Free Kalpana's Dream by Judith Clarke Page A

She looks nice, don’t you think? I reckon she might make a really good friend for you.’
    Did Gull Oliver remember her from then? All red and hot and weepy, sticky . . .
    Neema jumped up and went to look at herself in the big mirror on the wardrobe door. The mirror showed a slender, long-legged girl, whose perfect oval face, with its large lustrous eyes, was framed by a cloud of soft dark shining hair.
    Neema didn’t see these lovely things. Her eyes were focused on what she hated most: her big knobbly ugly grotty sticking-out knees, so big they were like nasty bony faces, jeering out at her. Dad said they weren’t ugly, of course; and Mum kept on saying her legs would grow into them, very soon. Neema didn’t believe them . . .
    ‘Neema?’ Her mum peered round the door. ‘Can you help Nani with the washing-up?’
    ‘I’ve got all this homework. I’ve got this essay, Mum.’
    And that was true. Ms Dallimore’s essay – or was it Count Dracula’s? – still lay untouched on the furthest corner of Neema’s desk.
    ‘Come on, now. It’ll only take five minutes. I offered to help, but Nani wouldn’t let me – it’s you she really wants.’
    Dad’s voice sounded from the hall. ‘She wants her only great-granddaugher, the beautiful Nirmolini, ’ his voice took on those Bible tones, ‘whose name is like perfume poured out–’
    Neema went downstairs.

    Kalpana loved everything about her Nirmolini. She loved her hands, so busy with the tea-towel, square hands, a little like her own; she loved the way her hair grew, like Raj’s had, in a springy arc from her broad forehead; she loved her strong young legs and the delicate ankles above the sturdy flying shoes.
    She would buy those flying shoes in the window of the sports store, decided Kalpana. She’d buy them tomorrow, when she went out with Priya, and she’d get the purple ones for Sumati, too. Even if Priya laughed and said they were too old for flying shoes. Even if Priya was in a hurry and impatient, and Priya would be, because she was so like Usha. Usha had been rushy and impatient even when she was a little child. On summer evenings Kalpana and Sumati would go to the river; they did nothing there; they simply sat, dreamily watching the sky, or the water flowing by. Usha had hated that: ten minutes by the river and she wanted to rush away. And Priya had been just the same, when she’d visited on holidays.
    Nirmolini was different, thought Kalpana. Nirmolini would sit by the river with them. Hadn’t she done so, when she was a tiny child? Sat between her and Sumati, quietly, gazing up at the wide blue sky?
    How small and delicate Nani was, thought Neema, and how gracefully she moved. Standing beside her, Neema felt big and gawky, like the picture in that storybook she’d had when she was little – the one of the princess and her great big genie slave. There were no photographs of Nani when she was young, but Gran said she’d been very beautiful and you could see a little bit of it even now, if you imagined the wrinkles away and changed the white hair to black. You could see it in the fine heart-shape of her face and the softness of her eyes. Neema’s mum was beautiful too, and on the bookshelf in her study there was a framed photograph of a lovely, gentle-looking girl that Neema often took down to examine, because who could believe that sweet-faced girl was her stern headmistress gran?
    Nani was looking at her, Neema noticed as she dried the dishes, studying her face in that way she had: gravely, carefully. Perhaps she was thinking, as Neema was herself, that her great-granddaughter was the plain one of the family. Nani’s gaze drifted downwards, and Neema wished she wasn’t wearing shorts, because Nani was staring at her knobbly knees, and then at her new white air-soled runners, which made her feet look big. Nani probably disapproved of runners; old people often did.
    Neema sighed and counted the cups and dishes on the sink; there weren’t many