How Dada had grumbled, ‘Maa! Please, it’s important, let her go. It’s a meeting with the CEO!’
‘I don’t care if it’s a meeting with god himself,’ Maa had said and how Maa feigned fainting, and Dada rushed to her, made her lie down on the sofa, and Boudi fanned her with a magazine. Of how Baba rushed to Dada’s house—hovered for a few moments outside the door —and then entered the house saying a prayer, and then took Maa’s head into his lap and whispered her back to life, and then accused Dada for Maa’s recent health problems.
I could have told Brahmi about my doubts about the genuineness of Maa’s fainting episode, which I had expressed to Baba, who had looked at me agape, insulted and then showed me the reports of Maa’s health check-up.
‘You think we are lying to you!’ Baba had shouted and thrown a bunch of prescriptions at me.
Her blood pressure has shot up dangerously, and both of them are taking sleeping pills.
I didn’t tell Brahmi that.
What I also didn’t tell her is that Dada–Boudi had lied shamelessly to Maa–Baba afterwards. They told us that Boudi had cancelled the trip and I had believed them. But later that night when I dropped in unannounced to tell Dada about Maa’s reports, her blood pressure and sleeping problem, Boudi was gone and so was her packed suitcase.
‘She’s going to return tomorrow afternoon. Just handle Maa–Baba till then,’ Dada had said.
So I did that. I came back home and lied to Maa who looked pale but smiled thinking her son and daughter-in-law were stubborn but also pliable.
I didn’t tell Brahmi all this, instead I told her I loved her, I missed her and that I could spend the rest of my life sitting next to the telephone waiting for her call.
She on the other hand wasted the first ten seconds in silence and then told me she loved me too. There was no joy in her voice. Unlike me, who had things to tell her, important things, she had nothing but a rough silence for me. She talked in an alien voice, formal, the one she reserved for teachers.
‘Is something wrong?’ I asked.
‘Why would anything be wrong? Everything is perfect.’
‘Is there something you want to say?’
There was a pause after which she said something absolutely meaningless, ‘What’s up?’
Why would anyone ask that question?
‘Nothing. I’m talking to you.’
‘Okay.’
‘So nothing has happened that you might want to tell me about?’
‘No, Raghu. What will happen? I work, I go back home and I sleep. Work’s hectic and my sleep schedule is all topsy-turvy. I have to be up the entire night.’
‘We used to be up the entire night,’ I said.
‘Yes.’
‘And what else?’ she asked.
I lost my patience here and asked her to get back to work. Without a word of protest, she said okay, and disconnected the call, not bothering to tell me when she would call next.
17 December 1999
As it has always been, secrets hardly remain hidden from Maa. So when today, Maa gruffly shook me out of my bed, asked me to put on my clothes and come with her, I knew something was up.
We left in a hurry and were at Dada–Boudi’s place by seven-thirty. Maa rang the bell impatiently, and when there was no response, she turned and sprinted towards the bus stop, her chappals slapping furiously against her heels. Dada–Boudi were waiting for their office bus, chatting with their colleagues.
‘Maa?’ they both echoed seeing us there.
Maa held Boudi’s hand and started to pull her away in full view of her co-workers.
‘Maa? What are you doing?’ asked Dada, embarrassed.
