Indie Girl by Kavita Daswani

Author:Kavita Daswani
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing
Published: 2007-08-23T04:00:00+00:00

thirteen

My sixteenth birthday cake was in the shape of a clothes hanger. I could see what my mother had tried to do, but wished she could have been a little more inventive, maybe seeking out a confectioner who could render a spun-sugar version of a Balenciaga bag or an Elie Saab gown, or a chocolate cake in the shape of a pair of Marc Jacobs ballerina flats.

But a clothes hanger it was, painted in bright red food coloring atop a vanilla surface, my name on a tag where the price might be, a 1 and 6 candle put together.

My birthday was on April 12, a date that I was thrilled to share with the ever-stylish Claire Danes, although my father was far more excited that some ancient Bollywood actor and director called Kidar Nath Sharma was born on the same day as me.

But this birthday was special. For two weeks, the fact that I was turning sixteen was about the only thing anyone in my family talked about. If I ever felt the need to sulk, my mother would tersely remind me that I “was about to turn sixteen, and it was time to start acting like a grown-up.” In my father’s mind, it was when I would have to start getting serious about my plans for college, indeed for the rest of my life. In my family, the age marked a rite of passage in a way. It was the age, my mother loved telling me, that her own parents started to talk to her about how she would marry someday and have a family of her own. The day she turned sixteen, she was allowed to wear lipstick, to go out to the coffee shop down the street with her friends without a parent chaperoning them. It was when she was allowed to watch more adult-themed movies, when she had permission to shut the door to her bedroom when she was in it, knowing that her parents had to knock if they wanted to come in.

Being in America and going to a private high school filled with the mostly spoiled children of pretty well-off families, I was a bit beyond all that. I had been wearing lipstick—okay, lip gloss—since I was twelve, and Kim and I often hung out at the local food court at the mall on our own. Here in America, we grow up early.

But still, I was excited about going out to dinner with my family. While we dined together at home almost every night, going out to a restaurant was still a special occasion. That was a throwback to life in the old country. My parents had grown up with enough money, but not a lot, and eating out was a luxury rarely indulged. They had brought that with them when they moved to America, my mother loving to tell us that whatever it was we wanted, she could make at home for next to nothing.

Most of my friends who had already turned sixteen saw it as another milestone; it meant that they could drive.

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