Colour Pencil

Being eight years old is not easy; it’s much harder than being seven. I’m now in Standard 2 and we don’t get to play as much as we did in Standard 1. Instead we learn about the environment and tables. My teacher tells Amma and Baba how I don’t talk much and she’s tried and tried but still I can’t memorize tables and would they like to consider a special school for me.

My sister Diya is in Standard 4. All the teachers pat her head a lot. She got a trophy in Standard 2 which says Little Genius and another trophy in Standard 3 which says Little Einstein which I don’t know the meaning of; but I suppose she gets them for being not at all special. As far as parents are concerned, the best thing you can do for them is to go on being just one year old, like my brother Anant, and not know how to do anything. Amma and Baba just love that about him. The next best thing you can do is to be Diya whose words never get stuck inside her mouth so she gets trophies every year.

I have two Babas rolled into one. I can make out which Baba has come back from work; even before he enters the house, by the way his scooter rumbles happily as he parks it outside the house; by the way he rings the doorbell as though he has been waiting all day long to meet us. This is Happy Baba; who comes home before dinner time then we all eat together. Happy Baba throws and catches, throws and catches Anant high in the air, making him shriek with joy and I’m tugging at his pants for my turn. He finally sets Anant down and tries to lift me and sighs how I’m getting so big that he can’t even hold me, so I stand on my toes and do a little jump so that I become lighter for him, and suddenly whoosh! I’m flying in the air and Amma is telling Happy Baba to be careful! Watch out for the fan! But we all know Baba would never let me hit the fan and I fall safely back into his arms. Diya is watching; she’s most definitely too big for this game, but she doesn’t really mind. I think I will mind when I become older and it remains only Anant’s game.

The next day Amma is listening to songs all day long on her phone and humming softly. I try to sing along but the words stay stuck inside my mouth. She calls Nanu and Maasi and says how lovely it is that Baba doesn’t drink so much anymore. It’s strange because Amma also tells Nanu proudly how Anant guzzles down milk. It seems babies drinking a lot makes Amma smile but not grown ups drinking a lot. These are the kind of things I will have to wait to be a little older to understand because right now it’s tough as it is for me to understand tables. I asked Diya but even she doesn’t know so I suppose it will get clearer when we’re in Standard 6 or 7, maybe.

The second Baba, Sad Baba; I never actually get to see. He comes home very late at night, long after I’m supposed to be fast asleep. His scooter sounds tired as he parks it. He doesn’t ring the bell; Amma is awake and knows he’s outside and she opens the door for him. After a while I can hear them shouting in their room. A pause. Amma opens our bedroom door. She’s standing there, looking at Diya and me; she has Anant in her arms. I clench my eyes tight and lie very still so she can feel comforted that I’m asleep. She softly places the sleeping Anant in between Diya and me and goes away, closes the door behind us. The next day Baba has left before we wake up but the house is painted in bitter shades and Amma’s lips are pinched and it’s all very terrible. Diya buries herself in her book. Amma forgets to play her songs on her phone; I want to sing and remind her, but somehow I have forgotten all the tunes.

Only Anant doesn’t mind anything and goes on laughing. It’s the most wonderful thing to be just one year old and not mind that you have two Babas rolled into one.

Diya goes to the stationery store nearby to buy a notebook. I tag along and Amma tells me to hold her hand. The shopkeeper is taking out a color pencil and showing it to some boy. It’s a pencil unlike anything I’ve seen before. My own color pencils are short and stubby; I have a pack of eight. The white one’s quite useless. The blue one’s missing so I color skies and rivers in green. The yellow one’s tip is blunted into nothingness because of all the suns I like to make. But I don’t like sharpeners so it’s just the way it is.

But this color pencil is magical. It’s very long, its body has a plastic casing in which there are tiny nibs of different colors. Every imaginable color, it seems to me – hundreds of shades of reds, blues, pinks, greens. I just gape. The shopkeeper shows how to use it – he pulls out the black nib from the pencil point, and using it, gently pushes out a brown nib from the casing and fits it into the point, settling the black one the casing. Then he makes rich brown squiggles on a piece of paper. The boy pays him with an orange note. I know what that note is – it’s a 200 rupee note.

I know in that instant that I cannot ask Amma for a 200 rupee note to buy a color pencil. Because our house is quite small and, Diya and I, from inside our bedroom, we can easily hear what Amma and Baba are shouting about in their room, on Sad Baba days. But I can think of nothing else now. Everything in the house is the color of one of the nibs of the pencil. Amma says her head is about to burst could Diya and I change Anant’s nappy. I really do love Anant because he’s always so jolly but I wish he could grow up just enough to learn how to use the toilet because his poo smells awful. But today even his poo reminds me of brown squiggles on a paper. I look around me and there’s nothing in the whole world which cannot be colored with that pencil because it had every possible color in the world. I look at the electric pole outside from our window, and it changes into a giant color pencil, with nibs in its casing as thick as logs, every, every color nib; and there’s a bright blue nib right at top fitted into the pencil point, high into the sky, that’s filling the sky with the proper color; not like my dull green skies.

It’s Sad Baba day and he’s not home for dinner. I’m miserable and making small pellets of my roti and throwing them under the table. What’s wrong, Amma asks. My tummy hurts I say. She makes me drink some medicine. Now my tummy really hurts and I lie on my tummy. It’s late at night; Amma and Sad Baba are fighting inside. I go to the living room and pick up Baba’s wallet. There’s a blue note and an orange note in it. I take the orange note, keep it in my schoolbag and go back to bed.

The next evening I buy the color pencil and place it below all the books in my schoolbag.

It’s Republic Day tomorrow, the teacher tells us, and she gives each of us a flag of India which we have to color. It’s a sheet of paper with three parts and a wheel in the middle and she tells us to fill in the top part in orange, leave the middle part blank, only color the wheel in blue, and the bottom part in green. No one knows which one is the top part and which one is bottom because they look the same; we giggle and turn the flag round and round. I take my pencil out. I don’t want to use only three colors. I don’t want to leave the middle, or any part white. I want to make proper blue skies and I want to paint each spoke of the wheel with a different color and and there’s even a silvery nib; I want to use that.

The teacher is looking at my flag. Do you know how the Indian flag looks like, she asks me. Of course, I nod. Then what are all these? Ice cream cones? Suns? Mountains? Why is the wheel not blue why is it red and green and silver she asks. I try to explain but the words get all jumbled up at the back of my throat and I look down, choking. Should we, the teacher asks everybody, disrespect Our Flag? No Miss, everyone answers in chorus. No miss, I whisper in my head. She sighs but pastes a silver star at the bottom of my flag nonetheless. Everyone else gets a golden star. Silver looks just as nice but I can tell she’s only done it because she’s kind and because she thinks I’m almost special; but she’s still quite offended that I disrespected the Indian flag. I didn’t mean to, Miss; I want to say, give me another flag I will color it properly this time; but the words get all jumbled up in my throat again.

My tummy hurts quite a bit as I walk back to my desk with my flag. One of the nibs of my pencil has rolled off my desk; there’s an ugly gap in the casing looking like me when I lost my tooth; I frantically search for the missing nib. Dark pink, dark pink; I tell the other kids to lift their schoolbags off the floor and look for dark pink. I find it at last but someone has crushed it to with his foot by mistake and there’s only a small dark pink smear on the floor.

Baba is home when we come back from school. He has lunch with us. My hands shake. Amma takes my tiffin box out of my schoolbag. She takes out my color pencil in surprise. From where did you get this? I think desperately. Everyone is very quiet at lunch. After we finish eating Baba asks Diya – did you take money from my wallet? She shakes her head. Now Baba is asking me. I cannot quite make out whether he is Happy Baba or Sad. I shake my head too. He nods heavily. I go and lie down on my bed face down. Everything inside me is poking and pinching me and I can’t lie still. I look at the electric pole outside, it’s just a pole it’s just an ordinary pole today. When you’re eight years old, and you’re a thief and a liar and you’re a girl who disrespects the flag, and your Amma and Baba make those faces at you, there’s nothing magical left in the world.

I get up and go to the living room. Baba is still sitting at the dining table and drawing something on a sheet of paper; with my color pencil. Amma sits next to him and watches him, not the drawing. I clamber up on my chair and take a look. He’s drawn a tree with lots of flowers and leaves and the ground beneath the tree is also covered with leaves and flowers. He’s drawing…he’s drawing a rope swing on the tree branch, I think and a girl sitting on that swing. He’s using up all the nibs. He doesn’t outline with a pencil at first; just draws on directly with the colors; which I think is great because this way he’ll never spill the colors over the lines. I’m proud of how smart he is. I hope he won’t search for a dark pink nib then feel sad that it’s missing.

The great thing about drawing flowers is that no one gets angry if you don’t use only orange blue and green. Amma is looking at me and then me. I stare at the girl, slowly emerging on the swing out of Baba’s fingers. I took the money, Baba, I say. I wanted to buy this color pencil so I took the money. I know, he says, without looking up. Then he’s looking and smiling at me and Amma is smiling and suddenly I feel like I’m flying in the air just like Baba throwing and catching throwing and catching me.

I think I should go back to my room now but Baba pulls me into his arms and holds me tight and after a while Amma also puts her arms around me and Baba and we’re just standing there; I’m squeezed and can’t breathe out of the happiness of it all and I’m looking over Baba’s shoulder at his drawing on the table.

It’s at moments like these that I don’t mind that I am almost special.