The Scent of Mogra and Other Stories

by Aparna Kaji Shah

  Brother, I want you to know that I care for all of you deeply. Please let Ma and Pa know that. And I’m sorry for being the cause of so much sadness.

  Love always,

  Surekha

  Ba

  I would plead, “Just one more story, Ba, please, before you take a nap.”

  “Okay, Suneel,” she would agree, “then, young man, off you go and play.”

  When I came home from school around four, she always opened the door for me with a steaming mug of tea in hand. My parents returned from work at seven, and I looked forward to my Ba’s warm smile and chatter about what she had been occupied with during the day. “I walked for half an hour before lunch and oh, I saw such beautiful flowers on Bruce street,” or, “Did you hear about the accident at the intersection?” She showed me the book she was reading with comments like, “Such trash!” or, “Amazing, you should read it during the holidays.” She often went over to our neighbour Susie’s house. Susie was eighty-seven and completely bed-ridden. Ba read to her, made her a cup of coffee, chatted, and cheered her up.

  Other neighbours greeted her with a warm, “Hello, Mrs. Mehta,” and Ba always stopped to ask about their families and jobs.

  When she went out, she would come home and tell us, “Marie’s baby is lovely; I saw her at the park today.” Or, “Poor Henry, his knee is really bothering him. I told him I would get him the Ayurvedic ointment when I go to India.”

  I remember being very upset one evening because of a C-grade in a science project, as I usually got an A. I was miserable after a heated discussion with my parents. Ba came into my room later that evening and said, “Suneel, you can’t always get an ‘A.’ A ‘C’ will motivate you to work harder and not take your strengths for granted.”

  “You’re right, Ba,” I replied.

  I had wondered about Ba’s transformation after my grandfather had passed away about seven years ago. No longer did I hear the tinkling of glass bangles as Ba approached; no longer did I see her in a deep red or green sari with a vermilion bindi on her broad forehead. Those were the days when she was often in the kitchen, making traditional mithai that all of us, but especially Dada, loved. Now, I was used to seeing her in a white sari, no bindi, and a single gold bangle on her arm; now, she only helped my mother with the cleaning and chopping of vegetables and rarely went near the stove.

  One Friday night when Ba was already asleep, I tiptoed into her room to pick up a book that I had forgotten. I was surprised to see my parents in a whispered discussion by her bedside. I got my book and turned to leave. My dad came out with me. We went to the family room, where he seated me next to him on the sofa.

  “Listen, Suneel, Ba has been diagnosed with a lung condition that will make her bed-ridden in about six to eight months. They did some tests as her cough wouldn’t go away; we just got the reports this afternoon. She says that she wants to visit India before she gets weak. We don’t know when she will leave Toronto; it depends on what the doctors tell her on Tuesday. It could be in two to three weeks. When she returns to us — she wants to be away for about a month and a half —she may be quite ill. So, try to be cheerful and chatty while she is here. You never know what turn the disease will take.”

  With tears in my eyes I got up and stood by the window, staring at a blurred image of red and yellow tulips that filled our garden outside.

  My dad got up as well, put his arm around me, and said, “She has had a wonderful life, Suneel. But all things must come to an end … these tulips, too, will soon fade away and be replaced by summer flowers.”

  My mom was crying when I went into the kitchen to get a glass of water. She hugged me tightly and said, “Beta, it is a great shock now, but we will have to accept it. Soon I won’t have a mother, but who knows, miracles can happen, and she may be with us longer than we expect.”

  I was grief-stricken, but managed to talk to Ba as I had before. The following evening, she said, “I’m lucky. It’s the mango season in India. Also, your aunt and uncle are making arrangements for me to visit Trimbakeshwar, the famous Shiva temple near Mumbai. I hope I can go to Panchwati as well … that’s where Rama and Sita are supposed to have lived during their years of exile.”

  “Ba, it’s going to be really hot. I remember the sweet mango juice I had the last time we went. What do you want to take for Ajay and Anjali? I’ll send some video games for Ajay, and I guess Mom can buy some clothes and make-up for Anjali.”

  “Yes, I’m sure they’ll like that. Your cousins will be so grown up. I can’t wait to see them.”

  On the weekend before she left, my Mom and I helped her pack. She seemed more tired than I had ever seen her before, and I wondered how she would manage the long journey. I packed some books that she wanted to take with her. I put Anita Rau Badami’s Tamarind Mem in the bag. I said, “Oh, you will enjoy this novel. I’ve read the reviews. The book has stories of several related women, and how they end up where they are.”

  Without looking at me she whispered, “Good! I too will be finishing up soon.”

  A week later, she left. She was very excited at the prospect of meeting friends and relatives in Mumbai. She hadn’t been home for over five years. However, when we went to the airport to see her off, there was heaviness in her step and sadness in her eyes, though her lips were constantly smiling. As she turned to go through security, she brushed away her tears and waved a final goodbye.

  We drove back home in silence. We were all thinking the same thought — what will her condition be when she returns to Toronto in six weeks?

  Those six weeks went by quickly, as I prepared for my final school exams. We tried to speak to Ba about once a week. She always sounded happy.“Hello, Suneel!” she’d shout. Older people always think that the greater the length of the phone line, the louder they have to shout! “Are you studying hard?”

  “Yes, Ba. How’s the weather out there?”

  “Hot and humid … and I’m enjoying every minute of it. Can you hear the firecrackers? India just won the cricket match against Australia. Did you like the postcards I sent you? Aren’t they colourful?”

  Her return date was set for a few days after my exams. We filled her room with flowers. My mom cooked her favourite dishes and the house was filled with the sweet smells of cinnamon, cardamom, and saffron, and the aroma of fried puri and pungent curries. We drove to the airport in high spirits. The house had seemed rather empty and the family incomplete without her.

  We waited outside the arrival gate, peering at the passengers as they went past. Just as we were thinking that perhaps she could not find her bags, an airline attendant walked up to us with Ba in a wheelchair. My mother’s eyes widened and my father put his arm around her shoulders. My hand flew to my mouth when I saw wrinkles and sagging flesh that I had not seen before. She seemed to have aged ten years in six weeks. With a wan smile and a far away look, she tried to get up from the wheelchair to get into the car. I quickly grabbed her arm as she swayed and wobbled in front of me. She sat in the back seat with me and grasped my hand. We didn’t speak much.

  She was out of breath when she said, “It was … was a good trip … I’m so glad I went. I … I may not be able to go again.”

  My parents took her to the doctor the very next day. The news was not good. The doctor suggested moving her to hospital, or she could die peacefully at home. It would be a matter of weeks or a few months. Ba decided to stay at home.

  I vividly remember those long summer days. Ba used to rest in her room most of the time. I would sometimes sit by her side and read to her. I read to her about the war in Iraq, or I read to her from Rohinton Mistry’s latest novel, all the while thinking what it would be like without her. On better days she would have her tea in the yard, happy to be outside under the sun with the trees, the grass, and the flowers.

  That summer I had a job as a research assistant at a local university. I played a lot of tennis and
hung out with my friends. Soon, the leaves started to turn, the days grew shorter, and I was busy preparing to go to university. Ba was hardly eating, and rarely sat out in the garden anymore. Just two weeks before I was due to leave, she was having tea — my mother had to help her hold the mug now — and she asked me to sit with her.

  There, beneath the red maple rustling in the breeze, and the cardinals hopping about and chattering, she said, “Suneel, when you … go to university, work hard, and … play hard. Oh … I wish I had had the chance to study … have fun…” She stopped and had to take a deep breath before she could continue. Her voice was fluttery when she said, “But … but … be true to yourself.” As I nodded, unable to speak because of the lump in my throat, I noticed the wilting impatiens and the fading marigolds in our yard. The sky had clouded over, the pleasant breeze had turned blustery, and my mom and I helped Ba to her bed.

  The next afternoon, the doctor said she was sinking. When my mother woke me up at four thirty in the morning, it was raining heavily after a night of lightening and thunder. I went in to see her, and stood with my parents by my side. She looked very gentle and peaceful. I stroked the back of her small hand, the one that had grasped mine when she returned from India. But now it felt cold, and her skin was more wrinkled and finer than before.

  By eight o’clock that morning, when friends had gathered at our home, and we took Ba to the crematorium, I was relieved that the rain had finally stopped. The sky was blue and the sun was breaking through the clouds. The robins and cardinals seemed to have come to the yard to bid a final goodbye to Ba, and as we lowered the stretcher into the hearse, I thought I saw a slight smile at the corners of her mouth.

  Some weeks later, I was attending my first classes at university. I was excited about my courses, and I was trying to make friends and get used to being away from home. There were times when I felt very unsure of myself — of my intelligence, my knowledge, and even the values I had grown up with. There was a guy from my dorm who believed in partying every day of the week, but I had to excuse myself often because of an assignment or test. Soon he stopped asking me, and gave me a hard, cold look if we happened to meet.

  And then there were the drugs and the alcohol. It was difficult to stay away from those things and admit it, when many other students bragged about what they had tried, and how often.

  It was at times such as these that Ba’s face swam before my eyes, and I remembered her last words to me. Those words never failed to encourage me in moments of doubt and wavering confidence — they helped me draw upon an inner strength that I never knew I possessed.

  The Scent of Mogra

  Wait. I see another image. I see Megha and she has red flowers in her hair. But who is she? She is in the woods with her friends, chasing away the monkeys who steal the mangoes that they are trying to knock down from the trees with stones. She has gathered a few in her velvet odhani, the colour of sindhur, which she wraps tightly around her shoulders. Oh! Is she Tina? An earlier incarnation, Tina?

  “Mama! Mama!”

  Tina comes out to the verandah, and plunks herself on the swing. She pushes the swing hard to make it go faster, but I am dizzy and can easily overpower a five-year-old to bring it to a slow stop. I take her hand and we get off the swing. To distract her, I lead her to the mogra flowers and together we inhale their fragrance.

  “Let’s make a garland with them for Lord Krishna,” I tell her. She nods energetically and starts to pluck with her little fingers. We sit down on the swing again with the flowers in my sari pallu. The white flowers glow like pearls as I pour them between us onto the red swing. I thread the flowers as Tina hands them to me one by one.

  The incense stick with the mogra fragrance is burnt out. In this place, I don’t know where I can find another. I left twenty years ago, in Earthly time. Tina must have been around forty then. She had come from her home abroad to see me when I was in hospital. She would sit with me and stroke my hand. She would tell me about her two children, my grandsons. I tried to listen, to understand, but I was already far away. And when I was alert, I was anxious about leaving my husband Ramesh behind; he was seventy-eight. How would he manage without me? The best thing was to take him with me where I went. But not at the same time. That would be too much for everyone to cope with — our two sons and Tina. So, I went alone. I was scared. The pain had been too much. I couldn’t breathe. Each breath I took seemed to be the last; there was so much effort.

  But I passed over easily. What a big deal everyone makes about death. I saw my family weeping. My son’s daughter, Diya, came to the hospital room, looked at my body on the bed, and ran out, sobbing. Poor child, she was only thirteen at the time.

  Tina’s childhood was happy and very special to me, maybe because she was my youngest. Some episodes from that time unfold before me now, as if it were only yesterday that they happened.

  ***

  “Where are you going? Where are you going? I want to put it on too,” Tina said, sticking out her hand. My red nail polish still wet, I painted the little nail on her index finger. She looked up at me and smiled, eyes shining. She trailed after me as I went into the bedroom to get ready for a dinner party we had to go to. I laid out a black sari with a red border. Red. The colour of red robins. I remembered them from several years ago, when we were living in Kenya. They liked to visit our garden in Nairobi, hopping about the vegetable patch when I went to get the sweet green squash that was ready to be picked. They twittered on the steps that led to the front door where Tina played, or when she was squatting over a piece of old newspaper because I was trying to toilet train her. “Red, red!” she called out. I ran over from the kitchen to see if it was blood from her bowels. Ah, no, it was only the robins twittering, and she, my little one, talking back to them.

  Now there is smoke here, and it fills the air with another smell. Is it an incense stick? I don’t see any. It is a smell I know. It used to make me cough. But I have not smelled it for over twenty years, not since I came here. It will come to me in a minute, it’s so familiar … cigarettes! How can I forget that terrible smell? I didn’t think I would smell it in this world; thank God, it’s clearing up now. My husband was a chain smoker for many years, until the doctors scared him. Your lungs will collapse, they said. So, he quit at that very moment. What a man. He didn’t smoke again, ever. Not a puff. A man made of stony determination, and a loving family man.

  I took him away exactly one month after I passed over. Pulled him over so that he wouldn’t be a burden on anyone, so that he wouldn’t be miserable. Why exactly a month later, you ask? Easy for everyone to remember the dates. Better for him not to live on after I left him alone. Yes, it was traumatic for the children. Tina was back in Canada when she got the news. She was angry.

  She asked him, “Why did you too leave me?”

  He, a grumpy voice in her head, told her, “What can I do? Mummy came to get me. She took me away.”

  I saw Tina when she was driving in Toronto, just a few months after Ramesh and I had passed over. She’d had to stop on the side of the road because she imagined being in a car crash, dying, and then immediately meeting us. She panicked and felt that she could not breathe; losing both parents within a month of each other was too much to deal with.

  There are times when we can look down and see what’s going on in the world that we left, and in the lives of our near and dear ones, but not always. What is going on in Tina’s life? She is sad, I know. I see her weeping. I see her praying. She even asks us, her father and me to help her. Can we, from a different world, help Earthly beings? For twenty years, I’ve never thought about it, but Tina is confused, upset. Why can’t I see the cause of her pain? We used to talk about the mysteries of life on earth, but life in this place is even more baffling.

  Though I died more than two decades ago, I have not been back on Earth even once. I have seen other people here go back and return several times. You may be wondering
what I’m talking about when I speak of being back in the world after death. If you are born a Hindu, you are told that we all have many lives to live. The cycle of birth and death will stop only when we have reached a high spiritual state. Those who had led a “good” life would have fewer and better lives to live, until finally, there are no more births to go through.

  My life was simple; I did what I was supposed to do. Ramesh and I had some very good times. I have already told you that we lived in Africa, but we also moved to different cities within India. I never complained to my husband about moving so much — from countries, cities, or homes. I was content with life as it was.

  Whenever my husband or children needed me, I was always there for them. Soon after I had passed over, I heard my doctor tell my son that I was one of the most courageous patients he’d ever had. I don’t think that was anything big, really. I simply did what I was asked to do by the doctors, and I didn’t whine and grumble because I had to bear what was to be borne. Complaining would have only aggravated the people around me, the people who were doing the best they could for me.

  As a bank manager, Ramesh could have made pots of money by taking bribes, but he never did. I did not mind that we could not afford expensive holidays, or that I could not buy much jewellery. He lived by the motto, “honesty is the best policy.” And Tina has taken this lesson to heart.

  Telling you about my life, about my husband and my daughter, has taken me back to our flat in Mumbai.

  The rain had finally stopped, and I opened the windows. The sea looked calmer, but the breeze was humid. The smell of cinnamon and saffron wafted in. It reminded me of the sweet rice dish which I always made for my birthday. Wouldn’t it be a nice surprise for my husband if I made it even though it was not my birthday? I went to the kitchen and started the preparations. Tina came to see how to make it. Whether she was busy studying for exams, or preparing to teach college students, she sometimes liked to relax by cooking; she wanted to make something different, something new. That youngest child of mine was creative.