11. Aisha Paul

One of the worst things about my school life was what my elder brother had to endure because of me. Poor boy went through hell and back for me. It started when the boob gods started being benevolent on me and gave me a 34B when they should have stopped at something like a 32A. Even Megha wrote in her diary which I chanced upon (I was surprised she wrote one): Aisha is not even pretty! She's so dark! And her pimples. Oh God. All she has are her boobs.

  No one cared about my unwaxed legs, or the pimples, or my bad hair or my crooked teeth or shabby shirts, it was like suddenly my boobs were the epicentre of all gossip.

  Sample these rumours:

  Aisha and an eleventh grader were behind a dumpster and he had his hands up her shirt.

  Aisha uses a massage oil that gets them really big. She kneads them like dough every morning. Sometimes she gets boys to do it!

  Aisha is quite the nymphomaniac. That's why they grew so big!

  Her boobs might be big but they have ugly moles on them.

  She has ugly nipples. A friend sucked on them. He's in college. Of course, she's into college guys.

  It was sweet of Sarthak to never confront me. I knew it was hard for him. He must have been struggling with his own adolescent sexuality. To top that, he was dealing with the repercussions from mine. Every time a rumour cropped up, he just curled into his own space like a little snail and totally cut me off.

  We were quite thick before my damn boobs grew out.

  It was like he was standing at the junction of a forked road for people who had to decide whether to be an introvert or an extrovert. He chose the former because people kept reminding him of a sister who had boobs, which of course, made him vulnerable to attacks and humiliation.

  If only I had been a boy, my brother would have been a different person altogether. He wouldn't have spent the last four years of his school trying to block out all the voices of the hormonally charged boys who wanted to flick my nipples or look up my skirt. If he were not the nicest person in the world, he would have slapped me and told me to wear loose clothes, stay away from boys, and maybe even have asked me to shift to a girls' school but he didn't, and that made him the only kind of man I like in the world. However, I wouldn't want to wish any brother in the world a sister like me.

  We waited for the bus together that day. His cycle had broken down. He stood away from me, like I had leprosy. When we got on to the bus, I got away from my friends for a change and sat next to him on the last seat. He flinched. Just what a girl needs from her big brother.

  'Why don't you sit with your friends?'

  He stared into his phone like he always did. I had never seen him hang out with people, or go on boys' night outs, but he was always on his phone, scrolling through social media feeds, reading up articles, and catching up with world news. He knew everything.

  'I wouldn't really call them my friends. I know them and I talk to them but they are not really my friends friends. I don't think I have found a real friend yet. You?'

He looked outside waiting for me to leave but I was stubborn. He would have known that if he knew me better. Finally, he spoke, 'Is what everyone saying in school true? Did you . . . ?'

  'Lose my virgi—'

  'Shhh!'

  'No, I haven't! Where did you hear that?'

  The bus stopped outside the gate of our school and the kids poured out. Sarthak, literally, jumped over me and walked away before he could catch my infection. Grabbing my bag from my seat, I ran after him to get my answer.

  'Tell me. Who told you, Sarthak?'

  He stopped, turned at me, furious as he seldom was, and said, his spit flying angrily all over, 'Everyone, okay! The boys in my class are taking bets about who will be the next one who sleeps with you!'

  'But—'

  'I know it's not your fault but that's what it is! And I'm sorry for shouting right now but I can't help it.'

  'I'm sorry.'

  'It's better we don't talk.'

  'But—'

  'Look, Aisha, what you do is your own business. I won't stop you. But don't expect anything more. That's how it is.'

  'But you're my brother.'

  'I know, Aisha. You deserve a better brother.'

  It sounded more like a plea for me to leave him alone. I obliged and let him walk away into the crowd.

  I sat through mathematics and physics and chemistry and English thinking if I were at fault, discovering masturbation, wanting to have sex, getting my boobs. They should have been my little high points in life. Then why did people find some way to ruin it all for me? The last time I had truly laughed with my brother was when I was in the seventh standard and a new school year was about to begin. We'd shoplifted brown covering paper from our neighbourhood stationery shop. Usually we stuck to pencils and gel pens, so wrapping paper was a bit of a stretch, and we almost thought we'd get caught as we cycled away from the sprinting shopkeeper. We spent hours laughing that night as we wrapped our copies with brown papers, stuck labels on them and wrote our names neatly with our flicked pens.

  'Are you looking forward to the counselling session today?' asked Megha in the middle of the chemistry class.

  'I would rather throw myself in a blender.'

  'Oh! I forgot to tell you! I have a date with Dhruv today after school. We are going to this new pub and a movie afterwards.'

  'Are you planning to drink?'

  'Of course,' said Megha. 'How dowdy will it be to not drink in a pub.'

  'Then he will probably slide his hand under your skirt.'

  'What?' she exclaimed.

  'I mean he might.'

  'How do you know?'

  'I read books,' I said.

  'Fifty Shades of Grey?' she asked.

  I rolled my eyes at the poor, ignorant girl. She had taken my copy but her parents got hold of it, read a few pages, and branded me as a slut. They asked her never to talk to me. I hadn't even enjoyed the book! It was stolen and I'd later exchanged it for a copy of Eleanor and Park.

  Why do I even talk to her?

  'Okay, but what should I do if he does that?'

  'I think you should stop him,' I said. 'If you're not ready.'

  'Am I ready?'

  'I don't think so. You don't even touch yourself. How can you allow him to do so? Plus he won't know what to do. Your nether region is like an archery target. You have to be totally precise!'

  She crinkled her brow. 'What if I'm ready and I don't know if I'm ready. I think I will stay quiet.'

  'I think you should say No.'

  'What if he doesn't listen? I don't want to be uptight with him.'

  'You should say No.'

  'What if he still doesn't stop?'

  'If you think that's a possibility, you should not go out with him and tell all your friends not to go out with him as well!' I said with authority.

  'C'mon!' she said, exasperatedly. 'I should just give him what he wants. He might begin to date me after all.' She shrugged her shoulders excitedly as if free candy was on offer.

  I decided to be happy about the fact that I wasn't the kind of woman who was happy that a boy was ready to date her. Nor was I a woman who wouldn't shame a boy trying to get into her pants, even after she said No.

  The classes ended and I was instructed to wait outside the counsellor's room, who was running late by an hour, and so I waited, drawing love handles on the skinny women in the newspapers.

  Along with me were three boys—one was caught smoking weed, another had set off fireworks in the washroom, and the third had abused a teacher.

  I was the last one in the line.

  The stoner, hardly thirteen, looked at me and asked, 'Are you the one who mast—'

  'Yes, I do!' I snapped.

  'That's only like the coolest thing ever.'

  'You think so?'

  'I know so,' whispered the boy. 'I just discovered it. It's awesome!'

  'I know, right?'

  'So you are here for that?' I nodded in response. 'You're so screwed. So are you going to deny it? Stop doing it? What?'

  'Of course not. I'm in love with it. I'm never stopping.'

  'You're like the coolest girl ever, bro,' he said.