Em and the Big Hoom

by Jerry Pinto

The memory makes me smile: Em, with her beedi, and Susan and I watching Satyajit Ray on a Saturday evening, with The Big Hoom working overtime or busy in the kitchen. Even when we were a family, we weren’t quite the usual.

I had no idea why. I still don’t. I like details—no, it’s more than that; I delight in details. I’m never sure where I am with people who may give me the large truths about themselves but not the everyday, even trivial details—the book a friend was reading in the airplane on the way to Chicago, the number of times someone sat for his degree examination, the names of the dogs a friend had when he lived with his grandfather. I’ve been told that I exhaust people with my curiosity. Once I was told that living with me would mean being trapped and slowly asphyxiated.

there was something capricious about God. How could one demand perfect submission from those who are imperfect? 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.