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The moment she stepped onto the train that morning, Katli knew she wouldn’t be going to school. She had set out – like every Thursday – in her chequered uniform with her backpack full of schoolbooks, intending to get to school. But, like every other Thursday morning, when she’d entered the train and stood in her usual spot by the door with her backpack between her feet, a deep crushing feeling had come over her. A feeling that said, “This day is too beautiful to be experienced from inside a classroom. Stay out, explore, enjoy!”
Katli was convinced. Who was she to argue with such inspiring feelings anyway? she asked herself, as the train stopped at Sector A–B/7 station.
The train track was the lifeline of Thutta Island. It ran through the heart of the tooth-shaped landmass, connecting crown to root. There were fewer than four trainfuls of people on the island, and a train went back and forth every eight minutes. If you didn’t take the train, you went on foot. There was no third way to get from one place to another. That wasn’t saying much, though. No matter where you were on the island, you were never more than a ten-minute walk from a train station.
The thirty-seven-kilometre length of Thutta was littered with stations. And the width (five kilometres at one end, half on the other) was walkable by the entire population of 5,120.
Katli was wondering whether camping out in the field beyond the library was the best use of her time when a cat entered the train. That was odd. Cats didn’t take trains. Their modes of travel were walking and dreaming. In fact, the only other time Katli had seen a cat on the train was when Shipra, the Sector F Invigilator, was cat-sitting for her sister. The white kitten had been glued to Shipra’s lap and the only interaction he’d had with his fellow passengers had been a series of shy yawns.
This cat was nothing like that one. She strode in as if she owned the place. She walked up to Hasan, the theatre owner, and sat down decisively on his bag.
I’d like to be a cat, Katli said to herself. I would be likeable but aloof, and no one would object if I displayed an utter disregard for social acceptance. So, for the rest of the day, Katli decided to be a cat. Specifically, the cat she was looking at.
When the train stopped at Sector C–D/3, the cat abruptly stood up and walked out. Three seconds later, so did Katli.
The girl who walked out of the train was Katli Three. (Katli Three would impulsively follow a cat instead of going to school. Katli Two would have been mortified at the thought of breaking rules, no matter how beautiful a day it had been.)
Katli was made up of, at last count, seven Katlis. Once, when she was eight, Katli was supposed to meet her grandparents, but she was in no mood to do anything other than sit in a corner and stare out of a window. Her father had bent low so his eyes were level with hers, and said, “If you don’t want to do this, pretend to be someone who does. It’s simple.” And it had been!
It was the advice Katli hadn’t realised she’d been waiting for her entire life. She’d always felt like many different people rolled into one; she never knew what opinions were her own or which were ones she’d adopted to agree with someone so they’d like her. Everyone always seemed consistent with their personality traits – her mother was forthright and bookish, her father was kind and active, her friend Abhay was helpful and positive – but Katli struggled to find words to describe herself.
Was she shy? she’d ask herself, and immediately she would remember times when she’d heroically carried on conversations with people who only responded with stiff two-word phrases. Was she outdoorsy? Sure, except for all those days when she had spent so long inside her room that the sunlight hurt her eyes. It felt like there was a series of switches inside her that kept changing what mode of human being she was on a particular day.
So, when her father told her to “pretend to be someone who does”, she took it as an opportunity to be in charge of all those switches. Katli One had come into existence that day. She was a perfectly happy girl who enjoyed raisins in kheer (just the way her grandfather used to make it) and loved to talk about school.
Katli Five was observant and curious and had been created when Katli needed to figure out why her father had stopped making tea. (He’d been sulking because her mother had pointed out that the tea tasted weird – even though it had been because he’d accidentally used coconut water instead of regular water.)
At first, she’d just switch to a different Katli when required, depending on what the situation demanded. Increasingly, though, she had begun picking a Katli at the beginning of the day, much as she picked an outfit. Some days, she’d even wake up feeling like a particular Katli and would have to go along with it.
The Katlis made life so much easier for her. She always took the shape that any situation needed and so she always fit in perfectly. She knew what to say or how to feel in a given situation – where Katli herself might have been conflicted, each of her individual selves had clear opinions and points of view. Being a particular Katli also helped her avoid conflict and left little scope for her to be disliked.
The most recent Katli was Katli Seven, who she had switched to for a school picnic two days earlier. Katli Seven loved risks – like eating in the open where a crow could make off with your poori. She loved group games and thought ant-bite splotches looked cool.
Excerpted with permission from An Absence of Squirrels, Aparna Kapur, Duckbill.
This article first appeared on Scroll.in
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