CHAPTER NO 15

CHAPTER NO 15

When they had settled in the new flat, Feroza found out about her roommate’s social life. She came to know  that Jo picked up people without distinction and socialized with them for wine and other activities. Jo’s extraordinary capacity for expletives, which matched her other appetites, soon , had Feroza saying “shit” and “asshole”  with and abandon that epitomized for her the heady reality of her being abroad, away from home, and even it she knew it was an illusion, a sense of control over her actions. Another reason for Jo’s move to an apartment was her delight in cooking. She cooked a lot ate a lot, and was generous in sharing. Feroza, as sampler of the culinary artistry Jo had acquired from her parents and various restaurant cooks, discovered that pot roasts and meat loaves with vegetables and gravy were as  good as anything she could get out of a can and a welcome supplement to her steady diet of sardines, baked beans, and sausages. They liked cooking and stuff like that. Jo was moody, changeable, her persona governed by an interval orbit of its own, which complete its mysterious cycle once every two weeks. Once they quarreled over the cat incident which had sheltered into room and was attacked by the raging Jo. In the morning, they were awakened by the most heart-rending mewing, and Feroza rushed to the door to let her cat in. His fur sticking out in icy tufts, his slashing tail and plaintive cries cataloging his complaints, Kim entered awkwardly, with what appeared to be a limp. He saw Jo and, like a ginger comet, streaked into Feroza’s room.

            After that cat was in Feroza’s and was committed to her care alone. They named the cat Kim or Kimy or sometimes to called her Katty. Kim was an affectionate little  stray who liked company and snuggled, purring, on Feroza’s lap every chance he got. He also had a habit of mewing and yowling dismally in Feroza’s absence, even though a window was kept slightly open for him to go out. Feroza gradually discovered that Jo had an unexpected conservative side to her personality as well. It was a different genre of conservatism, and it took Feroza a while to catch on that whereas the shortest skirts were permissible by her standards, a strapless dress was not. Otherwise Jo wore the standard ali-American uniform:  jeans and in her case oversized,  T-shirts and sweaters. After school, Feroza sat glumly in front of the TV nursing her broken heart and her grandmothers, her parents, their friends, her friends, her ayah, the incessant chatter of her cousins, and even the raucous chorus of the Main Market mullahs on Friday afternoons. She became unbearably homesick and