I'm Not Butter Chicken

By Paro Anand

Paro Anand loves to write for, work with and play with children. She's an award-winning writer, an editor, and runs a programme called 'Literature in Action'. This is her eleventh book for children and there is one more on the way.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Roli Books
• Release date: Aug 22, 2012
• ISBN: 9788174369017

Paro Anand

Paro Anand is a Sahitya Akademi, Bal Sahitya Award winner for her book, Wild Child. She has written books for children, young adults and adults. As a performance storyteller and speaker, she has represented India all over the world. In 2019, she was awarded the Kalinga Karubaki Literary Award for Fearless Women Writers.

Book preview

~I’m not butter chicken~

"I ’m not butter chicken, you can’t order me!" Nitya shouted at her father. And then she turned to run. But he grabbed her arm. Hard. Oww! She yanked her arm away, stumbling as he was forced to release her. Upset the silly little over-carved table and fled. Heart thumping wildly, bursting out of the cage of her ribs. Raced up the stairs. Slammed the door shut and leaned, panting against it.

She heard footsteps thumping up the steps behind her. She braced herself against the door in case he tried to kick it in. But the footsteps just kept on coming. Kept on coming up the stairs. And they never seemed to reach. As the sound began to fade, she realized with a start that the footsteps weren’t footsteps, but the beating of her own heart. Thumping so loudly, it had seemed like her father’s angry footsteps. She stilled her beating heart by swallowing great gulps of air.

She listened now, pressing her ear against the door. Surely papa would come up. He would never let her get away with this. But the stairs were empty. No footsteps creaked on them. There was a murmur far away. Voices? Nitya just couldn’t be sure. She waited. She knew she’d have to pay the price sooner or later. Shout now — pay later.

He could be so vindictive. So loving sometimes, so… so… so… She didn’t dare give a word for what she thought of her father just then. The word, whatever it was, was too, too terrible. And maybe there would be no going back once it was out. Like there was no going back on the words she’d barked out at her father — I’m not butter chicken, you can’t order me — No going back.

Nitya didn’t realize that she had slid onto the floor. Her trembling legs, trembling both from exertion and fear had collapsed under her. But she had been listening so hard for the footsteps that she hadn’t noticed that her legs had literally let her down. Like her tongue had let her down. It always did. She could never control it. Your tongue is too long for your mouth she was often told. Crossing her eyes, she stuck her tongue out as far as it would go. Pointed and sharp. It looked as razor sharp as she was always told it was. Trouble was she didn’t even always agree with it. Sometimes it said things that she herself would never — could never — even have dreamed of. Like just now, for instance.

I’m not butter chicken — you can’t order me! Wow! It was a pretty smart thing to say. Much smarter than anything she could possibly have thought of by herself. She certainly wasn’t that smart. If she were, she’d get better marks in school. But she didn’t, because she could never get the smart, correct answers out at the right time. And yet, when you least expected it, phatak, there’d be a real smart-alecky comment that would come racing off the tip of her wretched tongue before she could ever have formulated the words in her own tiny brain. Crossing her eyes, she stuck her tongue out again. So whose tongue was this? So agile and smart. Too smart for its own good, too long for its own mouth. She stretched up a bit and tried to get a better look at it in the chrome of the door handle. Her distorted reflection stared back at her. Eyes bulging in disbelief. Her tongue rippled restlessly, never still even for a split second. She tried to hold it still. But it rippled like a hyperactive pink python. I wonder if all tongues are as restless or is it just mine?

Voices — there they were again. Just a murmur. What could they be saying? Ma’s probably saying, let it go, she’s a teenager. Papa’s saying, enough is enough, she doesn’t deserve your sympathy or my understanding. This time I’m really going to let her have it. Nitya’s tender behind smarted at the very thought of ‘getting it’. To be fair, it had been a long, long time time since anyone had ‘let her have it’. But this time… well, to be honest, it was a pretty rude thing to say. Oooof! I’ve really let my self in for it this time.

She lay down. Right there on the floor. The crack under the door revealed the lit-up lobby, the top of the staircase. There was the murmuring again. What were they talking about for so long? The tension was killing. Why didn’t he just come up, scold her, thrash her, do whatever he had to do with her and get it over and done with? May be this is his idea of torturing me. Well, if that was it, it was working. Nitya was tortured. The tension was like a live thing leaching the strength out of her — making her evil tongue dance around like an obscene cabaret dancer.

Cabaret dancers danced all around her. In slimy pink costumes. They looked just awful. But there was something familiar about them too. Nitya looked a bit closer. It was as though she was looking at hundreds of mirrors, seeing zillions of reflections of herself. All in cabaret costumes. Pink and restless, like tongues that had got out of too-short mouths. And were now like living writhing things — obscene and uncontrollable. Mouthless tongues with her face on them.

She awoke a little while later to the sound of voices. Her tongue felt hot and swollen and dry. Too thick and too long for her mouth. The tongue which had danced itself to exhaustion.

Voices. Voices again. Punctuated with laughter this time. Laughter? What was funny? Where was the fury? Where were the pounding footsteps — the pounding fists breaking down the door in their anger to get to her? Laughter? Nitya’s mother’s voice. Her father’s voice. Laughing. Were they laughing at her? At her misery? That would be just like them, wouldn’t it?

Now grief overwhelmed her. Loneliness engulfed her. She was, after all, alone. Even her parents, unaware and uncaring of her despair were sitting downstairs in their living room and laughing. And here’s the point — THEIR living room. It was theirs — not hers, never hers. Theirs. She was living in borrowed space. On borrowed time. Maybe if something dramatic were to happen to her. Maybe if her life were to come to a sudden stop. Then — oh then — they would realize that they had wronged her terribly. She could just see it now. Her mother grieving. Her father, not only grieving but terribly guilty. Knowing, heart of hearts, that it was his fault. Well, if not his fault, exactly, then at least that he had been too hard on this tender young child who now lay so pale and still on the pyre.

Tears, real