Her Story

A mother   felt betrayed when a father fell on the landing, developed two little blood clots in his brain and sat like the torso of a fallen tree at the edge of the sofa, looking like a  pearl fisher. His grey eyes saw eternity and nothing but. He smiled sometimes when the cosmic comedy tickled a funny bone in him.  Ma’s ire was first directed at God but as Omniscience could never be put on the dock, the wrath fell on the man whose shade had been her comfort. Her eyes looked accusingly at the swaying body that had been her gateway from one world to another.

Hurt by the betrayal of this fallen tree, she fell in love, one more time, with the man who was but an inconvenience even as a new groom with sandal wood dots painted on his wide significant forehead. Stories were many and changed colors like a many splendored thing.  The wedding night and  the consternation of her bemused father as the groom refused to change into the silk dhoti that was part of the wedding repertoire  and the rejection of the  pearl ring offered to him by the  father –in-law. He does not feel comfortable in anything other than khaddar. Sorry, wearing a ring made things so much inconvenient, for he worked with chemicals.

                                                                      ****

Sheila was scared.   Of falling in love with a strangeness named husband; of following him, to a remote provincial town where he taught the intricacies of Chemistry to young strapping lads of farmers and ancient landlords.  He sang, not a little and made sketches with the burnt out coals that came out of the mud oven.  She felt a little embarrassed by her longing for a man who defied the definition of masculinity that was her bustling, roaring father with a mustache that he wore like a flag.
The singing man sensed her unease and spread his shady branches on her. There she blossomed, learned to grow roses, cook, clean and write love letters when she would be dispatched to the comforts of her father’s sprawling mansion  as the  singing man  immersed himself in undecipherable  papers and chapters  in the provincial two roomed house, balancing complex equations to prove his worth.

The green letters arrived every week bearing the village post office stamp , was smuggled  into her hands by the youngest brother whose consuming  matinee passion for Dame Suchitra Sen and Liz Taylor was supported by  his sister’s  showering silver.   Strange letters they were.  Palpitating with ardor.  Guilt, Tenderness. Sleepless nights.  “You have left a strand of your hair on the pillow, naughty girl”   “Your roses need you” “Why am I thirsty in the middle of the night?”
At first her words came halting forth. Then she wrote like a man of her own sleepless nights and her crying womb.  She wanted to go home.  Was he eating well? Was the newly appointed cook following her instructions? Was it raining there?
*****
Blasphemy and Reconstruction. A pile of faded green letters wrapped in a wedding veil, hidden discreetly at the bottom of a pile of sarees in a wooden wardrobe.  A curious daughter found them. Read a few, blushed and put them away.  A strange, unsavory revelation: Fathers kissed.  Mothers were women.

The letters formed a backdrop to why a woman was angry with the trunk of a tree with no leaves and no shade. The swaying trunk took away from her what she thought was hers by right: to be the queen that she was not, the artist’s model that she was not born to be. Her pride of being the centre of a universe even when she wore her glasses and marked student papers, and even when…

                                                                        ***

 Every story begs a preamble.
Jacob married sisters Rachel and Leah, sayeth The Bible.

Leah had six sons and a daughter, but the Lord had closed Rachel’s womb. Rachel tried everything she could think of to have children.

Sheila did the same.

Sheila was Rachel.

Once in anguish, Rachel cried out to Jacob, “Give me children, or else I die”

Sheila did the same…

Until the Lord opened her womb that Rachel bore Joseph and Benjamin.

 Rachel was Sheila.

Sheila’s womb was closed too. She wept.

The tree had whispered it mattered not. The nights would still be resplendent with or without a child.  And her womb had opened, and a daughter had tumbled forth to steal her letters.

Sheila felt betrayed by the pearl fisher. She glared. The daughter knew why. For fathers kissed and mothers were women. And green letters from the village Post office got lost.  Sheila was Rachel and Jacob turned into a trunk or a pearl fisher. That is why.

A story should not read like a poem
A man should not turn into a dead trunk
Daughters should not read stolen letters

 

                                                             ***

    A mother’s story should not read like a poem and must not be frozen in time; first he was moved to a different room and a bed that was hemmed in by bottles with strange liquids and pills and served as a throne where the man behaved like an exiled king. Dismissive-generous-smiling-nodding with occasional flashes; Startling, when he rattled off phone numbers, bank accounts and then would go back to his worry free smiling ways. Sometimes he would be a second Lear: “Pray do not mock me…” but sometimes he sang Tagore in his crumbly voice: Take from me O Lord, all that I have… and Ma would beam and ask him to sing some more. When he refused like a difficult child, she played with him.

Eeny, meeny, miny, moe,
Catch a tiger by the toe.
If he hollers, let him go,
Eeny, meeny, miny, moe.

He liked it first; then he stopped. That was the second betrayal. So she let him go and became a grey angry woman outraged by the hole the singing man left in the bed.
-“Where is Baba’s wedding dhoti”, Ma? : (a daughter fresh off the aircraft, rummaging through his things)
– “I wrapped him in it, he should wear it at least once! didn’t do the sandal wood thing. Forgot the Geeta; he didn’t care much for it anyway, but…  not the Manifesto… he wouldn’t forgive me if I missed that!”

A daughter understood, for she had stolen the letters. She knew Sheila wasn’t scared anymore.