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While out walking in the jungle, the young boy, Little Babaji, encounters a group of four tigers who steal his clothes and possessions. In their new finery, the tigers become distracted arguing over which is the grandest. Forgetting all about Little Babaji, they begin snapping at one another, biting each other’s tails until they’ve formed a ring around a tree. Clamped together, they start chasing each other round and round, going so fast that they begin to melt into a yellow butter. Babaji’s father finds the butter and brings it home, and there the melted tigers are slathered on hotcakes,
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Their backgrounds may have been worlds apart, but Reiko and Rika shared the experience of holding, throughout their girlhoods, a sense of unease towards the kind of family that the rest of the world idealised.
only want to spend my time with people who know the real thing when they see it. People who truly understand the value of the real thing are few and far between.
And yet, Kajii had given herself that permission. Ignoring other people’s yardsticks, she had decided that she was enough as a woman. To be treated well, to be adored, to be showered with presents and affection, and to eschew that which she disliked, including work and group socialising – she went on demanding these things as though they were perfectly within her rights, and as a result, she had carved out for herself an environment she found comfortable, in which she could live apart from the world.
In principle, all women should give themselves permission to demand good treatment, but the world made doing so profoundly difficult.
‘I learned from my late father that women should show generosity towards everyone. But there are two things that I simply cannot tolerate: feminists and margarine.’ Rika smiled uncomfortably, and murmured, ‘Then I should apologise.’
We’ve come to use the word “evolution” as though it were a resolutely positive thing, but all it means is that the species best-adapted for a particular environment survive, and the others die out.
Instilling desire in someone was a lot of fun, regardless of whether that person was male or female.
‘You know how in recipes it’ll say “sugar to taste” or “a good amount of salt” and so on? A friend of mine who edits cookery books for a living said that they’ve started having complaints about recipes that leave things to the individual’s discretion. She thinks it’s because people are increasingly worried about making mistakes, and losing faith in their own judgement – they don’t know what “a good amount” looks like for them. When in fact, cooking is all about trial and error.’
‘There is nothing in this world so pathetic, so moronic, so meaningless as dieting.’
Maybe, if she weren’t receiving so much criticism from the people around her, she would be fine with the way she looked.
