Didimaa started to cry. She said, ‘My son, your Mama, hits me when no one’s there. You know what he does? You know? He wraps little stones in a handkerchief and swings them at me. He sleeps with the nurse when I’m sleeping. People think I don’t see things but I see everything, I know everything.’
To her credit, she’s a masterful storyteller. But the best stories come pouring out of her when she is asked about the long misshapen scar on her right hand. The story, the context, the characters change every few months.
‘But Didimaa, how did you get that scar?’
‘Oh, this? You wouldn’t believe me even if I tell you.’
‘Tell me, Didimaa.’
‘World War 2, before your wretched Maa was born. Your brave Dadu had just came back injured from his posting in Egypt. Three bullets, three bullets had hit him! They wanted to amputate his hand at the hospital but he refused! He ran from the hospital with his hand dangling by just a few tendons. It was I who took out the bullets and wrapped his hand with bandages made out of my wedding sarees. And then like Gandhari, you know Gandhari, from the Mahabharata, yes yes, like her, I took a hot knife and cut through my hand and left my wound to fester and fasted till your Dadu was all better!’
She fell silent for dramatic effect, and waited for me to show any sign of having believed this bullshit story. Dadu, sixteen years Didimaa’s senior, died in 1962, having fought in both the World Wars and the Kashmir skirmish of 1948. Some say he died of a broken heart after finding out that the Indian Army was decimated by the Chinese in the ’62 war.
Didimaa’s the only one who knows how I am wholly responsible for Sami’s death. Only mad people can keep secrets. No one believes them.
‘Are you here to cry again? Tell me how you watched your friend die?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Do you think I don’t remember?! I remember everything! You let him die! You and your mother—both murderers!’
‘Whatever, Didimaa. I just came to tell you that I think I like a girl,’ I said.
‘Ish!’ exclaimed Didimaa, suddenly soft. ‘You’re so young! Why? Who’s the prostitute who’s trying to snatch my sweet grandson away from me? Who’s she? Ish. Who’s it? Tell me? I will slap her with my chappal, drag her to the streets and parade her naked.’
‘Didimaa, she’s a nice girl, very smart and very beautiful,’ I said.
‘Nice girl, my foot. I will thrash her and then shave her head. I am going to tell your Maa–Baba. I am going to tell them to change your school. Ish! All this because your Maa–Baba are too busy working—’
‘Didimaa, who’s going to believe you? They will think it’s one of your stories,’ I said, more calm than I felt.
Then I turned to the TV and put onThe Jetsons. A little later, without warning, Didimaa relieved herself in her diapers.
‘My sweet grandson. Change me?’ said she and looked at me, her eyes flickering with hope and tears. I looked away, turned up the volume of the television and waited for the nurse. It was thirty minutes before she came and cleaned Didimaa who levelled the choicest abuses against me, Maa and Baba. ‘You will all die poor and unhappy. Worms will eat out your eyes,’ she said while I was leaving.
‘Thank you, Didimaa.’
We all ate alone today. Maa doesn’t eat till Dada gets home and he’s rarely home before 11 p.m. Baba can’t wait that long but he tries his best and gives up at 10 p.m. I am made to eat early. I wonder what toll this high-pressure job is taking on Dada’s heart. I have to remind Maa–Baba to goad him into getting a full-body health check-up.
15 March 1999
Today I went to the Mittals’ house to watch an episode ofHum Paanchbecause our TV had stopped working. The Mittals, who live in the flat above ours, and with whom the Gangulys share a rich history of skirmishes big and small. Our car, a ten-year-old Fiat, stands in their parking lot which Baba hijacked a couple of years ago after they sold their scooter. The algae growth on our living-room walls is because the miserly Mittals don’t fix their drainage system.
‘They have cash and jewellery hidden in their bed boxes! Don’t I know these banias? All thieves!’ says Baba.
It is unlikely.
Their house smells of poverty and despair. The sofa’s old and lumpy, their fans creak, the flooring is cracked and dark in places, the refrigerator doesn’t work half the time, and the bed sheets are always stained. Maa says they are saving dowry for their two daughters—Kanika, seventeen, and Richa, sixteen—both of whom study at the Kendriya Vidyalaya. They are both darker than me; the younger one is the colour of my elbow. Last year Richa had accepted me as the love of her life when I had inadvertently walked into the bathroom while she was bathing. She was the first woman I had ever seen naked, and I was the first man who had seen her like that. Ever since that day she shies away from me whenever I’m in the room, blushes excessively when I ask for extra tomatoes or a cup of dahi, steals glances at me till I smile and accept the existence of that secret between us. She’s beautiful with her thick black hair melting into her skin and has the body of a grown woman, no doubt about that, but I feel nothing for her. That’s unfair. If we were intended to live most of our lives in pairs, why didn’t we come with the names of our soulmates imprinted in our hearts? Why do we stumble from one name to another till we make a choice, right or wrong? Why would she fall in love with me when I would never love her back? The checks and balances of love in the world will never settle. It will always be a CA’s nightmare.
Coming back to the Mittals.
Despite Maa’s affinity for fair skin, she loves both the girls dearly. In them she used to find solace for the void left behind by the daughter, Mina, who left her too early. After Dada, Maa had a baby girl whom she had lovingly named Mina, meaning light. She was born with a heart too small and didn’t live past a week. Mina’s death severed not one but two mother–daughter relationships. Post Mina’s funeral, Didimaa told Maa she had wished for Mina’s death, as a punishment for how Maa had ignored Didimaa.
‘Now you know what it feels like! Kali has listened to my prayers!’ Didimaa had screamed.
Maa, in the grip of fury and grief, had thrown a vase at Didimaa’s head.
Mama had found Didimaa after a full hour, lying in a pool of blood; Maa sitting on the couch, watching her. Maa had been there for the entire hour, watching Didimaa plead and bleed and pass out.
