Em and the Big Hoom by Jerry Pinto

make you want to run away from it all?’
    â€˜That’s where pride comes in, and stubbornness. The city is a challenge but it’s a challenge that doesn’t care either way. If you go home, it won’t jeer, it just won’t notice. You can stay and work hard and make something of yourself and it still won’t notice. But you will know. I would have known that I had failed. So I stayed.’
    â€˜You could have written,’ I said. It was family legend that Masses had been held in the village church for my father’s soul. The family had assumed he was dead.
    â€˜They thought I had died in Poona or on the way back.’
    â€˜Why not on the way there?’
    â€˜Because my examination results came in the post. I did well too.’
    That must have fitted in nicely with the tragedy, I thought.
    â€˜When did you return?’
    â€˜With my engineering degree.’
    As the doctor’s practice declined, he began to invest more and more of his life into his compounder’s future.
    â€˜We work in the ABC professions,’ Dr da Gama Rosa said. ‘Ayahs. Butlers. Cooks.’
    â€˜Doctors too,’ said his compounder.
    â€˜Drunks, more likely,’ said the Doctor. ‘If you want to be someone else, you have to work ten times as hard because they see us as the boys in the band. But what’s worse is that that’s how we see ourselves. Do a little work, sing a song, drink yourself to death, go out with a funeral band and four children following the coffin.’
    Once his assistant had begun to master the English newspapers, the doctor made him read a series of English classics borrowed from a public library that stood at the corner of Dhobi Talao. At first, Dr da Gama Rosa picked the books but eventually he started sending The Big Hoom.
    â€˜One day, I happened to look over a young man’s shoulder and saw a cutaway drawing of a motor. I did not know what it was at the time but it looked fascinating. So I asked him what the book was and he flipped it over so I could see the cover. It was Coates’ Manual for Engineers. I wanted to ask him more but he said he was studying for an exam, so please. I looked at the shelves and found another Coates. It was marked ‘for reference only’ but Dr da Gama Rosa had told me how to get around that. Most of the time the labels were old so all you had to do was peel it off and get the book issued anyway.’
    â€˜What did the doctor say when you started reading Coates?’
    â€˜I think he was disappointed. I think he wanted me to become a doctor. When I was in the clinic, he would test me all the time. He would make me read temperatures and take blood pressure and ask me what I would prescribe.’
    Which explained the almost impersonal kindness with which The Big Hoom treated us when we were ill.
    â€˜And so you got into the Victoria Regina Technical Institute?’
    â€˜On the second attempt,’ said The Big Hoom. ‘And three years later, with an engineering degree, I went home.’
    The prodigal was not welcomed, even if he had made good.
    â€˜Your grandmother was a big woman for her time. She was nearly five foot ten and she could carry a head-load of firewood five kilometres to the Mapusa market, talking all the while.’
    The news spread even before he got off the bus.
    â€˜By the time I reached home, mother was waiting for me with a stick,’ he smiled. ‘Later, I was told she had burst into tears at the news, then dried her eyes, killed three chickens, changed her sari and picked up the stick.’
    â€˜Did she beat you?’
    â€˜No. Six years had passed. She remembered a boy of fifteen who would take his father’s shirts without permission. She hit me once or twice but there was no conviction in her. And I remember when she hit me, the village, standing behind, said “Ohhhhh” and then when she hit me the second time, they all said