KP shared many of her family details with me that day. She told me that her father was a habitual drunkard, a murderer, and a swindler. “If you come to my house, come after six,” she said, “All the day, they act like pious people, hypocrites that they are. But in the evening, it all vanishes, and they reveal their real selves.” She told me that her mother had TB, because of her parents-in-laws. KP’s father didn’t give enough attention to his wife, and didn’t care what happened to her. They, KP’s grandparents, even tried to kill her mother by poisoning her thrice - once with ground glass. This resulted in a long undifferentiated illness, and TB.
The, when the first child was born, it was a daughter - and KP’s father killed her in front of her mother, and announced it a still born child. The nurses and doctors were paid off. KP’s mother temporarily went off her head - she tried to kill her husband, lots of complications followed, and she had to be kept in a mental hospital for two years. When she came back, she had lost her will to live. She never objected to the seasonal mistresses living in the house. It was a large house, and she would keep herself in a separate room and drown herself in drinking. Soon, she became a habitual drinker, and kept the habit ever since. Then KP’s brother was born, and her mother gained some status in the family. The yearly income from her father started coming in, and she came to be respected by her husband because of her economic independence.
Two years later KP was born, but her mother had no time to look after her. She, and her brother, were left in the hands of an ayah. The grandparents intervened in the upbringing of the children to their utmost extent. KP was neglected, and was given worst to eat and wear, while her brother was spoilt deliberately. KP told me how, when as a very small four-years old child, she was taken to the hospital to see her mother (she had suffered a heart attack), the nurses had turned her out thinking that she was a servant’s child. KP’s father gave good schooling to both the children. They went to best of the schools, but the son was always kept in the hostel.
Meanwhile her grandfather died, and KP grew up seeing property quarrels, seeing her father ordering the “removal” of a close relative, seeing her mother drinking morning to evening, her father seldom sober, and the servants squandering the money. She was afraid of them all. When she was 12 years old, she acquired a taste of Harold Robbins (which she warned me never to buy), and finished all his books quite early. She read every “hot” book available. She was always readily supplied with money, and never acquired any real interest in literature, or art.
After that day’s outburst, KP became somewhat distant for some days. Then, one day, all of a sudden she became communicable again, and told me that she smoked. Then, I recognized the smell that lingered around her whenever she was near. She was a heavy smoker, she told me, and finished two or three packets of cigarettes daily. I tried to tell her that it was madness for a girl to smoke, but she would say that I should try it myself. All through the time our friendship continued, I tried to dissuade her from smoking, but she would only laugh.
One day she told me that she drank, and was surprised that I showed no reaction. “Why don’t you try to tell me that drinking is disastrous?” she asked. I told her that she could herself know best what drinking did. She said she didn’t drink regularly - just about twice or thrice a week - which I told her was more than enough. She had a smokers’ cough already, and she used to love drinking - she used to rattle off names of several famous drinks, and different brands of wines. She told me that she was very fond of non-vegetarian food, even though it was forbidden in her house. On my asking how she managed it, she said she went to different kinds of restaurants for that. “Suppose someone finds out?” I asked timidly.
“So what? I can always tell them that in a family where everyone is drunk all the time, and all the men are involved with prostitutes and mistresses, and all the women are corrupt, this is no great crime. And,” she went on thoughtfully, “I think most of them know this, but simply don’t dare to say anything to me.”
KP was a thorough rebel. She revolted against everyone in the house. She said that her brother had three mistresses in Lucknow, and was dead drunk all the time. But he would shave off his head when he went for his yearly visit to the temple, and act like a “goddamn pious Hindu Brahmin pujari.”
But she could understand her brother. She would be glad, she said, if someone did away with her father and mother. She told me that one evening when she was telling the chauffeur to bring out the car, her mother came out and asked where she was going. “How are you concerned?” KP retorted. Her mother said that she was her mother, to which KP told her flatly, “As far as I am concerned, you are no better than those women kept by your husband, nor for that matter, any ... on the street.”
KP was very fond of dogs. She said that they were better than human beings. To her, even stray dogs were irresistible, and she would touch them without disgust or anything. Half her lunch was daily thrown to the dogs in the campus, and there was always a trailer of two or three pariah dogs following us both about.
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