If I snuck out right after my parents had fallen asleep I would have to wait for Moses to appear. I didn’t like waiting alone in the dark, so I always waited right outside the door beside the shoe-rack. Sometimes I would fall asleep waiting, and he would have to come and shake me awake. Then the drama would begin spectacularly, with sound first as always and then Moses’ big brown eyes.
Moses’ eyes were the brown of a peanut shell. I loved collecting peanut shells for that reason, Acha was always happy at my choice of snack- cheap. Somebody would always be stepping on peanut shells, yelping in fury. A yelp, and I would say quietly, Moses.
He was not a storyteller. Often, I did not know what story I had listened to and what made the characters heroes. All I had were bits and pieces, a jigsaw-puzzle of toes and leaping eyebrows, elbows knocking at the air and the swish of his cape. Besides, none of his characters had names. So I always called everybody Moses. What a beautiful name.
One day I went by a little too early. Dinner ended even before it began that night because no one got to have any. It was like that sometimes, Acha would knock it down. Today the cable went out in the middle of the cricket match.
The thing with his house was that it was right next to mine but our door was all the way at the front of the apartment. So I had to get out, take a left, take another left and then another left and then his house, right next to mine. That’s the trip that was scary.
As I approached I heard hushed chanting – maybe it was singing, or people talking in whispers. There wasn’t much light, but there was some. As if the electricity had gone off. That’s also when people speak in whispers, as if they were afraid of the loudness of their own voice.
I went up to the window and the Moses family were standing in a semi-circle in height order. All five of them with their hands joined and eyes closed. In front of them, a Jesus portrait that had him looking up, perhaps at his Father. Moses was shining in the candlelight.
I was made to say my prayers everyday at 6. I prayed that I would one day be able to stop wasting my evening praying. Now I wished dearly that I could be the sixth, standing next to shining Moses in prayer.
_____
The fuzz of cotton on the meat was sometimes blue, sometimes yellow. He wore black with the blue, and red with the yellow. On November 1st, they would raise Moses up a pole and he’d swing in the wind. That was his joke, not mine. He had two sets – a Moses uniform – and everyday it was neatly ironed. Sometimes it felt crisp and when he moved shirt and shorts scraped against each other like nails. No wind could blow Moses’ crisp red and yellow like the Karnataka flag.
On Thursdays I craved meat more than chocolate. I wasn’t allowed to eat it, so Moses would sneak the dark brown kidneys into his pocket. The only part of his clothes that would wear off as evidence of his thievery.
I always hoped for chicken, white when stretched or dipped in a dark red from Malabar Mess. But it was almost always kidney, and sometimes small cuts of the darkest meat I had seen that made my tongue smart with vinegar. I didn’t believe him when he said it was liver, it was some other unnamable meat that I should not be having.
Once, in a spirit of reciprocity I wiped the bright orange curry off the prawns at dinner and hid them in my pocket. He held them up to the sun to inspect the translucent white and pink veins. I waited for him to experience the joy that I had sacrificed that week for my shining Moses. But he quickly pocketed it.
I didn’t see Moses for two days after that. Somehow I knew not to go at night. When we went to the tracks the next day he was unusually quiet, but right in the middle of the railway track pretending to be a steam engine he stopped,
“What was that?”
“Prawns”
He looked at me almost angry, Moses angry for the first time. And then he ran like the wind, his cape flying behind him; a steam engine superhero, while I withered and cried and went vegetarian that Thursday.
_____
I wrote across the wall on the front of the building, ‘I love Moses’. He had left behind big cans of half empty paint in the shed on the terrace. I chose white to contrast the creamy pink of the wall, and the thinnest brush. Ammini aunty was chatting with Ma when both of them discovered this steamy declaration.
It had been ten days since he left. That night I slept with the high-pitched sound of cackling as everybody came to gawk at my painting. It was the only one I had ever made, he always said I held a paint brush like a toothbrush. Moses was the painter.
That night we went to Ammini aunty’s for dinner – soft white velappam and mutton stew, beans thoran and bread pudding. I ate it all at once, appamstewbeanspudding and considered pocketing morsels of mutton, maybe a folded appam. Moses would have loved its brilliant white softness, the delicate pink of the mutton. And I could have the springy nuggets of dark meat, his offering in trade for mine.
But there was no Moses. I looked at the Jesus Christ portrait at Ammini aunty’s house. ‘That’s Jesus,’ Sajil said. I imagined Sajil, Rijil, Paul uncle and Ammini aunty in a Moses formation. Jesus didn’t look too pleased with that picture.
But it didn’t matter. No Jesus, no Moses. So I ran as fast as I could that night, as if on hot coals, hopping and hissing to prevent the snakes from getting to me. When I reached the railway track I stopped.
There he was, shining and waving. All I had to do was cross the track. I had never done it before. I waited for my fear to go away. This Moses, the Moses on the other side of the track, did not come reassuringly to hold my hand so I wouldn’t fall. I had to do it myself, he seemed to say.
For seven nights I ran to the tracks, seven nights I sat down, afraid I would die. And then one night, just like that, I closed my eyes and slid down to the other side to Moses.
He was never there during the day of course, he was careful because that’s when the trains came. At night he waited for me, waving and shining as I got better at crossing the tracks.
One night he told me I was to bring the paints. The next morning I woke up with evidence of the night before, my hands dipped in a bright red that Ma couldn’t wash away.
____
My name is Moses.
It was written in red, ‘I like red. Red is my colour.’ On our eight birthday, November 30th I picked a Rubik’s cube for his gift. The next day I found him painting each square red, even the red one. “This is my red,” he smiled happily.
We were the only two children in the apartment and the only ones who could fit in the shed upstairs. The shed that was his first and now ours.
I loved the kitchen set, it was pink and had two more pans than my last set. I took it up to our shed to tell Moses how much I liked his gift.
His thumbs were red, but not his index fingers. He placed his left thumb across the dimple on my left cheek, his mouth rounded in a light o. “I thought it would sink in. But it didn’t.” And so I smiled for the red to sink. And Moses shined.
“What’s that?” he heard the tumbling of pots and pans as I turned to display my dimple.
“It’s the new kitchen set. Did you buy it for our house?”
He seemed confused and looked around at the shed to see what I was talking about.
“This is not a house. There’s no door, no windows.’
“Okay. But can we play with the kitchen set? I know how to make masala fry.”
“No, boys don’t cook. Except on Sundays. Let’s paint”
He spent the rest of the afternoon painting it red. Each pan, handle and bottom. Spoons and ladles and the teapot. I was to lay it all out in a row so it could dry in the sun.
“We’ll arrange it tomorrow.”
And so we did. He had cardboard boxes of different sizes, arranged one on top of the other in a rectangle. The little collection of red trophies he had saved for this secret project. Sticks that formed a cross, stuck with sellotape, spoons and ladles leaning back against the wall, teapots and cups upturned on the brown cardboard. A Barbie and a cricket ball. And the Rubik’s cube. All painted in the same red, in two careful coats, dried in the sun with not the slightest smudge.
A stray saree border hung at the entrance, swinging in gold.
“It’s a showcase,” I said.
That, he liked. “We live in a showcase.”
You could walk the length of the terrace and you wouldn’t find us. Moses and I, in our showcase so no one could see.
brown-study 