Panty by Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay

Author:Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tilted Axis Press
Published: 2017-02-17T23:20:55+00:00

20

I had no idea where the lice came from. One day, I’d just started eating when something dropped from my head onto the plate. Squinting, I could make out waving limbs. I plucked it out of the food, placed it on the table and crushed it with my nail. It didn’t bleed. A viscous fluid emerged – I couldn’t go on with my meal.

As a child my hair was frequently infested. My mother would get tired of having to wage a year-round war against the lice. Sometimes her irritation was so great that she would insist on having my head shaved. But that didn’t help. As soon as the hair grew back just a little I would come home from school with a head full of lice.

The elderly woman who worked as our maid loved killing lice. Whenever she had time on her hands she’d tell me, ‘Come, let me clean it up.’ One day my mother discovered that you could kill them by blasting them with a hairdryer. From then on, whenever I had lice, I had to blow dry after my bath for several days in succession. Both my mother and I were relieved. Because the insecticide was ruining our hair. Whenever I had an infestation, so did my mother – it was inevitable.

The last time I had lice was twenty years ago.

We’d been best friends for as long as I could remember. Our house stood cheek by jowl with theirs. We used to play together all the time.

This woman I called Kakima had come to our neighbourhood as a new bride. She was forever out on her veranda, munching on pickles or guavas. She’d spit the guava pulp out onto the floor. Whenever the young men passed by on their bicycles, she’d call out to them, smiling, inviting them to chat. She would giggle as she pretended to pummel their backs. My friend and I were walking past hand in hand one day when Kakima called us over. After some small talk she asked me jokingly, ‘Why is your hair so brown and coarse? People with brown hair are very quarrelsome. Does that sound like you?’ Kakima turned to my friend. ‘Does she often pick fights with you?’

My friend glanced at me. ‘Yes, we fight a lot, but we always make up …’ she answered.

‘You don’t look like much like a fighter,’ said Kakima.

‘Why doesn’t she?’ I asked.

‘Just take a look at her hair. Black, neat, beautiful. Not unkempt like yours.’

‘Is that all there is to it?’ my friend asked.

She seemed upset by what Kakima had said. But it was she with whom I felt angry.

It was getting dark. ‘Let’s go sit on the culvert for a bit,’ I said.

‘I know you’re upset,’ she said. ‘Kakima is too smart for her own good. My mother says so too. You haven’t done her any harm. What good did it do her to hurt you?’

I was silent.

‘We’ll never behave as badly as she has, all right?’

Sitting next to her on the culvert, I rested my head against hers.

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