by Kanupriya Dhingra
B.
bee.
B for Beautiful.
Miss was beautiful. nobody else could have taught us the alphabets in a manner even close to hers. i can bet these favorite pair of underpants on it, these, that I have pulled down. these aren’t skin-tight, and are blue. i have always liked these underpants. i would have never known what kind of underpants Miss wears. i had to focus while she wrote on the blackboard. it was a sight! how the left side of her hip and the right side of her hip moved cordially, following the rhythm of her left hand as she wrote and paused, and wrote and paused, and turned to look at us, to smile or to scorn, and wrote till she paused again. her movement was wavy, like the letters she drew. furtively, i took note of the chalk dust on her hand and on her hips. hands and hips. not so secretly, i noticed her lips. hips and lips. those were the Reddest Lips of all. Zed-Red. her lips and hips resembled Monroe’s. back then, i didn’t know who Monroe was. i know now. Miss resembled Monroe. especially when she used to sing the alphabets to us, her lips and her hips moved like Monroe’s. i waited for her to utter O, or Q, U or Y. i liked to see her cry M, subtly, when she pressed her lips together; or V, where she used to bite her lower lip, so hard that i thought it was bleeding when she released it with a smile. vee. i liked it when she uttered G; when she was found boasting her bright and polished teeth. i liked her teeth as they were; a little off white, nevertheless, bright and polished. they looked real. wonder if she still has all of them intact. gee. Or rather, jee. G for god. god. G in god had to be in capital letters, said Miss. God. that’s right. To think of god as God. is one allowed to think of God, with a capital G, in the bathroom?
B for Bathroom.
what about when one is sitting on and shitting into the shit-pot? what about, when one is washing and touching the parts that shouldn’t be named out loud? can those parts not be named loud even in the bathroom? can those parts be touched inside the bathroom, if not outside the bathroom? can those parts be named or touched at all? why not in here, inside the bathroom? there’s nobody around as it is, no? does God, one with a capital G, know that i am touching those parts in the bathroom? is that what accounts for what Miss calls Blasphemy?
B for Blasphemy.
if only god could see me when i am inside a bathroom. one with the capital G is everywhere, said Miss, and mom.
is God here, in the bathroom?
is any of the gods here?
how many gods are there?
how many of them are gods with a capital G? Gods, to be precise.
is there a separate God for the bathroom?
possibly. i make a lot of prayers in the bathroom. not all, but a few of them were heard too, indeed. did God, or some god, know that i wanted to kiss Miss? was it again blasphemy to kiss miss?
to kiss miss.
Kiss-Miss.
Kish-mish.
i hate kishmish. is hating kishmish blasphemy?
i hate wearing a bra. is it blasphemy again?
i would hate it still. no, i don’t like to wear a bra at all.
B for Bra.
Miss did not use to wear a bra. my classmates used to say so. i wouldn’t have known, like i did not know what kind of underpants she wore, until that day. her underpants were red like her lips, that day, when i left my bag at her place. i had always wanted to know what Miss does after we left the classroom. i remember, she kissed me on my cheeks as i was leaving, when i asked her to excuse me for leaving my bag. that was sheer carelessness, indeed, Miss would have thought. i always knew that she liked me, despite such carelessness. my belief would have been undone, but she let me kiss her back. i couldn’t leave any imprint on her cheeks, like she did, on my cheeks, with her Zed-Red lips. you only kiss who you like, my friend told me. she was my neighbour; my friend was. still is. but we don’t see each other often now, not anymore, but we used to talk for hours back then. most of the times, across each other’s balcony. we could not kiss. i did not like her like that. neither did she, i guess. and then we only sat in each other’s balcony so we could not anyway. anyway we only talked, most of the times about Miss, and about the kiss from Miss. about the kiss from the Miss, across the balcony.
B for Balcony.
no one interrupted our balcony conversations. the balcony conversations were supposed to be sacred and secret. like the Bathroom God. i can tell the Bathroom God about it, like i told my balcony friend, that Miss and i kissed each other. but later i was scared of telling it to my balcony friend. what if it was blasphemy? i couldn’t let Miss be accused of that, no. committing any sort of blasphemy was dreadful, Miss told us. and i liked her enough to protect her, and myself. the exchange between us, of a kiss each, was supposed to be sacred and secret. at first, i was scared of being scoled on seeing her undressing. but seeing her undressing was not with an intention. it wasn’t my fault anyway to have left my bag and that i did not find her in her room i went to see if she was in her bathroom and that i could have knocked but the bathroom door was open. hey, i have been here in the bathroom for long, no one knocked? maybe no one awaits me. Miss might have been sure that nobody awaits her. Miss used to live alone, still does. she likes to, i guess. i like it, that she lives alone, that she never wears a bra, that she always wears a Zed-Red lipstick, that she kissed me with those Zed-Red lips, that she taught me what blasphemy was. oh, and i liked her underpants too. but I like my blue underpants more. i guess, i like blue. one is supposed to be sure of what one likes, and what one doesn’t like. i am quite sure that i like Miss. i am quite sure that i like blue. quite.
B for Blue.
in all probability, i like this bathroom because it is blue. the Blue Bathroom. the Blue Bathroom with a sacred and secret bathroom god. The Bathroom God. i think even The Bathroom God should be Blue. precisely because i like blue and i like the Bathroom God. The Blue God Of The Blue Bathroom. have i created the The Blue Bathroom God? indeed, i have created The Blue Bathroom God. wonder if gods have to wear a bra. wonder if God, one with a capital G, wears bra? in any case, The Bathroom God won’t require one because you may not wear a bra inside a bathroom. you may not wear anything inside a bathroom. you may do anything inside a bathroom. you may not do anything inside a bathroom. there is no blasphemy inside a bathroom, that’s what i like to think at least. bathroom is sacred, i believe. i can recall Miss telling the class once, that for anything to be sacred, there has to be a belief that it is sacred.
B for belief.
For anything to be, there has to be a belief that it is. The Bathroom God is blue. The Bathroom God is.
B for Be.
bee.
B.
Kanupriya Dhingra is a research scholar at the Department of English, Delhi University. She writes and translates in English and Hindi.