But Ira Said by Shreya Mathur

Author:Shreya Mathur
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers India
Published: 2012-08-21T16:00:00+00:00

‘Ira, what’s this rubbish you are watching?’ Ma asks me, annoyed.

I barely hear what she says. It seemed that fate had played a cruel joke on me when I switched on the TV and found myself glued to Sansani Khez Khabar—a girl studying medicine in Delhi had hung herself in her room. She had been caught cheating during exams. Rather than facing expulsion, she had decided to ‘gale lagao maut’. Both her parents were hi-fi surgeons who had studied abroad.

It is gory stuff. At least for me. Think about the reporters who have to cover stories about a kid hanging herself because she was caught cheating.

And then a disturbing thought occurs to me. What if one of my friends flunk because I refused to help them? And then they …

No, I immediately chuck the thought from my mind. None of them is so bad that they would flunk.

Anyway, even if they do, they can always switch to IB …

‘Change it na,’ Ma cries. ‘It’s so depressing.’

Instead of changing the channel, I turn off the TV and start checking my mail.

Ma continues, ‘Ira, I tell you, you’re lucky you have parents who aren’t forcing you to do engineering or medicine. See what happened to that poor girl!’

I nod briefly. My parents are blissfully unaware of my rendezvous with Ass-hok Amroliwallah. They assumed all the tension and stress etched on my face was due to exams.

It would be better if I phuto from this place as fast as I can. Now that the ‘prediction thing’ topic was closed, my parents had started on the monotonous ‘Beta, you have to decide now if you want to do arts or science …’

Honestly, doesn’t she know I have more serious things to worry about?

‘See, Ira,’ Ma states in her no-nonsense voice, ‘we have absolutely no problem with what you want to do or become. Even if you want to take up arts and become a writer or something.’

This is my mother’s fondest dream. That I will also become a writer and we will be like Nayantara and Gita Sahgal.

‘You can do anything you want,’ she bulldozes on, ignoring my expression of complete and utter disinterest. ‘Except politics, engineering, acting and fashion designing.’

See, this is her problem.

Not that I want to do politics. Or engineering. Or fashion designing. Or acting. It’s just that she has an opinion on everything. I don’t think she would like it if I declared my desire to help Ashok Amroliwallah conquer exams.

Even if not doing it meant being ostracized (God, I love this word. It sounds so cool. I picked it up from our history chapter on nihilists in Russia. Rika would make a very cool nihilist.) by everyone I know.

And she knows we can’t change schools. Anyway, where would we go? No place in Mumbai. And Ma and Papa want either Delhi or Bombay now that I have to do my twelfth and college. And I can’t live in Delhi. Delhiites call pani-puri golgappa.

I let my mother talk. She is happiest when she is allowed to talk without any interruptions.

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