binny

by Khushi Bajaj

Raphael and Sonam had had Binny for ten years when they decided that they needed a replacement. It was mostly Raphael’s decision, because Binny had recently learnt that she could say no to her parents, and had exercised that to demand that she be allowed to wear a frock without jeans since it was hot outside. “There is clearly something wrong with her”, he had declared to his wife, and so Sonam had wrapped Binny in a shawl and taken her to the well where girls could be exchanged. She brought back Tinny instead, and Raphael loved her innocent sleeping face. “This one will wear what she is told” he prophesied, and he was right. Tinny would play with thick jeans even if the scorching heat gave her rashes, and she soon became her Baba’s darling. He would honk his scooter’s horn on coming home from work so that she could run out and hop on it and they could go for a round around the village. It was when they came back that she would silently go into her room and keep her small bathroom mirror at the farthest corner, so that when she took off her jeans she could see her full self.

All was good, until one day the teacher called Sonam and Raphael to school and told them that Tinny was struggling. “We’re not sure what it is, but she has been saying that she is having some problems concentrating,” the teacher explained, and Raphael decided that he could not keep this girl. No child of his could use excuses to evade studying when his wife had never gotten the chance to become literate. She had cried tears of joy when her daughter had gotten into school, and had been so proud of her husband for agreeing to take this progressive step. But Tinny was clearly ungrateful, so she went back to the well, and this time Sonam came back with Ginny. Ginny was sweet and timid, and when her concentration wavered in class, she did not tell the teacher and instead gulped down her shame till it made her heart beat faster. When it was the next parent teacher meeting, Ginny’s teacher praised her for being non-disruptive and quiet, and Sonam bought Ginny an ice cream on the way home.

When Ginny turned fourteen, she told her Amma about having a crush on a boy. Amma felt that this was a crisis that warranted letting Baba know, and he slapped his daughter right across the face. “I need a daughter who does not even make me feel like she knows who boys are until she is married.” The well offered up Minny, who made sure to hide her boyfriends from her parents for the next five years, which meant that when one of them hit her she had no one to turn to and she stayed with him for ten more months.

Sonam, incidentally, loved having a more grown-up daughter, because she could accompany her everywhere they went. She loved oiling her daughter’s hair and tying it into two long plaits like roots of a tree, and Minny always got complimented on how she kept her eyes to the ground and did not look up in the company of men. Minny loved going to these gatherings because her aunties would bring the most delicious food and since she was expected to stay silent, she would end up taking seconds and thirds, licking the tasty gravies off her fingers after finishing the paneer and gobhi pieces.

“How will we get a good match if our daughter is fat?” Sonam wailed, and Raphael decided that he had had enough. “This is because I keep sending you to the well!” he complained, “I will go myself this time.”

“Minny”, he called out, “we need to go for a walk.”

Minny quickly deleted the chat she was having with a man who was begging her to take him back, hid her phone under the mattress of her bed, and ran out.

“Where are we going Baba?” she asked as she wore her sandals but he just gestured her to follow him.

When they reached the well, Minny asked him if their time together had come to an end.

“It has” he nodded honestly, “I want a different daughter”

Minny took off her sandals and tied up her hair before she sat on the edge of the well and turned to look at him again, “Are you sure Baba?”

“I am sure” he looked away, “I am getting sick of not having the perfect one. I want to be free from this cycle.”

“Then it shall be so” Minny declared, and used both her hands to pull her father into the well with her. They both fumbled for a few seconds and then fell in with a loud splash, drowning farther and farther down until they saw the light. That is when Raphael felt something tug at his leg and was pulled into the darkness.

When Minny came up she found herself gasping for breath, but she had succeeded in bringing ten-year-old Binny in his stead. A man was staring down at both of them.

“Take this one home” she told the child “He will be your new Baba.”

Photo of Khushi Bajaj

BIO: Khushi Bajaj (she/her) is a multilingual poet and writer from Lucknow, India. Her work has previously been published by Penguin Random House, fourteen poems, The Bombay Literary Magazine, Feminism in India, and more. She has won the international Briefly Write Poetry Prize, and been highly commended for the Disabled Poets Prize and the erbacce-prize. She is passionate about intersectional feminist politics, supporting local communities, and radical kindness.