Miss Timmins' School for Girls by Nayana Currimbhoy Page A

saintly bitch,” she would say, her eyes small slits of venom. “Biggest hypocrite on this planet.”
    I was unsettled by the profanity and anger. “Who has wronged her?” I asked Merch once, when we found ourselves alone.
    â€œIt’s all about the parents,” he said. I could not buy that package. Many people lost parents. It was tragic, no doubt, and it must be terrible. But she was already a grown-up then, so why this intense hatred for her guardian?
    â€œHer parents were strange creatures.”
    â€œSo?” I asked.
    He laughed, “OK, all parents are strange creatures, I’ll grant you that. But she feels they hated her, all three of them, her parents and Miss Nelson.”
    â€œNever heard of parents hating their children. And if Nelson hates her, why would she keep her in the school in the first place?” I asked.
    Merch shrugged. “Yes, there is that,” he said, and changed the subject.
    I knew there was a secret, and Merch was its keeper. I tried to work it out of Pin. I would pry in small corners, but everything she said made her more mysterious. In the beginning, I took her with a pinch of salt. It was a touch of paranoia, I reasoned, and I felt somewhat sorry for Miss Nelson having to keep her in line.
    â€œShe is a wounded one. Sometimes you just have to wrap her in cotton wool,” offered Merch, following my thoughts, and suddenly, instead of recoiling, I wanted to hold her in my arms and shield her poor naïve heart against the hard world.
    And then there were those other nights, when she was quicksilver. Her eyes would turn large and liquid, and she would say small funny things unexpectedly, in the middle of conversations. There was a sparkle around her. The hippies and the farmers would often be there, and we would sit around Merch’s room. The nights were redolent with music, laughter, and dreams that stretched thin and clear into the future. It felt like we were all in a cozy little spaceship, spinning around the universe.
    With Merch I felt light and graceful. With her, it was butterflies. My stomach turned somersaults when she looked at me. I thought about her a lot. I constructed conversations in my head with her, but I rarely had them. In my hospital room, with the rain drumming on my temples, I would stay up and think of ways I could have answered her sudden swirls of tenderness and humor. When we walked from Sunbeam to Merch’s at night, she had this way of striding along deep in conversation, and then stopping suddenly to deliver her punch line. I would have to look back at her to hear her. Walking up alone to classes, I would often catch myself nodding and saying a word out loud, looking back for her tousled head behind my shoulder. She often kept her hood down, even in the pouring rain, and rivulets of water poured down from her curls.
    Some sort of Shiva, I thought.
    She waved to me as we were all leaving the gym after the Scottish dancing, and was waiting for me outside under a dripping eave. She was in a good mood, bouncing with laughter and enthusiasm.
    â€œBrown girls bowing in kilts,” she said with sparkling eyes. “This is absolutely my reason for being here.” We both laughed out loud. I was thinking then only of the colonial implications of this neat turn of phase. Later that night, it came as a complete revelation to me that there was also a further meaning embedded in that line, and she had hoped that I would guess it. If I’d known, I’m not sure that I would have walked up to table-land with her that night.
    We walked out together, I thought, perhaps to buy cigarettes around the corner. She did not stop at the bidi stall, however, and we walked on. I did not ask where. The rain had slowed to a fine drizzle, but the world was still encased in water. The wind tugged at my raincoat hood as we turned the corner and saw the land rise up to the clouds.
    In Marathi, Panchgani means five volcanoes, the