The Private Life of Mrs Sharma

by Ratika Kapur

  So we met each other outside the Metro station, Vineet and I, and from there we decided to take an auto to the mall, and even there at the mall for the three hours that we spent walking around all the beautiful showrooms, or sitting, sitting and talking, sitting and eating, or sometimes just sitting quietly, even there it seemed as if it was only him and me, it seemed as if the words that I had spoken the Saturday before had never been spoken and my husband and son still remained hidden deep inside me. It was so nice, I was feeling so calm and happy, but then when we left the mall and started walking towards the Metro station, Vineet suddenly, just like that, said, How is Bobby? I pretended that I had not heard him, but again he said, How is Bobby? Actually, it did not happen exactly like that. Actually, as we first started walking, Vineet said, I want to take you on a holiday to the mountains. The mountains? I said. Yes, he said, I remember how you told me that you wanted to see snow, so I talked to Neha’s brother, who is a travel agent, and he told me that Rohtang Pass, which is near Manali, has snow even in summer, and there are very nice, modern Volvo buses to Manali with clean toilets and DVD players, and it is only a twelve-hour overnight journey from here. Before I could answer, Vineet then said, And don’t worry, we can take Bobby with us, and then again, before I could say something, Vineet said, How is Bobby?

  How is Bobby? I wanted to shout. I wanted to shout, Stop! I wanted to tell Vineet that this was already a holiday for me, this, these moments alone with him, away from all my problems, away from my Bobby, this was enough of a holiday, and I did not need to go all the way to Manali, as long as Vineet did not ask about Bobby. But again Vineet said, How is Bobby?

  Vineet did not understand that it was after so many days that my mind felt free when I was with him today, and that I did not want this short time of calm and happiness to end. He did not understand that I just wanted this little holiday from my useless son to go on for a little bit more time, and so I just said to Vineet, He is fine, Bobby is well and truly fine, and since we were walking by Max Super Speciality Hospital at that time, I quickly tried to talk about it instead, and I told him how my friend Rosie brought me here last year to show it to me and it was so beautiful inside, and so clean, that for one or two seconds I had thought that I was standing in the middle of the Taj Palace Hotel. And the hospital actually was just like a five-star hotel and just like a five-star hotel it had a fancy reception and lobby, and staff who were dressed in very smart and stylish uniforms, and I was telling Vineet all this, and I also told him about how Doctor Sahib is a Senior Consultant here, and I kept blabbering on and on because I was hoping that Vineet would forget about the Bobby topic, but what can I say? He kept coming back to the topic. He did not understand. Just like each and every man that I know, Vineet did not understand that from time to time there are things other than her children that a woman thinks about, that from time to time there are things other than her children that make a woman happy.

  Finally I gave up. I gave up, and I don’t know why but I told Vineet about how Bobby had suddenly told me yesterday that he wanted to leave school. And Vineet said some useful things. He said that I should be careful about how I react. Children these days don’t obey the stick, he said. They obey reason. And he gave me some more examples from his own life. I know that a man without a child is actually just a child himself, no matter how old he is, but I understood the value of his words. The only problem is that these were not the type of words that I wanted from him. Actually, the truth is that I did not want any words at all from him, but if words were the only things that we had this afternoon, then at least they should have been about the actions that they were substituting for.

  We took some photos. Vineet took photos of me sitting by the fountains outside the mall, standing on the escalator inside it, and a few other photos. He also made me take photos of him on my phone, one in front of the Nike showroom and two of him leaning against a fancy red SUV. There is also one photo on my phone that he took of both of us eating ice cream at the food court, both of us smiling. It is in front of me now, this photo of Vineet and me. I am going to delete it, and all the others, and not because of Bobby. Bobby could not care about his mother just now, he would not even care if his mother was with another man. Bobby is too busy in his own world, too busy thinking about cooking and leaving school. Just like Bobby is too busy to study or read the newspaper that I especially subscribed to for him, Bobby is too busy to think about his mother. No, I will delete the photos because I hate photos, all photos. Look at this photo of Vineet and me, leaning into each other, eating strawberry ice cream, smiling, smiling like a young, happily married couple. I am young in this photo. I am wearing the yellow and orange suit that I bought in Lajpat Nagar last summer. I look as young as Vineet. Look at this photo. What story does it tell? It seems that after the photo is taken, this nice young couple will walk back to their flat somewhere nearby and quietly unlock the door because there is nobody inside, and then they will take off all their clothes without words or worry and do the thing that they want to do more than anything else in the whole world, the thing that Vineet and I had actually wanted to do but could not do today. See? Photos are lies. Stories. And what about these other photos here in front of me that my husband put in frames and hung on the wall above our bed even though I begged him and begged him not to do that. Here on the left, my sweet Bobby at age four in his coat and tie, and next to this, a studio photo of my husband and me with baby Bobby in my arms, and there, up there on the right below the tube light, in black and white, my mother and father, alive. Photos will tell you lies, photos will break your heart.

  20

  Sunday, 31 July 2011

  I have never been on a holiday, actually, except for my honeymoon, seventeen years ago, when my husband and I went to Jaipur, and we went alone, without any family members, and we stayed in a hotel so there was no cooking or cleaning, and in the daytime we came to know the city and at night-time we came to know each other. It is a nice thing to do, a holiday. Doctor Sahib takes many holidays, and almost every one of them abroad. It is actually like running away. I am sure that you have seen those advertisements that travel agents put in magazines and newspapers, advertisements like European Getaway or Tropical Escape or Mountain Hideaway, and what not. Why are these holidays given such names? These companies understand that people want to get away from their problems, they want to escape and hide from all their big and small problems. So, in our early married life whenever my husband suggested that we go on a holiday I just said no because at that time it did not seem that there was any big problem to run away from and also it seemed foolish to spend such a lot of money just to see some new place when you could see so many new and different places on TV. But now it is different. Now, by God’s grace, my husband has a good job in Dubai and so I have a little bit of money. Now, I also have problems that I want to run away from. But does this mean I will just get up and go on a holiday with some man that I met on the Metro?

  No.

  See, whatever you do, good or bad, right or wrong, it is very, very important to set limits. And I know my limits, and I have set them. I can meet Vineet from time to time, enjoy his mind, enjoy his body. But I am a good woman. I have a child and a husband and in-laws and a job, and I have duties towards each and every one of these, and I don’t like to boast, but the truth is that I have always fulfilled my duties without fail and I will keep fulfilling my duties until the day that I die. Nobody, and surely not Vineet, can ever stop me, and so, obviously not, I will not just forget everything and go on a stupid holiday just like that with Vineet.

  The truth is that I am quite shocked that Vineet could think such thoughts, and I am even more shocked that he could share such thoughts with me. It is one thing that he suggested that we, Vineet and I, go on a holiday, but he also dared to suggest that we take my son with us! Has he gone mad? Does he think that I have gone mad? See, to some extent I can understand that a young man can have foolish romantic thoughts, even though Vineet is actually not
that young. I can try to understand that he has dreams about being with me in the mountains, sitting by the fire, lying naked with me in a warm bed, rolling around in the snow, and what not. But how, how could he want to pull Bobby into this dream? This thing that Vineet and I share, this relationship, or whatever it is that you want to call it, this is about a modern man and a modern woman and sex and a certain type of friendship, and that is all. Nothing else, nobody else, and surely not my son. Doesn’t Vineet understand this? Isn’t this what he also wants?

  Maybe Vineet is confused. Maybe he thinks that the only way to make me part my legs is through my child, that if he talks about my dear son Bobby he can make me do whatever he wants. But, whatever the reason is for Vineet always wanting to talk about Bobby, and now, wanting to invite him on a holiday, which, even after twenty-four hours, I still just cannot believe, whatever it is, Vineet better understand, and understand once and for all, that I will not allow it. I will not allow him to pull my son into this thing. I know that one or two times I was the one to bring up the topic of Bobby, and it was foolish of me, I know, and I know that Vineet gave me some good advice. But not any more. I swear on God that I will never ever bring up the topic of Bobby again, and I will also not allow him to try to talk to me about Bobby ever again. It is one thing if a third person tries to push himself between husband and wife, but it is a totally different thing if he tries to come between parent and child. Bobby is the son of Dheeraj Sharma and that is a God-given fact. Vineet cannot change that, and I will show him gently that he actually does not need to do that. My legs will part even without any talk of Bobby. Actually, my legs will part only without any talk of Bobby.

  Seducing a woman through her child? I know that most people would probably be very shocked by all this. But I would like to explain something here, about marriages in these modern times, and even though I am going to sound like a child who uses the idea of modern times as an excuse for behaving badly, I am sure that it will be clear that this is not what I am trying to do. What I want to say here is that these are modern times and in these modern times modern husbands and modern wives are sometimes forced to live separately, but even if their marriages are different to the marriages of their parents and grandparents, their needs, their needs for love and friendship and sex, are not any different. They are still just men and women with hearts and minds and bodies that have grown up needs. For example, that Anglo nurse that my husband said his roommates go to, and that I am sure my husband also goes to. Far away from their wives this is what they do. What else can they do? Can we blame them? Should we stop them? Wouldn’t it be like telling them not to eat? There is this Internet site called Human Digest. It is full of stories of sex, all types of sex, and I know about this only because my husband showed it to me one time many years ago. So there are all these stories of sex, and many of these stories, more than half of them, I am sure, are either about husbands who are working in the Gulf without family doing what not with strangers, or about wives left behind in India doing what not with their brothers-in-law or servants or neighbours. Now I am not a vulgar woman like some of the vulgar people in these stories who do the types of things that I cannot even speak about, and my husband is also not a vulgar man, so actually I should not compare myself or my husband to the people on this site, but I just want to show that from time to time men and women do these types of things, and they only do them because they have to, not because they want to. The first law of marriage is being together, and if that law has to be broken, as it had to be broken with my husband and me and so many other married couples because we all understood that it was necessary for a better life, if that law of togetherness has to be broken, then other laws of marriage are also automatically broken. That is how it is, in these modern times. And nobody actually wants to do this. Nobody actually wants to slip into a stranger’s bed, nobody actually wants to hide. That is the truth, nobody wants to tell lies.

  21

  Wednesday, 3 August 2011

  I have brought up my son well, I know. But good manners can only control how you show your anger, they don’t make the anger itself go away. Even though you will not raise your voice at grown ups, because your mother has taught you not to do that, it does not mean that you will not find some other way to show the anger that boils inside you. Today, my well-mannered son showed me his anger. Obviously he did say sorry afterwards, but politely and gently my son showed me his anger today. He had come back very late from the restaurant, even though he knows that he has to be back in the house by seven o’clock latest so that he has enough time for his studies. This was one of my conditions for allowing him to go. But still, he came back home at almost eight thirty today. So I was very angry, obviously, and obviously I scolded him just like any dutiful mother would scold her child. And then what happened? After I scolded him, Bobby looked straight into my eyes and very softly said, Ma, I wish you were the one who had gone to Dubai. That is exactly what he said.

  Even though I know that he is just a child, I felt such a lot of pain. He could have just stolen a knife from that stupid restaurant he goes to and stabbed his mother in the heart instead. Children don’t understand how much they can hurt their mothers. Or maybe they do understand and that is why they do it.

  But the truth is that from time to time I also wish the same. I also wish sometimes that I was the one who had gone to Dubai. It would have been so nice. Even if my husband says that it hardly feels like a foreign place and that it is only like a clean India, at least it is clean. And I would have taken evening walks on Jumeirah Beach and earned a lot of money of my own and only worried about my son from far, far away. It would have been so nice. I would have felt so free. And maybe being far, far away, my son would have understood the value of his mother.

  It is an odd thing, this mother and child relationship. And so difficult. We are taught, we are taught by our fathers and mothers and textbooks and teachers, that every relationship is based on giving and taking. You give something to somebody and then you receive something from that person. You get something from somebody and then you quickly give back something. And if one side stops, then the relationship stops. Simple. That is how it is, that is how the world works. Every relationship in my life, and not just between my husband and me, or my parents and me, but even between Doctor Sahib and me, Rosie and me, even Vineet and me, has been like this, giving and taking. The five or six people in my life who did not give me something back in return for what I gave them, like one nurse Mariam who used to work at the clinic, or my father’s brother and his family, I just stopped talking to these people. My mother was an only child like me and the only relatives I had were my father’s brother and his family, but even then, because my uncle and his horrible wife and children only took, took, took from me and never gave me anything, any love, even then, when I had nobody, I still just stopped talking to them, and today, in my mind, they are dead. All dead. Because Renuka Sharma is not a fool. She will not allow anybody to treat her badly. And, mark my words, if tomorrow my husband tried to do the same thing as those relatives, even he, my husband, would find himself in the same hole as them.

  But what can I say? All these grand, grand words I speak like I am some grand, grand woman, these words mean nothing when I am face to face with my son. These words become dust.

  I remember when Bobby was a baby. I would feed Bobby and bathe him and play with him and stay awake night after night looking after him, and, yes, my husband did try his level best to help, but how much can a man actually do? And what happened? The first word that came out of Bobby’s baby mouth was Papa. Mummy did all the work, but Papa was the word. And then it was Papa, Papa, Papa, day in and day out. I did everything for that boy, I broke my back for him, but still, Papa. Always Papa. The boy gave his mother nothing. For a long time not even that one word Mummy. And it is not any different these days. What do I get from him now? Still nothing. And what do I want? All that I want is that he should eat properly, sleep properly and study properly. That is
all. But all that I get are painful words, words like knives.

  There are one or two things that I would like to ask my son. There are one or two things that I want to know. Bobby, my dear son, you are, you know, a healthy, handsome, intelligent boy, and everybody says this. Now, tell me, do you think that this just happened by magic? Do you think that you are what you are today, the envy of every mother, just like that? Or do you understand that there is this person in your life, your mother, who has spent every second of her life from the day you were born trying to make you into this healthy, handsome, intelligent boy? Do you even know that your mother exists? Bobby, my dear and loving son, I also wish that I went to Dubai instead of your father because it seems that a child will only see his mother when she is not there.

  So, the law of give and take is broken in a mother and child relationship. And then the most difficult part is that a mother cannot just say, Oh, I am being treated so badly that this relationship is finished now! How can she do that? She is a mother! A goddess! She will give, give and give. She will suffer quietly and live.

  Maybe God created a special type of heart just for women, a mother heart that only needs to give to beat, a heart that needs nothing else, and that is why mothers don’t run away. And maybe God also created a special type of mother mind that will always and only think about her child with love and forgiveness, and that is why now, at this very second, as I think again about what happened today, about what Bobby said to me, now, I am starting to forget those words, I am starting to forget the pain, and the only thing that my mind is now remembering are the moments after he said those horrible things, the time when I refused to eat my food and I just sat on the divan and picked up The Hindu newspaper and tried to read it, and then my sweet Bobby came and sat down on the floor at my feet and started pressing my legs, and then he just looked up at me and said, Ma, if you don’t eat, then I won’t eat.