Pierced!

Karan sighed and looked at himself in the mirror. He thought that after spending endless nights worrying about whether or not he would have a beard, he could finally venture to accept that ‘hope’ was a thing to be believed in. For, finally, he could make out that there were exactly three tiny hairs sprouting, albeit reluctantly, on his rather sharp chin. He stroked them proudly and felt quite important.

But then he sighed again. He did want it with all his heart…but how could he ask for it? It wasn’t wrong, it wasn’t disgraceful, and it certainly wasn’t weird. He had seen so many people proudly owning it. He did think that it would suit him and more importantly, he knew it would make him proud to be him, make him love him.

“Sigh! It sounds so easy and perfect when I say it to myself”, he confided to his reflection. “But I am pretty sure, I am going to sound like a dolt when I manage to blurt it out…”. His reflection smiled back at him sympathetically.

With another sigh that seemed to rise from the very depths of his soul, he turned away from the mirror and stared unseeingly at his geography textbook. He was supposed to be tracing the river Ganga, from its point of origin till it met its watery grave or was reborn, (it’s all in how you see it) when it joined the Bay of Bengal. He was also supposed to be noting down all the major cities that the massive river ran through. But his heart was not in it, which was shocking because as everyone knew, geography was Karan’s first love.

The next day, at breakfast, he sat playing with the steaming idli sitting on his plate. He put his finger in the centre and wriggled it around, making a hole there, so that it looked like a doughnut, and then surveyed it with satisfaction. He sighed. Every action and thought of his only proved how much he wanted it and how much good it would do to him.

He sighed again.

“What are you moping about for? Did your favourite anime character die?”, Karan’s mother said, chuckling.

Karan looked at her reproachfully out of his dark, deep-set eyes and shook his head. He took a deep breath and decided that he had to start the conversation. He would, at least, throw the topic in the arena and fight it out till his dying breath. And so, gathering his wits and, more importantly, his courage, he asked the question on which his happiness depended.

“Pierced!?! You want to get your nose pierced?! What for?!”, screamed his mother.

“Because it’s cool!”, he said lamely, forgetting all his well-thought-out arguments, that no one could have refuted.

“Cool, my foot! You’ll look like a bull!”

“Ma! I’m not going to get a ring. I won’t look like a bull. I’ll get a simple stud.”, Karan said, barely containing his laughter.

“Absolutely not! Whatever filled your head with such a horrendous idea? And anyways, who has heard of boys getting any piercing at all, forget nose piercing…? Piercings are for girls.”

“Can I get my nose pierced then?”, asked Sana, Karan’s younger sister, in a voice dripping with innocence.

“No!”, snapped their mother, as she wrestled with the lid of the pressure cooker. Few minutes of silence ensued as they watched her silent tussle. She finally got the lid on right and slamming it on the stove, she furiously poked the lighter, igniting the stove. Then, she turned on them with a glare.

“Ma! Listen...”, started Karan again.

“Karan! You are truly preposterous! What made you think of a nose piercing of all the things?!”, she queried.

“Ma! But you are not listening! I don’t…”

“I am not listening?! Oh! it’s me who's not listening, is it!? No! It’s you, who's not listening…! How can you think of getting your nose pierced? You’ll get my self-respect and reputation pierced along with that!”, she retorted, peeling a carrot with such speed that it made you feel quite sorry for the blameless carrot.

A helpless smile broke out on Karan’s face, but he urged his arguments ahead.

“Ma! Listen, ok? I am not getting myself a ring or a hoop, so I won’t look like a bull. I want to get myself a simple stud. There is nothing disgraceful about it. It is beautiful! It will make me feel awesome about myself, I will feel more confident about myself, I will learn to love myself more and I will, for once, be proud to be me!”, he said, counting the reasons off his fingers.

“You’ve simply repeated the same point four times. And how is a little piece of jewellery going to accomplish that impossible task?”, their mother grumbled, chopping the already persecuted carrot, with more ferocity.

“But, Ma, you would know about that, wouldn’t you? After all, didn’t you say to me only yesterday, when we were going for Sudhir Uncle’s anniversary party, that your earrings were the one thing that would make you feel yourself in the party?”, quipped in Sana.

“Sana, the circumstances were different then. We were going to Sudhir Uncle’s party. You do know how much I detest him. Always telling me that his biryani is better than mine… Naturally, I would feel consoled by my earrings. After all, they are pretty and…”, explained their mother, grabbing hold of a bunch of coriander and pulling off the leaves with frightening precision.

“Ma! You have hit the nail right on the head! That’s what I meant when I was…”, said Karan cutting in.

“Don’t pull your fancy idioms on me! My earrings are a different matter. Your nose piercing is not going to happen and that’s that.”, she said with a tone of finality, as she began chopping the hapless coriander.

Karan looked mutinously at his, now cold, idli. The ‘piercing’ he had made in his idli leered up at him mockingly. He stuffed it into his mouth and felt a small sense of satisfaction at not having to look at it sneering up at him.

“Besides, you have such a nice nose. Why do you want to go and spoil it and look like a bull?”, said his mom, softening a little.

“Ma!! Really? How will it get spoiled if I am decorating it with a piece of jewellery? And for the last time, I won’t look like a bull! I said I would get a stud!”

“Well! Whoever has heard of boys with jewellery? That’s ridiculous! You must be the first of your species to have such an absurd idea.”, she said, firing up again.

“Okay. Okay. No! I am not the first of the ‘man’ kind to express this desire. Ma! In case you have forgotten, let me remind you of the fact that Lord Ram and all the other nobles, from the Ramayana that you are so fond of, wore jewellery. And what’s more…Ram was a man!”, Karan said, crushingly.

“Oh! But he relinquished all of them when he went on his vanvas.”

“Fine! I will relinquish my stud too if I have to go for a vanvas…”

A strange noise, as if someone had been seized with a rather explosive fit of coughing, seemed to be appearing from the opposite end of the table. Sana was laughing.

“Ma! Do send him on a vanvas! I can have his football then…”, she managed to blurt out while going off into peals of laughter.

“Sana!”, admonished both Karan and his mother.

“What?! Your conversation was making no sense anyway!”, muttered a somewhat subdued Sana. “Anyways, I am done eating. And I don’t want to miss my bus…so, bye Ma! If I were you, I’d let him have his nose piercing. It would suit him.” And having given her verdict, she grabbed her bag and after glancing at her mother, left the house a little more hastily than normal.

“Really…that girl…! What?! No Karan. There is no point in looking at me like that. I said ‘no’ and it is my final word. It really isn’t respectable, and I don’t want one of my offspring looking like a bull.”

“Ma!”, Karan groaned, “What have you got against bulls?!”

“Oh nothing! I just don’t want you looking like one.”

An argument flashed through Karan’s head and he eagerly put it forth. “Ma! See, even if I did look like a bull… a bull is male, right? So, I will look very manly and all that…”, he said triumphantly, believing that his logic made complete sense.

His mother looked at him pityingly and simply said, “You are getting late for college, dear.”

Crushed and defeated, Karan pushed his chair back and got up. Sending a rebuking glance towards his mother, he slouched off to college. All day, he could think of nothing but how perfectly lovely his nose piercing would look, if he ever got one. His geography professor looked at him with a slightly worried face.

“Are you ok? You don’t seem quite well. You haven’t answered a single question today.”, she said.

“Oh! I am fine, ma’am.”, he mumbled.

During lunch, he decided he would do something about it. He told his friends not to wait for him and betook himself.

***

Later that evening, Karan and Sana were lolling on the sofa, lazily flipping through the different channels on the TV as they waited for their favourite show to begin.

They heard the key turn in the lock and grinned nervously, but excitedly, at each other.

Their mother entered and plonked her bag down on the sofa. She kicked off her shoes and sank into the sofa. “I am a hundred percent sure that the person who invented heels was not a woman. No self-respecting, sane woman would willingly undergo such pure torture for the sake of looking good.”, she said, massaging her foot.

“Oh! But you do, Ma…”, said Sana, slyly, before slipping away to get a glass of water for her.

‘Ma’ glared at Sana’s retreating back and looking at Karan, she said, “That sister of yours is getting naughtier day by day, when she should be doing just the opposite.”

“Hmmm… you’re right.”, said Karan, after a short pause, during which he searched his mother’s face for any sign of shock or panic.

But she simply continued massaging her feet and asking him questions about his day, richly interspersing the conversation with anecdotes and complaints about her own day.

What? How had she not noticed? Was it that invisible?

There it was sitting proudly on his nose… and she hadn’t even acknowledged it with a simple look of shock. How very indecent, Karan thought vehemently, that she had not even screamed a little. Then why, he demanded to know, had she said all those things to him in the morning, if she was, after all, fine with him getting a nose piercing?

Offended, Karan replied in monosyllables and glared at the TV remote. Meanwhile, Sana came back with a glass of water and offering it to their mother, she sensed that as there was no shouting match going on, something was wrong. Puzzled, she looked at Karan. Karan simply shrugged his shoulders and then returned to glaring at the remote.

“Ma?”, said Sana, gingerly.

“…and so, I told Ms. Dhillon that I was simply not going to take any cheek from her. Her being new to the company and showing so much cheek! I don’t usually like using my authority in such a manner, but this time I really put my foot down and… yes, Sana? You were saying something?”

“Ma…do you not notice anything different?”

Karan spared the remote and turned an eager face up to his mother.

“Different? What’s different, Sana? Oh, I see… you seem to have watered the plants, since the soil looks nice and nourished… or did it rain here? Anyways, as I was saying, Ms. Dhillon really needed some talking to and… Karan!!”

Karan smiled a little defensively, all his bravery deserting him and being replaced by acute nervousness. His mother was staring at his nose as if a bee had perched on it.

“Karan!!...Karan!! What is…? How come…? Where…? Karan!! What is??” Finally, she took a deep breath in and wailed, “Whhhyyy??”

“Ma! I told you I did want it with all my heart. So, I just had to get it done. Please don’t be angry…”, he said. “And I don’t look like a bull”, he added as an afterthought.

His mother looked at him out of narrowed eyes and taking his chin in her hands, she firmly turned his head one way and another, closely scrutinising his face from each angle.

She gave him a sharp slap on his cheek and then allowing herself a small, rather stern, smile, she said, “You do look like a bull, after all. But I wouldn’t venture to go so far as to say that it doesn’t suit you.”

Karan looked at his mother incredulously, while Sana did a little victory dance, whooping with joy.

“Yippee! Now, I can get a piercing too!!”, she yelled in delight.

“Sana! No! Absolutely not! You are not getting any piercing!”

“But you allowed him to get one…! Why not me…?!”

“I haven’t allowed him to do anything. He has just gone and…uff!”

Karan and Sana had leapt on her and pulled her into a bone-crushing hug.

“All right…all right! Now go and set the table before your show starts or you’ll forget all about it, and I will have to hobble around on my poor feet and set it myself…”

Sana and Karan let go of their mother and racing to the kitchen table, they proceeded to set down the plates and spoons with a speed that would have rivalled hers.

She shook her head, smiling, and continued massaging her foot.