Posthumous Pages

By Antara Mukherjee

Am I your step-daughter?

“My mother is a witch. She eats all the sweets without giving me one. Can I take one from the plate?”

The eight-year-old, curly haired girl pleaded with Chatterjee Uncle. From the corner of her eyes, she could see the fair cheeks of her mother turning red. She disliked her mother. Why would she be entitled to get the best things every time? The expensive sarees, gold jewelleries, comfortable shoes, best quality blankets, sumptuous dishes, etc. belonged to her only by default. Even during her old age, uncontrolled and unmeasured, healthy or tasty, oily and sweet – all sorts of forbidden dishes enveloped her being. You name them, she had them. She was such a nuisance!

“Nothing will happen to me, Goddess Nistarini is there to take care of me” – her patent dialogue irritated me to the core. In between classes, I switched on the app on my phone only to check what she was having and where she was loitering around the house. More than her food, I feared her slipping and falling on the floor. Eight CCTV cameras failed miserably to control her eating habit. My little rebel found her way out:

“I am telling you, in the name of Kali, I didn’t eat spicy food at all.”

“I saw oil dripping from your plate, Ma. Why are you doing this to me? I want you to remain alive, not die.”

“I will. Don’t worry. You bring me the Sandesh from Mrityunjay when you come. And some mangoes. I need to make pickles for you all.”

Confidence emanated from her tone. Armed with it, she could do anything under the sun.

“You can barely stand for half an hour and you’ll make pickles?”

“Jyotsna will assist me.”

I looked at her frail left arm. It has been bleeding blue for two years. Uncountable medicines and injections have taken the place where beautiful bangles once dazzled. Yet those hands still store every possible rubbish that could be found on earth. From an empty bottle to a worn-out wrapper, from a truncated cup to a broken torch, she won’t part with anything.

“Don’t discard. Let them stay. They have stories.”

“Oh Please! Learn to give up, Ma.”

“After I die, whichever almirah you open, you’ll have fortune falling upon you.” Her eyes brimmed with an impeccable pride every time she uttered those words.

Was she cooking memories for me? Even after more than a year of her passing, whenever I open her cupboards, why do I smell her fragrance in the dark? 

It’s been more than a year.

Really, Ma, I no longer care.

You seldom wanted to listen to me.

You must be happy where you desired to be.

I have agonised memories to correct.

I don’t want to falter, but to stand straight.

Have a blast there! Trouble your Mate!

I travel for work, I am never late.

While at leisure I search for lost love,

Your life-baked lessons whisper from above.

You have been my silent architect.

All my life, I thought about you, in neglect.

Time and loss remove my girlish curtains,

I now see lush green rooms, for certain.

You be inside me, naggingly, Ma.

I wish to unhinge life’s enigma. 

A dusky girl

“I won’t give you that saree to wear. You’ll spoil it.” Tears rolled down my adolescent cheeks. As I stood bruised near the brown almirah of hers, my father quietly whispered into my ears, “Don’t worry, I’ll get you one.”

In a crowded shop, he was the lonely man who stood embarrassingly surrounded by women of all ages.

“How are you doing, Doctor babu?” Innocent questions often came from his erstwhile patients, now busy in selecting an earring from numerous boxes.

“I am fine,” he said hurriedly.

Yet he had to bring his daughter for her Puja shopping of imitation jewellery. The narrow lanes of the town sometimes seemed broad in comparison to the narrow mind of his wife. Disgust welled up from the unconscious.

“Why can’t she share her stuff with her own daughter,” he must have thought several times.

But he was an expert peacemaker. What option did he have otherwise? Apart from being a doctor, he was drawn into all sorts of social activities. It was during one such adventure, he almost abandoned his wife during her advanced stage of pregnancy.

“He went to distribute blankets to the needy when I needed him the most.” She harboured a deep wound inside for ages.

“Do you blame him for your miscarriage, Ma?” I always wanted to ask but could not. I came within two years of that incident, and so, probably, the topic was shelved.

I was an order which was delivered to her doorsteps on special demand. A baby girl born after she lost one a few minutes after its birth. I have heard that she completely lost it. Her soul companion, Goddess Kali, came to her rescue soon after. On a hot and humid Tuesday morning, two years later, she was given an unusual present, straight out of Nistarini’s kitty. So, as long as she could, she religiously maintained all the Joy Mongolbar, a month-long worship of Mars. I read Letters from a Father to His Daughter pretty early in my life (which I hardly understood then) and I grew up to realise that I was born the day Pandit Nehru died. Thus, Joy Mongolbar didn’t matter much to me. I got to eat good food in exchange for a silly ritual of asking her, “Mongolbar holo?” (“Are you done with your worship?”) thrice to which she replied, “Holo” (“Yes, I am”) and felt immensely satisfied. Smell of ripe mangoes, bananas, sweet curd mixed with flattened rice and punched with some chilli vegetable pakoras permeated my being on such Tuesdays as I saw a mother’s annual thanksgiving to a Goddess for bestowing her with a ‘dark-skinned girl’ just like her friend, ‘Nistarini Kali’. She prayed hard: “Give me a dark-skinned daughter like you.” So, here, I landed – a dusky, angry, little devil. The moles were of my Thamma’s, paternal grandmother, whom I didn’t see. She was in a hurry to go. The father was super happy to get his mini mother back.

My mother had a milky, white skin, glossy, smooth, like Hema Malini’s cheeks. I remember, since class 3, she made a paste of mustard oil, raw turmeric, milk cream and rubbed it vehemently over my skin. I absolutely disliked that compulsory pack. No cosmetics and no ‘Fair and Lovely’ were allowed in our house. I am not sure whether it turned one dark-skinned into a fair one, but I could not marvel at any pimples during my adolescence and all discredit goes to my mother. Thanks to her, I was never interested in any make-up of sorts. All her periodic rituals had a Newtonian Third Law reaction on me. Mentally, I drifted away from them. But I tied threads of all colours on my left wrist as she wanted me to, wore multi-coloured dots on my forehead without protest and took shanti jol (the holy water from the Ganges), when it was sprinkled on me. I am still wearing the emerald which she forced me to wear for my concentration, even though the emerald failed to resolve my anxieties. I was a part-time peacemaker who tried to please a mother with things that gave her peace.

Birth of a woman

My convent education and my progressive worldview, cultivated by my father, ran torrid current under my skin during my adulthood. I was more interested in crafting my own niche – questioning, doubting, and protesting – rather than stepping into mother’s unquestionable ritualistic shoes. However, I was swayed by the lovely items cooked by her, especially on special days. After a hard day at the National Library or College Street or British Council Library, when I came home, quite late, she welcomed me with a platter of steaming fine rice, aromatic vegetable dal, reddish white piyanj posto (typical Bengali poppyseed preparation), and an unbeatable kofta curry. Books kept me occupied throughout the day. Then, the tram-bus-train-rickshaw ride accepted defeat in front of that platter which my mother served to a hungry, tired girl.

Despite my father’s overarching presence in my life, it was my mother who silently taught me the importance of personal space in life. Deeply superstitious and ritualistic, she never forced anything upon me. She was happily there whereas I was happily not there. As I matured into a woman, there was no malice, no encroachment, no demand upon each other’s territories. It was a beautiful journey of our coming close, mentally.

In my room, named by my father as ‘club house’, day long adda sessions went on with seniors, juniors and contemporaries. One of my father’s friends, Sujay Uncle, could not hide his shock when I topped in my graduation: “What is her study time? I always find her loitering around with friends!” How correct he was! But 16 bottles of saline, jaundice and heartbreak before my graduation exams failed before my mother’s devout dose of worshipping Goddess Kali. Ma hardly knew of the heartbreak though, but since Kali knew, she probably felt sorry for her disciple and made me a topper.

Greeting cards of various sizes and shapes hung from the walls of ‘club house’. Various categories of books lay strewn. Expensive organisers, newly brought cassettes, photo stands, leather files, letters, traces of creative writing, etc. defined my existence. That room bears testimony to unnumbered practice sessions for audio visual dramas, poetry readings, dance recitals, elocution, friendly banters, heated debates, poster making, the first stroke of eye liner, the colouring of the lips and the first touch of it as well. By then a major part of my life had either been white or ash like my school uniform. Life took a drastic turn in college when ‘black’ steeped in. Fancy mid-gowns and tight denims crowded my cupboard. My mother noticed the changes. She was alert yet she accepted my flowing out of her safety nets with ease. She, however, had one condition: “Tie your hair, don’t spoil it.” Tying up the hair was all that she demanded from me. Thick, long, black hair which I got from her was my virasat that I hardly cared about. Regularly she oiled and tied my hair with a black string. But the syllabus in college necessitated me to be a silky sun, flaunting the black cascade while getting drenched in the rain. I have heard the best expletives for this from her. But who cares? I cared more for Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

A mother’s pride

My mother had the ability to snub both the familiar and the unfamiliar, like a player who could play both offside and onside with equal ease. During the performance of Meghdutam, she snubbed a part of the crowd that seemed to doubt my hair as ‘false’. I was performing a lovelorn song that required me to let my hair loose (to enhance the effect), when an enthusiastic member from the audience remarked: “That must be a wig.” My mother, as I was reported later, turned back and gave him a piece of her mind, “What do you mean? I have been regularly oiling and taking care of her hair since her childhood and you dare call it false hair?”

I am sure he was caught on the wrong side. As I was collecting my stuff in the makeup room, she walked in triumphantly and declared: “Today I gave someone a piece of my mind. Bloody fellow! He thought that you were wearing a wig.”

My heart sank as I said, “What did you say exactly, Mother?”

“Oh! Nothing like that, just a little scolding!” She said casually.

I sat lost in my make-up room chair. Who could have been the person she snubbed? Was that the Chief Guest for the evening? My heart skipped a beat. Even if it was so, how did it matter to mother! Forget about a Chief Guest, our entire house was kept on its toes. We feared what would come out from her mouth! So many relations had gone sour because of ‘holy truths’ that were splattered out from her. She had no control. I feel she never wanted to control. There was a pride in speaking out her mind without a comma or a semicolon and hardly any full stop.

“Don’t ask me to shut up every time. A day will come when I won’t be able to speak at all.” She often blackmailed us.

“For how long will this dialogue continue, mother? Think of something new!” I joked.

It took me an ‘Ides of March’ to realize that she was not blackmailing me all these years. She passed away without uttering a single word. 

Mother’s mother

“Bapi won’t come back to us,” I said her straight.

I had just got home. After ICU, hospital, doctors, masks, tests, and reports, my father had finally collapsed.

Tears fell down her cheeks silently. I hugged her.

“Do not worry, I am here. I will take care of everything.”

When the final call came from the ICU at 1.30 a.m., I woke up with a jolt only to find her sitting straight up in the bed. Silence, that robbed me of all the colours of my life, hung heavy on my eyelids.

I looked at her. She looked back at me.

 “So, he has left us? Everything has ended, right?”

I sat motionless for a while, practically lost. The one who created hurley-burley all her life and panicked at the slightest of issue, was unusually calm.

“We have lots of work to do. Tell me what you want and how.” I was business like, matter-of fact, just like her poised tone.

It was Durga Dwadoshi. The Goddess had just left for her home. She was, probably, ready to receive her gifted child. As I got ready to receive the ‘body’ of my father, I felt relieved. I won’t have to calculate any more when to tell the doctors to switch off the ventilator. My mind always raced between Wednesdays and Sundays – days when Mother would be at home, days when there would be no dialysis, days when I would be relaxed to light up the pyre. My father died on the intersection of Tuesday and Wednesday, after Mother’s Tuesday dialysis. I had time until Saturday, the day for the second weekly instalment.

My mother handled her widowhood exceptionally well.

“You don’t have to take anything out of your hands. Wear, eat, sleep. We must live.”

“O.K. Can I wear the Noa too?”

Difficult question. I pretended to give a simple answer.

“Whatever you want. Nobody is going to tell you anything. If anyone does, I will handle it.”

She looked at me for assurance. Suddenly I realized I had grown up. She was now my daughter – the non-conformist one – and I was going to be her witch-mother.

During those days when we fought over food or medicine or shopping, when the backpain was too much to bear, when the dialysis wore her out, she frantically looked at her husband’s picture hanging from the drawing room wall and complained, “When will you call me there? I am done here.”

While the father ended in a whimper, the mother finished off with a bang. I was in the middle of a class when I got a call from Roopa, her day-time help.

“Didi, Jethima is not keeping well. She wants to see you.”

“Has she come back from dialysis?”

“Yes, but she is very weak. Gave her a bath. She is not eating anything. She is very weak. Please come back.”

“I’m coming.”

I came out of the class. I had to rush to Burdwan. Maybe for one last time. A two-hour drive from Kolkata to Burdwan was spent in calling people and arranging for blood tests.

I stepped in and found her drooping. I checked blood pressure immediately and it was alarmingly low.

“Why haven’t you eaten anything? You’ll have to. You’ll become weaker otherwise.” I got no reply.

“Okay, I am cooking something for you. Please eat for my sake.”

I hurriedly cooked chicken stew and mixed it with rice to make small balls, just the way she used to feed me when I came back from school. She ate four balls from my hand and refused the fifth one. I thought she felt better. The evening was settling down and I had to leave. The little one was at home in Chandernagore. I have come unannounced. Just as I was tying my shoelaces, I bent down to ask her, “Okay then, can I leave for today? I’ll be back tomorrow.” “No don’t.” She swung her head to both sides.  

“You want me to stay back?”

“Yes, stay near me.”

She stopped me so that she could bid me goodbye.

In the ICU, she opened her eyes every time I frantically called her, “Ma, o ma, ma go.” She made a faint sound like ‘hmm’ before sinking back. When I rubbed some dried leaves – leaves from her friend, Kali – on her forehead, she kept her eyes closed. I, thus, saw her fading away before she was put on the ventilator.

Bang’s the way a mother leaves

My mother signed off in style. Literally, everybody went to see her on the ventilator – her son-in-law, her domestic helps (Dasarath-Rinku-Jyotsna-Kishan-Rita), her daughter’s friends, family friends, grocers, the fish seller, the newspaper boy…God knows who else! She loved to be surrounded by people and did not leave them out even in her ventilated state. Everybody pestered me to go and see her alive. I kept rigidly sitting on the drawing room sofa, waiting for her to give up. It mattered nothing to me when she was on the ventilator. I knew she had returned to her partner. It was just a matter of time for the mortal heart to fail.

A Heart Failed – a heart that has been rock solid in front of all the debacles in her life; a heart that helped her wait with patience for the right time to venge on her strict father who did not give her permission to dance (deep inside her heart, she must have silently promised to herself that when she will have a daughter, she will make her one of the noted dancers of the time); a heart that silently bore all the insults when asked for money; a heart that had uncountable wants and desires; a heart that she gave unflinchingly to Uttam Kumar, Suchitra Sen; a heart that wanted to be like her icon, Rekha; a heart that loved white, off-white, beige coloured light silk sarees; a heart that craved for soft Sandesh, dudh puli, payes and chutney when they were forbidden to her; a heart that had so many wounds; a heart that sometimes felt betrayed and cheated; a heart that was looked down upon as inferior because of her materialistic demands; a heart that loved to roam and travel; a heart of a hoarder who refused to throw away even empty bottles and worn out boxes; a heart that loved unconditionally all those who cared for her, especially her domestic helps; a heart that foolishly believed that ‘Nistarini Kali’ would save her from diseases; a heart that often became sentimental upon neglect; a heart that realized, upon maturity, the importance of being financially independent for a woman…

…a heart that gave me my first lesson on feminism, way before my teacher taught me in the class, “Even if you earn five rupees, it is yours; you will have to be financially independent at any cost; never ever ask for money from anyone – it is an insult to your being.”

…a heart that believed in her daughter blindly.

… a heart that gave me my best complement in life: “You are, therefore, I am.”

I am. Therefore, you are. Still.

Vertically, Ma, you were rift apart.

You took no risk; it was a new start.

Humid days, filled with songs of sparrow

A much-awaited end to your year-long sorrow.

Blood and pus dropped from uncared surgery.

But you were busy in rainbow imagery.

A girl, after all, is here to heal

Whatever agony your heart concealed.

Natural accessories and an unalloyed heart

You assembled in her, part by part.

Some traits from society did she imbibe

You were proud of the world she would inscribe.

But you did not forget the vertical slash

You forbade a repetition, during her splash.

Horizontally, when the girl laid you to rest

Years have gone by, so did you, with your zest.

The girl now nurtures her horizontal shift

A miniature reminds her of her mother’s gift. 

Adieu, my daughter-mother

A hard nut to crack, my mother kept me waiting throughout the day. Towards evening, the call came from the hospital. The husband kept staring at me with vacant eyes. He has not seen much sadness in life. But I knew it. I waited a while, felt tired, looked at the watch, calculated US time and dialled the first born. As Borda, my elder brother, cried inconsolably over the phone, I suddenly became the elder sister and found myself consoling a younger brother. I told him that our mother waited for the sun to rise in Pittsburgh; in her final passage, she allowed him a full course of sleep and then gently glided by. I could see the design – she had waited for the elder son to arrive a month before she decided to call it a day. She instructed, “When I die, you won’t be able to come immediately. But you come for the rituals.” Deeply religious, she was always fond of Borda; after all, he gave her the first taste of motherhood. So, after Ma’s cremation, I received an email from Qatar Airways – within 15 days of going back, the elder son was again coming home to keep the promise. The younger one was in complete denial. I dialled Minnesota and tried to reason with an unreasonable son who kept on telling me, “I told her to wait till August. I was going to meet her. She didn’t listen. She went away!” She wanted to see you badly but the fu**ing OCI kept the meeting on hold. She just couldn’t bear the uncertainty anymore. Impatience was in her blood. Same pinch. I too, do not like uncertainties, do not like to be kept suspended. We try a lot. We expand like elastic in holding on to our patience. But if the stretch is too much, we are torn into pieces. My mother refused the suspense this time.

“Please build my pyre with sandalwood. I want no electric chimneys. There must be buckets of milk ready too. I want to be reborn as fair as possible.” Clear instructions.

 As usual, I, being the rebel daughter which she so proudly raised, did not follow either of those instructions. Those instructions were superseded by another one, given after my father’s death: “I want to rest beside your father in Burdwan. Do not take me to Tribeni.”

Mother now rests in Burdwan, beside her husband, on the wall, just above the drawing room sofa of our Burdwan house – the way they sat with their mortal hearts throbbing.

I kissed you before blackening your lips with the fire from the flaming sheaf of grass.

You smiled. As you had always done, during any crisis.

 Breathing through daughters

“I hate to see granny like this.” Alipti, the younger grand-daughter, ran inside the bedroom. As she lay motionless in our veranda, I opened her age-old almirah, took out a new saree and gave it to our neighbour to dress her up. I was so tired of doing all those unnecessary things. I had a pyre to light, and nothing was more important than that. While women in the house got busy, I refused to go out of my room and kept staring at the starless sky. I thought of a distant land, of a house where the wife has lost her father ten months back and now the husband has lost both his parents within one and a half years – none could see their respective dearies for one last time. There also lives a granddaughter, Ahona, born exactly thirty years after my birth, a girl child in the Mukherjee family. She is now robbed of her grandfathers on both the sides followed by her grandmother. She will only meet her maternal granny when she comes to Kolkata next year. How cruelly fate has almost robbed her of spaces of indulgence in India. Strangely enough, at that point, I felt my mother breathing through them. Before a circle ended, another cycle has already begun. Death has always lived near life. Why, then, one fears death? The granddaughters appeared to me as a renewed cycle of birth which would eventually end in death at some point of time.

At forty-three plus, life is no chill running down the spine. There is deep contemplation, reflections on things passed and preparation for things to brace. The ‘witch-like’ mother of an eight-year-old girl has become more accessible in her absence. While she has left me behind physically, I now carry in my physique her parts. Precisely, that is why I feel she has not completely left me; rather, she throbs inside me virulently these days. I find her faults and her qualities in me. I feel she has unflinchingly bestowed her assets and liabilities upon me.

“You’ll understand once I am not there.”

With each passing day I, realise, that I am becoming my daughter’s daughter.

Ma, you throb in the private chamber of my heart.

as windchime to my daily failings,

as white cement to my broken railings,

as yellow moon of my dark filament,

as cathartic tears after a heated argument,

You breathe for me.

The solar system is at your command.

when I am lonely in the crowd,

when there are only bends and no end to shroud,

when there is dusty storm and no trace of rain,

when there is only trouble and no relief from pain,

You shine for me.

In my silent musings

In my crafty cruising

In my mountainous soar

In all the earthly lessons I ignore

I feel your cosmic care, riding through the light waves

And I know it’s you, salvaging me from my mental caves.

Pain-healer in absentia 

My life, primarily, has been channelised by my father but my mother has silently played such subtle roles that I now feel guilty of overlooking them most of the time. I feel I have not done much for her, except looking after her when she could not take care of herself or scolding her for eating exactly those things she was not supposed to eat. Ma needed me more physically than mentally. She always reached out for my hands when she could not balance on her own, she needed my hands to massage her pain-ridden back when she could not sleep, she demanded to hear my voice on the other side of the phone when I was super busy. I am, after all, a physical part of her own and she had all the right in the world to ask for anything from me, starting with attention and ending with silence.

Our relation has been one of fierce competitors, each trying to smash the tennis racket hard at the other. My headstrong nature is her genetic gift, and I am sure she was proud enough to raise one after her. I have hardly written or dedicated or thought of doing anything worthwhile for her – I always felt she does not need any part of my mind; she was that catalyst which never took part in several chemical reactions going on inside me. But without her, there would not have been any scope for any reaction in me. I have understood this late. She had to die to make me realise the importance of taking proper care of oneself not only for one’s own sake but also for the sake of the caregivers. Now when I look at the mirror, I see my mother of yesteryears, a mother whom I never met, who was bogged down by duties when I came to her. I find in me those traces that I never found before. She renewed me, in the posthumous pages of her life.

I have you, in my bosom

I have you, in my waist

I have you, in my mood-swings

I have you, in my grains.

The grit of my eyes

is but your never-give-ups

The agility of my core

is but your sunny hiccups.

Together we wade

in troubled waters,

Together we anchor

in furthest corners.

What can fire burn

when life renews every dawn?

Where can darkness lead

when inner peace is won?

Bio:
Dr. Antara Mukherjee is associated with West Bengal Educational Service, Govt of West Bengal and is currently teaching English Literature at Durgapur Government College, Durgapur, Paschim Bardhaman. She loves to travel, observe, listens to the winds and rains in an attempt to self-medicate herself.

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For more stories, read Café Dissensus Everyday, the blog of Café Dissensus Magazine.