May We Borrow Your Country

Author: The Whole Kahani (Various)

Genre: Anthology, short stories and poems.

Publisher: Linen Press

Year: January 2019

Format: Paperback, Ebook (epub and mobi.)

Blurb: May We Borrow Your Country is a collection of stories and poems that looks at dislocation and displacementwith sympathy, tolerance and humour. They are peopled by courageous, poignant, eccentric individuals who crossborders, accommodate to new cultures and try to establish an identity in a new place. In the process, they encounterdifferent versions of themselves, like reflections in a room of trick mirrors.

The stories and poems are written by women. They are evocative and multi-layered in their portrayal ofrelationships, family, ambition, careers and friendship. They offer a fresh, contemporary look at metamorphosisand many catch that fleeting moment of transition between the familiar and the new.

Foreword by Preti Taneja, author of We That Are Young, winner of the 2018 Desmond Eliot Prize.

Sample: THE METALLIC MINI SKIRT - Radhika Kapur

I was scraping the tomatoes and their beady juices from the chopping board into the pan of simmering bright, green bhindi, but my mind had already taken flight. I imagined hot water cascading down my neck and back. My finger smudging a wet path down steamy, beige tiles. The shower is my favourite room in the house. It’s like watching Kuch Kuch Hota Hai on Star TV for the 27th time. It’s where I find peace. At my side, my mother-in-law’s flour-dusted hands rolled out rotis with practised ease. She looked my way sharply when I sighed, and turned off the gas. She plunged in a spoon and scooped up the bhindi, blew on it three times and sucked it clean. I waited.

‘Don’t put in so many tomatoes next time. It makes it too sour,’ she said. I liked the water hot, the lever turned to the right. I envisaged it washing my skin. Troubles sliding down my shoulders, swirling and disappearing down the dotted drain cover. ‘You will get your wife degree the day Sunny can’t tell who has cooked, you or me!’ she boomed, raising the spoon in her hand victoriously.

‘Yes mummy,’ I murmured.

Chandigarh

One year earlier

‘A proposal has come for me, from London,’ I whispered to Sunita on the phone.

‘Aoi!’ She screamed for a whole minute. I could visualise her jumping up and down like those glossy heads of hair in shampoo ads. She then lowered her voice conspiratorially. ‘Have you seen a photo? Do you like him?’

I nodded. ‘He’s kind of cute-shute,’ I giggled.

Sunita and I met at the Titanic Mela so I could tell her every single detail in detail. We were, as the name suggests, inside a giant cardboard replica of the Titanic. In one corner stood cut-outs of Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio with Kate’s hands outstretched and Caprio’s hugging her waist. Next to it, a motor spurred the grand Ferris wheel into slow motion. I clutched the latch of our red and yellow swaying carriage while Sunita nudged me, eyes gleaming.

‘Boys abroad are better lovers,’ she said confidently.

‘How do you know, you’ve never had one?’ I asked.

‘Don’t you watch English movies?’ she rolled her eyes.

I tittered, eyes sliding away, fiddling with the gossamer gold circle around my flushed neck. I looked down at a child jumping excitedly, pointing at the wheel. The ground was teeming with chole-bhature and chaat stalls, whirring pots of pink candyfloss, twirling merry-go-rounds and loud speakers hoisted on long wooden poles.

I met Sunny in the red plastic interior of Cafe Coffee Day two weeks later. He had come to India to meet his shortlist of girls.

Boys abroad are better lovers. Sunita’s words echoed in my head as I gazed into his deep brown eyes, the colour of melted Dairy Milk. His lashes were long, his nose had a little bump in the middle. I imagined running my finger over that nose as we sipped our cappuccinos.

He went home that night and told his mother that he didn’t want to meet any more girls. She sat bolt upright on the bed and flung down the newspaper she was reading. ‘Thank you, God,’ she screeched. She couldn’t believe her duty as a mother was done so fast.

The next day I went with my parents to meet his mother. When I folded my hands in greeting, she crushed me in her cushiony embrace. My held breath unfurled as she let me go. It wasn’t the only time she would choke me.

My parents were ecstatic.

Mummy said, ‘You already know how to speak in an accent,’ referring to my call centre job where I was trained to deal with American customers. ‘You’ll get a good job very quickly.’ A job in London? Oh my God, my head just spun at the thought of how my exciting my life was going to get.

London beckoned like paradise. It was out of India. I had never been out of India. Sunita said you get pre-cut vegetables in the supermarket there. Such a cool idea. Pre-cut vegetables. The first world is the first world, bhai! Even their vegetable shops are more advanced than ours. What would the rest of the country be like? I wanted to see Buckingham Palace, ride the red London buses and dance the night away in slick nightclubs. I daydreamed about the short skirt I would wear.

I took Sunny shopping to test whether he would object if I bought one. I watched him from the corner of my eye as I slid my hand across the rack and picked out a shiny, metallic mini skirt. He raised an eyebrow, then, jauntily, his thumb. I hugged his startled frame. He didn’t know he had just passed the exam. I stood, my hands on my hips, looking at my reflection in the mirror in the small changing room. The mini skirt hugged my hips. I pushed my lips into a pout, flicked my hair back and held my waist like models do. Ooh la la. The thing is that if you wear revealing clothes, people say you are fast and that no one will marry you. But, once I am married and I wear my skirt, what will they say? Ha! I’ll outwit those old busybodies. The seven rounds of the holy fire that Sunny and I will walk on our wedding day will be my freedom.

The day after the wedding, I quickly changed my status on FB from Divya Sodhi to Divya Khanna. I stared at my new name onscreen and rolled it over my tongue: DIVYA KHANNA, DIVYA KHANNA, DIVYA KHANNA. It sounded like the horn that blares just before a train pulls away from the platform, when passengers still buying wafers, kulhad tea or water from the stalls run and jump into their compartments. My new name was a signal that a whole new life was about to pick up speed. I exhaled. Then the pinging sounds began. 103 likes by the end of the day!

The night before I left, I looked at my cupboard. Well actually, it was a fridge. Not a working one of course. It became my cupboard when it stopped working. Ma said that there was no need to throw out something useful. Doesn’t every house have an object that is transformed into another? The t-shirt that becomes the duster or the tyre that becomes a swing. Sunita’s house even has a broken washing machine that’s used as a table. Anyway, back to my cupboard. Ma always scolded me because it was so untidy, clothes dumped on top of each other, but now only a few old clothes remained in it. When I saw the aching emptiness, I broke into heaving sobs, head resting against its smooth whiteness. Then Sunita called. She was crying too.

‘You were right, by the way,’ I told her between wet snivels that dissolved into shouts and whoops.

The next morning, I sneaked up to the terrace, hid behind the water tank and shared a hurried cigarette with Raj, my younger brother. Soon, it was time and I shyly asked Sunny to set the code for the number locks to his birthday. The new Samsonite suitcases, with new sweaters for London, were hauled into the SUV.