I listened to her complaints for a while and when they had been dealt with, I came to the business I had called for.
‘Ma, to knit a muffler does one knit purl or knit?’
Ma was badly shocked by my question. She loved knitting and had wanted me to learn from her. She had been trying to teach me all her life. But she had always said I should learn because it’s ‘something all girls should know’. And I hated her reason. But today I put my hatred aside.
‘You’re feeling okay na, Nimmi?
‘Yes, Ma, just tell me.’
It took Ma a while to return to normalcy after my question. But then she told me step by step how to make a muffler. I had decided that a muffler would be given for a muffler.
The next day I went to the bazaar where I found a nice wool shop. I bought some spools of wool and went back to my hotel. It won’t take me more than two days, I thought.
‘Okay, now sit cross-legged, and put the ends of the spool on each knee. And then start wrapping it from one end making a ball around your fingers.’
I remembered Ma’s old knitting tutorial as I made the balls. In childhood I had barely paid attention to it but I must have learnt something.
‘You know, knitting is like a relationship. Slowly, one a stitch at a time, it meshes together and grows stronger. If one stitch slips, the relationship begins to rip and all one’s hard work goes to waste.’ I hadn’t understood what she meant then but now I wanted to understand.
‘One knit, two purl.’
With Ma’s words in my ears and my hands on the needles, the muffler slowly started to take shape. It was a strange madness that kept me tied to the strands of wool and the muffler that I was knitting, and a new relationship. The muffler that should have taken me two days to knit was ready by the morning. Now to see about the relationship!
Susmit had said he was leaving at eight, and it was already six-thirty. Would it be okay to go so early, just to give him the muffler? I had been awake all night; maybe I should sleep a little? Would it seem too desperate to go this early in the morning? I had doubts but was also excited about giving him the muffler. Eventually, like always, my excitement defeated my doubt.
I called Susmit’s number. Once, and then again. He didn’t answer. After calling four times I gave up, and just as I was putting the phone down, it rang.
It was Susmit.
‘Is everything okay, Namita? You’ve called so early.’
‘Yes, everything is fine. I’ve disturbed your sleep, I think.’
‘No, it’s good you woke me up; I would have kept sleeping otherwise.’
I was known for always having something to say. I could say anything to anybody without a moment’s hesitation. But suddenly I was flustered. And a sweet hesitation had crept into me.
‘A . . . Actually . . . I wanted to give you your return gift before you left.’
I said it. Susmit too seemed to be at a loss for words.
‘Do you have to ask?’ he replied playfully. I decided I liked his sleepy, early morning voice.
‘Let’s meet at seven, outside your hotel,’ he said and disconnected the phone. And I slowly removed the hand that had been on my heart the whole while. This was the first time something like this had happened to me. Was this love at first sight?
Is it possible to feel so strongly for someone after such a short meeting? And this was completely opposite to how I was. I was known for not giving boys the time of day. Then what was it about this boy?
I had wasted fifteen minutes thinking and now I rushed to get ready. I even put on some make-up, which I never did. I took the perfume Simmi had given me out of my bag. ‘You never know, some day the girl inside you might wake up; then you can use this!’ she had said.
I wore the perfume and then Susmit’s muffler. I checked myself in the mirror. I could hear Susmit’s words in my ear, ‘This muffler looks good on you.’
I thought he would like the muffler I had made for him. I had stayed up the whole night for something after a long time. He had not bothered about his life for me, so what was losing a little sleep? I stepped out of the hotel.
I waited for a while. It was cold. Susmit’s muffler and thoughts of him kept me warm.
Just then a car came towards me and drew to a stop. Susmit sat in the driver’s seat. Next to him sat a little girl. My mind went into a tumult on seeing the girl. And then I looked at the back seat where a definitely married girl, around our age, sat.
The car stopped and three people got out. Susmit smiled and introduced us.
‘This is the girl I told you about.’
I stood in silence. I didn’t know what to say. Then Susmit pointed to her and said to me, ‘She chose the muffler you’re wearing now.’
I pasted a false smile on my face to hide my feelings. Had I fallen in love at first sight with a married man?
‘Oh! Your wife has really good taste. You’re a lucky man.’
They heard me and burst into laughter.
‘I’m not that lucky. The lucky man who is my brother is over there at the ATM.’
I was at a loss for words again. But I liked this twist in the story.
After talking for a little while I gave him the muffler I had made for him and came back to my hotel.
Even before I reached the hotel there was a message, ‘Thanks for the muffler.’
‘Same to you!’ I wrote back.
And leaving future possibilities for the future for now, I lay down in my room. I had a whole day to catch up on my sleep and a whole lifetime to fulfil my wishes.
ACROSS THE SEVEN SEAS
Ankita Chauhan
There was a nip in the air. From under a blanket of clouds the sleepy, pale morning peeked in from the window. My half-open eyes were full of dreams. Dreams that Vinay had shown me that evening.
‘Start packing, my Elizabeth, we are going to Canada soooooooon!’ All those o’s expressing his happiness. I was happy. Life had been kind to me these last eight months.
After twenty-two years of travelling between Rajasthan and Noida, I, Reva, was going abroad for the first time. Life was going to step out of the realm of the usual and dance to a new music.
During this time Vinay had changed everything: from the sandals I wore to the ringtone on my phone, Enrique’s ‘Let Me Be Your Hero’. There were lots of parties. While he was basking in the congratulations of his friends for his two-and-a-half-year project in Canada, I was looking for a few moments of peace, rather, some courage.
Over and over again, my fingers would go to the contact list on my phone and stop. I wanted to talk to Ma. I wanted her to know how happy her daughter was. I was proud of my decision to marry Vinay—a decision I had taken against society’s dictates, a decision that Ma had not agreed to despite thousands of pleas. The mantle of society’s meaningless rules that shrouded her mind was the source of my uncertainty.
The crux of that confusion stuck in my throat and I told Vinay about it later that night—about the fear that was growing in my heart. When I told him about going home, he had closed his laptop and said, ‘Do whatever you feel is right,’ and turned off the night lamp.
Suddenly it felt as if all my relationships were drifting apart. His turning his face away and his monosyllabic answers with his back turned told the story of his relationship with my mother. But the burning silence of the night had filled me with courage. I had decided that I would meet my mother once before I left the country.
The next morning the unshed tears in my eyes must have melted something in Vinay. Breaking a mouthful from the parathas on his plate he said, ‘I didn’t say no, yaar. Go. If you want, I’ll take you. If Ma doesn’t let me in I’ll pitch a tent in the garden.’
He laughed and ate my burnt parathas as if they were the best jalebis in the world. I could only look at him with a teary smile. He had never let the acid of Ma’s words tarnish our relationship.
My mind slipped back to the day I had first taken Vinay home to meet Ma. After sitting with him
for a little while she had taken me by the hand and pulled me into the kitchen.
‘He has been raised by some NGO, his education paid for by charity. He has no home, no people—’
‘It wasn’t charity, Ma, he won a scholarship. It isn’t easy to get them.’ I cut her off mid-sentence. She stared at me for a while and then in an angry gesture she turned off the gas. The tea that had been on the stove for him hadn’t even had time to come to the boil. Like his relationship with Ma.
‘Your father isn’t here any more, so you can do what you want,’ she said and stormed out of the kitchen. It felt as if someone had closed a tight fist around my heart. I think Vinay had heard the bitterness of her words. He left the house without saying anything.
I had never dreamt that life would lead me to this sort of crossroads. I couldn’t get Vinay’s face, stripped of its smile, out of my mind. I couldn’t stop him even though I had wanted to. Something was stuck in my throat.
For the next few days I struggled to breathe, and I chose the person who would walk beside me, not direct me. I proposed to Vinay. We moved to Delhi after getting married. Despite everything, a day had not gone by when I hadn’t thought of Ma. The conversation with Vinay that morning gave me strength, and finally I dialled the number on my phone with trembling fingers.
‘Hello,’ I heard Ma’s voice.
‘I want to meet you, I’m leaving the country next month.’ The words stuck, my throat was dry, I felt like crying, but I didn’t. I listened to the silence on the other end of the phone for a long time.
I had tried many times to talk to her over the last few months. I had tried to explain, but the silence that had crept into our hearts scraped and echoed. When the bonds that run in our blood become estranged, emptiness fills our chests. I didn’t want to leave the country with that emptiness, and that’s why I had reached out to Ma for the last time.
The next morning we were at the Nizamuddin Railway Station. Vinay had managed to get two tickets on the Jan Shatabdi. It hadn’t been easy to get them at such short notice but he had managed somehow to get me a seat. By one-thirty that afternoon the train was speeding along. He stood near me. I clutched his hand.
‘Water?’ he asked. I shook the water bottle next to me. I looked at him for a while. ‘Why can’t this train be going to a place where everything is as we want it to be?’
‘Crazy girl,’ he said and caressed my hair.
‘When I was small na, with Papa . . .’ I stopped: there wasn’t really anything to tell him that I hadn’t told him before—over and over again. Things like how I often travelled with Ma and Papa by train. Ma would make alu-poori specially, on his request. Sometimes she would sing for him. She would pull his hand towards her and pretending it was a mic she would sing, ‘Ab toh hai tumse, har khushi meri.’ I would always get emotional at that song.
‘Do you want to eat bread pakoras?’ his voice broke my reverie. He had noticed the sadness on my face.
‘Ma was never like this when I was younger. Really! Everything changed after Papa passed away. She stopped laughing. It was as if she had locked herself up somewhere and forgotten,’ I spoke haltingly. For the rest of the journey, Vinay stood with my hand held tightly between his.
A little while later, we were both in my town, in the courtyard of my house. I looked at the house carefully. Then I saw Ma standing in the doorway, behind the curtain that fluttered in the breeze. My heart grew heavy.
Memories were strewn around that courtyard: the small hand pump in the corner and the broken pots in which flowers grew. Everything was the same. Nothing had changed, except the tulsi plant that had wilted, like Ma’s face.
I stood like a stranger at the entrance of my house. I was waiting for Ma to come to me and, like the old times, shout at me. And then, like the old times, hold me tight to her heart. But Ma didn’t come. Ma who once had counted the seconds for me to come back from college, who didn’t sleep a wink when I was sick, today sat far away, locked in a room. As he filled water in the bottle from the hand pump, Vinay asked me softly, ‘What should we do?’
By then I had stepped into the room that was filled with Ma’s silence. The memories held me, but Ma didn’t move. She was sitting on the same stool near the window. She hadn’t looked at me then, and she didn’t now.
Vinay had sat down on a chair in the room. I didn’t say anything to Ma and went straight into the kitchen. Once again I put some tea on the stove for Vinay. Once again my heart thudded with fear, wondering if Ma would accept him or not. I was putting cardamom in the tea when I heard the sound of footsteps.
I turned around to see Ma leaving the room and walking towards the stairs. For a while I stood with three cups of tea. Then, disconsolately handing Vinay a cup, I followed Ma.
She was sitting on a mat on the roof. In a corner stood a cupboard that held an entire childhood: a broken bat, the invention that I had started to make with papa with parts from a video game . . . Memories came alive.
I saw a sigri in the corner. I pushed it towards her and said pleadingly, ‘Ma, you know I never get to eat bajre ki khichri in the city.’
‘Don’t trouble me, just go,’ Ma said.
‘Don’t do this, Ma,’ I said moving closer to her. Our shadows met but the relationship stayed aloof behind locked doors.
‘You children can do what you like, isn’t it? You did what you thought was right. The matter is closed.’ Ma got up and went downstairs. I sat there for a while under the stars, collecting bits of scattered memories.
The night deepened. Ma had left me surrounded by questions when she had left. For the first time in eight months I felt as if I had done something wrong.
I don’t know what I had thought when I came here. If my being here is causing Ma pain, I’ll leave. Maybe my absence will give her some peace, I thought as I went downstairs. Every step seemed to be taking me away from myself. My legs were trembling.
I saw that it was eight-thirty. The train for Delhi left at eleven. My mind was heavy. Ma sat on the string cot out in the courtyard. Memories do fade with age but Ma had deliberately swept away all memories of me.
I picked up a few things and, without looking at Vinay, said, ‘Come! Let’s go. We’ll wait at the station.’
‘What do you think I am? Come here, go there?’ I stopped, startled. I looked at him and went into the kitchen. This was the first time Vinay had spoken to me like that. It was my fault. I should never have brought him here.
A tear rolled down my face. I remembered that Vinay hadn’t eaten anything all day. I kneaded some flour and while I made the rotis, memories of Ma flooded my mind again. My mind fought with my heart. I made two birds out of the flour and put them on the tava. Ma used to make them to placate me whenever I got angry with her.
A sob rose in my heart. I quickly put my childhood on a plate and took it to Ma. I put that plate down in front of her with so much hope. She looked at the plate and then at me. She said nothing but her eyes filled with tears. Not wanting to cause her more pain I went back inside. I wanted to fill myself with Ma’s fragrance before I left. Just then I heard Vinay’s voice.
‘It’s amazing, I’m the one who is hungry and your daughter gives you the plate! No matter how hard a man tries, a girl’s first love is always her mother.’ Ma turned away at his words.
This last effort had failed to melt Ma’s stubborn heart. I wanted to grab Vinay and go far away. I was moving close to him when he stopped me with a gesture and looking straight at Ma he said, ‘This stubbornness of yours has made my life hell. I can’t fight with her, I can’t say anything to her because she doesn’t have the option of running away to her mother’s house. And I feel you sulk on her behalf too, because she seems to have forgotten how to sulk. I had fallen in love with a life-filled girl; today she is just a lifeless puppet.’
I was shocked. What was he saying? Was he angry with me too? I was embarrassed. Ma’s worried eyes looked for me. I stood, scared, hiding behind the curtain.
Vinay, now
sitting on the cot near Ma, said, ‘Now you tell me, Mummy, I don’t know what you have taught Reva. But apart from noodles she doesn’t cook anything. How can I eat noodles every day?’
Oblivious of her anger Vinay looked Ma in the eye and spoke to her like an older man. I had told him once that no matter how angry she was with me she could never tolerate anyone else saying anything bad about me. I now understood what his game was. My eyes filled with tears but I was smiling. He carried on.
‘We are going abroad for three years now. She weeps the whole day, where will Ma stay? How will she stay? I said let’s take Ma with us so she said Ma has refused.’
‘Refused? I can refuse only if she asks me!’ Ma finally broke her silence and glanced at Vinay. I looked bewildered from one to the other.
‘She’s going away for three years. If she had been a son, wouldn’t she have at least asked me to go with her?’ Ma said.
‘Look at that, she didn’t even ask you and just made it up because she was scared to ask you.’
‘This girl, she used to trouble me like that too,’ Ma complained.
‘Do something, Mummy. Please come with us. She’ll starve me to death in Canada.’ Vinay said. While all this was happening Ma had gone into the kitchen and put her pot of choice on the stove—the kadhai. Within seconds the smell of roasting semolina filled the house. Ma’s heart was like a piece of ice which Vinay had melted with the warmth of his affection.
We were leaving on a new journey the next month. Flying high amongst the clouds, Ma was telling Vinay about how crazy I was in my childhood. I was smiling. My country was getting left behind. I felt a stab of pain at the thought. But I was happy. I was taking my home with me.
A BIRD IN FLIGHT
Snehvir Gosain
The highway was more or less empty. The white car speeding along it was approaching Alipur. The passenger, Shivshankar Sahay, seemed to be ill at ease. As the car raced towards the town, so did his heartbeat. Suddenly the car moved onto a dirt track. He placed his hand on the driver’s shoulder. ‘Ram Dayal, please stop the car.’
Storywallah Page 14
