Mother Ocean Father Nation by Nishant Batsha

Author:Nishant Batsha
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2022-03-19T00:00:00+00:00

18

IT WAS ALREADY four thirty and Bhumi was going to be late for her Ecology lecture. The mother of the boy she was nannying was supposed to be home by four o’clock, and here she was, pushing it yet again. It had started with her coming home five or ten minutes late, testing Bhumi’s patience. When Bhumi said nothing, the lock started clicking at 4:20, 4:25, and now, the woman was a half hour late.

Bhumi was trying to get Amit to stack blocks, but he wanted to throw them (“Want throw! Want throw!” he would shriek). Bhumi hoped the mother wouldn’t notice the dents in the drywall. He was still learning how to throw. Sometimes, the blocks would go backward, right into Bhumi’s face.

The boy was a little hell creature—hyperactive and loud. He spoke at deafening volumes, and he hit and bit in tantrums that raged and waned without regularity. In short, he was a toddler, and Bhumi was exasperated.

Bhumi heard the snap-swish of brass in the door and the footsteps of the woman as she entered her home, the squeak of comfortable trainers against the tile of the entryway. The woman wasn’t much better than her child. She flaunted her Indian appetite for gold (gold chandelier earrings, gold bangles, gold chains) and was the type who, outside the home, spoke with others in tones of forced cheer but preferred the comforts of a scowl with the help.

Farida Aunty had used the grapevine to help Bhumi find this job, just days after Bhumi had arrived to stay with her and Raj Uncle. The job came with a warning: desi Indians like Amit’s mother saw them as second-class, useful only as nannies because they knew English and Hindi. Farida said these Indians told them what dishes and cutlery they could use, haggled over hourly wages even though they lived in mansions, and laughed mockingly when Indians from the island hummed a Bollywood song. After her first week on the job, Bhumi knew one thing: She wasn’t Indian. Not to this woman. Maybe she was like her grandmother: lost in a foreign land.

Bhumi grabbed her bag and headed for the door, informing the mother about the child’s bowel movements, meals, and nap. If she wasn’t careful, she could lose an entire unpaid hour: the mother would take another half hour to drink a cup of chai while Bhumi kept chasing after the child.

From the house, she walked double-pace to the BART station, one hand upon the nylon bag she had bought from Goodwill, which, no matter how many times she cleaned it, always smelled faintly of roasted peanuts. It was large enough to carry her lunch and any of the toys she needed to take to the park for the boy, as well as the more important things: her notebooks, her pencil case with three highlighters (green, yellow, pink), pens, pencils, a sharpener, and the pack of Marlboro Lights she always carried now.

She had never smoked that much back home, but here, she couldn’t walk from place to place without a cigarette.

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