Book Excerpt: ‘Da’ by Arathi Menon

Book Title: Da
Author: Arathi Menon
Publisher: Pan Macmillan India
Number of Pages: 192
ISBN: 9361138367
Date Published: Jul 1, 2026

Book Excerpt

Da might like Lei. He is softly spoken, has a funny side and is truly intelligent. Though he doesn’t come first in class, I know he is the most brilliant of us. It is the way his mind travels to places, which we don’t even know exist. We once watched a movie in the Resource Centre, where a bunch of people met to analyse their dreams. That’s all the movie was about, six people sitting around a table and talking about their dreams for three hours.

I tried very hard to like the movie; Da would want me to love it. He likes anything artsy (though I am not allowed to use that word) and if I don’t like it, he gets angry and accuses me of having no soul or no imagination. I don’t care too much about either of those things, but if I were to say so, lunch the next day would be horrible (sometimes even for a week). With Da, my policy is to be cautiously enthusiastic, even for things I think are a bit over the top.

At the end of the movie, we had to discuss what happened. I made a good point about how because one person spoke about antlers and the other about deer, they may have been in the same dream. The teacher smiled and gave me one of those now-that-young-man-has-potential looks.

Lei wanted to know why the women didn’t have dreams. There was a silence of embarrassment. None of us had realised the women had stuck to only making comments and didn’t have any experiences of their own. The professor stared at Lei for a bit and then said that he didn’t know either and that was very well observed. After class, I watched Lei and the prof have a long discussion, as the rest of us walked out towards the biscuits in a box.

Da would like him. Definitely.

If Da dumps Vamsi, should I invite Lei home? Would it complicate my life further? Da and I are yet to have a conversation about it. Does Da even realise there is a secret between us, floating in the air, sometimes pushing us apart? Why does he keep so quiet about it? He speaks about everything else, always telling me he prefers me to be informed than ignorant. Then why is this one thing never mentioned? I can’t ask him, I’d rather die than ask him.

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I miss Mama more these days – the secret turns and twists in me, filling me with a nameless fear, a catch in the chest. Sometimes it gets so bad I can’t breathe. That’s when I do those theatre exercises I learnt last summer. Close one nostril, breathe in. Close the other nostril, breathe out. Close one nostril, breathe in. Close the other nostril, breathe out. Ten times of doing this can usually control the fear that begins rising from my stomach. Sometimes I’d have to do it for twenty counts. Then I feel like taking a dump and everything is better.

Unless Da walks in during one these attacks. Then it goes away and I feel fearless just looking at him. I think Mama would have been excited about my Socials. Would I have bought different clothes if she was here?

I have been writing down all the boys’ names and my page is filled. I decide Lei is the one Da would find the cutest and draw a cheesy heart around it with my felt pen. The bright pink doodle looks obscene. If one of my classmates saw my page, they’d think I was in love with Lei. I carefully tear the page from the book and rip it into tiny shreds. That isn’t enough. A ragpicker may put the pieces back together and if it gets traced back to me, I will die. I set fire to the tiny stack of torn names and watch the flames curl my secret into a dark, unreadable black. There is a tiny brown stain on the floor, which no matter how much I scrub, won’t go away. If I look closely, my floor has many small, brown dots.

I open the windows, switch on the fan at full speed, uncap my deodorant and spray in the air, aiming above my head, at all four corners. The room smells of deodorant, smoke and guilt. It is horrible but I know in twenty minutes it will smell normal again, leaving behind not a trace of what I have been up to.

Excerpted with permission from “Da” by Arathi Menon, published by Pan Macmillan India.

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