He observed them, tried to learn from them and be like them, but remained inevitably mired in his reticence when it came to girls.
She started talking to him one day while they waited for choir practice to begin. It had taken a lot of courage, two years’ worth of it, to join the college choir. As he correctly guessed, it was comprised mainly of members of that hateful species from coeducational schools who, in addition to their sartorial advantage, came equipped with prior experience from school choirs and corresponding portions of arrogance. All he had was a love of music and a good but untrained ear. After the first meeting he decided never to go again. He had felt like a gatecrasher at an exclusive party.
But a week went by during which he re-collectéd his courage, and the day for choir practice arrived. She was a soprano, he sang bass. She started the conversation, and Jehangir was relieved to find he had no trouble keeping it going. She had a lot to say, especially about Claude, the conductor: “The pompous jackass thinks all the girls in the choir are his personal property. The next time he puts his arm around me, I’m going to take his baton and poke it in his froggy eyes.” Jehangir laughed, surprised at how naturally it came.
They had talked often after that. His fear of blushing when spoken to, or stumbling over his words if he thought they were being overheard gradually diminished. They discovered a common interest in reading; and she invited him to her house. He borrowed books, met her parents, and went back often for more. She sometimes mentioned movies she had seen or wanted to see, and how it would be fun to go together, but they always stopped short of making definite plans.
Jehangir had never been much of a cinema-goer. Amidst the bunch of envelopes marked Rent, Water, Light, and others, the last was labelled Pocket Money. But this one always stayed empty. And if sometimes he had enough money for a cinema ticket, there was no one at school or in Firozsha Baag he really cared to go with. The low opinion he had of the boys in the Baag, formed during the days of Pesi paadmaroo and the misery his life had been then, persisted. He preferred to sit on the steps of C Block and read, or watch the activity in the compound. Sometimes, he heard them heroically recounting their feats in the cinema: chucking paper balls of empty potato-chip bags at strangers, or hooting and whistling in the dark to provoke shushing sounds from the audience. He felt nothing but contempt for their puerile antics. A delight in Nariman Hansotia’s yarns on the steps of A Block was the only thing he shared with them.
When Mrs. Bulsara decided he was old enough to go out alone provided he always returned by eight o’clock, Jehangir varied the routine of his evenings. He began going for walks to the Hanging Gardens. His favourite place there was the children’s playground after the children left at dusk. Then, it was occupied by men who transformed it into a gym every night. They came regularly, and improvised by using the various combinations of bars and railings of the slide or swing for pull-ups and push-ups, and the plank of the see-saw for sit-ups. They must have had an arrangement with the night-watchman, because the playground was strictly for children. Jehangir, hidden behind a bush or tree, watched the exercisers. They fascinated him. Their rippling, sweating muscles were magnified versions of the bodies of the boys in the school gym. Watching their powerful torsos and limbs had a strange effect on his own skinny body, it sometimes triggered a longing for brawn and sinew in his slender arms and legs.
Later, in college, Jehangir stopped going to the Hanging Gardens. He was suddenly very conscious of his aloneness, and felt silly wandering around amidst ayahs with children or couples looking for solitude. Hiding and watching the exercisers did not seem right, either.
The cinema became his new haunt. In the dark movie theatres it did not matter that he was alone. If he sat next to a girl, he would fantasize that she had come with him and was throbbing just like him. He let his elbow touch her arm as if by accident on the armrest they shared. When she edged past him during intermission or after the movie, he gently grazed the back of her thighs with his knees, almost like a light caress. He would manoeuvre to make a show of allowing her maximum room, but made sure to get the most feel. Those were moments of pure ecstasy, moments which he re-lived in bed at night. Sometimes, if there was a particularly active couple next to him, he spent more time watching them than the screen, employing the contortions of a head trained in school under desks and benches. But a stiff neck and an ache at his centre were his only companions when he emerged from the theatre.
Several choir practices later, she went with him to the cinema, and Jehangir found it hard to believe that he had not come alone again to the darkened hall of possibilities. After the intermission she was gently massaging her right wrist, having sprained it the day before. He asked if it was hurting terribly, and later remembered the moment with pride, that he had had the courage and presence of mind to stroke the wrist without a word when she held it out for him over his lap. The stirring which began at his centre swelled with each stroke; after a while their fingers entwined, clumsily, until the index, middle, and ring found their proper places, and interlocked in a tight clasp. He was tremendously aroused but did not dare do anything else. Much too soon the flag appeared on the screen and the audience rose for Jana Gana Mana. His tremendous arousal was quickly doused. All that remained was a nasty ache, the unpleasant residue of lust unreleased, as though he had been kneed in the groin.
It was a while since the train had stopped at a station. Jehangir crossed his legs. He was disgusted with himself. Getting excited again at the mere memory of holding hands. He had read in various magazines and books that boys of fifteen in America enjoyed regular sex, and had the privacy to do it, while he at nineteen was still a virgin, worked up just at the thought of holding her hand, and it was all very unfair and frustrating.
The train was passing by farmland. The fields were sere, brown and bare, and the little vegetation persisting tenaciously was parched yellow. The monsoons were late again, and here, outside the city, the delay was writ harsh across the landscape.
In the city, too, there were hardships. The quota of tap water had been curtailed, and Jehangir had been waking up at five A.M. for the past month to help Mother fill up storage drums for bathing and cleaning and cooking, before the supply was cut off at six A.M.
Scrawny cattle foraged amidst the stubble in the fields. Telegraph poles whizzed by, menacingly close. Poles which periodically cracked open the skulls of commuters who travelled hanging from doors and windows, and provided fodder for the death toll faithfully recorded by city newspapers. A death toll sharing the inconspicuity of inside pages. Side by side with assaults on scheduled castes in one village and murders of harijans by brahmins in another.
When he had brought her home the first time, it had been for a very short visit. He had warned his parents beforehand, praying that Mother would take the hint and remove the mathoobanoo from her head; the white mulmul square made her look like a backward village Parsi from Navsari, he had recently decided. But he was not spared what he thought was a moment of shame and embarrassment. There were quick introductions and several awkward silences, then they left for choir practice.