‘Then you’ll have to go without it today.’
‘That’s nearly two weeks without one.’
‘I’ve just had a baby. I need to rest.’
‘You were up and about in no time after Ayesha.’
‘I’m older now.’
‘Other women pop out dozens and nothing happens to them.’
‘According to their husbands.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Are you saying I’m not considerate of you? I don’t care for you? Who used up all his savings so you could go to a fancy clinic for her delivery?’
‘I didn’t ask you to.’
‘But you hinted at it. So-and-so gave birth here, so-and-so only had a dai, so-and-so said the clinic was the best,’ he mimicked someone, it wasn’t her, ‘you practically taunted me into doing it.’
‘I didn’t. And even if I had, so? You did your duty and now I have to make you an omelette?’
‘At least. I did my duty and now you do yours.’
‘Well, I’m telling you I can’t.’
‘Don’t be lazy.’
‘I’m not being lazy, I’m not well,’ she wailed. The baby started crying.
‘Now look what you’ve done.’
‘He wouldn’t have woken up if you hadn’t made such a fuss! What does he want? Shut him up.’
‘I can’t if you keep talking.’
‘Abba,’ I poked my head around the door, ‘I’ll make you an omelette. I know how Ammi does it.’
They both looked at me. Even Adil paused in nipple-swallow to grunt approvingly.
‘Ok,’ Abba retreated, ‘at least one woman in this house knows how to take care of me.’
Ammi refused to get out of bed even after Abba, pleasant on a full stomach, renewed his cajoling. By mid-afternoon, after she had even refused a meal sent over by neighbours, he went to the doctor.
BHOOL NA JANA PHIR PAPA,
NAURUS LAY KAY GHAR AANA
JINGLE OF JUICE AD IN ‘90S
~
Back then, doctors still made house calls. There were one-man clinics/dispensaries in many neighbourhoods where the doctors would be more than happy to close shop and accompany a supplicant home. I recognized the young man with a moustache who trotted in with Abba, he had given me a shot in the bottom once. That sort of thing you don’t forget. He had to wait a while before being taken into Ammi’s room. When he did go in, I attempted to follow but was stopped at the door by my father, who winked as he held me back but left the door a little ajar so I could peep in and watch the proceedings.
Moustache-mouth took Ammi’s temperature, her blood pressure, poked and prodded her in various places, all without meeting her eyes. There was a certain propriety involved with female patients and male doctors, I had noticed it before. Doctors laughed and joked with Abba, made small talk, bantered about cricket and politics, this that and the other as they examined him. With Ammi, it was strictly a ‘what I need to know and what I need to tell you’ kind of conversation. She never relaxed, they never attempted to make her. Another one of those differences between men and women I was noting as I grew. To male doctors, men = people, women = patients. Strange.
Ammi kept her eyes fixed on Abba the whole time the doctor was examining her; he was standing by her side holding Adil in both hands, the doctor began asking her a series of questions. He noted her answers on the small writing pad he removed from a pocket of his safari suit. There were quite a few, and once or twice he shook his head and clucked like an anxious hen, but I couldn’t make out what either of them were saying. Then he put his pad away and asked Ammi to do something; I couldn’t hear what but she cast a pleading look at impassive Abba. She sat up and he palpitated the small of her back. Then he gestured for her to stand. Pulling her dupatta all the way across her chest, like the only garment of an African woman (I had an encyclopaedia with pictures), she swung her legs over the side, stood, swayed alarmingly and sat right back down again. The doctor said something to her, perhaps ‘once more’ but she shook her head in refusal and rested against the headboard again. Abba stepped in and told her to do it. This time I heard her curt, ‘I said I can’t,’ and cringed; I hoped they weren’t going to yell at each other in front of the doctor. He seemed like a nice man, I didn’t want him to be unhappy.
But he stopped Abba mid-sentence with a raised hand, put all his things back into his bag and came towards the door. I darted around the corner to the small lounge and waited till I heard Abba come out to talk to him. There was a scratching sound, pen on paper, and the rip of a sheet being torn off.
I hoped he had given Ammi the red syrup. When I was ill, I always got some red syrup. It was sticky and sweet with an aftertaste that made my mouth open by itself and my shoulders hunch up.
‘Doctor Sahib …,’ Abba began.
‘Just a minute,’ there was more pen on paper, more ripping. Had he started again or was he giving her lots of syrup? ‘Right. You’ll need to get these and start them immediately. The dosage is on the prescription. You should be able to get the first two at the corner store, but the other one you might have to go a little further.’
‘This is a lot of medicine,’ Abba sounded hesitant, unsure of what to say or whether to say what was really on his mind.
‘She needs a lot of care. Most of this is for strength, tonics and tablets to build her up. As you must have noticed, she can’t even get up.’
‘I thought she was just being dramatic.’
‘She’s just had a child. She’s not that young anymore. It’s just exhaustion, plain and simple. The weakness is bad for everyone right now, especially since she’s feeding the baby.’
‘I wanted to put him on formula but she won’t agree.’
‘She might have to if she doesn’t get stronger.’
‘Doctor,’ again there was that hesitation, ‘she wasn’t like this after the first child.’
‘Like I said, she’s not that young anymore. She’s run down, her blood pressure is low, she’s probably anaemic, and her blood isn’t thick enough.’
‘But why would that happen all of a sudden?’
‘It doesn’t happen all of a sudden, it’s obviously been building up for a while.’
‘But from what? She doesn’t work.’
‘Who takes care of the home?’
‘She does.’
‘And the other child?’
‘She does, naturally,’ Abba was beginning to sound irritated.
‘Even during pregnancy? What about her family, her own mother? Why didn’t she go and live with them?’
‘Her mother died when she was a kid. No sisters. And I don’t have any close family either. We’re pretty much on our own.’
‘There’s your answer. Now, are you going to drop me back? It’s a fair walk from here.’
‘Of course,’ Abba’s keys jangled in his hand.
As they went out, I heard him say, ‘But other women have eight children and that doesn’t slow them down.’
‘People are different. Can you afford a fulltime maid for a while to help?’
‘Just my luck. I had to go and marry a princess.’
I looked in on Ammi but she had fallen asleep.
For all his grumbling, my father was getting worried. If not about Ammi herself, then about all the planets which orbited her sun. Adil. Me. The home. The kitchen. Who would make sure his carefully constructed kingdom, his refuge from the harsh outer world, would not collapse while she recuperated? To me he said she would recuperate, he was sure of that, she’d be back to her normal self in no time.
Was he just an extremely positive thinker or was it denial? I thought my father’s optimism about Ammi getting better was misplaced. You only had to look at her. She grew paler by the day and thinner too, as if Adil was sucking the life out of her with every tug of his mouth. Abba was forcing her to take the tonics and pills, and a girl from the neighbourhood was popping in to cook and serve lunch to me a
nd Ammi, but dinner was Abba’s chore once he got home from work. He had said after the doctor left and I quizzed him that we couldn’t afford a fulltime maid but after just a couple of days doing it he threw in the towel.
SHAADI NA KARNA YARO,
BOHAT PACHTAO GAY
LYRICS OF HASSAN JEHANGIR SONG
~
‘I’m so distracted by the thought of cooking I can’t finish the work on my desk, and ten more files are waiting to pour in,’ he told Ammi one night as he watched her pick at the tray he had taken in for her. Adil nestled in his arms, sucking mindlessly on one hairy knuckle. I was on the floor by the dressing table, my plate balanced on the stool. It had been there for a while and I still wasn’t finished. Abba was a terrible cook.
‘Then don’t make bhindi,’ was the best Ammi could manage, accompanied by a wan, sad smile, as if to say, ‘Thank you for reminding me that you’re having to do extra work, my work, while I lie around all day doing nothing more important than breastfeeding your child and feeling awful. So inconsiderate of me, I know.’
‘It doesn’t matter what I make, I still have to think about it before, rush home, rush into the kitchen, it’s all rush, rush, rush. I can’t do any work like this.’
‘Maybe the girl can come and do dinner as well?’
‘She can’t. I checked. And we can’t force her because we’re not paying her. Her mother just wants to help out, says it’s neighbourly.’
‘Wants to know exactly what happens in our house is more likely.’ Was that a weak snort?
‘These people are trying to help us and you’re looking at them so suspiciously,’ he shook his head.
‘Sorry. Everything just seems so dark all of a sudden. I just can’t think of anyone doing anything nice. Why would they? Why do anything at all?’
‘Well, everyone can’t lie around all day.’
She flushed, ‘You think I’m faking, don’t you?’
‘No, no I don’t,’ he was quick to deny it.
‘You don’t have to lie. It doesn’t matter if you think I’m faking. I don’t care. It’s not going to make me hop out of bed and scrub your floors.’
‘I’ve never asked you to do that.’
‘You’ve never asked me not to either.’
‘Are you saying I don’t treat you well?’
‘You don’t treat me at all.’
‘If only your mother were alive, or you had sisters, cousins, good friends even. This is when you need other people.’
‘Because you know, those other women and I had this baby, built this house, and raised Ayesha together.’
‘You know what I mean. You can’t go to my office and do my work. It’s natural that I have to struggle with yours.’
‘My work?’ Ammi laughed, ‘it’s funny how we and us, ours and together becomes yours and mine.’
‘Don’t blame me. That’s just the natural order of things. It’s our way.’
‘You know what our way really says? It says you have to take extra special care of me at a time like this. That I should want for nothing, need nothing, if you can provide it.’
‘What do you need that I haven’t given you?’
She kept quiet, looked away.
‘I’m doing my best, aren’t I? Is it my fault if I have to work so I can’t come home earlier to cook lunch as well? Is it my fault that you’re spoilt and inconsiderate? Is it my fault the bloody bhindi has to be chopped so small? Why can’t you just fry it and munch it like potato chips, huh?’
‘Ayesha,’ Ammi sounded disinterested, ‘get me a glass of water please.’
I brought her a glass of cold water from the clay matka in the coolest corner of the kitchen, a plate under it like she had showed me before. Serve people properly, make them feel important. No one had said anything in my absence. I could tell. It was as if I were the switch. On. Off. On. Off. Was this somehow all my fault?
Ammi reached under her pillow and pulled out a thick gold bracelet. It had been her mother’s. She had shown it to me, said it would be mine one day.
‘Ayesha, come here.’
I went over. She patted the bed and I climbed up quickly, pleased to be close to her. I had missed her soft, warm body, her sinewy arms, lately they had been given over entirely to Adil. I considered jabbing an elbow into his rounded belly as I nestled next to him, but decided against it. Both parents were watching. Besides, there would be time enough for that.
‘I know I told you that this was yours, and I was merely hanging on to it for safekeeping.’
I nodded. To me, it was a bauble. A pretty bauble, but a bauble nonetheless. Jewellery was for silly girls who whined about clothes and swooned over preppy faced singers. I was going to grow up to be a man.
‘I need to ask you for something Ayesha. I need your help.’
‘What do you want me to do, Ammi?’ I would do anything for her. She was the most important thing in the world to me, more important than Abba, Adil, the Mamus, the street, the bauble all rolled into one.
‘I need to get some money so I can have help around the house, someone to look after us, look after you while I rest.’
‘I don’t need anyone to look after me,’ I protested, stung by the implication that I was a helpless child. I wasn’t. Who had kept everything together since Adil was born? Who had gone around and checked all the locks on doors and windows at night when everyone was asleep like Ammi used to do? Who had made sure the girl who came to cook didn’t wash leftover food down the sink? It certainly hadn’t been Abba.
‘To look after me then, so I can grow strong again and look after Adil properly?’
‘And me!’ Sure I didn’t need anyone else, but I wanted her. Needed her. To plait my hair, intimidate my enemies, read me stories.
‘What do you want to do then?’
‘I want you to say goodbye to this bracelet. It won’t be yours anymore.’
There was a snort from Abba’s direction.
‘Okay. Goodbye bracelet,’ I waved happily at it.
‘Thank you, baby doll,’ Ammi kissed my nose, then held the bracelet out to Abba, ‘get me a fulltime maid. Someone clean, reliable. She should be able to cook.’
‘Of course your majesty,’ Abba bowed to her, ‘I exist but to cater to your every whim and fancy.’
‘And try not to forget that too often,’ she grinned at him. A full-throttle Ammi grin, and the room seemed brighter; an open, airy chamber of love, joy, closeness.
‘As you command. Now perhaps the court jester and I can amuse you with a dance?’ He grabbed me under the armpits and lifting me off the bed, swung me around once, twice, three times before putting me down, winking and launching into ‘Co Co Corina,’ tugging at my hand to indicate that I should join in. So we sang and danced, and Ammi laughed. Adil opened his eyes, grunted and went back to sleep. It was just the three of us. Happy. And it had only cost one bauble. I wished I had a million to say goodbye to.
AYA BENGALI, CHAYA BENGALI, MEHBOOB KO KADMON MAIN LAYA BENGALI
AD FOR OCCULT SCIENTIST
~
Over the next week there was a succession of maid hopefuls. Big. Little. Young. Old. Skinny. Fat. Rude ones who demanded to know the terms before talking about what they could do were dismissed outright by an imperious Ammi who interviewed them in her bedroom.
‘Wrong attitude,’ she confided after I had returned from ushering yet another candidate to the door, ‘she was acting like she was interviewing me!’
Two or three were merely looked at before being dismissed with a curt, ‘too young’. One mother who came in with a daughter who seemed about my age was given a classic lecture when it turned out that the daughter was the applicant.
‘What sort of mother are you?’ Ammi snapped at her, ‘How can you even think about putting someone that young to work?’
‘We don’t have a choice,’ was the sulky reply.
‘Of course you do. Put her in a school.’
‘Are you going to pay her fees? Besides we d
on’t believe in educating our girls. What are they going to do with education later? Think?’
‘We don’t believe in using babies as labour,’ Ammi replied primly, and turned her face in a sign that the interview was over. I smiled at the girl as they left. It would have been fun to have a playmate.
After the interviews had gone on for four days, with work continuing to pile up and no acceptable candidate in sight, Abba decided to take matters into his own hands. When he was forced to go to work wearing ‘casual’ clothes because there were no clean ones (Ammi used to wash, starch and iron his shirts herself), that’s when Ammi’s warnings of impending domestic doom really hit home. Wearing shalwar kameez to report to the administration wing of the federal government, everyone would think he was an intelligence agent, he grumbled.
‘But isn’t that our national dress?’ I asked curiously as he ironed, very badly I noticed. That was constantly being drummed into us at school.
‘Yes doll, it is. But what is national dress on one day can be your fancy dress costume on the next.’
‘Do women also have to wear pants to work?’ I was worried because I knew most women didn’t wear pants. Was that why there didn’t seem to be any at Abba’s office?
‘No they don’t.’
‘Because they don’t have any?’
‘Because it wouldn’t be right.’
‘Why is it right for men and not right for women?’
‘I’ll explain when you’re older, okay? But I have to rush now. Better still, ask your mother.’
I did, after he had gone, I had cleared up the debris scattered in his wake and told the girl what to cook that day.
‘Men and women are different, Ayesha,’ she said, ‘they think differently, walk differently, and talk differently. Their bodies are different too. So there is a different set of rules for both. Like what’s okay to wear and what’s not.’
‘Who made the rules?’
‘God did.’
‘So God said “oye men, wear pants and oye women, don’t wear pants.”’
‘Not in those words exactly ...’
‘Then how do we know He said that?’
Tunnel Vision Page 20
