Half of Nita | Chapter 1 | The Trapped Beast
On weekends, the National Gallery felt less like a museum and more like a crowded bazaar.
Nita sat on a wooden chair against the wall, staring down the long corridor at George Stubbs’s Whistlejacket, a painting of a horse. She still couldn’t understand how anyone could name a horse “Whistlejacket.”
The chestnut horse in the painting leapt forward on its front legs, with no rider on its back and no background at all. The horse seemed trapped by the doorframes of each gallery room, unable to break free.
Every time she looked at it, a wave of uneasy tension rose in Nita’s chest. Yet her daily work was to sit in the same spot, staring at the horse while keeping visitors’ hands away from paintings far older than any of them, and blocking the flash from their cameras.
“It’s a good job. For an Indian girl like you, the National Gallery couldn’t be better.” That was how her grandmother, Nakusa, would describe her job.
Nakusa often said that living in Britain did not mean forgetting the Ganges, nor being afraid of white people; one should always be proud of being Indian. Even so, beneath her words lingered an unspoken reminder that in a society as open as Britain claimed to be, a subtler form of caste was still ingrained in certain minds.
But Nita did not think of herself as Indian. She was only half Indian — the daughter of an Indian mother and an English father. Still, she disliked the word “half.”
In third grade, a classmate named Charlie — a red-haired boy with freckles scattered across his face — called her “dirty coffee.” She did not like the way he said it, so she punched him. No — twice.
The first time, her father came to school. Her teacher, Mr. Myers, told him, “Could you teach your daughter some discipline, please?”
The second time, her mother came. This time Mr. Myers said, “Please teach your Indian daughter some discipline.”
“Don’t disgrace your blood.” That was all her mother said to her that day before refusing to speak to her.
Nita stopped causing trouble after that. Perhaps the main reason was that Charlie no longer dared to call her “dirty coffee.”
A burst of white light flickered to Nita’s left. A blond boy, no more than ten, was pointing a camera at a painting three times his height.
“Hey! No flash,” Nita said, stepping forward. The boy scampered off.
Nita would have wagered that he only wanted to test the camera’s function. What could a child that age possibly understand about art? Then again, her sixty-year-old father, Carl, who worked in finance, probably did not understand it either.
“If a horse can hang in the National Gallery, my daughter graduated top of her class from art school — even if you painted a dog, it could hang there too,” Carl said, glancing around her workspace. It was only the second time he had ever been to the National Gallery; the first had been on a school trip when he was in secondary school.
She had never believed that her father truly tried to understand her paintings. So whenever Carl praised her work, it made her deeply uneasy. The feeling only grew stronger as she gradually found herself unable to complete a painting.
“Do you remember that painting from your graduation exhibition — the one that sold for twenty thousand pounds? It’s still hanging in the Stanleys’ foyer. Every time I walk into their house, the first thing I see is that boy you painted.”
Carl brought it up suddenly last month, during one of their rare family dinners out.
Nita had been in a good mood, but his words cooled it at once. She could not help replying with a trace of sarcasm.
“Wasn’t that ages ago? In the foyer? I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d moved it to the bathroom by now.”
“It’s in the foyer. Every guest who walks in sees your boy. Isn’t that a good thing?”
Carl frowned. A few drops of gravy dripped from his fork onto the white tablecloth, spreading slowly into a large brown stain.
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The painting showed an Indian boy standing on his tiptoes, his hands resting on the edge of the table as he craned his neck to look at at the cream cake before him.
Across from the boy at the table sat a white little girl. Her golden curls were tied with a blue ribbon, and she wore a white lace dress, white stockings, and black leather shoes, her small feet swinging beneath the table.
In the background, an Indian woman stood in the kitchen with her back to the viewer.
Nita still remembered how her mother Kareena’s face had gone pale with anger when she saw the painting at the graduation exhibition.
“Nita, tell me what this painting means! How could you paint something so racist?”
Kareena’s eyes were wide, and she hurriedly dragged Nita to a corner to demand an explanation.
You’re Indian — how could you ridicule your own heritage? Nita knew exactly what her mother meant.
“It’s just a painting. It doesn’t represent my views. Why make such a fuss?”
“I’m trying to protect you! How is that fussing? Think about how they’ll see you… what would your Nani think?”
“Nani wouldn’t read into things as much as you do.”
Nita rolled her eyes irritably and turned back toward the painting. There, her grandmother Nakusa stood beside her father, studying it.
Nita glanced back at her mother, then walked back toward the painting.
“Nani.” She gently tugged at Nakusa’s sleeve. Nani meant grandmother in Hindi; Nakusa had taught her the word when she was little.
“Oh, Nita, this painting is beautiful. It reminds me of the days I worked for the Taylors when I was young.” Nakusa’s gaze returned to the painting, settling on the woman’s back in the kitchen. Her expression grew quiet, as if she had drifted into memories from a distant time.
Footsteps sounded behind them. Nita turned her head. Kareena stood a few steps away, arms folded, her face set in a rigid expression. Nani didn’t mind it at all, so why was she so angry? Nita couldn’t quite understand why her mother was so dissatisfied.
“Nita, are you free after work?”
A shadow fell across her with the greeting. Nita looked up. Vincent, the youngest son of the Stanley family, stood before her, hands in his pockets, his posture loose and careless
Nita remembered the day of the graduation exhibition. Her painting had sold for twenty thousand pounds; a small red “sold” sticker had just been placed beside the boy in the painting.
Not long after, another painting was sold for an even higher price — Vincent Stanley’s.
It showed a homeless man feeding a dog a fast-food hamburger in a nighttime street scene, and it was bought for fifty thousand pounds by one of the Stanley family’s business partners.
First buying the top graduate’s painting for twenty thousand pounds, then prompting his partner to purchase his son’s work for far more.
Who understood business — the art of self-promotion — better than Stanley?
