Storywallah

by Neelesh Misra

  One morning she had come early to the orchard for a walk. Ma was there collecting fresh flowers. Amaya plucked flowers and began to put them in Ma’s thali. Ma looked at her intently. Amaya smiled, but Ma didn’t return her smile.

  A little later, Ma entered her room with a garland made from the flowers Amaya had chosen and draped it on Prashant’s photograph.

  Amaya was stunned. ‘Why, Ma? I don’t like to put flowers on Prashant’s photograph,’ she said plaintively.

  ‘Why?’ Ma asked coldly, her normally calm face ablaze.

  ‘Because they remind me that Prashant isn’t alive,’ Amaya answered, her voice shaking.

  ‘So? It’s true. He isn’t.’ Ma’s words were cold.

  Amaya was shocked. Why was Ma being so harsh? She knew Ma felt the pain of Prashant’s passing as acutely as she did. But perhaps Ma hadn’t understood that.

  Thoughts crowded Amaya’s mind. Sometimes she remembered the past and sometimes thoughts of the future worried her.

  And then the day came when Amaya smiled, from the heart, after ages. Wrapped in pink cotton her tiny daughter lay beside her. Amaya lifted her up and held her to her heart, slipping her finger into her daughter’s tiny fist. The baby clenched her fingers. This was her first gesture of trust towards her mother.

  After the arrival of her daughter Amaya spent all her time looking after her. She was busy with her own things.

  One afternoon as she sang her baby to sleep, she heard Prashant’s mother call out loudly, ‘Amaya! Amaya!’

  She put the baby down in her cot and ran out of her room.

  Her mother-in-law and Dadi stood outside her door. She couldn’t read the expression on their faces.

  ‘You’re singing so loudly the people on the road can hear you. Is it nice to sing these film songs?’ Ma asked.

  What was wrong with that? Amaya was amazed. Prashant’s brother listened to music on full volume the whole day, and sang loudly. But she couldn’t say anything.

  Just then the baby started crying and after a few moments of standing there, Ma turned and went back to her own room.

  For the last seven or eight months Amaya had been observing her mother-in-law’s attitude towards her. It was if she, Amaya, was a stranger. She didn’t understand what she said, but she did understand what she didn’t say.

  Amaya’s daughter was growing and so were Amaya’s responsibilities. Despite the family’s interferences she was trying to be a strong person and a good mother.

  There were so many restrictions on her. If she resisted, she got trouble. If she agreed quietly, everyone behaved well with her. It was exactly as if a caged bird was being congratulated for clipping its own wings.

  Amaya’s innocent mind was breaking. The shackles of tradition were beginning to chafe. She was becoming increasingly restless.

  One day her daughter saw someone drive past in a scooter and asked for a ride. Her eyes filled with tears.

  ‘Okay! Is this anything to cry about? Come on, we’ll go for a ride too.’ And Amaya started the scooter parked in the courtyard and took her daughter for a ride. After a few rounds of the block, they came back to find the entire family gathered in the door, their faces furious.

  ‘You have disgraced us in front of the whole society. The next time you go somewhere, take someone with you. And go in a rickshaw,’ Ma blazed at her.

  Amaya stood at the doorway for a long time. The house seemed like a cage to her. And Ma like a jailer.

  Her frightened daughter held her hand tightly and looked from her mother’s face to her grandmother’s. Amaya’s pain was giving way to anger. She understood that her clothes, her driving and everything else aside, she was not permitted to feel happy even during festivals.

  It was the monsoon and swings were hung from the mango tree. The same tree that she had carved Prashant’s name on. Women would be invited from all around to swing on it. Amaya was always kept away from it. She wasn’t permitted to put mehndi on her hands, or wear bangles; she wasn’t even allowed to touch them.

  Amaya held her daughter’s hand and went and sat on the swing, the little girl laughed with joy. Slowly she kicked with her feet and soon the swing was swinging high. Amaya felt she could touch the sky. Just then, her mother-in-law grabbed the rope and jerked the swing to a halt.

  She had no right to fly.

  That night Amaya couldn’t sleep. She couldn’t get the picture of her sobbing daughter out of her mind. Her voice was an ache in her ears, ‘Ma, I want to swing! Ma, I want to swing!’

  Amaya was scared.

  The next morning, when Amaya stepped out of her room, she wore the orange sari, Prashant’s favourite. The one she had been denied the right to wear. Before anyone could speak she said, ‘Ma, I am going to Delhi. I have a job as a teacher in a school there. The pay is good and they are giving me a house to stay in.’

  Ma threw the mouthful of food in her hand down on her plate.

  Without stopping Amaya continued, ‘Ma, I don’t want to be a weak woman in front of my daughter. If I keep killing my dreams and wishes, who will keep hers alive? Prashant would never have wanted me to be sad. To be weak. He loved this Amaya, Ma, the Amaya filled with colours. The Amaya who was full of life.’

  The family was stunned into silence. They had never seen Amaya like this before.

  Amaya spoke again, ‘Wherever I stay, Ma, your relationship with this child will never change. I only want that when she and I swing together, no one should be able to hold the rope, and that she can laugh and say, “Higher, Ma! Higher!”’

  EVENING TEA

  Chhavi Nigam

  Ammaji rubbed the lens of her glasses with the edge of her sari for the tenth time, and stared intently at the clock on the wall for perhaps the eleventh time. This was too much. It was five minutes past five and her daughter-in-law still hadn’t brought her tea.

  Holding on to her knee gently, she got up and went out of her room to the veranda. In the fading sunlight she saw her loneliness and her own declining age. Despite the odd wrinkle she still had a lovely pink blush on her skin. You felt like you should lay your head in her lap and fall asleep listening to a really good story.

  Even though her house was small, it used to be filled with people and light and noise. With her shy nature, she had found it hard to deal with Monu’s laughter and Babuji’s guffaws. Then Monu got married. The first floor was built. And then after her grandson Ashu was born, Monu (or Manish) and his wife Nandini shifted upstairs. After Monu’s father had died, they had tried hard to convince her to move upstairs, but she had preferred to stay downstairs. This was where her memories of Monu’s father lived. In any case, she was no longer capable of going up and down the stairs. And she was a little apprehensive of what her daughter-in-law might and might not like. She didn’t know whether it was consideration for the relationship or a generation gap, or whether they had made no attempt to get to know each other more. But now, they both lived in their own worlds. She was good, her daughter-in-law. And she took care of her. That is why she wondered why Nandini still hadn’t brought her tea. Perhaps she was on her way down.

  She sat down in the easy chair on the veranda and gently rocked back and forth. An old memory came to caress her half-closed eyes. She was young, the ride in the horse carriage had felt like this rocking, hadn’t it? She remembered that day when, stuffed into a horse carriage, she and her whole family had gone to the cinema to watch a film for the first time. The day she had lost her heart to Dev Anand. For her, the most romantic scene in the black-and-white movie had been the one where the hero comes home from office and the heroine—her hair tied up in a high bun, long lines of kajal in her eyes—opens the door and then lifts a beautifully embroidered tea cosy to pour out two cups of tea. Then they proceed to drink their evening tea looking deep into each other’s eyes. The tender age that she was at then, this was her first romantic dream.

  Ammaji opened her eyes and took a deep breath. She looked at the time. Five-thirty!

  T
he pinkness of her face started to flush a deeper red. A vein on her neck stood out. Is this what she was reduced to in her own house now? Was she, like all the extra furniture downstairs, becoming redundant, unneeded?

  Just then the upstairs door opened. Her eyes flared for a minute and then gently closed. It was her grandson Ashu coming down the stairs, not Nandini. Something unpleasant stuck in her throat. It wasn’t only a question of drinking tea. The evening tea was a symbol of her status in the house, her relevance. Was Nandini sidelining her? Did she no longer have any place in her heart for her wishes? But why?

  Ammaji tried to understand the reasons. She never interfered in her household anyway. Nor did she scold or demand anything. She only wanted her evening tea-time ritual to remain unchanged. In fact at the time of the muh dikhayi she had given Nandini an expensive seven-strand gold necklace and stressed that fact. And when smilingly, Nandini had bent down to touch her feet, Ammaji had blessed her. In the beginning everything was okay. But ever since her husband had died, the evening tea was getting delayed further and further. And today it had really crossed the limit.

  ‘Ashu beta, carefully!’ Ammaji called to him as she heard him leaping down the stairs.

  ‘Don’t worry, dadi,’ Ashu said as he kicked the football in his hands crashing it into the gate.

  ‘Okay. What is mummy doing?’ she finally asked.

  ‘I don’t know. Something on the laptop.’ Ashu shrugged his shoulders carelessly and ran off. Ammaji was left staring at the gate from where he had left.

  So! Nandini’s work had become so important that she had forgotten her mother-in-law? Or was she deliberately ignoring her? She hardly came downstairs. She probably found it hard to bear the time Monu and Ashu spent downstairs too! She tried to remember the time when Nandini had been happy to spend hours sitting with her. The only time she had sat downstairs recently was when she had been here for two hours because she had seen a mouse upstairs. Who is scared of mice? All drama!

  It was just she who tolerated everything. Her own mother-in-law had been so strict. But Ammaji had always respected her. In her moments of hopelessness her mother-in-law’s face came before her eyes. Dusky, very thin, with a hard voice, was how she had been. She had been the sole ruler of the house. And delicate, innocent Ammaji, laden with golden saris and jewellery as a new bride, had spun around the house on her orders like a Catherine wheel. She woke up at four every morning. She would bathe and prepare her mother-in-law’s puja thali, then she would prepare her fruit, then massage her head and comb and plait her hair. She would wash her clothes, look after the cooking and then, late at night, fall into a dead sleep while massaging her mother-in-law’s feet. That was how her days had been. Her husband was a lawyer and would keep trying to devise schemes to call her to him on some pretext or the other. But far from meeting, they barely got time to talk to each other.

  But eventually, after years of devotion, her mother-in-law had melted. Then, in her naivety, she had told her about her filmi dream. Her mother-in-law had laughed loudly. But the very next evening, the lawyer and a tea tray with two cups and tea pot under a beautiful tea cosy were sent to her room. That was the most precious gift her mother-in-law had given her. A sweet hesitation, shy eyes slightly lowered, a faint smile, the lightest touch as she handed him his cup. With those sips of tea, Ammaji and Babuji had woven a new relationship.

  The evening deepened. She still sat on her easy chair. Through tired eyes she watched the birds hopping about and the squirrels scuttling around, and that naughty mouse that came regularly for the biscuit crumbs she put out for it. She was deep in thought, wondering why she hadn’t been able to connect with Nandini despite giving her love. She had never to come to share the loneliness Ammaji experienced after the death of Monu’s Babuji.

  It was night when Monu came home from office. He sat with her for a while. Ammaji didn’t mention the tea incident. She didn’t like to cause trouble. And truthfully, the things that hurt our hearts the most are the hardest to talk about. Monu was in a hurry himself. He had to leave the next morning for a week-long office trip. She sent a message through him that she didn’t want dinner that night.

  The night wore on. When she got fed up of tossing and turning, she sat up. She turned on the light and went into another room. The room was filled with her things: an old sofa, a dressing table, a carved cupboard, big brass pots, trays and all sorts of other objects. No one used these things any more, but her memories were tied up with them. She had kept them all safe.

  She struggled with the carved cupboard for a while and then managed to pull out an old photo album, wrapped neatly in an old tablecloth. She dusted it and sat on her bed. Then she opened the album on her lap. With damp eyes she turned the pages. She stopped at a fading black-and-white photograph. She closed her eyes and, sighing deeply, caressed it. In the crystal-clear mirror of her memories, she could see the day her husband had managed to spirit her away from his mother’s gaze to the Kartik mela to have a photograph taken. And when they had both stood behind the wooden moon prop for the photo, that idiotic bearded photographer had said coaxingly, ‘Arre, stand a little closer! Bhabhiji, move the palla from your head! Now stare into each other’s eyes!’ Ammaji felt shy just remembering the incident. She turned the page.

  In another photograph, her smiling mother-in-law blessed her, her hand gentle on her head. It had been Ammaji’s strength that had won her mother-in-law’s love. She felt her mother-in-law’s hand on her head again. As long as we hold them captive in our memories, our loved ones can’t really escape, can they? While her mother-in-law and Babuji had been with her, no one had been able to challenge Ammaji’s significance.

  When she finally lay down, a slight smile lit her lips. It was a hint of that same determination. Her eyes had the contentment of having taken a decision.

  When Monu came to touch Ammaji’s feet before leaving the next day, she had already finished her puja. Nandini was probably working at her designing course, she thought as she watered the plants. When she had asked Ammaji’s permission to complete the course (that she had left halfway when she got married), Ammaji had given it happily. She remembered her own experience. She had decided that when she became a mother-in-law, she would never impose her will on her daughter-in-law. So that her respect would be born out of love, not fear. But now . . .

  Sighing, she turned to go in when suddenly something unexpected happened. Flying down the stairs like an arrow, Nandini came and clung to Ammaji. She managed to stop herself from falling with difficulty, otherwise they would have both been on the floor.

  ‘What has happened?’ she looked at Nandini and was shocked. Nandini was trembling and her lips quivered. She was pale with fear.

  ‘What happened, beta? Is everything okay? Say something!’ Ammaji was worried. Nandini was unable to speak. Finally Ammaji pieced together what she was trying to say: ‘M . . . . M . . . Mouse!’

  ‘Oho! Is there a mouse?’ she asked. Nandini nodded and collapsed in a chair.

  Uff. Ammaji smacked her own forehead. ‘Here, drink some water. What is there to be scared of? It will go away by itself.’

  ‘No, Ammaji! I’m very scared! Please see! Come upstairs, Please!’ Nandini held on to her tightly.

  Ammaji wanted to refuse. Nandini hadn’t even thought about her yesterday, had she? She had never called her upstairs before, had she?

  Then she looked at Nandini’s terrified face and her heart melted. With great difficulty, supporting both her knees, huffing and puffing, she reached the top. And fell on to a sofa.

  She isn’t that bad, Nandini thought as she brought Ammaji a glass of water. She had always thought of her as Hitler. And all that stuff about having tea at five sharp, on the veranda, in that chair? Who does that? She had a child, her studies, a household to look after, Ammaji should try and understand. Now just yesterday, she had forgotten her tea. So what? She would give it today. Now because of the stupid mouse, she would have to be nice to Ammaji till Manish came back to
save her.

  Amidst their emotional and mental upheaval and the mouse’s terror, a few days passed. Ammaji suggested many methods which Nandini tried but the mouse evaded capture. It was becoming fiercer and fiercer and Nandini more timid. Seeing Nandini’s discomfort made Ammaji secretly happy but she also felt bad for her.

  ‘Ammaji! Wait! I’ll make tea, have it here, please!’

  ‘No, beta. I will have it downstairs. With Babuji. He must be waiting for me.’

  Nandini was stunned. So it wasn’t some arbitrary rule made to trouble her. She began to understand some of Ammaji’s deepest feelings. If she was missing Manish, how painful must Babuji’s absence be for Ammaji? Ammaji must feel so alone.

  Ammaji was going down the stairs, one step at a time, holding her knees, as Nandini watched her.

  That night Ashu had asked his grandmother to tell him a story about herself and his grandfather. The last time she had started telling it to him Nandini had rebuked her. Now as Ammaji completed the unfinished story Nandini sat nearby, immersed in her laptop. Ashu soon fell asleep and a smiling Ammaji stopped speaking. Just then she heard a hushed voice ask, ‘So, have you never had tea without Babuji?’

  Ammaji was surprised. She looked towards Nandini who had turned off her laptop and had been listening to the story intently. That one moment bridged the distance between them. She shared her life’s stories with Nandini, and Nandini listened.

  ‘Thank God for that mouse! It is the reason I have got a chance to understand you,’ Nandini said clasping her hand. Ammaji laughed and asked, ‘I thought you were very brave. How come you’re scared of a tiny mouse?’

  Nandini was quiet for a few minutes.

  ‘When I was four or five years old, my grandmother locked me in the storeroom as punishment for something I had done. When they opened the door after two hours they found me unconscious. I’m still terrified of mice.’

  The fear in her tear-filled eyes shook Ammaji. What had she done? In her anger she had turned that poor child’s fear into a weapon. She had let that mouse loose herself, to trouble Nandini. She was ashamed of herself when she thought of what she had done. Ammaji didn’t hate Nandini, she wasn’t even angry with her. She was just upset about her evening tea. If she had known that Nandini’s fear of mice was real, she would never have let that mouse loose in her room. But she had been happy with the interaction between the two. What if Nandini got busy after the mouse went away? Ammaji would be left with her memories. The thought had worried her. But now it was time for her to take a decision.