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He stormed impotently at her while she pranced elegantly on her aunt’s makeshift tennis court during one of her lessons, her precise strokes cruelly making her plump teacher race breathlessly from one side to another.
“Baba, you’re being silly. Just get one of these monkeys to read out some bits to me, and I’ll memorize them. It’s easy,” Henna said calmly, swinging her backhand return dangerously close to his ear; “monkeys” was the disrespectful term which she used for her long-suffering gaggle of tutors. She was enjoying the charade, the pretty new clothes, the make-up, the dissembling; she even looked forward to the prospect of learning lines from the Shakespearean sonnets her Baba had brought. It was like she was an actress already.
(Bitter Sweets © Roopa Farooki 2007,
first published 2007 by Pan Macmillan)
“Baba, you’re being silly. Just get one of these monkeys to read out some bits to me, and I’ll memorize them. It’s easy,” Henna said calmly, swinging her backhand return dangerously close to his ear; “monkeys” was the disrespectful term which she used for her long-suffering gaggle of tutors. She was enjoying the charade, the pretty new clothes, the make-up, the dissembling; she even looked forward to the prospect of learning lines from the Shakespearean sonnets her Baba had brought. It was like she was an actress already.
(Bitter Sweets © Roopa Farooki 2007,
first published 2007 by Pan Macmillan)