘When you’re new you think you should be an Early Bird. But, believe me, it’s not a good idea.’ She stopped suddenly and asked, ‘Do you birdwatch?’

Paro was chewing with great effort. She shook her head.

‘Pity. I saw a Red Whiskered Bulbul yesterday. No, the day before. Near the clock tower. Nice place. Quite beautiful, actually. Must take you there.’

Paro took a big gulp of water.

‘Funny. They always remind me of my father. His hair stands up like that. Not in the morning, when it’s neatly set with Brylcreem and all. But when he gets home. I hope he doesn’t go bald. That’s what he’s really afraid of.’

Gopal strolled by casually with a meaningful cough. It was already nine. Dinner time was officially over.

Tara suddenly realized that Paro had hardly eaten anything. ‘Forget this. Let’s go to Sunandini’s. She always has something in her room. Instant soup, imported of course, instant noodles. Banana chips and murukku, definitely. She has to keep her room locked. Unlike me. I have nothing. Are you vegetarian? I am. Very strictly. I suppose you eat fish, though. I think I could have eaten fish if it wasn’t for their eyes. Ma used to give me eggs for breakfast when I was young. Then I saw one with a bit of blood. It made me sick. Literally. Threw up all over the place.’

Paro looked suitably distressed.

‘Breakfast can get a little dull for us vegetarians. Dalia, poha, butter-toast, upma, dalia, butter-toast. And bananas of course. Lots of bananas. A rich source of potassium. Good for athletes. I don’t suppose you run?’ She stopped reflectively. ‘But what makes life worth living is chhole-puri on Sunday. Today’s lunch. You missed it.’

Paro absorbed this information, put away her plate, and obediently followed Tara out of the mess.

2

IT HAD RAINED RELENTLESSLY FOR THREE DAYS.

Fat drops plopped down, making pretty patterns where they fell. Light, teasing drizzles tempted people out, and then turned into malevolent downpours. Mrs Mathur was inundated with complaints of leaking windows and sparking plug points. The courtyard was littered with the carcasses of earthworms slain by careless feet. The Masters’ students trudged to class clutching umbrellas that lost all sense of proportion in the wind. The Ph.Ds took extended breaks from their damp rooms, congregating in the dingy dhaba and drinking endless cups of tea to the steady patter of rain on the tin roof. The normally sullen cook produced pakoras at tea-time on persistent demand.

Tara climbed gratefully into the autorickshaw and planted herself on the glistening rexine. Her supervisor lived in Asha Nagar, close enough to walk, but not in pouring rain. The auto swerved crazily to avoid potholes and the sorry Fiats abandoned on the road. Dr Narain, gold medallist, Oxford returned, lived in a small flat down a lane of soulless houses, each vying with its neighbours to grow a storey higher. Construction work had halted because of the rains, and the road was littered with soggy rubble. Tara changed into sandals, stuffed her rubber chappals into a plastic bag, and rang the bell. She was five minutes early.

The door opened almost immediately. As she entered, Tara was struck as always by the smell in the room, the smell of books, hundreds of them on tall, dark, imposing shelves. Some promising knowledge and wisdom, others offering companionship on a lazy afternoon. To those divorced from the world of books, they probably summoned images of dust and silverfish.

Reading through her synopsis, Dr Lalita Narain had deftly underlined passages, adding many squiggles in the margin. Tara was one of her better students, one of the few who shared her love for literature. But she tended to be erratic, less than consistent. Her diversions were interesting, no doubt, but they made it difficult for her to return to the subject in question. As she turned over the pages filled with her ungainly scrawl, Lalita’s face was impassive. At last she put down her pencil.

‘I’ve marked some sections which need to be reworked. You do need to look at more sources. Try the library at St Paul’s, they have an excellent collection.’ She paused consideringly. ‘I’m not entirely convinced about your choice of texts. There are too many of them, and they are too varied, in terms of period and in terms of genre.’ She ran a hand over her prematurely peppery hair before she continued: ‘I’m afraid this is just too ambitious. I would suggest you work with just a few texts that allow you to develop your central themes. You really must talk to Prakash about this. I don’t suppose you’ve done that yet?’

Tara shook her head.

‘It’s going to be very tough.’ Lalita sounded somewhat severe. ‘Other than that, it’s not bad.’

Trained in the art of understatement at the university known best for this skill, Lalita actually meant that she liked it.

Tara felt like kissing her supervisor’s feet, which she could not. Instead she looked down at her own.

They were white and wrinkled.

It had been tough from the start. The English department objected to the study of classical Indian literature, suggesting that Tara return to the department of philosophy, where she had originally come from, or go to Sanskrit, or anywhere else. For Lalita it had been like going back twenty years in time, to when she had begun to dabble in Indian literature and art, far removed from her doctoral research in romanticism. Despite virulent opposition, she had dared to transgress the boundaries of her discipline, and had gone ahead with support from departments other than her own. This made her a kind of traitor, albeit one with impeccable qualifications. It was difficult to get rid of a faculty member, so she survived. A couple of years ago she had given a talk on symbolism in Indian mythology. Not many students came – it was out of the syllabus – and attendance was not being taken. But Tara came. That was how she got interested in using literary criticism to analyse texts that she had earlier studied, from a very different perspective. Lalita had several doctoral students but Tara was the only one who was following in her deviant footsteps. It had certainly been tough. Lalita had argued that translated texts were already part of the course. She had discovered an obscure, thirteen-year-old precedent and had enlisted Prakash Sanyal as co-supervisor. He was in the Sanskrit department, a friend. They had written a paper together, and he was happy to help. The academic committee hopefully examined the dusty rule books but ultimately gave in. That had been over two years ago.

Back in the present, Tara had to fight for every word she had written, and to sadly sacrifice those that wilted upon closer scrutiny. Lalita had the knack of nudging – even pushing – a student to take that extra step from a good idea to a sound proposition.

They carried on for over an hour and a half till the doorbell rang.

Two wet children burst into the room. Without warning, Dr Lalita Narain became a fond, scolding mother appalled at the dry raincoats and dripping uniforms.

Tara watched with interest.

‘Sorry about this,’ Lalita managed while wrestling with a wet, wriggling arm. ‘Anyway, you may go ahead with what you have, though I do expect the final version next month. Call me sooner if you have a problem. Anything else?’

With clinging clothes already being peeled off, there was obviously no time for anything else.

Tara left.

She replaced her slippers, and sloshed her way back to the university, unmindful of the muck floating about in the muddy water. The drains were overflowing and all sorts of curious objects floated freely down the road. It had stopped raining. People emerged from sheltered awnings and hurried to their destinations. Hawkers whipped plastic sheets off their wares and resumed business. Trees waited for a gentle waft of breeze to cheekily shake themselves over unwary passers-by. Tara was so absorbed in her thoughts that she almost did not hear the shout behind her.

‘Behenji!’

Only Vivek called her that. Not because he was a second cousin, but because he liked to annoy her. She stopped, annoyed, but determined not to show it.

‘Oho. Bunking again.’

‘Bunking? Who, me? No way. Class was cancelled, the teacher didn’t show up. At least not in the first seven minutes,’ he grinned. Vivek was the kind of student whom all teachers disliked. The kind who spent more time in the canteen than in class, shamelessly copied tutorials, was a complete stranger to the library, and did brilliantly. Vivek attributed his success to his superior intellect, but