Our school is one of the few places that turns out young women who make good wives—to future princes, industry barons, politicians, bureaucrats, army, air force and navy chiefs, probable Nobel laureates, to award-winning thespians. We know how to command a room and turn the conversation away from an unpleasant topic. We give intimate dinners and huge galas. We supervise troops of servants and cook gourmet food, manage the house and sew buttons without visibly showing consternation. If required, we do the laundry at home and make it look like it has been dry-cleaned. In the last eight years the nuns have been training us, testing us by turning the rest of the three-hundred plus students into our guests with the ayahs and bearers acting as our help. We are each being moulded to fit the man our parents will choose for us. If he is an outdoorsy man, we will accompany him in whatever he chooses to do, since we already ride horses, know about hunting theoretically, belong to several birdwatching societies, participate in the National Conservation Month, and play several sports exceptionally well. If he likes to stay at home, we will read to him in our cultured voices, play indoor games, perform on an instrument, and sing to amuse him. If he is a quiet man, we know how to sit with our knitting or sewing or painting, accomplishing something. If he is a social man, we will smile at his guests for hours, guiding the conversation to appropriate topics. If he is a garrulous man who likes to converse, we will talk about anything and nothing if he prefers. If he is a nervous man, prone to finger-cracking or throat-clearing when in large gatherings, we will soothe his nerves by rubbing our thumbs in a circular motion on an acupressure point on the outside of his arm. We know when to change his glass of water to whiskey, when to increase the latter. We have been taught what to talk of, how much to talk, how to laugh, how much to laugh, how to sit, who to sit with, how to eat, how much to eat, how to walk, how softly to walk. We know how to fade away. A lady must be like the wallpaper, always admired but never doubted in her taste.
And among these things we have also been taught how to play a fine game, any game, and lose by anticipating when our husbands will not win. The Sisters took special pains to instil that in us. You will figure it out in time—that the only way to get anything from a man is to lose to him. We learned this from our superiors, who in turn learned from the priests. We were pitted against many brother schools for various competitions and urged to lose. After years of winning it was strange to think of losing. Some of us broke right away. A few of us took longer. Many of us were stubborn. Our mothers wrote to us week after week. Is this why we’re paying so much money to have you raised right? Will you shame us like this? Don’t you always listen to what papa says? How is this any different? Why is it so difficult for you to understand the necessity of this? Would you like to fail the exams? The Finish? We give you as much as your brothers and with little expectation. In the final three years of our education, losing is the last lesson we learn.
Our parents brought us to school, piling us in their big safari cars, counting us along with the trunks, holdalls, and school bags that needed to be deposited. They made charts tabulating how long the whole trip would last, to and from, including the time it took them to say goodbye to us and talk to the nuns about our impending exams. They said, This is the worst, to come up in this cadaverous winter when it’s so cold that even the shadows do not move, your urine freezes inside your bowels, and you can’t see your zipper anyway because of the damned fog. For some of them this was their last trip after more than a decade of such trips, since they didn’t have any other daughters in school. They didn’t like to be stuck in a town made dead by weather, where the sun fought to be part of the day, with no hotels hosting in-season parents-of-the-student discounts on rooms, on parties, on liquor, on food, on games, on rides, on ponies. Our fathers sped through the plains in the early hours making good time, but in the mountains they switched places with the driver, reprimanding him for his driving, sighing that if they weren’t so exhausted they would show the man how to navigate the serpentine turns. Some of our parents brought the help with them, encasing their weathered bodies in the small space alongside the baggage, so they wouldn’t have to hunt down coolies in this cold to carry our luggage. They cursed at the size of the mountain slope they had to walk up. They huffed behind our red coats and grey woollen pants, nodding at each other, unable to speak again until they had rested at the top and had a drink of water that the bearers brought them. Our fathers, who had brought us for the first time since we came here at the age of six, took us aside and told us, Do your best in the exams. Some added, Especially in mathematics, in physics, in chemistry, in biology, in business administration, in economics, in linguistics, in history, in geography, in political science, in sociology, in Hindi because you are weak in that subject. They did not mention English. They patted our shoulders and walked out, leaving our mothers to fuss and trail after them. Don’t forget to Finish, your future depends on that, you have to get through it first, our mothers whispered as they pressed money in our manicured hands. We sidled up to each other and watched their pastels get swallowed by white fog.
In the winter we are all alone in the middle month of our three-month, yearly school vacation. We are thirty instead of three hundred.
One of the first things we did in school—before listening to the directions of the Sisters, before gravitating towards our cliques, even before exchanging information about our preparedness for the oncoming exams and rummaging through each others’ bags for what savoury and sweet tuck we had brought— was to hold on to each other silently shrieking our joy at being back again. We clasped hands and ran out of the parlour harrumphing our voices into speech. We went everywhere at once; the chapel, the assembly hall, the television room, the drama room, the computer room, the library. We dashed up and down the front and back slopes to the big hard-court, the small hard-court, fencing, badminton and table tennis halls, the tennis and basketball courts, the chess and carrom board room, the stables, the gymnasium, the large running grounds. We slipped on the frost, but paid no mind to it. We made our way back through the dining halls, the terraced gardens, the cemetery, Father’s cottage, the teachers’ cottages, the dormitories, the laundry rooms. We led each other, one red coat indistinguishable from the other. We jiggled the handles of the nuns’ quarters, the staff rooms, our examination halls, and the Finishing quadrant. We sniffed around the kitchens before we were shooed away. We walked hurriedly, breathless from a cold we hadn’t thought would affect us, from our nonstop chatter, huddling under our coats for warmth. We lingered in the music rooms, the painting galleries, the needlework rooms, the reading rooms, the theatre and our classroom. In the senior girls’ private sitting room, for which only we had the key, we sank into plush imitation-leather chairs borrowed from the costume hall, locking the door behind us. It was only an attic the nuns gave the final-year students as a mark of their trust, a nod that we were ready to go out into the real world. We smoked cigarettes and ate back-pain balm on bread to get high. In an evening we had traversed the confines of the crater that our school rose from and was carved out of. We shuddered at its sudden enormity.
In the morning and at night the Sisters call roll—Anubha, Avneet, Binny, Gauri, Garima, Devlina, Karen, Nishdeep, Neelambari, Nidhi, Natasha, Mona, Manmeet, Megha, Mridula, Palki, Parul, Priyanka, Raksha, Radhika, Saloni, Sonia, Selina, Shabnam, Sharon, Shefali, Shilpa, Simran, Tripti, and Yasna.
On our first official day back we were summoned to a meeting. The entire staff was present, from the ayahs who had cleaned our hair of lice when we were little to the Sister who was the administrative advisor and usually away on work trips. It was a tense time for all of us. We were here to prepare for two sets of examinations. One was the board exam that every student who had had twelve years of formal education took to qualify for university. We looked at each other nervously; our course had been completed in the school year, and now we were back to revise it, one last push before our fates were determined. Some of us had been assigned to particular teachers so that we could get extra help. Some of us had been broken into groups because we worked better that way. A few of us were given no instruction. Our teachers talked with us, gauging the work we had completed towards our exams since the start of vacations, and made notes beside our names. It was as much their responsibility as ours. A study schedule had been drawn up that allocated a growing number of hours for each week we got closer to the exam. But it was the second exam, the Finish that made us more nervous.
In the first few weeks after our arrival, we spend the latter half of the day putting our extracurricular report cards in order. We make sure that we have been given A’s or B’s in each activity, and if we don’t have the desired grade we schedule meetings with the Sister or teacher in charge to see what can be done. We need to have a growing grading curve. We make portfolios of our artistic endeavours. We wrap two woollen mufflers around our necks, lest we lose our singing voices. We review our bridge, chess, backgammon, and tennis strategies, playing against each other, sometimes to win but mostly to lose. We measure each other’s faces to see if we Finish without consternation at having lost. We re-read the notes we have taken on the etiquette of letter writing. There are so many types of letters, and we are bound to forget one. We check and recheck to see that we have all the things we need for the Finishing exam, like our fencing kit or our paints and brushes. If the weather permits, we will ride. We have our gear prepared. But we know that we are more likely to be tested for in-door activities and are glad for it. We go down to the Finishing quadrant and assemble our things. We linger in the room and walk through its four parts. Three of us will be tested each day for six hours. We hear rumours of other girls who had been unable to stand the pressure and had to leave early. We hear that it isn’t like practicing amongst ourselves, but we practice harder anyway. Many of us will be married to brothers of girls we are in school with, and what our classmates write in their letters home will matter. There are other rumours still. Many of us will pass because of our merit. Some of us will pass no matter what; we are favoured, good girls as recognised by the Sisters. We have never been caught doing anything naughty. Some of us will have to work harder than the others because we have been an annoyance one way or the other. Even though we speak as well as the others, two of us are going to be called for an English speaking and listening exam, because we only joined school in the ninth grade. They will have us watch non-subtitled BBC shows so we can demonstrate comprehension of our impeccable English. We aren’t very pleased. For two weeks the two of us are worse than uncool. One of us will not pass, even though she excels in all the activities she has undertaken since the age of ten, even though she is not one of the charity Catholic girls to whom the Sisters give three seats of admission every year. None of the Sisters look her in the eye, and when she excels they smile a tight smile. Her father’s cheque donations (for-the-princess-ball, for-the-new-kitchen- wing, for-the-art-supplies, and especially for-the-charity-school-our-school- runs) stopped arriving two years ago. Her school fees have been late on more than one occasion. We are always very polite with her.
Our first few days back, we woke up unsure of where we were, surprised by the cold narrowness of our beds. We slept in the same room, wooden beds in three lines of ten. It was odd waking up to our noises, not those of a household, nor the cacophony of hundreds of other girls. Some of us called out for our mothers. Some of us searched with clutching fingers for siblings. One of us demanded milk for a week in her half-awakened state before we kicked her. We lay in our beds muddled with what we were feeling. This is it. Our final tests and then we will be free. No more regimented living, no more school uniforms. We were going home? Unlike in the past, we no longer dawdled in our beds. We made them a few minutes before the gong went off, smoothing the counterpane with one hand, holding our toiletries in the other. We sat on chairs assigned to each bed with our feet half in slippers, softly whispering
In the winter only the top half of the school is open in its entirety. The sun shines a few hours a day, so we usually walk around following the fluorescent light. We quickly fall into the routines designed for us. The first half of the day is dedicated to academic scholarship. We flitter between the classrooms and the library. Our last class is always remedial Hindi, and most of us are in it. Some of us in the school are from Goa and have spoken only Konkani before we came here. Some of us are from the southern states and spoke our native language along with English with a Tamil, Malayali, Kannad accent, pronouncing x and m as yex and yem, and refused to learn Hindi. Some of us are from Mumbai and spoke slang English mixed with Marathi and Hindi. Some of us are from Delhi and spoke Punjabi accented English and good Hindi. Some of us are from Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, and spoke only the languages of our country. Most of us come from small northern towns where our fathers owned all the businesses, and we spoke broken English because our kindergarten teachers were afraid of correcting us. After twelve years of speaking only English, we speak pidgin Hindi at best. One of us writes this on the board with chalk, It is kitchen Hindi, spoken fluently when communication with the help is required. We are expected to forget it once we are in the living rooms, and when our Hindi teacher, whom we consider a smarty, asks us who did this, we stare at her in unison until she begins to scratch her arms and turns away. We now cram to get good marks.
In the cold, when we huddled to study in the off hours—in the school parlour, the steps leading to the corridors, the closed-in verandas outside the television rooms—we often fell asleep because the dark outside tricked our bodies into thinking it was night most of the time. Our school was a dreamlike place with an embankment of fog covering it at all times. The sun came out late, peeking its yellow head at noon and disappearing by four in the evening. We dreamed in the waking hours. Some of us saw ourselves completing the exams without any problems. Some of us woke up unsure of why we were uneasy about our exams. Some of us rushed to check our instruments because we were sure the piano was not tuned or the sitar and banjo were cordless. Some of us dreamed of not wanting to Finish. Most of us dreamed of what it would mean to get an exemplary grade. We woke up with happy faces. Some of us pretended to smile. All of us dreamed of home, and it was usually of our favourite place in school. It is nothing to be frightened of. We have spent nine of twelve months for the past twelve years here. In our lucid hours we would find that we had altered the dream to include some place within the houses our parents called home.
In the winter, in a month we have never lived in school before, we find ourselves perpetually cold. During the day, between classes, we rub each other’s hands and bring each other shawls our parents have given us. We carry thermoses of fragrant tea and hot chocolate. At night we creep into each other’s beds and talk into our soft bodies. We play with each other’s hair. Most of us have short black hair that we oil, every week, to keep it lustrous. We will be able to grow it and style it any way we want soon. We are tall, sturdy girls who have been raised on a steady diet of porridge, eggs, peanut butter and jam, rice and chicken curry, lychees and chilli pickles, lentil soups and fresh fruits with little or no fast food included. Most of us reached puberty together. A few of us were late bloomers. Many of us have the same breast size and wear each other’s bras. In bed we often touch each other to see if the texture feels the same. We know above the waist is all right and below the waist we can only look. One of us had a growth spurt a few days before coming to school and has not yet learned to balance herself properly. We show her how. In the evenings, when we have time before going to our dormitories to study and sleep, we play hide and go seek in the fog, disappearing in twos. Some of us pull our partners behind the pillars and, with our index finger and thumb together, explore each other gently, as if corroding something friable, reducing it to collapsible waves. Sometimes some of us make small noises. One of us always pulls away, bending down to look for an earring that is still in her ear. Most of us have pierced ears and wear delicate gold tops or hoop earrings. Some of us have pierced noses but we pretend not to notice them when we look at our washed faces in the mirror at night. We’ve gotten used to holding soft yielding bodies. We know who is likely to come in our beds, and we make room for that person even before she comes.
In a town full of Catholic boarding schools our school has the most spacious chapel. During the school year people from other schools and the town come up only for the Sunday service. In the winter, public services are held every day. We are encouraged to join, though most of us are not Catholic. Some of us like the quiet piety of the chapel and choir voices. But many of us peek through dorm windows, pushing checkered pink, yellow, and green curtains aside, to see how many young men walk up the slope for Mass before making up our minds.
After a week in school, most of us received care packages from home. We were nervous because the Finish was about to begin. Our mothers sent us our childhood talismans for comfort. We were grown up now, so we hadn’t packed them but were grateful to be holding on to a balding pink- haired doll, a floppy-eared Goofy, a python with its eyes missing, a rubber band that would snap if we pulled even a little, which our mothers had scotch taped heavily so that there was more tape than band. We received long letters detailing what was going on at home, how much we were missed, and how they couldn’t wait for us to be home once we had passed all our exams. Many of us received news that we already had a spot in a college our mothers had gone to. Some of us wrote back home, begging our parents to let us go to university with our best friends. Some of us, who had not heard anything, scribbled letters to our older siblings asking for information that might have been kept from us. A few of us were going to competitive public universities, and we were unsure of what to say. We gave our letters to each other and wondered aloud what they meant. We helped each other write respectful letters asking our parents why they had made this choice. One of us never posted the letter. Some of us heard of future suitors and blushed. Some of us read their names out loud. A few of us were angry at the names that others read out. Many of us blotted those paragraphs from the letters. We wrote them down in other books so we could look at them later. Some of us hid the letters under the newspaper laid out on the shelves of the small brown cupboards next to our beds. We weighed them down with cold creams and shampoo bottles. We never locked the small brown doors of the cupboards
Sometimes during recess we look at the names of the men our parents have chosen for us. Some of us know them. They are boys like us, and we feel better. A few of us know they like another girl from our class, from a senior class, from a junior class, have danced with her in the school dances and have exchanged letters with her, and we are unsure of what to do or how to feel. A few of us know they like another girl from our class, from a senior class, from a junior class, have danced with her in the school dances and have exchanged letters with her, and we feel a giddy excitement but can’t tell if it’s nervousness at the thought of always being compared with her or the idea that we can take something this important away from her. Some of us know the boy we’ve been writing to and dreaming of will be married to someone else from our class and find our hearts harden towards her. Some of us know the boy we’ve been writing to and dreaming of will be married to someone else from our class and find ourselves telling her about him, his likes, his dislikes. Many of us are afraid that the man in the letter is a grownup man much like the one our cousin married, someone who doesn’t speak proper English, or thinks it’s cool to oil his hair when he goes out, or eats with his mouth open, or belches in public, or makes non-vegetarian jokes, or wears fold-up jeans or drives a Maruti 800.
Mostly we sit and think about the re-runs the nuns let us watch of Baybewatch, our name for Baywatch, and know that even though our husbands might not look like Mitch, Cody, Eddie, Matt or JD, they might still want to live by the beach, make us romantic dinners, and kiss us with their tongues forking in and out of our mouths just like on television. Some of us want them to realise we’re cool enough to have sex before marriage but hope they won’t ask us to. Some of us prefer Jason Priestley from Beverly Hills 90210. Some of us prefer Brenda and Kelly but only in a wanting-to-be-like-them way. Some of us don’t care what our husbands are like, as long as they aren’t like our fathers. Some of us don’t care what our husbands are like, as long as they like to hike or play tennis every day. Some of us think of the boys in our apartment societies who lounge by the pool but are never invited to our parents’ summer parties. Some of us think of the young taxi driver who speaks impeccable English and went to the same school as our brothers; we romanticize a meeting between him and our parents. Some of us think about the additional mutton momos we always find in our takeaway order and wonder which of the five cute Tibetan waiters at the Amitash Mussoorie Café put them there. One of us plans to run away. When the nuns let us, we sit and watch old videotaped episodes of Santa Barbara and wonder: how many times can Eden and Cruz marry each other, fall in love with other people, marry each other, almost die, marry each other, come back from the dead, marry each other, cheat on each other, marry each other, have babies with other people, marry each other, love one another? One of us vows never to get married.
Two weeks before the exam we had our last professional day. We had been to these talks before, twice a year for the last six years. The Professional Women Lecture on how our self-esteem was somehow tied into what we did with our education after school. So have you girls decided what you want to be? Did the brochures have helpful information? Most of us shrugged and smiled. Are you married? Do you have children? Do you have time to work and go to the club in the evenings? Doesn’t your husband mind? Some of us stayed back talking to them quietly. One of us asked about something she had read, the action of rainwater on limestone as the creation of preferential pathways. Most of us wondered what a preferential pathway was.
In the future, when we are in our mid-forties and watching Travel and Living one balmy afternoon, one of us will appear on screen as the geologist leading a walk along the West Bank in Israel, talking about the result of falling water across limestone and how this surface formation plays a large role in the development of footpaths. Some of us will think we are mistaken in our recognition. Some of us will call each other to confirm. Some of us will shake our heads at the man-like khaki clothes worn by the geologist and ignore her kohl-smudged eyes and peacock earrings. Some of us will think of our career attempts. Some of us will think of the choices we could still make. Most of us will find our eyes wet. Some of us will shout out to our daughters, newly returned from their boarding schools for their summer holidays, and point at our friend. Some of us will whisper to our daughters, Study hard and always ask questions.
Before the exams we studied all day and sometimes all night. We fell asleep with books in our laps. Our hands ached from writing too many test papers. Our throats were dry from giving too many answers. We ate at odd times; the kitchen was open to us at all hours, and the bearers slept on their stools waiting for one of us to turn up asking for some food. In the beginning we went down every hour to eat something. Our bodies were ravenous from having been starved by a fixed timetable of three meals a day for twelve years. We sometimes paid the bearers our tuck money to bring us chips and chocolates, Coca-Cola and Pepsi, burgers and samosas. In the last few days before our exams we were cross at each other. One of us walked in circles when she studied, and watching her gave us a headache. One of us always wrote everything out, and she scribbled too loudly. One of us lay down to study, and we were always tripping over her. One of us scratched her head all the time, and we asked her to wash her hair. One of us needed to be quizzed for every chapter and harangued us into testing her. In the last week all of us split up, hiding behind pillars, in closets, behind the assembly hall, behind the haunted Jesus Christ statue during the day, in the blocks that were built for the younger children, in the laundry room, on the roof. Some of us used this excuse to congregate separately, away from those who had stayed to talk after career day. One of us always followed the other and often played with our hands when we let her hold it. We knew she would never get over us and told ourselves that we were repulsed by her.
The day before the exams, the Finish, we get time to let off steam so we can rest our minds. We dress in the only dresses we have been allowed to bring. Some of us wear dresses shorter than the prescribed length. Some of us go without shawls and coats to show off the dresses better. Some of us show more cleavage and back than is tasteful but aren’t reprimanded. We run to the assembly hall and play music all day long. In the evening we eat dinner with the nuns. They talk to us about the mating season of birds we often see in the psoriatic pine and deodar trees that stand looming everywhere on our mountain. We laugh. Sister, we’ve already been tested on that by the nurse. We change the topic and ask them questions. Sister Lucy, do you really have short hair? Sister Damien, can you really wear whatever you want under the habit? Sister Anita, is it true that you are the last of seven sisters? Sister Patricia, is it true that the Cardinal made you kneel to him? Sister Celestine, were you really the badminton champion as a young girl? We watch them skip rope and beat us at badminton and cheat at carrom. What do you think we do when you girls are not here? We smile. Watch Eden and Cruz kiss on a loop on Santa Barbara?
The days of our examinations were divided into two parts. Before lunch we gave university-related papers. Our first examination was political science, and most of us did well. After lunch, the three of us with last names starting with the letter A prepared our kits for the Finish. The Sister in charge came and got us. We walked sluggishly, the nerves in our shoulders tense with pain, our legs refusing to go solid with intent. When we entered the room we met our opponents. Every boy we had ever defeated in any school tournament had been summoned, and they sat in a straight line behind a board with our names on it. We sat down in the nearest chairs we could find. We thought of the others outside. How come no one had told us about this? Some of the boys looked at us impassively, some of the boys seemed nervous, some of the boys from our brother-school smiled at us encouragingly. One of the boys bared his teeth at us, one of the boys promised to beat us. Gently.
In our beds at night we stay awake, twisting away from each other. What’s the matter? We ask to be left alone. We blow into our hands and watch the white come out of our mouths, even with the heaters whirring near our beds. What is it? We imagine ourselves in other worlds. Do you think it will hurt? We are still. Scared of what we are thinking, scared of the answers. Scared of what our bodies demand of us. We turn our faces into the soft pillows. Only in the beginning and for some not even then. You’ll enjoy it, want it. Just make sure your uncle or cousin doesn’t get to you first. We do not ask which one of us spoke. We know the voice well.
As the days progress, in the mornings we finish with mathematics, with history, with sociology, with economics, with chemistry. Many of us with last names beginning with the letters B, C, D, E (none of us have surnames starting with the letters F, G, H), I and J go through the Finish. Some of us finish quickly and shake hands with the boys. Some of us forget to lose in the beginning, but start to when we hear the scraping of pens on paper by the Sisters observing. Some of us forget to lose in the beginning, but start to when we observe the line of boys sitting in front of us. Some of us don’t lose, and the Sisters make us repeat the same activity over and over again. Some of us are relieved when we leave and offer the others advice on what to expect. Some of us come out crying, our fingers cold as chalk. Some of us refuse to talk about what happened. Some of us think it’s unfair, the exam, but never say it out loud. One of us starts walking out of the Finish midway through
Most of us received increasing numbers of letters as the exams drew to an end. Our families wrote encouraging us to do our best.
Dear, I hope you are studying hard. Remember, your grades are important for university. Nowadays the right university education will get you the right husband.
My dearest, I know the Sisters are hard on you, but you must do well. We have such high hopes for you.
Darling, the reason why you cannot go to the same university as Anubha, Avneet, Binny, Gauri, Garima, Devlina, Karen, Nishdeep, Neelambari, Nidhi, Natasha, Mona, Manmeet, Megha, Mridula, Palki, Parul, Priyanka, Raksha, Radhika, Saloni, Sonia, Selina, Shabnam, Sharon, Shefali, Shilpa, Simran, Tripti, or Yasna is because you are going to a better university, is because there is only one seat in that college and her parents got to the Vice Chancellor first, is because her parents went after the boy we wanted you to marry.
My dear child, I think this university is best for now because I think I can persuade papa to let you get a professional degree later on. Wouldn’t it be something if you had a law degree even if you didn’t practice? I know we never spoke of it, but it’s such a lovely idea.
Sweetheart, I have spoken to Papa about it, and he says he will see what can be done.
Dearest, you should have written to us instead of your older brother, your older sister, your cousin. You can always talk to us about anything, you know that. Well, the good news is that you have spots in more than one university, but keep this to yourself for now.
My dear daughter, remember Auntie Sheila’s daughter? The one you didn’t like because she talked trash about your school? She is a doctor now, a well respected paediatrician. You should see her, saving lives, going to conferences, butting heads with the best. Papa and I think it is best if you went to a competitive university and thought seriously about a career. You have had the best education and will easily do better than your schoolfellows at university. Even the boy we’ve thought of for you believes women should use their education. Isn’t that nice?
Hullo darling, it was good to hear from you. I’m glad you write back frequently and are doing well. I’ve looked into a school where you can study geology, and I think you could probably go on to read at Oxford after that, if that is what you want.
We stopped reading each other’s letters, hiding them under the newspaper laid out on the cupboard shelves, on top of other letters. We placed cold creams and shampoo bottles over the newspaper, pressing the letters into the wood. We locked the small brown doors of the cupboards.
This piece was originally published in Indiana Review and has been reprinted here with permission of the author.
Misha Rai was born in Sonipat, Haryana and brought up in India. She holds an MFA from Bowling Green State University where she served as Assistant Fiction Editor for the Mid-American Review. At present she is pursuing her PhD in Fiction at Florida State University where she serves as the Fiction Editor for The Southeast Review. She is a regular contributor to The Missouri Review blog. Her fiction has appeared in the Indiana Review for which she received a Pushcart nomination. Her nonfiction has been published in Hayden’s Ferry Review. She is currently at work on her debut novel.
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