Support Systems

It’s that time again. I’m off to another break from a life with zero support system and on to a few days of respite. It’s just the three of us at home, 365 days a year. No off-to-my-mum’s-house breaks with simmered responsibilities; no solo-time breaks for Aniruddh. It’s always been like that. Our short, and occasionally long, vacations are the only kind of breaks we ever get to have.

Planning begins months in advance, usually on the last day of an already ongoing vacation. Packing begins weeks in advance. Clothes, footwear, accessories, even activities and toys for Kush are easy to set aside. He’s been screen-free so far, and my plan is to continue this for as long as possible.

The difficult task is picking out our books. Books that all three of us carry. It’s like picking out a song you want to listen to when in a certain mood, a certain moment. You shuffle and manually scroll but you need that right song. You don’t know which one it is but you’ll know it when you hear it. Only in this case, you anticipate for a mood for some time in the future.

Choosing my books for a vacation is like that. There’s the wait at the airport and the flight itself. Then there’s the actual vacation. How will my pace of reading be affected? Do I know if the weather will match the tone of the book I’m going to be reading on the 3rd day of the trip? Will I be able to fall asleep on a bed that’s new to me, finishing off a chapter? Do I even want to have the book lull me into sleep? I know not. I never do. I find it’s always a difficult decision.

Our vacations always fall into two categories: leisure and slow paced, or active but still slow paced. What I mean is we try and not rush from base to base. By leisure I mean a "stay put at a resort" or a hotel vacation. This is one of those. It’s slightly easier to pick out reading material for these. There’s a lot more time to read.

Or so I thought. A few months earlier, I finished Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Quartet. I had to start on the first book twice before I could finish it. Books two, three and four followed immediately after. What a journey it was! I haven’t been able to really move on to another book. It was decades ago that a set of books had such an effect on me. Remember the frenzy and excitement during Harry Potter? The 5th, 6th and 7th book release periods had me breathing and dreaming of the wizard world. That was how I met Aniruddh.

The Neapolitan Quartet. Various characters set in descriptive scenes of the Neapolitan neighbourhood. The deep attachment to the books I felt seems unshakable. It’s not to be confused with the story or even the character stories being relatable. That would be what Elizabeth Strout’s books were for me. Relatable. Ferrante’s quartet was moving. The growth of the characters across the four books, the increasing awareness of self in pockets of everyday happenings, the development of each of the characters’ lives spanning decades in subtle but in extraordinary ways, still. And towards the end, the last scene of the last book bringing you back to the first page of the first book, how the four books affected me.

I started on a couple of novels after I finished The Story of the Lost Child. Even as I turned pages, I couldn’t get a grip on any of them. I’m currently on Zikora’s story in Dream Count. I remember enjoying reading Chimamanda’s previous three novels. This one doesn’t hit the same. It is the book? Or is it aftereffect of Ferrante's translated literary piece? 

In the past couple of months, I’ve picked up a sizeable number of books from bookshops and a couple from my aunt’s stash. I am hoping to find a read that will shake me up from the deep stasis I am in.

The Booker Prize longlist Playground was picked by Aniruddh. My first pick for this upcoming life-routine break. It seems like a read that will be different from the Strouts and the Mitchells and Ishiguros. A good break during my break? Troubling Love is my choice for a flight read. I picked this in the hope that a Ferrante book will ease me out of Ferrante’s hold. It’s one of those things that don’t make sense until they do. I’m sure there’s a word for it. Dream Count is my back up.

Aniruddh and I have learnt to be increasingly self-sufficient as parents. Our long vacations, our short breaks, our mini-dates while Kush is in school, our family weekend meals at the table, our board game evenings, even our music mornings on the JBL cinema base, and of course, our books, have collectively become our support system. 

Am I going to have a life like the Grecos or the Carraccis or the Cerullos? Full and vivid? How will the story of my life read to me?

 

Slivers and waves

Some places are like songs, like music. When you return to a particular location, it takes you back to when you were first there. The feelings all come rushing back. There is something powerful about the sheer mountains and the vast seas. 

At barely 22 years, I went to Pondicherry by myself. My first solo trip, if you will. I had always liked going to the beach before, but the Bay of Bengal by the Pondicherry shores seemed to pull at me. I have visited the place at least 8 times in the three decades of my life but I am yet to go back with my son. Something stops me, you see. The thought of going to Pondicherry as a mother feels different. 

A decade back, in 2015, my first international trip took me to Austria and Slovenia. First trip of me as a part of a couple. Vienna for the song by The Fray, and Before Sunrise of course, and Salzburg for The Sound of Music. Renju and Lakshmi added Gosau and Villach to the itinerary. Klavze 28 and Nebesa Chalets were wonderfully complementing experiences, but Gosau? Gosau had my heart. 

Riding into the Gosau village on the bus from Bad Ischl, with the pretty flowers hanging out the windows and the gently rolling landscape, all the cottages that sprung at foothills of the mountains on both sides of the road, the running stream with tiny, walking bridges over it, the sheep and cows grazing away lazily along, the little school kids who got on the bus mid way, the gentle ascent of the road further ahead and the final stop by the lake, Gosausee.

I remember being in tears by the beauty of what I saw. For many months to come, I choked whenever I brought back to mind the picture of the Gosausee lake and the pretty village. For years I held on to the feeling.

Since then, I have visited places more breathtaking and beautiful. The enormity and diversity of Iceland’s landscape still looms over the memories of the mighty Alps at Wengen-Murren. Switzerland’s beauty remains unmatched.

After 10 years of marriage, Aniruddh decided to bring me to Gosau again. I welcomed the idea of visiting Gosau as a family, to bring Kush to view the world through our eyes a little more. There’s barely a few years left before he hits his teens. So, for his 7th birthday, I agreed with Aniruddh to throw in another vacation for the calendar year instead of the customary birthday party.

Like I said, I have seen places where the forces of nature are raw and scary, and I know that there are places that are seemingly unbelievable still on this planet. But Gosau? Gosau still has my heart. Visiting again with Kush brought back slivers of what I felt all those years back. The innocence weaved between the waves of emotions surprised me.

One of these days, I shall brave a trip to Pondicherry as a family, with my baby, yes.

Heart Glass

This picture shows a small portion of the compound wall of the house I mostly grew up in. It bears the name of my grandfather on it. The builders to whom my grandfather sold the property to, left this intact when they put up the new building. No one knows why. It’s been like this for the past 2 decades, at the least. I have memories from that house I don’t talk about. My childhood, really. During my middle school years, I walked home from school after karate and basketball practice. Most of the kids at school passed by my house on the main road on the way to school and then back to their homes in the evening. On some days I waited for my parents to return from work, swinging on the black gate, while my grandfather looked over the balcony from the first floor. On others, I watched SWAT Kats and Ninja Robots on CN.

I barely add to conversations when someone is reminiscing about their childhood. As a young adult, I practiced forgetting to such an extent that I fail to bring to surface what’s inside my brain and out through my tongue. I’m tempted to cleverly use the phrase ‘Of Laughter and Forgetting’ here in this piece but this will have to do. ‘Identity’ was the first book, the first gift ever, that Aniruddh gave me. I don’t think I will read it again at this age. I haven’t finished ‘White Noise’ because I find the central preoccupation scary. The same can be said about ‘Em and the Big Hoom’. Today is my mother’s 4th death anniversary. 

I remember one evening in the kitchen in my old house, the same house from which the compound wall in the photo comes from. The lights are out and candles are lit, my mother is cooking dinner. I remember sitting cross legged in front of the small temple area within the kitchen and doing times tables. I think I was writing table 7. There was a faint light from the setting sun through the half-window above the sink, diagonally opposite to me. I can see the outline of the stairs of the house at the back, leading up to the neighbours behind the house. You could sometimes see people walking up or down from our kitchen window. I must have been 6 or 7 years old. 

Cut to about 3 years later, the kitchen is now converted into a bedroom. There is a lot more light coming in from the same high, narrow window. It is clearly sometime after noon. My mother is not with me now, she is either at work or resting in the first bedroom. I have the image of my father walking to the window to cover it up with a towel, hooking the fabric into the holes of the mesh on it. I am looking at this faintly, with my eyes barely open. He then proceeds to come to the bed I am on and lies next to me. 

My first memory of inappropriate touch by my father was when I was five years old. The last time he touched me was on the first day of my menarche. My precious son will turn 7 years old next month. Since he was born, I have witnessed how my words and my actions shape him. How his father’s, Aniruddh’s, moods affect him. A slight change in the tone of our voices and you can see the enormous effect it has on him, a young child. How they change the way he looks at himself and at the world. Things that happen to you and around you in your early years literally shape how your brain develops. Your personality is the result of your experiences, both present and past. 

Looking at that preteen girl as a third person, I can imagine and predict how her abuse will affect her adulthood. Being that preteen girl, I live through its effects every day. Understanding this in my mid-thirties is helping me re-path my thoughts, it is what encourages me to take what feels like a giant, heavy step every single day. 

I owe it to that little 5 year old girl, still inside me. I owe it to my darling son.

In all this, I am learning more about my mother, days after she has passed, than I learnt when she was alive. I can only imagine how much she kept to herself, and how it ate her away. I may not pen a ‘Mother Mary Comes to Me’ memoir in this lifetime, but I do have stories to tell. One death anniversary at a time.

Movie theatre

I once described life to this guy I was riding behind with. I told him that my life was like those minutes inside a movie theatre. Now, I had the ticket with me, I'm inside the theatre. I'm watching the movie. Waiting for it to end. Only then can I walk out.
Awaiting death, I called it.

Years later, I am made to realise that I still feel the same.

The Feminine Mystique

Industrial revolution. Industrial revolution and women. Women during industrial revolution. Working women during industrial revolution. Industrial revolution mad men. Mad men commentary industrial revolution. Iconic images of women during industrial revolution. Rosie the riveter mad men. Mad men feminist book. Feminist books. Feminist book industrial revolution mad men. And voila! I finally found the title of the book I was looking for - The Feminine Mystique. 

My second ever assignment during editorial training, on my third day at Digicaptions was on a commentary for a Mad Men episode. The writers/producers talked about the show and the industrial revolution and women venturing out of their households and men adjusting to the change and a mention of the book - The Feminine Mystique. I once spent hours at work trying to find out which show I had transcribed that spoke about the book. 
And today, here I was, desperately googling for it. Not that this post is about the book. The book is  just a thing that you remember which takes you back to that place, that image in your head, that moment and the thoughts you had then and the ones you consequently have over the years to come.

Not housewives, home-makers, we say. Labelling the non-working married women. I do not see much difference in the two, frankly. 

You see so many women holding high offices, you have your mothers and aunts at responsible positions of authority, you see your neighbour having her own organic garden while she raises 2 kids, you see your female friends venturing into starting something new themselves, you see a female rickshaw driver... And you see all these women and you feel proud. Women out there, fending and earning for themselves. Respect and awe comes naturally.

And then... You again see your moms and aunts in the house all day, cooking and tidying up after you and the rest of the inhabitants of the house, that distant aunt who juggles 2 whole sets of families all under one roof, your friend who got married the week after your last exam, your neighbour lady who is seen outside only to say bye to her husband and kids, and then to receive them again with a smile in the evening and you think, you think to yourself, why is that woman not doing something else with her life?

We tend to see non-working women a notch (or two) below the working ones. It is true. 

But there is a lovely movie out there that showcases both the sides. And here is one lovely scene with Julia Roberts, the art teacher trying to get her student, Julia Stiles, enrolled into a law school, in a bid to let her ‘pursue her dreams’, instead of being married away.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQ1xOOyENmw

Watch the video and then read the transcript below.

Katherine Watson: There are seven law schools within 45 minutes of Philadelphia. You can study and get dinner on the table by 5:00.

Joan Brandwyn: It's too late.

Katherine Watson: No, some of them accept late admissions! Now, I was upset at first, I can tell you that. When Tommy came to me at the dance and told me he was accepted to Penn, I thought, 'Oh God, her fate is sealed! She's worked so hard, how can she throw it all away?' But then I realized you won't have to! You can bake your cake and eat it too! It's just wonderful!

Joan Brandwyn: We're married. We eloped over the weekend. Turned out he was petrified of a bit ceremony, so we did a sort of spur-of-the-moment thing. Very romantic.

[Katherine is stunned]

Joan Brandwyn: It was my choice, not to go. He would have supported it.

Katherine Watson: But you don't have to choose!

Joan Brandwyn: No, I have to. I want a home, I want a family! That's not something I'll sacrifice.

Katherine Watson: No one's asking you to sacrifice that, Joan. I just want you to understand that you can do both.

Joan Brandwyn: Do you think I'll wake up one morning and regret not being a lawyer?

Katherine Watson: Yes, I'm afraid that you will.

Joan Brandwyn: Not as much as I'd regret not having a family, not being there to raise them. I know exactly what I'm doing and it doesn't make me any less smart. This must seem terrible to you.

Katherine Watson: I didn't say that.

Joan Brandwyn: Sure you did. You always do. You stand in class and tell us to look beyond the image, but you don't. To you a housewife is someone who sold her soul for a center hall colonial. She has no depth, no intellect, no interests. You're the one who said I could do anything I wanted. This is what I want.

---------------------------------------------

Joan's last lines sums it up.

French Windows

A couple of years ago, I used to ride to work on chilly mornings at 6:30 and annoy the hell out of everyone. Why? I was annoyingly happy. I loved my life in the house which I shared with a thirty something woman. She travelled a lot and was hardly there. I had the entire house for months at a time. Top floor house, it was. Nice view of the neighbourhood. Quiet and lonely up there. I had my very own room, a narrow but fully functional kitchen and the hall which had long French windows right next to the door.
I remember how excited I was when I got a refrigerator and paid for it myself. It was my very own fridge. It was small and red. I made sangria.
I started learning a new language. I downloaded audio lessons. I cleaned and repeated weird sounding words after the guy on the tapes. I cooked dinner. Tried my hand at new recipes. Treated myself to yummy food. I went out walking in the evenings. I remember the rains and the skies the best. Monsoon. Chilly weather. I sometimes met up with a friend or two for dinner or coffee.
I remember one late evening when there was a heavy downpour and the lights went out. There was thunder. Loud. I took my veena, sat down in the hall, faced the windows and played for hours. I didn’t have a candle. Or a torch. Longest I have ever played. I was happy.


But I didn’t make just sangria. I experimented with white rum. Miniatures stocked up. I had a wine bottle always tucked away in the bottom most compartment of my cupboard. My nights were a routine of having a couple of glasses with a movie or a sitcom. But I did wake up every day at 5:30, all by myself, to go work. Every single work day. All charged up to irritate people during breakfast on the top floor.


Long time back, it all seems. 2013 has been a horrible year so far. Right from January. I do have French windows here as well but the view isn’t that great, and a roommate who is absent on some days.
I am no longer annoyingly happy. No miniatures stocked up. They don’t help anymore.

Thatha

Torches. He liked to keep them handy by his pillow. His wallet filled with a wad of money notes under his pillow or the mattress. Boxes filled with biscuits and rock sugar and chivda by his beside. His phone book filled with names of people from his daughters to the cable guy. A bottle of Sprite on the stool before him. A book or two next to his pillow. He wrote letters to the Governor and the President and made us all wary. His oxygen tank and other breathing aids surrounded his bed 24/7. A few years before it was different. Slight changes. Steel boxes filled with khara mixtures and sev. Plastic ones filled with potato chips and dry pakodas. A tape-recorder for listening to the FM radio in the mornings. He used to walk around a little on the balcony outside his first floor house. His very own house. Occasionally calling out to the pan shop guy to his left or the juice guy to his right or reprimanding the college boys and dog walking uncles for smoking. A few years before this he would be seen doing a lot more. He loved getting out the hose pipe and washing the balcony and the stairs and the compound on the ground floor. He’d occasionally be seen getting into the auto with his youngest daughter. Most times to buy books. Every morning after shower there was a ritual done in the kitchen before the small mantap. Every morning without fail. A couple of years before this my most vivid memories are of him running after frogs after the rain with a bucket. I don’t see frogs now. I used to play vehicle counting games with him on the balcony while we waited for my parents to return from work. He used to smoke. And I hid his cigarette packets. He always took my side whenever my then college going Aunt told on me. He rode a Bajaj Chetak. I was 7, probably. I remember being thrilled at the fact that he okayed me to sit sideways and ride with him. I once stole 10 rupees to get a chocolate from the local milk parlor. My mother saw me with it on her way back from work. He took the blame for it. Said he had given it to me. He never questioned me about it. I never stole after. I used to head upstairs and sleep by his side. He used to make up stories for me. Suvarna Sundari - I think was the protagonist ‘princess’ character of most of his stories. He once took me to his then ‘office’. I can still picture it. A large room, barren, with a few desks and 2-3 people at them. Was it in Chamrajpet? I cannot recall. Not a spiritual or a religious person myself, he was the only one to teach me shlokas and such when I was little. I remember the black telephone with a round dialler. I remember his favourite black cane chair.  He always, even the last time I met him and spoke to him, chided me for not keeping a bindi. But I was the only person with whom he was lax about it. I’d like to think I was his favourite.

My Grandfather. He had his flaws. But he was one person I was never afraid of. The only person to ask me straight out if I had made love with my previous boyfriend. The only person with whom I discussed death and how I wished to be disposed off. Oh, we spoke on it pretty lengthy. He subscribed to Readers Digest and The Week. The many, many letters to RD in the hopes of winning the jackpot! He loved Clint Eastwood, Robert Redford and movies with other such actors. I remember getting in touch with a guy who did torrents of old flicks and requesting for a list my Grandfather had asked for. He read Clive Cussler, Lee Child, James Patterson, Tom Clancy, David Baldacci and a host of other authors. He prided his James Hadley Chase collection. He cooked as well. His signature dish was benDekaayi mudh-palya. It was yum every time.

Over the 24 years of my life, I knew him and knew of him in stages and phases. He used to call me MS 2 - Maddi SambraNi 2. He was perceived to have weakened over his last few years, but he was strong as well. He spoke well in English and like he'd say, there is no bullshitting about it.

I am the only grandchild to have known him this closely. I miss him already. I shall miss him more over the years to come.