Em and the Big Hoom

by Jerry Pinto

I don’t think you’ll ever understand how challenging the city can be for a boy from a village. You don’t know anything about it. You don’t know if you buy your ticket before or after you get onto the train. You don’t know if you can go into a mosque or not. You don’t know if the man holding out booklets is offering them free or is selling them. You don’t know why a stranger is smiling at you from the next park bench.’

Perhaps the truth is not that Em extinguished all curiosity about The Big Hoom, but that I, at least, couldn’t ask because I was afraid. I thought he might no longer be able to do what he did if he realized he was doing it.

It can be everything you choose it to be: a mad whirl, a mad idea, a mad March day, a mad heiress, a mad mad mad mad world, a mad passion, a mad hatter, a mad dog. But it is different when you have a mad mother. Then the word wakes up from time to time and blinks at you, eyes of fire. But only sometimes, for we used the word casually ourselves, children of a mad mother. There is no automatic gift that arises out of such a circumstance. If sensitivity or gentleness came with such a genetic load, there would be no old people in mental homes.