The Homing Pigeons... by Sid Bahri Read Free Book Online

vengeance. While it wasn’t abnormal to have three children in those cheap times, there would be a strain on the budget.
    We were usually short on money; it always took a lot of thinking to spend. With my mother’s frequent pregnancies, a lot of responsibility came my way. I would often go to shop for vegetables at the farmer’s market across town. Often, the green grocers would try and steal a bargain from a seven-year- old. I learnt from my father the art of bargaining. I would have a weekly budget. Often, I would save a few rupees from that budget to put into a piggy bank at home.
    When my mother’s labour started, we were so convinced that it would be a boy that we didn’t even think about girl names. We went back to the civil hospital for her delivery and waited while she was in the labour room with my father. After an endless wait, he emerged out of the labour room with mixed emotions; happy, yet a little subdued in expressing it. Elated, because there was another child; disappointed for it wasn’t a son.
    ‘You girls have a sister,’ he had said, walking away to get himself a cup of tea. The joy that had been him at Natasha’s time was missing. He was happy, but he still looked forty. He wasn’t that young kid that I had seen him become.
    Studying in class 2 of the government school, my routine was still the same, but my father didn’t bring the gifts anymore. Maybe for him, it was a struggle to be fair. He would have to buy three gifts for each of his daughters and, therefore, avoidance was best for his budget. Even then, he loved me. It’s not always that gifts show how much you love someone. Sadly, I couldn’t say the same about my mother.
    Often in the evenings, there would be the sound of the two adults at home grumbling. In the two-bedroom government quarter, where the contractors had pocketed the most part of the construction budget, the walls couldn’t hold the sounds.
    My father would say, “I don’t make enough money to raise three children; my salary is quite inadequate.”
    “I told you not to adopt her,” my mother would reply.
    I would hear it, but didn’t quite understand what they really meant. My father didn’t shirk my responsibility that my mother was willing to and would always try and find a solution.
    “I think I’ll start taking tuitions in the evening to earn some extra money,” he replied.
    Time passed by and I was fourteen, grown up enough to understand that puberty had arrived. When I think back to myself at that time, I can best describe myself as ugly. I was taller than normal and thin as an eel. Sometimes, I felt like an earthworm. My hair was my only saving grace on an otherwise unkempt face. It had to be the hormones that covered my otherwise fair face with dark hair. I think it happens to everyone; it’s just that some people have a budget to go to the parlour and some don’t. I think if I had broken into my piggy bank, I might have had the money to do it. I think mothers teach you this stuff but mine was almost non-existent.
    I had been able to break away from the pigeons because my board examinations were scheduled that year and my father would help me at homework after the other students he taught had gone home. I was doing well at school; my grades were amongst the best, except for English. It got introduced when I was eight, maybe nine. I didn’t speak it very well, even though I understood it and could write it. In a government school, most teachers can’t converse in English and so I had little exposure to the language.
    Ashima was now six and Natasha, eight; the bout of fertility that my mother had had was probably seasonal. It was as if the desert had got a season of rain and then went back to being a desert. At a time when contraceptives were a rarely- used commodity, my mother had been successful in not being pregnant for over six years - until now.
    The frown lines that my father had lost for some time were beginning to show again. The mere thought