Chapter 12

11. Reader's Digest

Awesome was the first word that Kirti learned in her new school.  Her class partner, Shivani Jaiswal had muttered it to herself while reading.

Awesome! And Kirti’s keen ears had immediately picked up the word. 

‘What did you say just now?’

‘What? Awesome?’

Kirti nodded her head. ‘What does it mean?’ 

‘You don’t know?’ As if it was a highly improbable event.

Kirti shook her head naively. She would have been embarrassed but till then she hadn’t been conditioned to feel ashamed over such little things. After all, one could not know everything under the sun, could they?

‘You use it to express awe.’

‘Auw? What is that?’

Hiding her own incompetency to produce an exact meaning,  she had looked at Kirti with impatient eyes. Kirti had continued to stare at her expectantly.

 ‘You know. You say that when something is great.’ Tapping her smooth and creamy finger on the glossy novel cover, she had tried hard for when someone looked at you so earnestly, you felt disappointed not living up to their expectation. ‘Or brilliant. Like...that wow feeling. India won that match. Awesome. It’s an awesome book.’

‘Ohh. Like, Your vocab is Auhsum.’

‘It’s Aw.sm, Kirti.’

‘Thank you.’ 

Kirti loved collecting words from her surroundings. Especially the words that her classmates used. Most of them she did not know. 

‘It sucks’  ‘What the hell’ ‘Ridiculous’ ‘Guys’ ‘Dudes’ ‘Bro’ ‘Bucks’

Although her previous school medium of teaching was English, the students talked with each other in Hindi so Kirti’s own vocabulary was not so rich.  These new words and phrases, she would roll them on her tongue, loving the feel of it. It made her feel one with her classmates.

She would recite all the new words to her father on their way from school to home.

‘Do you know Papa what Saif Ali Khan says when he eats the chips?’

‘What are you talking about, beta?’

‘The lays ad, Papa. He says aw.sm. I had never been able to make it out. But now I know. Do you know what it means?’ This way she would tell about all the new things she learnt at new school, her father growing proud of her and hopeful of their future. The girl speaking such good English, surely she’d grow up to become like those stylish Memsahibs who with huge bags and folders in hands, occasionally boarded his auto and got down in front of those high rise buildings.

‘High Five, Biplab,’ Kirti would greet her brother who’d look at her cluelessly.

‘Dadi, your hair is so healthy even now. Touch wood.’

She was happy, her father saw and felt happier in return.

Kirti and Shivani had reluctantly become friends. It was more of a necessity than mutual desire, Like oxpecker and zebra. They found moments of companionship while sharing books when there was only one on table, or notes when one was absent or simply passing their opinions on the school and their new classmates. Shivani was a quiet girl, with a round face and droopy eyes behind her sleek spectacles . Her long hair, she parted in the middle and made a ponytail that reached past her hips. When they had joined school, everybody had been talking about her long hair. ‘She’s going to give a tough competition to Sanjana for Miss Beautiful Hair,’ Kirti had heard some girls discussing.  Some of the girls with whom Kirti ate would say things like, ‘See you both are new, but you at least come and try talking to us. Your partner, she’s so full of herself.’ ‘She thinks she’s so beautiful with all the guys gawking at her. ’ One said.  ‘Oh but I think Kirti is prettier,’ The other girl countered  and Kirti couldn’t help but feel flattered. ‘I am not.’ ‘You totally are. You know, once you get your brows done, and a facial, have you gotten a facial? All that hair on your hands. Get it waxed or it will get worse. Please don’t do it at home. Traditional honey wax is the best. Oh God, I used Veet but then my hair started growing back sooner and thicker.  Grow your hair a little, Kirti. This blunt cut doesn’t bring out your face cutting.’ Brow, wax  and facial were beyond her age but Kirti had let her hair grow after that. 

She was forever surveying the crowd around her. The beauty, the richness and flamboyance and glitter of this side of the world was enticing and eye blinding.  Very quickly, she found herself sucked in and comparing her life with others. Kids like Shivani came in different cars everyday.

‘What does your father do?’ She had asked just out of curiosity.

‘He’s a businessman’ 

Businessman, Kirti thought. Must be very unlike Manjhi Kaka, her neigbour,  who dealt in bidi business, if he was able to afford so many new cars. When she had asked one of the Bhaiyas in the neighbourhood, he had said, maybe be a garage business. You can pass others’ cars as yours. 

‘How do you know so many words?’

‘I read,’ Shivani had replied.

‘Do you buy all these novels?’

‘Yes, I like to have a personal copy.’

Kirti had peeped at the back cover of the novel that Shivani was currently reading. Five hundred and eighty four rupees! One single book was worth a month’s cow milk. Five hundred rupees was the monthly amount the government often kept announcing to transfer to the bank accounts of the head of BPL families. She knew because Bimla Tai’s mother was going to make a BPL card for herself, even when her annual income was more than Rs.27,000.

Obviously, she could not afford novels so made use of her library. She would have soon been sucked into the fiction world, but her father once caught her reading a novel, he had given her a harsh scolding about paying attention more to Math and Science. Reading novels apparently did not help in getting good jobs and comfortable lives.

‘How can I learn more words without reading novels?’

‘Newspaper reading or you can get a subscription of Reader's Digest.’

Well, her father used to read Hindi daily at the auto stand and her grandmother’s interest was limited to her small world that consisted of her son and his kids and the small clinic where she worked as a nurse , so what need did they have to add another expense to the ever exceeding budget.

That summer vacation, however, Kirti decided she wanted a copy of Reader’s Digest. She liked the image of spending a summer,  sitting by the window, with a book in her hand, reading stuff that only grown ups understood, and putting away the book to take occasional sips from a mug of tea.

Her father kept procrastinating, but after two weeks into the summer vacation, she continued being stubborn, he took her to a bookstore and bought her the book. It cost him eighty rupees. Fare of eight passengers. 

‘Thank you, Papa’

‘Pehli aur aakhri baar hai. Ye sab ameeron ke chonchle hai, beta. Gareeb aadmi kahan se assi rupaye kharch karega har mahine. Ganit, Vigyan ki kitab ho toh kuch baat bhi ho’

Kirti sat by the window, with much excitement. Her grandmother had made her a glass full of tea.  The book smelt rich, just like she felt being the possessor of it. It was the first book she owned that was non syllabus. Turning the glossy pages, she began reading the book.

But it wasn’t what she had hoped. A story of how a man survived a whale attack, flipping the pages, she reached the puns and jokes section but it seemed she did not share the same sense of humour as the writer for all of it flew over her head.

She looked at the children playing outside. Keeping away the book, she picked up her glass of tea, took out Parle g biscuits from a tin that was placed at the highest shelf and dipping it in the tea, she finished her tea and biscuits. Then, she glanced at the book for the last time before running away to play with her friends.

She had then picked up the book only one day before the reopening of the school, to glance at the story titles and a few jokes.

The next day at school, she was saying to Shivani, ‘Did you read that joke in Reader’s Digest? It was so funny.’

‘I did not get time to read. We had gone to Singapore for vacation.’

[NOCOPY]

[MEMBERSONLY]