The Private Life of Mrs Sharma

by Ratika Kapur

  I know that I sound like just another mother gone mad with foolish fantasies about her son. But the truth is that my Bobby has everything that is required to be that picture. I don’t like to boast, but the truth is that my Bobby has all the brains to get admission into an IIM for his MBA, and he is also six feet tall and has a handsome face, and his skin is so fair that in winter his cheeks glow pink. All that he has to do is forget about all those stupid cooking shows and recipe books, and apply himself a little bit more to his studies, and he has to stop slouching and fix his posture, and get his hair cut more regularly and shave at least one or two times a week. Then the whole world will see. That day he made a mistake, yes, but all young people make mistakes these days. But he also learnt his lesson, and I made very, very sure that he did, and one day, mark my words, one day my Bobby will be more than that man in the Raymond advertisement.

  8

  Sunday, 12 June 2011

  The anger was not going away. I tried my level best to push it to one side, to swallow it, to dissolve it in prayers, everything, but wherever I went it followed me. Wherever I went this anger followed me, pulling on my sari pallu like some needy child. The picture of my Bobby and the two dying boys was not going away. Each and every time I closed my eyes, each and every time I blinked, that picture appeared. I had to know what happened. I had to get my hands on the animal that sold that poison to three young boys, the animal that almost killed two young schoolboys and maybe almost killed my Bobby. I had to get my fingers around that animal’s neck. But Bobby refused to tell me anything. All this time he has refused to say anything at all about that day. He has not even allowed me to meet the parents of the other boys. But I had to know. I had to come face to face with that animal. Then this morning, after begging him and threatening him for days and days, Bobby finally agreed to show me the shop from where they had bought the alcohol, but only if I allowed him to come with me. Obviously I had wanted to go alone. I did not want Bobby to see his mother be the animal that she had to be in front of another animal. But he would not listen, even though I tried my level best to convince him. That place is too dangerous, he kept saying. That place is too shady. You can’t go there alone. So, I agreed to allow him to come with me.

  It seems that evil lives closer to you than you would suspect it to. It seems that evil is even easier to buy than bananas. The shop from which Bobby and his friends bought the alcohol was closer to my house than the fruit seller that I go to every evening. And Bobby was right. It was well and truly a very shady place. From outside it looked like any workshop, a small, little shed filled with towers of old and new tyres, and there were small, little dirty boys loitering around. It looked like the type of place you went to to get a puncture repaired. But behind this shed was a small room, and I only call it a room because it had four walls and a ceiling, and as soon as I entered this small, dark and dirty room, or hole, or whatever you want to call it, as soon as I stepped into it, I wanted to vomit. I actually retched. There was the most horrible smell, a smell worse than anything that I had smelt before, a smell of kerosene and shit and chemicals all mixed together. And in every corner, on every shelf, there were packets and packets of what looked like powdered masalas, but were drugs, surely, packets and packets of them just sitting there openly on the shelves along with hundreds of bottles, small, little glass bottles, filled with a urine-coloured liquid that must have been the cheap country liquor that my Bobby had drunk. I quickly did some deep breathing. Then, in my strictest voice, I told Bobby to wait outside, but he just stood behind me and refused to move. I looked up at a picture of Ganeshji above the door to steady myself.

  I had thought that I would see a fat old man with a fat stomach in a vest and pyjamas, with henna-coloured hair and paan-stained teeth. That is what TV does to you. But instead of that what stood in front of me was a slim man who seemed to be about my husband’s age, dressed in a baby pink shirt and grey pants, a balding man with metal-framed spectacles, who only had to wear a white coat to look like a lab technician in a doctor’s office. I looked up at Ganeshji again, and then I turned to the man and spat on his face.

  Bobby, who was standing behind me, caught my hand. I shook him off. And the man standing in front of me? He just took a folded white handkerchief out of the pocket of his pants, unfolded it, gently wiped my spit off his chin, folded it again and put it on the counter. Then he smiled.

  Madamji, he said, looking not actually at me, but at some point behind me, at my son maybe. Madamji, what can I do for you?

  I could not speak.

  Madamji, you won’t find what you are looking for over here.

  I turned to Bobby, who looked like he was just going to cry, then I turned back to the man.

  Madamji, he said, now looking up at Ganeshji’s picture. Madamji, as a mother you pay not only for your own sins, but also for the sins of your child. And then he just left the room.

  I tried my level best to stand steady, I closed my eyes and tried to do some deep breathing again, but all that I breathed in was that horrible, horrible smell of chemicals and shit. I turned again to Bobby. His eyes were now filled with tears.

  When we walked out of the shop I felt the June sun attack my bones. It seemed that the anger that I had felt all these days had slowly burnt through my skin, burnt through my flesh, so that the June sun could attack my bare bones directly. Now, thirteen hours after the visit to that shop, my bones still feel that same heat.

  As a mother you not only pay for your own sins, but you also pay for the sins of your child. How dare he say such things? How dare such an animal say such things? What does a criminal know about being a mother? What does a man know about being a mother? And what do they even mean, those stupid words? How can one person pay for the sins committed by another person? And why only the mother? Sharma Sahib, where are you? You were supposed to spend a month with us every year. Come back just now! Come back and take control of your son. Come back and pay for his sins. But what do you even know of your son’s sins? Oh, my Bobby, you say. Oh, my poor Bobby. Oh, my sweet and studious Bobby. What do you know of your sinful son?

  Many times when I am walking in the market or standing in a crowded train compartment, basically, whenever I am surrounded by a lot of people, I think about how each and every one of these people has or has had a mother, and then I think of all the hours, all the days and nights, all the years that are spent looking after children, and it seems that my head is going to burst. Such a lot of time! Such a lot of care! I wonder if anybody has ever bothered to think that if there are six billion people on this earth, and each and every one of them has a mother, dead or alive, what the total time spent would be on caring for others, on caring and compromise and sacrifice. I am sure that if anybody actually bothered to make such a calculation, that person’s head would also burst.

  Obviously there are those mothers who have easy lives. There are those mothers like my mother who were let off from their duties very early or mothers like Doctor Sahib’s wife, modern maharanis, who have one ayah to feed their children, one ayah to clean their noses, one ayah to clean their shit, and what not. But then that is how the world is.

  It is night-time. Papaji and Mummyji are sleeping in the hall, and Bobby is sleeping here in the corner on his cot, his headphones still in his ears, a cookbook resting on the pillow next to his cheek. You have to see this boy, this tall, beautiful boy. This man, almost. He would make any mother’s heart burst with pride.

  But what am I saying? Am I so stupid a woman that I could forget so quickly that this is the boy who betrayed his mother, who brought shame to her? Have I forgotten that this is the boy who drank? It is night-time again, and again sleep will not come to me. Maybe now I have met the man who has blood on his hands. Maybe now I know the face of evil. I stood in front of it and spat on it. But then what? I still can’t close my eyes. You won’t find what you are looking for over here. That is what he said. And the truth is that what he said was right.

  When I came back
home from that man’s shop I prayed. Except for preparing lunch and dinner, the only thing that I did today was pray. I prayed and I prayed and I prayed. I prayed until Mummyji came into the prayer room, and actually caught my shoulders and shook me, and asked me if I was fine. I prayed, but nothing. No answers, no peace, no peace that comes from answers. It seems that God was also saying one and the same thing to me. It seems that He was also saying, Madamji, you won’t find what you are looking for over here.

  But was it actually a sin that my Bobby committed? Is drinking such a sin? On Friday, when I met Doctor Sahib at the clinic, one thought came to me, the thought that if Doctor Sahib drinks alcohol, and I know that he does because his bearer had told me a long time ago about how his sahib drinks two glasses of whiskey every evening without fail and from time to time even the memsahib does, so if Doctor Sahib, who is such a respectable man, drinks, then why is it such a bad thing if my Bobby did? Should I have become so angry? Obviously Bobby is just a child, and he drank some cheap country liquor that almost killed him, not the imported whiskey that Doctor Sahib enjoys. Still, was it a sin or just a child’s mistake?

  God help me. What am I thinking?

  I am not fine, Mummyji, I am not fine. Shake me up again. You are a mother, Mummyji. Only a mother can know the suffering of another mother. Help your daughter-in-law, Mummyji. She has gone mad. Tell your son to come back. You say that every boy has to have his father near him. Mummyji, every woman also has to have her husband near her.

  9

  Monday, 13 June 2011

  Sometimes the goddess of night can be kind. Sometimes she will sit by your bed and rub away all those big and small fears that trouble you with the lamp-black of night-time, until they cannot be seen any more, so that maybe you can wake up strong the next morning.

  Yesterday was a little bit difficult, I can’t lie about that, but today has been much better. Except when I had a small fight on the phone with the mechanic who has still not come to fix the washing machine, and I have been calling him up daily for two weeks now, except for those two or three minutes in the morning, I have felt peaceful. Everything will be fine. I know it. Actually, I have always known it. Yesterday I behaved a little bit oddly, but it was only because I had temporarily forgotten this important fact. I think that you can forgive me. From time to time even people who are normally quite strong can feel that they have been beaten a little bit. Still, as I just said, it will all be fine. In less than two weeks my in-laws will leave for Canada for the birth of their grandchild, and they will only come back in October, which will give me enough time alone with Bobby to fix his life. And in only seventy-nine days’ time my husband will be back in Delhi for his annual leave, and it will be just the three of us again. It will all be fine.

  I have decided that I am going to buy Bobby a suit. I think that he has to have a suit, a smart two-piece suit. It will be good for him.

  I have not gone mad. See, why is it that men wear suits to the office? Why is it a rule in government offices and big companies that all the employees have to dress properly? The reason is simple. The clothes that you wear every morning control how you think about yourself and how the world thinks about you. I have even seen this with myself. When I wear a smart, nicely starched sari to the clinic, I feel strong and important, I feel in control of all things and all people around me. I have even seen that the nurses, the cleaners, the lab assistants and technicians also give me a particular type of respect that I normally don’t get when I am wearing a churidar kurta.

  See, wearing a suit will help Bobby. Just now he is going through a difficult time, and the truth is that all teenagers go through these types of phases. But wearing a suit will give him a type of confidence that he does not have. Maybe it will also make him more disciplined. Not even ten or fifteen years ago, each and every school required boys to wear a blazer and tie as part of the school uniform. And how smart and confident the boys used to be. I remember so clearly seeing them waiting for their school buses on winter mornings, blazers and ties, shirts always tucked in properly, hair combed with a nice side parting. But that is all changing now. In my son’s school, for example, the children now just wear these sweatshirts with hoods in winter, sweatshirts that are at least two sizes too big for them, with hoods. The smart blue blazer and striped tie are all gone. It is very sad to see today’s schoolboys. The hair is never combed, the shirts are hanging out and their pants are so loose that half the time you can see their underwear. And are the girls any better? They shorten the hems of their skirts and roll their socks down to their ankles, and all around all you see are legs, naked legs. Don’t school principals and all those important people in the Education ministry see how this affects children? Untidy dressing makes untidy minds. But I know that when my Bobby puts on the suit that I buy him, he will come to know something about what it feels like to be an important person, to be a powerful executive in a multinational company or an international bank.

  Obviously I will have to lie to Bobby and tell him that I have bought the suit for a family wedding, because last year when I bought him a tie, he became very angry with me. I had bought it just like that, and that is the truth. I was walking around in Sarojini Nagar market, trying to buy socks for him, when I saw a beautiful silk tie with red paisleys in a showroom window, and it was on sale, and I thought that Bobby would look so handsome wearing it, and so I bought it. But what can I say? What is this? he shouted. No, he did not actually shout because Bobby is a good boy who does not raise his voice, especially not at his mother, but, What is this? he said, throwing the tie on the bed and looking at me like I had committed some big crime. Why did you buy this? What are you doing to me? What do you want from me? I was quite shocked by his reaction, but you know how boys of his age can be, and so I kept quiet. Still, my Bobby did wear it one time, in December, at my husband’s cousin’s wedding, and he looked even more handsome than I had imagined. Actually, he looked just like his father in the early days.

  Maybe I should talk a little bit about my husband in his early days, about how handsome he was, how smart and handsome he was. It is not that my husband is not handsome now, but then, when he was younger, there was that special type of handsomeness, the boyish type of handsomeness that shines. I remember so clearly the first time I saw him. It was almost eighteen years ago, in December 1993. Still, I can see him so clearly in a light yellow shirt and navy-blue pleated pants, sitting on the divan in my father’s house in Meerut, his hands fair and clean resting on his knees. He had come with his parents and sisters to meet me. And I remember how surprised I was that he was handsome. I knew that he would be a respectable boy, because my father would never ever have allowed him to put even one foot into our home if he was not a respectable boy hailing from a respectable family, but handsome? I did not expect any type of handsomeness. I had always thought that good looks and goodness don’t come in the same package. I was wrong. Even our neighbour Jyoti Aunty used to tease me about how handsome my husband was. She thought that he looked like a film hero. So, when is Rajesh Khanna going to bless us with his presence again? she used to joke all the time.

  The marriage offer had come some months before, through my husband’s uncle who had a bakery next to my father’s shop. Actually, my father received many offers for my hand. We never had a lot of money, but we were respectable, and I was also quite a pretty young girl, and so my father received many offers. But my father was not like most other fathers, he was not in any type of hurry to marry off his daughter. He was very particular about the type of boy that his daughter would marry. Even though he himself had a shop, he wanted me to marry a boy in service, not in business. My father was a very broadminded man and, for example, even though the boy obviously had to be Brahmin, the boy’s subcaste did not matter very much to him. What was important to my father was that the boy be well educated and in a stable job, and hail from a good family. So, my father took his time to find out everything that he could about the Sharma family and their boy Dheeraj befor
e allowing them to meet me.

  I remember the scene so clearly, my husband sitting quietly on the divan between his mother and older sister, while our fathers sat on the two chairs in the corner near the TV. When I entered he looked up at me quickly, shyly, and then he looked down again at his hands. I sat down on the stool at one end of the divan, next to my mother-in-law, and spoke to her for some time about the weather, about the cost of vegetables and about my job. She said that she and her husband did not have a problem with girls working, even after marriage. I remember thinking that they were also broadminded, like my father. I remember feeling good, I remember feeling not scared.

  After some time, after everybody had tea, my father told my husband and me to go to the veranda, so that we could have some time alone to come to know each other a little bit. Actually, my father had told me before the family came that he wanted me to spend a little bit of time alone with my prospective husband. That is how modern my father was. And you should have seen how shocked Poonam, my husband’s older sister, was. It was very, very funny. She almost choked on her biscuit. She is actually quite traditional, more traditional than her parents, I think. When we were going on our honeymoon, for example, she even checked my suitcase to make sure that I did not pack any indecent clothes. But at least she did not accompany us on our honeymoon, as my friend’s sister-in-law did. So, we went to the veranda, my prospective husband and I, and we sat down on the two new pink plastic chairs that my father had especially bought for that meeting.