The Family Took Shape by Shashi Bhat

Author:Shashi Bhat
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cormorant Books
Published: 2013-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Family Took Shape

GAMES WITH RAVI tended to crescendo to his turn. On occa-sional weekday nights, Mira and Ravi and their mother played Scrabble. They unfolded the board and each reached blindly into the bag of shaken letters. Mira and her mother would hold their breaths and mute the television when Ravi formed words. “c-a-r,” he had spelled the last time, fumbling the letters over their squares. “Car? Is that the best word you can make, Ravi?” their mother asked. Mira glanced at his letters and then took back “car” and replaced it with “charting,” building off a letter “g” that was already on the board, and managing to locate it over the triple-word-score square.

On long drives, they played twenty questions. Mira’s mother would choose something easy — the steering wheel, the green clock numbers — which Mira would guess in three questions. Mira tried hard on hers. The last time she’d had to provide them with a hint after fifteen fruitless inquiries: “It’s intangible.” Still nobody could guess, so she had to tell them, “frustration,” and her mother said, “Ohh, frustraaaation, how do you expect us to get that? Come on Mira. Now I am really frustrated.”

When Ravi went, Mira and her mother asked more than twenty questions. Finally, “Is it outside the window?” Mira asked, and they looked out at the empty sidewalks, the emerald-coloured highway signs and the short glass office buildings. He answered yes, but they couldn’t figure it out even after he tried explaining. Whatever Ravi had chosen, it was something he’d spotted before they’d even begun playing, before the slow lurches of the traffic jam — something outside the window from which they’d long since driven away.

LALA AUNTY HAD signed Ravi up for a bowling league, even though he should have been past games by now, even though what he needed was not bowling, which would have no effect on either his economic situation or his weight problem. He needed a proper job. She had come into their kitchen, pulled a pamphlet out from her triangle-shaped purse and placed it on the counter. Mira’s mother was dicing tomatoes, lamenting that the knife wasn’t sharp enough — “You need a serrated knife,” advised Lala Aunty — so Mira, sitting on a stool next to the counter, snacking on stolen, dripping tomato pieces, grabbed the pamphlet with her free hand. She read the slogan on the front — “Let me win, but if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt.” Underneath was a picture of a man with Down’s syndrome, about to fling a bowling ball towards the camera. The pamphlet’s earnestness embarrassed her.

“Ravi is very special, and so he is perfectly suited to the Spe- cial Olympics. It will be good for his self-image. And bowling! I know he would be good at it,” said Lala Aunty, who had begun searching through the freezer for who knows what.

“I’ll take a look at it when I get a chance,” said Mira’s mother.

Special Olympics, thought Mira, as though the real Olym- pics weren’t already special.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.