A Life Less Ordinary (15 page)

I was happy at this, of course, but I wondered when, if ever, my little girl would get the chance to wear the earrings. From the beginning she had been a sickly child, falling ill every now and again, and so she was quite weak. I wanted nothing more than that she should be healthy. I remembered that after I'd come home from hospital with her, I had had to work very hard fetching and carrying water for the house. One day, while feeding at my breast, she caught a terrible chill, and she was so sick that she could hardly breathe. I was really frightened. It was quite late—after nine o'clock on the night of Kali Puja—and her father was not at home. So I picked her up and started to walk out of the house myself. I saw Shashti and her mother standing near their home and talking.

“Where are you taking your little girl at this hour?” Shashti asked.

“Look at her,” I said, “she's so sick and I have to take her to a doctor. Her father knows she's ill but he can't be bothered, so what can I do? I have to go alone.”

“And where is Dulal?”

“He hasn't come today either.”

“Wait a minute and I'll come with you.”

There was a doctor near Dulal's house, so I suggested to Shashti that we go there, but by the time we got there the clinic was shut and he had gone. “What shall we do now?” I asked Shashti. Then I suggested we go to Dulal's house and ask his advice. We went there to find he was busy with a puja. He saw us standing there with the girl in my arms, but he paid us no attention. I was really surprised at this and I couldn't say anything. Shashti went up to him and whispered that the child was unwell but even so, he did not seem to be bothered. He just busied himself with whatever he was doing. Finally, I said to Shashti, “Let's go. We'll take her to Dr. Swapan.” We walked for about half a mile and finally arrived at his place. By then, it was around ten at night. Dr. Swapan knew my father a little. He took out his stethoscope and listened to the little girl's breathing and then he turned around and scolded me, “Why have you brought her to me when she is already half dead? What am I supposed to do? I will not take a risk. I'll write you a letter and you take her to Dr. Karmakar.” The doctor's words filled me with fear. “What will happen to my child, Shashti?” I asked her tearfully.

“Nothing will happen. Just pray to God,” she said, “and everything will be all right.”

Dr. Swapan pulled out some money and gave it to me. Then he called us a rickshaw and said, “Go on, go to the doctor and make sure you come to see me before you go home.”

The rickshaw took us around and around but we couldn't find a doctor's clinic open or find Dr. Karmakar. Finally, he took us to the home of a doctor he knew. It was almost eleven by then. He begged the doctor to examine the child. “Do you have enough money?” the doctor asked. “She needs to be hospitalized.”

“Can you not treat her in your home, Doctor?” Shashti asked.

“I'll try,” he said, and took her inside.

He had all the facilities in his home, and once inside, he handed the little girl to a nurse and asked her to lay her down on the bed. Then he inserted some kind of tube in her nose. I was watching this fearfully from just outside: I was so scared. I don't know what the doctor put up her nose, or what he pulled out, but the girl started screaming with pain. I could not bear to see her like this and I was clutching Shashti. At that moment, she was the only support I had. Finally, the doctor said I could take her home. He did not charge me too much—perhaps he saw my condition and knew I could not afford it. Even the rickshaw-wallah who was so kind, and took so much trouble, charged me much less than he should have. We were not able to stop by at Dr. Swapan's on the way home because by that time his clinic was closed. The rickshaw-wallah took us all the way home.

When I went in, I found my husband sitting and eating, his face swollen with anger. But the moment he saw the child and the medicines in my hand, his aspect changed. He became really concerned—he must have thought I was out and about with Dulal, which is why he was so angry. The next day Dulal also came in the morning, and I let fly at him unsparingly. He was truly sorry, he took it all, and when I had finished, he accepted that it was his mistake. Then, despite my trying to stop him, he took the girl in his arms and after that day, her care became more or less his sole responsibility.

Once I'd begun to go out to work, it was inevitable that people would stop when they saw me on the road, just for a chat. Someone would ask about my work, someone about home, and we just passed the time talking of this and that. My husband did not like this one bit. Whenever he saw me with someone, he'd wait till I got home and then start abusing me and beating me. If I protested or tried to explain, he'd pick up a large stone and threaten to hurl it at me. He didn't say much about my working
outside the house, even though he didn't like it, but if I so much as talked to another man, he would go wild. There was tension if I didn't work and tension if I did—what was I to do? But one day all these worries flew out of my head—albeit for a short while—the day I learned that my mother, my real mother, had come back.

That day I had barely lit the fire to begin cooking after work when my brother's elder daughter, Soma, suddenly came running, jumping from house to house, shouting, “Aunt, Aunt, come quickly! Grandma has come!”

Your grandma has come? So what's so exciting about that? I thought she came over yesterday?”

“Not that grandma!”

“Then which one?”

“My grandma! Come on! Baba has been all over searching for her, and he's finally found out where she's been! Come quick!”

I was stunned. Was it possible? Could it really be my mother? I remembered her face so well. “Let's go,” I said to Soma, “let's go and see.”

We ran all the way. When we got there, I found my brother sitting in the veranda of the house. “Go in,” he said, “see who I have found. All these years Baba hasn't been able to find her, but I've got her for you.”

A crowd had collected at the door. Someone said, “Look, your mother has come.” Another said, “She looks just like you!” A third said, “Go, run and tell your father.” I went in, and the moment I saw her my head started spinning and I fainted to the ground. My sister-in-law sprinkled oil and water on my forehead and sat me up. I began to howl and say to my brother, “Why did you bring her? We were all right without her. We had told everyone our mother was dead. Where was the need to bring her into our lives again?”

She was very different now. She did not even seem to recog
nize me. A woman from the neighborhood said to her, “Look, here's your daughter….”

“My daughter? Who? Baby?” she asked. “My elder daughter has left us all and gone.” I looked at her. I did not think she would stay with us. The people around said to her that now that her elder son had brought her to his home, she should stay with him. She said, “No, I'll stay with my younger son. He lives apart from everyone, I'll be all right with him. Why create a confusion again? I've only come here for a few days, I'll go back there.”

My brother asked, “Don't you want to go back to Baba?”

“He has another Ma now, why should I create problems for him?”

Anger, sadness, happiness: didn't she feel any of these at seeing her children after so many years? I didn't see any of these things in Ma. And I think in my heart of hearts, I felt the same. Sometimes there is an expectation, a joy, a soaring, elating feeling in someone's coming home. Nothing like that happened to me. If I felt happiness at all, it was no different from what one feels at meeting a chance acquaintance. Memories came flooding back: some happy, some sad. I wondered again how she could have left such small children and gone away, and in that condition. Did she even remember that she had managed to rid herself of her little girl, Baby, by bribing her with ten paise on the day she left home? Did she remember that she hadn't turned around once to look back? How then could she have known that Baby stood there and watched her until she became a mere speck on the horizon, until the eyes could not see her anymore? Had she turned once and seen her daughter standing there, would she not have come back to embrace her, to take her in her arms and love her…? Perhaps Ma did not even know that that child was now a mother of three.

I looked at her again. She looked ill. She spoke very little. She still had sindoor in her hair, a large
tika
on her forehead. But for
whom? For a man who had no time to remember her, who was doing perfectly well without her? I had imagined that when we finally met she would take me in her arms and hold me close, but this Ma did not even seem to know me. I asked her if she got any peace by leaving us and going away, but she did not answer. Then I asked if she remembered that she had pressed ten paise into my hand before she left and she said, “Shut up! Don't talk nonsense!” Did she really not remember any of this? She seemed to me like someone who had suffered a lot. The way she refused to understand what I was saying made me wonder if perhaps she had gone a bit mad.

She stayed with my brother for a month and then she left. Nothing would persuade her to stay longer. We also took her to see Baba. He took one look at her and said, “Where were you all this time? You destroyed my life: why have you come back now?”

“I haven't come to stay. If I hadn't been dragged here by my elder son, I would never have come.” Then, after a while, she added, “I am fine staying with my younger son. It's all very well to say I destroyed your life and went away, but what have you done? You earn so much but have you been able to give any of the children a proper upbringing? How did you marry the younger daughter off where you did? You are content to spend all the money on yourself, but you've never thought to give her anything. Who do you think will look after you in your old age? No one. And do you know how far my house is from the office in Kolkata where you used to work? Barely a stone's throw away. If you had wanted, you could have easily found me. But you weren't really interested. How do you think my elder son managed to find me?” The brother with whom my mother now lived had one child. Perhaps this was why she was so anxious to rush back. I wondered: Did she love this one grandchild that much, then?

Before she left, Ma came to visit me as well. Lots of people
from around collected to see her. Some of the girls asked if she was my real mother and I said, “Yes, and she's come to see me after twenty years.” But I wasn't able to say good-bye to her. I was at work, and by the time I got to my brother's house, I found she had already left. When I asked my brother, he wasn't able to give me a proper address for her. I thought I might go to see her, but no one was willing to take me there, and they kept saying that it would be really difficult to take all the children and go there, so it would be better to forget about it.

I met my mother after so many years, but I couldn't stop her leaving again. A few days after she had gone, my youngest brother came to visit us with his wife. I don't know why, but when I saw him I could not stop the tears. I asked him, “Bhai, do you know who I am?”

“How can I not know you, Didi?” he said. “Can it be that people of the same blood do not know each other?”

“No one has called me Didi before this, Bhai,” I said. “Please, can you call me Didi again?” I saw that his eyes welled up with tears, too, though he tried to hide them.

“So, tell me,” he said, “how many children do you have?”

“Ma did not want to stay with us,” I said as we went in, “she only wants to stay with you.”

Two or three days later he left. Then I learned that my elder brother had also moved to Delhi. So now, apart from Baba, there was no one there I could call family. And as for my father, he was as good as not there. At least with my brother I would go across to visit sometimes: now there'd be no one left. No one to turn to in sorrow or joy, no one who could intervene when I got beaten…but what could I do? How could I go anywhere with three children in tow? Sometimes when I looked at my husband, I felt a sort of compassion for him. And then I wondered why I could not live the way he wanted me to, be the person he wanted me to be. We
had nothing at all in common: perhaps that was the root of all our troubles. I couldn't understand why things were like this for us—there were so many families I knew of where things were well between the husband and wife, where they truly shared a life, where they went out together…Many people said of my husband that he was a good man, that he was straight, that he didn't have a bad thought in his heart. Sometimes I also thought that he was a good man, and that perhaps he was unduly influenced by others and they were the ones instigating fights between us. But there were other times when I was unable to bear the way he treated me and I would ask myself, Am I an animal or a human being for him to treat me this way? I remembered how he had behaved with me when I had gone for the puja at Dulal's house. Since that day, I had not wanted to go home to my husband.

The puja used to take place every year at Dulal's home and I used to help with the arrangements—making sure everything was in the right place. I also helped with the decorations—not only there but in other homes as well. In fact, whenever there was a puja, a marriage, or some sort of function in the neighborhood, people would call me to do the floor designs, the
alpana
, and the decorations. I enjoyed this very much.

On the day of the puja, I fasted and waited at home for my husband to return from work. I had put together some things for the puja—fruit, some food, a conch shell, a small stool. It was around two in the afternoon. Normally, my husband would come back by that time but that day, it was close to evening and there was no news of him. I thought he must have gotten delayed at work. I was waiting because when he came, I would give him his food and then I could go to the puja. It was well after five when he came. I served him his dinner and when he had finished, I told him I was going to the puja. He asked, “How late will you be?”