Book Uncle and Me (3 page)

—

The Important Things

THE BIG BLUE
van rattles past. Its horn shrieks.

Another second and I would have been mango pulp. Guava jelly.

“Yasmin,” Umma scolds, “don't give me a heart attack! Always with your head in the clouds, always wrapped up in your own thoughts. What will I do with you?”

The fruit man's wife clucks at me from her veggie stand next to his. She waves her hand to let me know that I should step off the road and onto the broken pavement, which I do.

I am not always wrapped up in my own thoughts
, I want to say. But I don't say it, because Umma is the one wrapped up now in worry. She is wearing a big blanket of worry that has to do with Rafiq Uncle and how his visits always give Wapa a headache.

That roar again. The van is back!

“Be careful,” warns the fruit man. “Nothing better to do — these political heroes of ours and their election campaign people. They don't care about election issues. They think life is nothing but one big TV screen.”

The van pulls up, slows down. It has two big posters like a tent on its roof. Karate Samuel is kicking and punching all over those posters as if he is doing his karate demo to the very loud music from the van's speakers.

Over the music, the driver shouts, “Want a tip-top mayor? Vote for Karate Samuel!”

“What'll he do for me?” the fruit man shouts back.

“And me?” his wife pipes up from her vegetable stand. She picks up an onion and tosses it in one hand, as if she's practicing. As if any minute she will throw it at Karate Samuel's poster.

The driver only yells as he drives off, “A-One hero! Karate Samuel for mayor!”

“Who are you going to vote for?” I ask my mother.

“I don't know,” says Umma.

“What about him?” I point after the van. It has now sped through a red light and is quickly vanishing into the traffic.

“That cinema-kaaran?” says Umma. “Why should I vote for him?”

“Just asking,” I say. She's right. He is a cinema guy. But is that a problem?

“They all want votes,” says the fruit man. “Then when they get elected, they don't
do
anything.”

That
is a problem. Because grown-ups are supposed to keep their promises, aren't they?

We buy onions and potatoes and bitter melon from the fruit man's wife.

“I don't like bitter melon,” I say.

Umma buys it anyway. She needs to show Rafiq Uncle that she is no slouch in the kitchen and that she can make traditional dishes. She does not say this but I know. The vegetable lady fills our second bag and hands it to me. I grab it with both hands. It is heavy.

Then we walk home.

“Umma,” I ask as I drag the bag full of veggies up the stairs. “What is an election issue?”

“The things that people care about,” says Umma, jiggling the key in the keyhole. She pushes the door open with her shoulder. “The candidates' positions on things.”

“What things?”

“You know, important things.” She waves her hand as if the important things will appear in our flat and walk across our floor. “Things that political leaders have to manage.”

“Does Mayor SLY manage important things?” I ask.

She tries to be serious. “Uh … ye-e-es, I suppose he …” Then she laughs at the silly name that everyone calls the mayor, because really, it fits him so well. “I don't know, Minu. I don't trust him, either.”

—

The Permit

I MANAGE TO
finish one of the two books that Book Uncle gave me. It is a mystery — the kind of book you can read in one big gulp and it does not feel like work. Not like that dove book. Skinny as that one was, its story is still flapping around in my mind.

The second Book Uncle book is a karate book. I'll read it later and then maybe I'll pass it on to Anil.

In the morning, before I catch the bus to school, I decide to return the mystery book. That way I can get a new one.

I'm thinking I'd like to give a book to Reeni, too, but she's not interested in karate. Maybe Book Uncle can find me a book Reeni would like. Something about animals or movies. Reeni is crazy about animals, the bigger the better. She's only a little less crazy about movies.

Oh, she is a crazy girl, my friend Reeni, and I want her back. I want her not to be angry with me anymore.

I'm busy tossing all these thoughts around in my mind, but then I get to the corner. The istri lady is yelling at her son. The buses are rattling down the road. It seems like a normal morning. But is it?

Because what I see stops me cold.

Book Uncle's place looks different. Book Uncle looks different.

“Good morning, Yasmin-ma,” he says. He's not smiling.

The books are still in their boxes. He hasn't even set them out yet, the way he does each morning.

What's wrong?

Book Uncle is just standing there with a pink paper in his hand. He puts the paper in his pocket. He takes it out again, then puts it back once more. He shuffles his feet.

“What's wrong?” I ask. He is still not smiling. It jumbles me up.

“I can't do this anymore,” he says.

I stare at him. What does he mean?

“They're telling me,” he says, “that if I want to run my lending library here, I must get a permit.”

A permit?

“Can't you get one?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “It costs too much. I can't afford it.”

Then he says, “You want to give me back that book?”

He sounds so sad that I nearly burst into tears.

“I need to …” I hand it back to him.

I was going to say,
I need to get another book
. But before I can finish, Book Uncle takes the book from my hand. He puts it in a box. He picks up the box. He carries it over the broken pavement and stacks it on top of other boxes on his wooden cart. He does not even look at me.

He rolls the cart up the road —
gada-gadaa, goodoo-goodoo
. He does not look back.

Over the wall that circles Horizon Apartment Flats, I meet the eyes of the istri lady. She moves her iron up and down her board. She shakes her head.

“What happened?” I wail.

“Someone wrote a letter to Mayor S. L. Yogaraja,” says the istri lady. “It was a complaint. About our Book-ayya. Who would do a thing like that?”

The school bus is grinding its way towards my stop. I'd better go.

I don't want to get on that bus. I want to chase after Book Uncle. I want to say, “Wait! There must be some mistake!”

Instead I have to run to the bus stop.

There is so much I want to know. What was in that pink paper? Who would be so mean to Book Uncle? Why would anyone write a letter complaining about him? And where are all his patrons who come and go, giving and taking books, day after day after day?

Can't anyone help him?

I want to know all this, and there is no book that can tell me. What's more, for the first time in four hundred and two mornings, I don't have a new book to read.

—

Shocked

“WOULD YOU
believe someone wrote a letter complaining about Book Uncle?” I say to Reeni on the bus.

She just stares at me with big round eyes. Then she looks away.

I try making jokes.

I try showing her the inside of my book bag where the lining was torn and I didn't know it, but when I followed a jingling noise, I found a bunch of change.

Nothing.

She won't talk to me in school, not even at our shared desk, not in maths or science, Tamil or Hindi or English. Just won't talk.

When we get to school, Anil tries to juggle two pieces of chalk. He tries to make Reeni laugh, but she won't, won't, won't.

Mrs. Rao says, “Anil, sit down, or you'll have to go have a little chat with Indira Ma'am in the office.”

All of which means yes, of course I said some things I shouldn't have. But it's not just me, is it? Anil was just trying to make things better. Can't Reeni see that?

What's wrong? I want to help but how can I do anything if she won't unbutton her lip and say one word?

When I'm ready to open up my tiffin box under the banyan tree at lunch break, I see Reeni sitting by herself. I can't stand it anymore.

“Would you like some dried mango?” I ask.

I am really trying to say,
Reeni, please talk to me because you're my friend, and I have to tell you all about Book Uncle and how can I do that if you won't talk to me? Aren't you my friend?

So I am shocked, completely shocked, when instead of saying,
Thank you, I'd like some dried mango
, or even,
Go away. I don't want your silly dried mango
, she bursts into tears.

—

Trapped by Words

I AM MORE
than shocked, I am flabbergasted, which means stunned, staggered, astonished.

When Reeni is done crying and her eyes and nose have turned all red from it, she tells me.

“My daddy's lost his job so he's going to stay home now and Mummy's working extra hours at the TV station.”

“Lost his job?”

“That's what I just said,” Reeni says.

I try to make sense of it. Arvind Uncle has lost his job? I know what that means, of course, and it is not good. It is an odd way to say it, I think. It sounds as if you just misplaced the job. Woke up one morning not remembering where you left it or something.

When you lose a job, they ask you to leave and not come back. Like Book Uncle and his lending library.

“Mummy's getting headaches from working too hard,” Reeni says. “And to make things worse, she used to do the bookkeeping for the Horizon Apartment Flats Association and Daddy says he'll do that now to help out.”

“So that's good,” I say. “Isn't it?”

“No!” wails Reeni. “It's horrible. They fight all the time about invoices and bills, and why the maintenance company got overpaid three years ago.”

Oh. That sounds bad.

“And when I try to stop them,” Reeni says, “They say, ‘Go to your room.' ‘Stay out of this, Reeni,' they say. ‘You won't understand,' they say.”

Reeni's words trap me in their net so I am speechless. Now I know why I hurt her when I wouldn't talk to her on the bus. When I said — oh, how I wish I could take back the thing I said and grind it into little pieces and throw it away.

Don't you know anything?

How could I say that to my best friend?

—

No Book

I MANAGE TO
get through most of the school day, until the afternoon.

Mrs. Rao says, “Take out your books for silent reading time.”

And I am frozen. Around me, everyone is getting books. From book bags. Desks. From piles behind Mrs. Rao's desk. From the bookshelf in the back of the class.

I cannot move. I want to run and get something to read, too. But I can't.

“You don't have a book, Yasmin?” asks Mrs. Rao.

“No,” I mumble.

“Get one from the shelf,” she says. “Come on, hurry. I know what an enthusiastic reader you are.”

I try to pick a book off the classroom bookshelf.

I can't. I stare at the spines of books marching along the shelf. They blur into a stream of colors and letters.

I can't pick one. I can't choose. This has never happened to me before.

“Yasmin,” says Mrs. Rao.

I'm the one who tells others about books I've read. Wapa calls me the world's biggest book fan. I'm the one who reads one book a day and will do so forever.

What is stopping me now?

I stick out my hand and grab a book off the shelf, any book. I go back to my desk. I open the book. The words float together, and I cannot read.

Someone has to do something about this bad news crashing on us all at once. Reeni's father's job, Book Uncle's pink paper. Someone has to do something.

—

Riddles

THE AFTERNOON
goes by, and I am getting more and more confused.

When I get home, I try not to look at the corner of St. Mary's Road and 1st Cross Street because I know how empty it will be. I do look and it is worse, much worse than I imagined.

No Book Uncle. No books. It makes my heart hurt.

I do my homework. Then I walk around the house. I try to read the karate book but the words swim before my eyes. There will be no new book tomorrow and the next day and the day after that.

My dream of one book a day has gone down the drain.

“Yasmin, come and have dinner,” says Umma. “Chicken biryani with lime pickle.”

I love biryani. But today not even chicken biryani with lime pickle will help.

I circle the dining table, circle it again. I can't make myself sit down.

“Yasmin,” Wapa says. “Why are you prowling around like a tiger in a cage?”

I fall into my chair and it all comes spilling out. I tell them about Reeni's father losing his job and her parents fighting and how bad I feel about being mean to Reeni and what can I possibly do now?

They look at each other.

“Oh, dear,” Umma says.

Oh, dear? Is that all? Sometimes grown-ups can be very disappointing.

Wapa makes a cocoon with his hands. He rests his chin on top of it and looks at his biryani.

“As the Pir says …” he begins.

Ever since he did some research and discovered that we are distantly related to an eighteenth-century Tamil Sufi saint — very distantly, Umma says — Wapa deals with all challenges, big and small, by trying to channel Pir Baba.

I groan.

“Yasmin,” Umma warns. She turns to my father as if she really wants to know what the Pir says.

Wapa puts on his best Pir-talking look.

“Pir Baba says, ‘A loving disposition towards one's neighbor lightens the heart as wings.' How about that, my Minu?”

I give up. Why do grown-ups always speak in riddles?

“Go to sleep early today,” Umma says, “because you-know-who will be here at the break of day.”

“Nadira,” Wapa says to Umma, but he's looking at me.

“What?” says Umma. “You think Yasmin doesn't know that your big brother is a bully and a petty tyrant and wants us all to go live in the village and doesn't like the fact that I have a college degree?”

Wapa sighs and rubs his forehead. I can see he already has a headache coming on.

I go to sleep that night and dream of the doves in Book Uncle's book. Caught in a net, the doves all fly up in the air together. They carry the net with them.

And the hunter? Well, he runs on the ground as fast as he can, but he can't catch up with them. So after a while he stops trying.

In the end the doves find a safe place to land. They ask a friendly mole to chew through the net so they can wriggle free.

I wake up and find that my teeth are chewing away on nothing. This is not a good feeling, because what is the use of busy teeth when your mouth is empty?