03
‘Would you like to hold her?’ Emily breathes in the baby smell. Talcum powder and sweet, milky breath. ‘Hey she likes you. You’re a natural!’ Anna’s teeth are surprisingly white. When she smiles Emily would like to run to her, to sit on her lap, breathe in her scent. Her mother smell. Emily smiles back but when her father comes onto the porch she quickly returns the baby and busies herself with the glasses on the tray. John is fairly tall but he is dwarfed by Emily’s father. And when he pleads for work she is reminded of a man she once saw, on a rare trip to the city. He stood there, cap in hand and begged her father for money, food, anything. Daddy flipped him a quarter and told him to get. Emily notices a familiar edge to John’s voice. He doesn’t look hungry but he is certainly desperate. He seems kind. That is a rare thing. She hopes her father has missed the bumper sticker. And the hunting rifle. Emily’s father has never hit her in the face. She thinks this is on purpose. Everything he does he does for a carefully calculated reason. The bruises cover her midriff and shoulders. And occasionally her thighs, depending on how drunk he is. That night he is sober. He holds her hair while he stuffs a cloth into her mouth. It wouldn’t do for the newly hired help to hear her cries. No sir. Not that their objections would have any effect. They know better than to criticise the hand that feeds them. A father’s duty was his business and his alone. His god given Reader, please forgive me for this rude interruption but I couldn’t wait another sentence to introduce myself. My name is Samir. I am twenty eight years old. I live in Bombay, currently known as Mumbai, but no one over the age of ten calls it by its new name. I am employed as a typesetter. I copy original books and make bootleg copies. English books. Expensive bestsellers. My boss, Mr Akash, sells these pirate books at markets in Colaba. And he also has a team of kids who patrol the roads, tapping on car windows at traffic lights, selling the books to tourists in the back of taxis. Mr Askash thinks I’m stupid. Pig ignorant. But I can read English. And although I don’t understand everything that comes my way, I always copy some of the material to read and translate later. Because I am a self-taught man. Mr Akash thinks I’m stupid because I make mistakes. Big mistakes with the copying. For instance sometimes half a book will be scanned and then I’ll go for a piss and come back and start scanning an entirely different book into the computer. Or leave out a middle section. What a hideous trick! Poor readers! But if you knew the fun I’ve had, I think you’d understand. Just think, reader! Fourteen hours a day in a windowless room in front of a tin can PC that often breaks down. And I have lost thousands of precious words to power cuts. Beautiful words. Unspellable words. Clever words like scrutiny and mishap and ultrasound. I copy these words out by hand and keep them in a special book. My little treasures. These words roll off my tongue and into my fingertips like precious stones. Most of the time I copy rubbish. Boring items. Take this story you’re reading, for example. You’ll see what I mean. Where is the action? She was only a child and yet Emily had grown up years ago. Wised up to the facts of life. That mostly you suffered. After the death of her mother it didn’t get worse. Or better. I took that bit out. What soppy rubbish! But today none of this is important. I was telling you about me. About my life. Let me tell you reader, it can be as dull as (do you say?) dishwater. I hate it. And I love it. Mr Akash believes that all of his print boys are ignorant and stupid with no education. That is my secret. I am the only Bombay Bootlegger who can read English. And so you can understand why a man of my intellect would be bored by this occupation. But also enlightened. I have a multitude of literature at my fingertips, available to ingest at all hours of the day. But the monotony is slowly killing my will to read. So I amuse myself. Emily’s life will be rudely interrupted by a few sentences pilfered