And now that I have very little free time on my hands, and there’s always someone looking over my shoulder to see what useful activity I’m involved in, I have started to do some research on geniuses. And there’s a lot of very interesting information. I googled a whole lot of stuff. But what came up repeatedly was truly frightening.
Geniuses have a strong tendency towards insanity. Well, if everyone keeps on after me, I can even see it as a good place to be. There are some days when I think of pretending to have lost all the possible marbles I can, then take to my bed and sleep. Ah, sleep! That’s another thing that geniuses don’t get much of. Sleep. According to the information I’m gathering.
Well, maybe there’s some mistake. Because I sleep. Lots. Or at least pretend to (maybe that’s what I’m a genius at—sleeping!)
Anyway, back to insane geniuses. I mean, look at Van Gogh, he painted those wonderful paintings, but he also cut off his own ear and posted it to his girlfriend. Ouch! No, I was never going to do myself any bodily harm. There are any number of geniuses who have done a lot of harm to themselves. There are also those who have vile tempers and have hurt those around them. Like some who throw things at their maids and therefore can never keep them on for more than a few days. Others who are so filthy in their personal hygiene. Like this one guy, who I heard used to keep his pee in an urn on a pedestal in his room and worship it!
I, on the other hand, am boringly normal. There are no streaks of anything that would even hint at an exciting person hidden beneath.
Finally, Bholu Chacha decided to try his hand at me. He is the black sheep of our family. He’s everything that our folks pretend we are not. He’s divorced, alcoholic, has even taken his fair share of drugs and cannot hold on to a job for long, for all the above reasons. Also, I suspect, because he doesn’t feel like it and there are enough people to feed him, even if they do it grudgingly. And he mooches off to various unsavoury places, I’m told. However, he is family, so he’s invited to occasions. So he came over on Dad’s birthday, carrying an old book that he’d taken off from my dada’s bookshelf, which he presented to Dad. Dad wore a suitably disgusted face as he accepted the newspaper-wrapped gift.
And then talk went back again to where it had been veering for all the time recently. My super-intelligence. I hung my head, trying to avoid the exchange of rolled eyes and mean looks from my siblings and cousins. For they had fallen totally off the conversation radar. Lucky them, though they wore martyred looks as though they wanted to be discussed by the groan-ups. Which, in truth, no teenager does.
Anyway, when I looked up I found Bholu Chacha staring at me. (His real name is Brajendra, but he is still called Bholu, as if he is four years old. My dad’s nickname was Golu, but mercifully, he has outgrown that! What parents subject their own children to! Come to think of it, maybe Bholu Chacha is a bit of a delinquent because he’s still called Bholu in his adult life. Like, do you know any Bholus who are CEOs of companies or heart surgeons?)
Anyway, Chacha was looking carefully at me with a distinct glint in his eye. A gleam I had come to recognize as the ‘I bet I can unearth the hidden genius in this boy’ one.
After dinner, I saw him talking quietly with Dad. It was very disconcerting the way they kept glancing in my direction. The same beam displayed at me that the testers had had when this whole nightmare had begun. Ma was disconcerted too. She’s very wary of Chacha and disapproves of every single thing about him. So she threw quite a fit when, after the party, Dad revealed that Bholu Chacha was going to try his hand—yep, you’ve guessed it—at unearthing my talents.
Ma was furious but Dad stood firm. Which does not happen very often—he was a middle sibling too. But he looked despairingly at me and said that if Chacha helped locate the source of my geniosity, it may be worth it. Ma, who was used to getting her way, was looking at me so irritatedly, as though this was my decision. I could see that she would almost prefer that my area of genius remain unearthed rather than be excavated by the family layabout.
Ma was still protesting the next morning. Dad was worried, I could see, but he insisted that I go. Chacha had spruced himself up and was wearing a suit that was only slightly frayed at the edges. The sleeves were a bit too long. It had obviously belonged to someone else. Probably my grandfather or great-grandfather.
Chacha slapped me on my back as soon as we were in the taxi (he’d had his driving license taken away from him after he’d been in a couple of bad accidents because he was DUI). Driving under the influence, for those of you who don’t know. As in, under the influence of intoxicants like alcohol or drugs. Yes, he was not the ideal idol, but he promised me a fun-filled day. Well, I needed one of those. So I felt my worries slipping away, as I settled in for a day of mindless fun. Maybe I could just have a carefree day with no geniosity peppering up my life. For one day.
But I could not have been more wrong. We went to the races. Horse races. I was shocked. We were supposed to have been discovering my talents and now horse races …? Yep, you must have guessed it. He wanted to see if I could tell, before the race started, which horse would win, so as to know which one to lay bets on! So gambling and betting was his new pet vice. Interesting. But I had no clue at all. I just had a high IQ, not ESP (extra-sensory perception, which means that you can tell things before they really happen). I could see that Chacha was disappointed. Very. But he put on a brave face. He lost some money, though not a lot. And certainly not any because of me. Although he kept telling at me to give it a shot, there were no voices in my head telling me to bet on Blue Streak instead of High and Mighty.
‘You tried,’ he said gamely, although his face clearly showed that he thought I was a cop-out who hadn’t tried at all. I’m getting pretty good at reading faces. Who knows, maybe that’s where my talent lies—like there’s that TV show—which one is it—The Mentalist? In which the guy solves all kinds of crime investigations because he can tell what people are actually thinking when they’re professing their innocence? Hmm … could that be it?
Anyway, Chacha took me to have a look at the horses. He knew some of the jockeys. I love horses, even though I was a little bit frightened to see these big ones, steam blowing out of their nostrils as they were walked up and down to cool off after the race was over. I went over to one of them and asked if I could stroke it. ‘Just a moment, beta, let him have a drink of water first. He must be thirsty,’ said the syce as his handler was called.
He took the horse to the water trough. The horse stepped up, blew into the water, but then stepped back. His syce tried to persuade him, but the horse wouldn’t drink. The man nodded to me, so I went and patted the horse’s neck. He turned to look at me, the horse, I mean, not the syce. Gingerly, I stroked his muzzle, (again, animal, not man). He turned back to the water trough, put his face to the water and began to drink. And boy, was he thirsty. Another horse came up and strangely, did the same thing. I mean, he bent to the water and then stepped back. This time, I patted him and he immediately began to drink the water.
‘Ha! Ha! Ha! See, you can do the impossible!’ snorted Chacha.
Impossible? What had I done now?
‘Anyone can lead a horse to water, but only you can make him drink!’ he guffawed loudly, turning the idiom upside down. Then he called some of his friends to look at the phenomenon. Some of the horses drank the water on their own. But three more just sniffed the water, and drank only after I’d patted them. Weird. So now the spotlight was back on me.
One of the horses, who’d been frothing at the mouth, drank loads of water, with me patting his neck the whole time. When he was done, he looked at me, and I swear he gave me a smile. Big teeth and all, with his lips pulled back. But in a distinctly friendly way, not scary at all. His owner came to get some photographs taken with him, because he’d just won some race. The owner was quite young, like just eight-ten years my senior. He gave me a smile too. All big teeth and lips pulled back. Quite like his horse. ‘Hi,’ he said to me, proudly. ‘Lovely horse, isn’t he?’
‘Yes, sure is, did you get him as a gift?’
‘Yeah, how’d you know?’
‘Er … I …’ Hmm, how did I know, exactly? ‘You’re pretty young, so I thought you may not have actually bought him, you know?’ I added, hoping he wasn’t going to take offence. I guess that’s what must have made me think the horse was a gift. He just laughed and then had no more time for me, as the photographers jostled me out of the way.
On the way home, I was kind of quiet. I’d seen posters of a movie called The Horse Whisperer. It was about this guy who could do magic with horses; he healed them, he talked to them and understood them in a way ordinary vets could not. I hadn’t seen the movie, but I’d heard about it. Maybe that was my thing. Maybe I was a genius with horses. I could make them drink water when they refused and I could tell that the horse was a gift by looking into its mouth. Weird.
I made Chacha take me to a Landmark store to try and find the DVD of this film. But they didn’t have it. They had the book, though. Now, I’m not a great reader, but recently, I’d found that reading was a way to keep others off my back. So I went to the shelf. I picked the book up and looked at the cover. It was a nice cover—from the movie poster, gentle and like an old photograph. But something about the cover told me that reading the book was not going to solve my problems or give me any of the answers I needed. No, I was quite convinced. I know you’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover, but I knew that this was not the book for me.
So I returned home empty-handed, and so did Bholu Chacha. He was quite angry, as though I’d purposely not picked a winner and so had literally robbed him of his chance at big money. Anyway, there was nothing to be done. At least Ma was somewhat sympathetic towards me. She knew what it was like to spend time with Chacha—waste, sorry, not spend. She told me to wash up and come and have something to eat. I went to the loo, washed my face and hands and then took a big mouthful of water to rinse out the grit from the racetrack. That’s when it happened. I almost choked. The water went down my windpipe. I gagged, struggling to get my breath back. I was panicking. I did not want to die! I stumbled out into the dining room, pointing to my throat. I think I was trying to scream. Ma caught hold of me. She thumped my back, squeezed my stomach, made me look up and blew on the top of my head. I’m not even sure what or why she was doing what she was. But finally, my airways cleared and I was breathing again. I sat down, tears streaming from my eyes, still gasping. ‘What happened?’ my younger brother asked. I told them I was just rinsing my mouth and a mouthful of water went down the wrong way.
My sister burst into hysterical laughter, ‘Tum chuloo bhar paani mein doob mar rahe they!!!’ Both my siblings were rocking with laughter and even Ma couldn’t help smiling. Great, now there was more reason for everyone to laugh at me. Well, yes, I did almost drown in a mouthful of water, but in the idiom, you do that in shame. I had nothing to be ashamed of!
‘Ha! Ha! Ha!’ continued Sowmya. ‘Maybe that’s your talent after all …’
‘What?’
‘Maybe you make idioms and proverbs come true. Now that would be a genius thing—even though it’s so useless. Just like you!’
‘Very funny,’ I mumbled, stuffing my face with daal chawal. There’s nothing like comfort food such as daal chawal when you’re down and out. And I was down and out. No doubt about it. That’s when I saw it. I yelped. A fly in the daal! ‘Oh yuck!’ I shrieked, fishing it out with my spoon, ‘Oh yuck!’ I felt sick, rushed to the bathroom, splashed water on my face, rinsing out my mouth, ‘Oh yuck!’
But when I got back, everyone at the table was laughing instead of being sympathetic towards me. ‘There was something black-black in your daal!’ my brother guffawed, holding his sides with helpless laughter.
‘Yep, daal mein kuch kaala, bro, daal mein kuch kaala!’ said my sister, ‘helpfully’ translating the idiom to its original Hindi.
‘It could have happened to you, you know. Any one of you,’ I said, glaring at my mother, who was overcome with mirth as well. ‘We were all eating the same food.’
‘Yes, but you are the genius who makes idioms literally come true. You are the idiot idiomizer!’ crowed my sister, always clever with words.
My brother immediately caught the tone and put the words to music, ‘You are the id-id-id-idiomizer. You are the tr-tr-tr-true idio … idio … idio … idiomizer. Mizer mizer …’
Clever. He got idiot and miser all into one song. Ma was trying to control her giggling and also stop my siblings from ribbing me and making up awful songs.
Well, there was no more daal chawal comfort to be had, so. I went back to my room in a suitably sulky huff, with many giggles following me like a following wind.
But when I got to my room, I sat on my bed with a thump. The horrible truth was dawning on me. It was true. I was a genius. A genius at making idioms come true.
The horses had drunk water when I patted them. I’d known it was a gift horse by looking it in the mouth. I had judged a book by its cover. And what else? I’d almost drowned in chuloo bhar pani and I’d found something black in my daal. Which of course means that there was something suspicious. Were these the only ones? I tried to look back at my life. And yes, my life did start flashing backwards before my eyes, like it’s supposed to happen just before you die.
And I realized that it wasn’t just happening today. This idiom idiocy had been happening all my life. For I saw, in that flashback, how I had once fallen between stools when I was little. I used to love sitting on the fence in school—so did my friends, but I know that I sat there the longest, they’d often tell me to stop sitting on the fence. And—oh god—I remember one time I’d got a bad paper cut on my finger, and then I had tried to sprinkle salt on to my fried egg. Man, had that burned! So I’d literally rubbed salt into my own wounds. And then, oh hell, yes, Ma had told me to take what others said with a pinch of salt! Which had made everyone laugh at me even more.
Oh yeah, and then there was the time we had had a lovely Lohri fire outside our house. Papa had put some foil-wrapped potatoes into the embers to roast. He kept saying we would have to wait until the morning to take them out, but at night, my sibs and I’d got hungry so we ventured out. Of course, I’d been the first one to stick my fingers in to try and open the potato. And I’m sure you know what happened then. Yep, I’d dropped the hot potato like … well … like a hot potato!