Read Tamarind Mem for Free Online Page A

every time Dadda came home with his transfer orders.
    She especially disliked finding keys for all the locks, and we had a huge collection of both for the many trunks and boxes that travelled with us when we moved.
    “Why she has to make a fuss about such silly things?” muttered Linda, making sure that Ma did not hear her. “How long does it take to find out which key is for what lock, henh?”
    “And worst of all,” said Ma, “I have to find schools for these children. Your Dadda sits there like a maharaja smoking a pipe and looking at the sky, thinking mighty thoughts no doubt, and I walk from one school to the next wearing out my slippers, saying to those nuns, ‘Take my daughters, please, they will bring honour to your school.’”
    Ma insisted on sending Roopa and me to convent schools, which were always booked full. It didn’t matter where we were transferred or how far away the school was, Ma stood in the admission queues and got us in. In Lucknow we went to St. Agnes’s School, in Calcutta it was Mount Carmel, and in Guwahati it was La Martinière’s. If Ma could not get us in because we had arrived in the middle of the term and there were no seats left in the classroom, she told the Mother Superior that she would get the nuns railway reservations anytime they had a problem if they could squeeze in two extra desks for us. Then on the way home she would say, “The old crows, they’ll do anything if you dangle a bribe. Even brides of the Lord have a price.”
    Dadda remained blissfully ignorant of Ma’s machinations as the nuns never did ask for reservations. He would have been shocked by her lack of scruples. And he could never understand why she insisted on sending me and Roopa to the nuns anyway.
    “What is wrong with a Central School education?” he demanded when Ma kicked up a fuss over getting transferred in the middle of the school term. Central Schools were set up for the children of government employees who had to move frequently.
    “They teach in Hindi,” said Ma.
    “So what? That is one of the languages in this country, in case you have forgotten,” argued Dadda.
    “Only one of them,” replied Ma. “You want them to learn a different language everywhere we move? Bengali in this place, Assamese there, Gujarati somewhere else? Poor things, as it is they are confused with first language, second language, third language and all. You want them to go crazy or what?”
    “They won’t go crazy,” insisted Dadda. “They will be true Indians.”
    “Yes, yes, you are a fine one to talk, you and your smoking jacket and pipe and British ways. Did your
pujari
father send you to Corporation school? Hanh? Did he? Oh no, you could go to Francis Xavier and St. Andrew’s, but it is okay for your daughters to go to any rubbish-pile place.”
    “Those days it was necessary,” said Dadda. “Now we’re an independent country, remember?”
    “Yes, but without English they will be like the servants’ children, what’s the difference then, you tell me?” argued Ma.
    As usual, Dadda got tired of the whole thing and ended up behind his screen of rustling newspapers, while Ma continued complaining to Linda Ayah, who was always ready with a sharp comment or sympathetic silence, depending on her own mood.
    Roopa and I knew that Linda was really a witch, a glass-eyed one, who could see what we were going to do even before we tried it.
    “Un-unh! Roopa Missy, no playing in dirty tap water otherwise I will tell Memsahib,” she would call from her favourite spot in the verandah, without even raising hereyes from the platter of rice or the
soopa
of coriander seeds that she was cleaning. “Kamini baby, if you climb that jamoon tree, showing your knickers to all the loafers passing on the road, you won’t be able to sit for a week, such a hard slap you will get!”
    When Roopa was a baby, Linda checked the
dhobhi
basket every day to see that the diapers were washed in Dettol and ironed properly. She