A Dream Walk | Jay Khemchandani 

Nilasha sat down with a thump on the floor. “Pappa, when will bhaiya come back?” Her father was sitting on his cot, moulding clay into toys. “How would I know?” he replied brusquely, not looking up.

Nilasha had always been a curious girl. Her mother had loved how she asked questions one after another without waiting for the answer. But she had also cautioned her about the consequences of her insatiable curiosity.

“Andaza bhi nahi?”

“I don’t know, girl.” He looked up from his work momentarily, a glance meant to subdue all communication, closeness, and co-dependency. Looking back down, he asked, “How much money did you make today?”

Nilasha made a face, secretly relieved her father did not notice her. “97 rupees. I made twenty more, but bhaiya came and took away some of my money and lied about needing it for vegetables. He always does this, pappa. He steals my money even though I know he has a secret stash; he just doesn’t want to use any of his.”

“It is not yours, child,” Ashwin’s tone was icy cold, threatening the very space she occupied. “Vo ghar ke liye hai. All of us have the need for that. What makes you think you have ownership of that money, haan? You’re a child; don’t play at being an adult,” he briefly looked up to glare at her and then resumed his work and his speech. “He’s earning now, girl. He earns more as a mechanic than he ever did begging on the streets. He’s allowed to keep some money to himself. Besides, it’s not like you don’t have a secret stash of your own.”

“Then why does he have to take mine?” she asked plaintively. “Why can’t I keep any of the money I make?”

“What use does a child like you have of money? Irresponsible girls spend money on frivolous things.” He sneered, “Give me what you made today.”

She stomped over to him, took some money out from her underclothes and handed it to him. He looked up at her angrily. “Ye kya hai?” he spat out. “I said everything. Not the money you told me you made!” Ashwin slammed the notes and coins on the table, making Nilasha jump. She put on a bold face. “I told you, bhaiya took the money I wanted to save! Anyway, today was a good day,” she said, walking back to her mat next to the door. “Why aren’t you happy with what I could make?”

“Being happy with what we can get is a rich man’s privilege. Pehle laakhon kama, fir aa.”

“Why don’t you earn it yourself?” she said cheekily as she dodged the incoming slipper and left the house.

The street outside her house was full of people wandering about, as it always was. She wriggled through the crowd – small and inconsequential. She had always loved the way the strong smells from the marketplace blended together. People often thought it repugnant. Others had grown accustomed to its pungency. But Nilasha could differentiate between the sources of the smells. She could smell the vegetable peels, the stale fish, as well as the dung and urine. But she could also smell freshly roasted groundnuts, rasmalai, and the flowers in shops all the way down the road. She then saw some boys and wondered how men were courageous enough to urinate in the open. Then again, they did a lot of things that made her uncomfortable, but people would call them brave and bold for it.

She turned around the corner and saw young boys playing and running around, trying to get discarded car tyres to roll by hitting them with sticks.

“Eesh. I never understood why children play this game,” Padma said. When I was your age, my only pastime was dancing. I could lose myself in songs and the movements,” she chattered to her daughter.

“Did you know pappa when you were my age?”

“Nahi, nahi, bachcha. I met him maybe twice before I married him. At that age… well, boys were supposed to be poisonous seeds good girls strayed away from.” Padma paused for a moment, lost in her own thoughts, as Nilasha stared at her mother’s countenance, wondering how loud she would scream if one of those tyres rolled by and hit her. “But, then again. It wasn’t like we ever strayed too far away from them,” Padma let out with a burst of laughter. “I once had a friend, Tamanna, who decided at 11 that she would run away with Tiwari sahib, who was a young man then. All of us girls made such a fuss over it. Some of us tried to dissuade her earnestly. But a few like me egged her on to give in to her fantasies.”

“Why, amma? Isn’t Tiwari sahib a big government employee? He is always so occupied with his work to pay attention to anything fun.”

“He was much different back then, Nilli. He was a big hit with all the girls. You know, he actually used to passionately grow flowers in his home as a boy? The prettiest ones I’ve ever seen. I suppose the diligence and care he showed to them really moved a lot of us.”

“What, you too, amma?!” squealed Nilasha, her youthful voice making the passers-by turn and smile ingratiatingly.

Padma laughed aloud and handed her daughter the cloth bag she had been holding. “Bachcha, why don’t you go ahead and ask Sameer babu to hand you some aloo and baingan for tonight’s dinner? And ask nicely; otherwise, he will make a big fuss.”

“Achcha, amma,” her daughter replied and walked off jauntily.

“And ask him if he will come to our house for Diwali,” her mother called out. “Be sweet to him. Sameer babu enjoys playing with you children.”

Nilasha’s laugh rang in the distance, leaving her mother behind.

She went to the city after getting out of the marketplace. She had a habit of walking for hours, observing the world around her and the richness inhabiting those forbidden places as she begged. But sometimes would feel that she was begging for rejection because that was what she mostly got. She often wondered about the lives she passed by – the pain and their helplessness, as well as the joy and hope consuming their eyes – and picture herself walking in the shoes of each one of them. They were such nice shoes, too. However, what she wondered most was if any of them would give her enough money to skim from, take home and stuff in her secret stash.

Nilasha finally came down to the school. That school. She had been visiting it every day for the past week. For one reason. And the reason was about to appear shortly.

He had longer hair than any boys she’d ever seen, wavy and shiny. He was tall, slender, and always carried a guitar with him. Hidden behind a wall, some distance away from the gate, she watched him walk and joke around with his many friends. Nilasha had never known what the instrument was, but she was enamoured by the enchanting music he played on the wooden toy, the kind she sometimes heard her brother’s friends play when he went out drinking with them around the basti. But this melody was deeper, more powerful. Frantic energy emanated from his music and captured her – his willing prisoner. The afternoon heat pricked her neck, and her ears rang with energy. She imagined how his voice would sound seated beside her – perhaps just as mellow as when she had first heard him sing – and what it would feel like to run her fingers through his hair. But mostly, she wondered what it would be like to walk up to him and not feel invisible in his eyes.

She had come across Vidyasagar High School a week ago on one of her daily walks, begging along a strategic route she’d come up with. She had not been able to read the signs but had intuitively known it was a school with its long walls, rusty metal gate, and the old and grumpy watchman sitting underneath the huge signboard. The bell had just gone off, and students were already spilling out of the gate. Girls and boys in a sea of white and navy blue. She had approached a girl, unabashed, begging her to give her some money, in the name of God, with all her blessings so that she could eat for the first time in days. A well-rehearsed speech drilled in by her father, sure to evoke pity, as well as hopefully loosen some purse strings. Just then, she had gotten drawn to the sound of a guitar and a singing boy. Every time she saw his long hair wave about in the air, and the way its mess covered his eyes, she had an indescribable feeling in her stomach, a power she couldn’t put a name to.

Outside the school, the boy was sitting on a slab of rock on the ground accompanied by a large group – but Nilasha ignored the buzzing crowd busking around; she couldn’t tear her eyes away from him. Not that she wanted to. She had not known any of the songs he had been singing; she only knew the ones her mother used to sing to her. But still, she was mesmerised. Everything else faded – she lived with the boy at that moment.

“Maaaaa!” Nilasha’s high-pitched voice echoed from behind the closed doors of Padma’s room as the mistress of the hut entered her kingdom. Her daughter’s call was loud, urging and ensuring a mother’s unsparing attention. Padma rushed into her room to find Nilasha bleeding from her left ear and a large, dark bruise covering her shoulder beneath. The bleeding was not dangerous but persistent enough to send tremors through Padma’s heart.

“Hai Ram, bachcha! What happened? Kya tum theek ho? Is it hurting?” A barrage of questions slipped through as Padma began to lose her grip on reason and rationality. A series of motions took over, perfected over ages and generations of motherly concern, one after another, grounding her to her reality: first, wash the wound, then apply medicine while gently blowing on it. A mother’s prerogative. Padma’s dominion. Action and affirmation.

Although, till her final breath, she would never admit it, Padma’s life, as a series of conquering and relinquishing of love, had left her only one person who could make her heart flutter. The little girl with the defiant, questioning eyes and the will of a raging bull. Her greatest prize and her biggest achievement, yet so atypical that the world considered her a failed mother.

When the wound was cleaned and dressed, Padma cupped Nilasha’s face in her hands and asked her once again why she had been bleeding.

“I got into a fight with Lalita. She wanted all of us girls to break into Sameer babu’s new shop and steal those imported chocolates with a funny name. You know, the ones wrapped in shiny golden paper and brown cover, na? I tried to stop them, but when they wouldn’t listen, I went and told her mother.” Staring at the bandage, twirling the loose end as if seeking a lost realm, she almost let out more but stopped herself. Her mother’s hands reached out, caressing her face, melting away her incredulity and giving her strength. “Is pappa going to slap me for getting into a fight?”

Padma laughed. “Don’t worry about your father, Nilli. I know the heart of that man. He may put on a tough face, but all he wants in life is security. Even for you. Tell you what, when he hears how grateful Sameer babu is to you for saving all those imported cholates, he will suddenly be proud of his brave daughter.” She smacked a kiss on Nilasha’s head and held her hands. “And whatever your father says, I will always be proud of the brave young girl you are.”

It was only when the boy had stopped playing his guitar that day that Nilasha realised it was beginning to get dark. She had hurried back home, afraid of her father’s wrath. She had visited the school every single day of that week since, watching him from a distance, afraid of losing track of time again. She had even gone on weekends, unaware that the school would be closed. But nothing broke her spirit, and she was delighted when she saw him again. No one she knew ever came to this side of the town, so she continued enjoying this secret pleasure without any interference, which she had had until that day.

Out of nowhere, there came a tap on her shoulders, and, turning around, she gave a violent start at seeing the towering figure of her brother, Raman, holding a bag of vegetables. She looked up to see his questioning face asking her what she was doing there. Instinctively, she looked to the boy and back again in a flash. But it was enough for her brother to know. For a while, he did not say anything, then quietly asked her to follow him. She began walking behind him without making a single sound, her head hanging and her eyes fixed on her feet.

During their slow walk back, they did not exchange a single word. They reached their home, and just as they were about to enter, he forbade her to go back to that school, fearing their father would go ballistic if he were to ever find out. Nilasha nodded silently – she didn’t want to go back anymore. From the moment she had been caught, she no longer found the boy appealing. She didn’t hate him because he was not to blame. She was simply no longer interested in him. What pained her was knowing he would continue living, oblivious of the life that had been attached to him for a week.

It was late in the evening by the time they sat down to eat dinner. Like every other day, she had prepared the food with her brother helping her out. Their mother had not taught him how to cook, and he never bothered to learn. Although, he had never helped his mother in any way.

Their father came home from his weekly run at the market just as the siblings had placed the mats on the floor. Without a word, he sat down. He smelled of liquor, something he often did since his wife had passed, and Nilasha was experienced enough to know it smelled trouble, especially for her. She served each of them and sat down as his brother began talking about his day, about his boss entrusting him to work on an expensive, foreign car that had come to their garage that day.

“Shabaash, beta. I am proud of you. Earn your boss’s trust, and one day you will be running that garage. I know I can trust you enough to take care of this house. And me when I grow old. Unlike this rascal right here, who never knows when to shut her mouth, and always dreams herself living a rich life when she is good-for-nothing.” Nilasha looked down at the floor, angry and frustrated at her father’s words but knowing better than to open her mouth and make it worse.

Their father went on, “This little idiot has decided she has bigger needs than that of her father and her household. Doesn’t she understand our work out there depends on how well she can contribute at home? Today, this stupid girl forgot to clean the house. In the afternoon, she completely lied to my face and kept aside money she got from begging. And who taught her how to make this money? Who takes care of her day in and day out? I do not receive any praise for the work that I do for this house, do I?”

Raman, miffed at having his father’s attention on his sister despite his achievement, gruffly replied affirmatively.

“Neither am I looking for any. But I take care of my duty to this house, and I bloody well should expect the same from toddlers, no matter how dull in the brain they may be. If this girl does not learn or understand why she needs to take care of this house in her own way, if she thinks she’s better than us, then she better leave and look after her own self.”

Suddenly, with a show of rage, their father got up, leaving his food unfinished, and went to his room. Nilasha, unable to control her rage, broke out in tears and ran out of the house. She went past Sameer babu’s store, but the shades were drawn, and the doors closed. She decided to go to the school but found the gates locked after the long hike across the city. She turned away.

Nilasha walked towards her house, disappointed in herself. She knew her calibre even better than her father did and that she could earn better begging on the streets. It had just been one of those days where nothing worked out for her.

As soon as she entered, she was mildly surprised to see her parents hunched over the small table her pappa had built for them, with their backs towards her.

“Amma, pappa, what are you guys doing?”

Her mother made a gesture that could’ve been commanding Nilasha to either get closer or pipe down. She decided to do both. As she inched closer, her father let out a cry, terrifying Nilasha. Instead of sitting next to them, she decided to hide underneath a bedsheet. Not that it accomplished the purpose of concealing her; however, it gave God-like powers of invisibility to a 9-year-old mind. Priding herself on her quick wit, she lay low and observed.

“Oh, tell me it is working, Ashwin!” Padma squealed with excitement. “Arre, wait! Let me see, na,” retorted Ashwin, tinkering with an unusual-looking device that had a couple of knobs and antennas jutting out of it, making it look like a dishevelled miniature television set that had decided to have an identity crisis.

“I think… it… should work…” Ashwin spoke in between his tampering with the machine, “Now!” and the equipment burst alive.

“Ye mera dil,

Yaar ka diwaana,

Diwaana, diwaana,

Pyaar ka parawaana”

“Ahhhhh!” Padma’s gleeful squeal made Nilasha jump up from behind her hiding spot. This was a new kind of terror for the young girl. Suddenly, it dawned on her that the people in front of her may not even be her parents. The facts were clear: her mother, while certainly an animated person, was never one to jump around like she was at that moment. And her father was… laughing?

Just as Nilasha decided that she should run away to safety, Padma’s pulled her daughter up and began dancing. “Waah, beta, waah!” encouraged her father loudly, clapping to the beat of the song. Ashwin increased the volume on the radio, and Padma picked up her daughter and swung her around the air.

“Pal pal ek halachal,

Dil mein ek tufaan hai,

Ane ko hai wo manzil,

Jisaka mujhe aramaan hai”

A screaming Nilasha begged to be let down, but Padma was immune to all solicitations and clamant entreaties. She was let loose; her whole body and soul had metamorphosed into a wholly different person.

Nilasha’s terror soon receded. She had never seen her mother so carefree. She knew Padma was often chastised by many for the casual confidence she had about her, but this was someone new. A mother and a woman she had never met before. A new Padma to fall in love with.

The dancing mistress screamed aloud and pulled her prized possession close into a back-breaking hug while swaying in a gracefully ludicrous manner, immediately breaking Nilasha’s reverie and adoration of her demented mother as she let out a whimper of pain.

Reluctantly, after another hour of wandering aimlessly, Nilasha turned her head back homeward to the only stability she knew. Her father was already asleep by the time she reached, but she saw he had covered her food, perhaps regretting his words once the effect of his drinking wore off or perhaps out of concern for her. Or maybe it was Raman’s doing. She sat down to eat, hungry after the long walk. Before going to bed, she put all the money she had saved for herself that day next to his pillow.

In the morning, when she woke, her father was already gone, and so was the money. As she washed up and came out, her brother stood in front of her. But instead of being rude or aggressive, he softly asked if she had eaten after coming home at night.

Nilasha nodded, rather surprised that her usually curt brother was talking to her. Raman stood awhile, a look of lingering hurt in his eyes. The kind of hurt that she saw in her mother’s eyes whenever she had felt too guilty to answer her questions. Something that made her feel that her mother had been trying to apologise. Wordlessly, he turned and started collecting his things for work.

Nilasha left to beg again, working her way around traffic and food stalls, earning a hundred rupees in the first hour. She was proud of the way she could beg. She considered it to be an art. She believed people saw something in her because she would always make more money than the children in her neighbourhood. No one except her mother had known that Nilasha had a secret trick. One day, when Nilasha had been too bored of entreating exactly as her father wanted it done, she decided to do it her own way. She wouldn’t beg in desperation; she would simply ask earnestly, without a modicum of pretence, and, for some reason, it worked. She made more money that day than she ever had; her success had made her too excited to stop. When she told her mother after coming home that she had made more than a thousand rupees, her mother took away nearly all of it, making Nilasha give only a couple of hundred to her father. The next day, they went to the central part of the city and bought the most expensive sweets and ice cream for themselves and ate it all. Later, she handed Nilasha another couple hundred rupees, telling her to give the money to her father as that day’s earnings.

Though she was tempted to continue in the same fashion after her first time, Nilasha would rarely beg that way. She knew if she got those sweets every day, they wouldn’t taste as good. She had continued going to the same sweets-maker and icecream shop even after her mother had died. And like before, she would save around a hundred rupees or so and give it to her father the next day.

That morning, Nilasha didn’t make her way to the school; she went in a completely different and strange direction. Her walks gave her a sense of belonging. The roads and the world around her slowly became a part of her, and she, in turn, felt beholden to them. She always felt like a massive force, a powerful girl on such days. She had felt the need for these walks only since Padma had died a few months ago.

She made it back home by the time it got dark. Her father had gone to sell his clay toys, and she was all alone when her brother came back. He asked her if she had gone to the school, and she swore, truthfully, that she hadn’t. After a while, they started preparing dinner and finished just as their father came back home. Like always, their meal ended without a word from Nilasha despite the loud chatter around her.

Later that night, the young girl came out of her father’s room, holding a picture frame in her hands. She told her brother she was going out for a while and asked if he could cover for her. She left the house and went up to their neighbour’s house, and jumped up to sit on a large wooden crate outside. Swinging her legs, she took out some sweets that were left over from her visit to the city’s centre and started talking to her mother about her successful venture that day.

“Maa, do you think pappa will be angry if we tell him where we’re going?” Nilasha asked, with half a heart, while the other half intently perused the sweets on display. The mother-daughter duo was at Amberam’s Sweets and Pastries, a popular store on the other side of the city. Nilasha had only eaten their sweets once when her elder brother had gotten the mechanic’s job. Her father had made a huge splash and bought sweets for the people in her locality, though, of course, Ashwin’s own daughter was kept away from the revelry. That hadn’t stopped Nilasha from getting her hands on a few; however, this was the first time such luxury was being spent especially for her.

“Today is not about him, my child. Aaj humara din hai. Now,” Padma turned her eyes towards the sweets tucked safely behind glass panels, “what shall we satiate ourselves with?”

Nilasha hunted across the shop with both hands and a restless nose sliding across every single panel of the store. Her eyes analysed everything, and her tongue imagined the rest. From milky sweets to hot, crumbly sweets, from the crunch of dry fruits to the promise lying underneath layers of cream, she experienced the joy of all that she saw. She ignored the loud creak of the old, rundown fan above. She ignored the look of the teenage confectioner as her nose left oily stains rubbing the glass panels. She even ignored the argument between her mother and the shop owner, who certainly wasn’t fond of the stains, and even less so of the duo. Padma had entrusted her with one task, and she was sure to fulfil that.

Soon after, with heavy footsteps pacing away from the man-in-charge, Padma came back and knelt beside Nilasha. “Any luck, my love?”

Nilasha paused her movement and slowly turned to face her mother. Then, without a word, glanced back to the chocolate barfi behind the panel and once again turned to Padma. She then barked out, “It’s too much! Why are there so many?! If there were four or maybe five, I would’ve known which one I want,” and then once again, back to face the panel, “but, oh, I’m really not good at making decisions about what I want!”

Padma giggled at her daughter’s imperious struggle. Softly, she bent down and asked Nilasha a question in her left ear, away from the panel and the peering eyes behind them. Her daughter’s face lit up at her words, and she nodded enthusiastically, her twin ponytails bouncing along the side of her head. Padma, still smiling, got up and walked towards the shop owner.

—

With the setting evening sun, the two were on their way back home. They passed by several mechanics’ shops and convenience stores built into the owners’ houses. An entire posse of men, workers, retailers, and owners, were closing up, frustration and agitation lining up their faces. The air smelled of oil and salt, of crushed hopes and greed, resilience and insecurities.

Meanwhile, the two passed by these lives and recycled stories, chattering all the way. In their hands were jalebis, wrapped in old, discarded newspapers, folded precisely to hold exactly a dozen pieces in them. That day, the packet of sweets in their hands were sceptres of their power, and the sound of honking cars were trumpets of victories in a war; a war neither could articulate, one where they could use neither arms nor armours, but one that each had fought with all her might. They were champions that day, and they feasted as such.

“I think we can come here every week, Nilasha. You’re grown-up now. Won’t you take your mother out for sweets?”

Nilasha giggled at the suggestion. “Grown-up women get married, amma. When I grow up, I won’t be here to take you out for sweets. Pappa will have to take you instead of me.” Padma laughed and caressed her daughter’s head. “What do you think about when you imagine your future, bachcha?” she asked her.

“I don’t know about that, amma. I don’t even think about that. I’m happy I can spend my days with you, so I suppose I’m not worried. But, maybe,” she paused, scrunching up her face to think, “I guess I want to be like you.”

Padma laughed aloud, almost like a witch’s cackle. She was overwhelmed with love for her daughter, but her naiveté was undeniably amusing. “You don’t have to be like me, bachcha. In fact, I would rather you not. I love the girl you are growing up to be. And although that means you will face many challenges, and a lot of people may abandon you, especially when I no longer can be in your life, there is something beautiful I see in you. As a mother, as a woman, and simply as someone who loves you. I don’t want to ever see you change.”

“What am I like, then? I don’t… understand how to answer such a question myself. How do I stop myself from changing if I can’t understand what it is that I am preserving?”

Padma laughed again. “You are a very smart girl, Nilli. Ekdam shaani.” She finished the last jalebi and picked up her daughter in her arms. “One day, when we are both older, I will answer that question. Right now, we’ll go home. Theek hai?” Padma pressed her forehead against her daughter’s and held her tightly. Silently, she vowed to herself she would never leave Nilasha’s side and have her face the world alone.

Jay Khemchandani is an English Literature postgraduate from the University of Hyderabad, currently working as a freelance editor. His interests lie in children’s fiction, young adult fiction, and sci-fi/fantasy (although nothing can beat plain old romantic satire). His art revolves around the belief that the greatest tragedies give birth to the most heartfelt comedy. His earlier work, ‘The Midnight Dew’, was a winning story in Writefluence’s Open Theme Short Story Contest and has been published in their collection, ‘Crimson and Other Winning Stories’. Jay lives his life bemused by Oscar Wilde’s words, “All art is quite useless.”