Em and the Big Hoom

by Jerry Pinto

Em peered at me for a moment, pulling deeply on her beedi. (She smoked beedis because they were cheap, she said, and because once you’d started down the beedi road, you could never find your way back to the mild taste of cigarettes. The Big Hoom rarely came home from work in the evenings with sweets for us when we were children, but he never forgot the two bundles of Ganesh Chhaap Beedi.)

‘That’s why Indian women fall ill,’ Em said. ‘So that their husbands will hold their hands.’

Did she? I would have prayed to any god, any god at all, if I could have been handed a miracle, a whole mother, a complete family, and with it, the ability to turn and look away.

How could one create desire and then expect everyone to pull the plug on it? And if God were capricious, then God was imperfect. If God were imperfect, God was not God.

‘If anyone ever does you a favour, you cannot forget it. You must always credit them, especially in public, especially to those they love and those who love them. You must pay your debts, even those that you can never fully repay. Anything less makes you less.’

I began to cry again but I managed not to sob. You can cry in public as long as you do not sob. Tears are transparent. If you’re walking fast, if the sun’s too strong, no one notices. Sobs intrude. They push their way into people’s consciousness.

He nodded wordlessly and I followed Susan into the kitchen. She set out four cups. I put one away. She began to weep silently. She had always wept silently. And she had always wanted to be alone to weep, so I left the kitchen.