The ruler became Nusswan’s instrument of choice in his quest for discipline. His clothes were the most frequent cause of Dina’s punishment. After washing, ironing, and folding them, she had to stack four separate piles in his cupboard: white shirts, coloured shirts, white trousers, coloured trousers. Sometimes she would strategically place a pinstriped shirt with the whites, or liberate a pair of pants with a hound’s-tooth check among the white trousers. Despite the beatings, she never tired of provoking him.
“The way she behaves, I feel that Sataan himself has taken refuge in her heart,” he said wearily to the relatives who asked for updates. “Maybe I should just pack her off to a boarding school.”
“No, no, don’t take that drastic step,” they pleaded. “Boarding school has been the ruination of many Parsi girls. Rest assured, God will repay you for your patience and devotion. And Dina will also thank you when she is old enough to understand it’s for her own good.” They went away murmuring the man was a saint — every girl should be fortunate enough to have a brother like Nusswan.
His spirit restored by their encouragement, Nusswan persevered. He bought all of Dina’s clothes, deciding what was appropriate for a young girl. The purchases were usually ill-fitting, for she was not allowed to be present while he shopped. “I don’t want tiresome arguments in the shopkeeper’s presence,” he said. “You always embarrass me.” When she needed new uniforms, he went to school with her on the day the tailors were coming, to supervise the measurements. He quizzed the tailors about rates and fabrics, trying to work out the principal’s kickbacks. Dina dreaded this annual event, wondering what new mortification would be visited upon her before her classmates.
All her friends were now wearing their hair short, and she begged to be allowed the same privilege. “If you let me cut my hair, I’ll swab the dining room every day instead of alternate days,” she tried to bargain. “Or I can polish your shoes every night.”
“No,” said Nusswan. “Fourteen is too young for fancy hairstyles, plaits are good for you. Besides, I cannot afford to pay for the hairdresser.” But he promptly added shoe-polishing to her list of chores.
A week after her final appeal, with the help of Zenobia in the school bathroom, Dina lopped off the plaits. Zenobia’s ambition was to be a hairstylist, and she was overwhelmed by the good fortune that delivered her friend’s head into her hands. “Let’s cut off the whole jing-bang lot,” she said. “Let’s bob it really short.”
“Are you crazy?” said Dina. “Nusswan will jump over the moon.” So they settled for a pageboy, and Zenobia trimmed the hair to roughly an inch above the shoulders. It looked a bit ragged, but both girls were delighted with the results.
Dina hesitated about throwing the severed plaits in the dustbin. She put them in her satchel and raced home. Parading proudly about the house, she went repeatedly past the many mirrors to catch glimpses of her head from different angles. Then she visited her mother’s room and waited — for her surprise, or delight, or something. But Mrs. Shroff noticed nothing.
“Do you like my new hairstyle, Mummy?” she asked at last.
Mrs. Shroff stared blankly for a moment. “Very pretty, my daughter, very pretty.”
Nusswan got home late that evening. He greeted his mother, and said there had been so much work at the office. Then he saw Dina. He took a deep breath and put a hand to his forehead. Exhausted, he wished there was some way to deal with this without another fight. But her insolence, her defiance, could not go unpunished; or how would he look himself in the mirror?
“Please come here, Dina. Explain why you have disobeyed me.”
She scratched her neck where tiny hair clippings were making her skin itch. “How did I disobey you?”
He slapped her. “Don’t question me when I ask you something.”
“You said you couldn’t afford my haircut. This was free, I did it myself.”
He slapped her again. “No back talk, I’m warning you.” He got the ruler and struck her with it flat across the palms, then, because he deemed the offence extremely serious, with the edge over her knuckles. “This will teach you to look like a loose woman.”
“Have you seen your hair in the mirror? You look like a clown,” she said, refusing to be intimidated.
Nusswan’s haircut, in his own opinion, was a statement of dignified elegance. He wore a centre parting, imposing order on either side of it with judicious applications of heavy pomade. Dina’s taunt unleashed the fury of the disciplinarian. With lashes of the ruler across her calves and arms, he drove her to the bathroom, where he began tearing off her clothes.
“I don’t want another word from you! Not a word! Today you have crossed the limit! Take a bath first, you polluted creature! Wash off those hair clippings before you spread them around the house and bring misfortune upon us!”
“Don’t worry, your face will frighten away any misfortune.” She was standing naked on the tiles now, but he did not leave. “I need hot water,” she said.
He stepped back and flung a mugful of cold water at her from the bucket. Shivering, she stared defiantly at him, her nipples stiffening. He pinched one, hard, and she flinched. “Look at you with your little breasts starting to grow. You think you are a woman already. I should cut them right off, along with your wicked tongue.”
He was eyeing her strangely, and she grew afraid. She understood that her sharp answers were enraging him, that it was vaguely linked to the way he was staring at the newfledged bloom of hair where her legs met. It would be safer to seem submissive, to douse his anger. She turned away and started to cry, her hands over her face.
Satisfied, he left. Her school satchel, lying on her bed, drew his attention. He opened it for a random inspection and found the plaits sitting on top. Dangling one between thumb and forefinger, he gritted his teeth before a smile slowly eased his angry features.
When Dina had finished her bath, he fetched a roll of black electrical tape and fastened the plaits to her hair. “You will wear them like this,” he said. “Every day, even to school, till your hair has grown back.”
She wished she had thrown the wretched things away in the school toilet. It felt like dead rats were hanging from her head.
Next morning, she secretly took the roll of tape to school. The plaits were pulled off before going to class. It was painful, with the black tape clutching hard. When school was over, she fixed them back with Zenobia’s help. In this way she evaded Nusswan’s punishment on weekdays.
But a few days later riots started in the city, in the wake of Partition and the British departure, and Dina was stuck at home with Nusswan. There were day-and-night curfews in every neighbourhood. Offices, businesses, colleges, schools, all stayed closed, and there was no respite from the detested plaits. He allowed her to remove them only while bathing, and supervised their reattachment immediately after.
Cooped up inside the flat, Nusswan lamented the country’s calamity, grumbling endlessly. “Every day I sit at home, I lose money. These bloody uncultured savages don’t deserve independence. If they must hack one another to death, I wish they would go somewhere else and do it quietly. In their villages, maybe. Without disturbing our lovely city by the sea.”
When the curfew was lifted, Dina flew off to school, happy as an uncaged bird, eager for her eight hours of Nusswan-less existence. And he, too, was relieved to return to his office. On the first evening of normalcy in the city, he came home in a most cheerful mood. “The curfew is over, and your punishment is over. We can throw away your plaits now,” he said, adding generously, “You know, short hair does suit you.”
He opened his briefcase and took out a new hairband. “You can wear this now instead of electrical tape,” he joked.