Returning Home

Lopamudra pens an interesting story about two women, unrelated by blood, yet connected with memories. A Special Feature for the International Women’s Day, exclusively for Different Truths.

I

In the dim light of her room, Anasuya reclined on a crumpled pillow, her restless feet flung over the end of the sofa. Her moist eyes were transfixed on a traditional Jamini Roy painting hung on one of the beige-coloured walls, depicting an archetypal, round-faced mother with big, magnanimous eyes, in her lap, cocooned in the deep blue warmth, her child surrendered to her motherly care in a quiet, peaceful demeanor. Mother and child. Child and mother. The nurturer and the nurtured appeared in her eyes, her vision in their myriad nuances. For the past few days, she had made it a habit to sit on this crumpled pillow during unearthly hours and stare at this painting till unnamed, orphan teardrops oozed from her eyes, drenching her face, an act of penance to which she surrendered, out of shame, guilt, and self-loathing.

Yes, she was a mother, a nurturer to her child, but then how could she ill-treat, abuse the feelings of a woman, her close kin, who was a mother too? How could she be so disapproving just because the generation gap was the only reality that stood between her mother-in-law and herself? Couldn’t she have just said sorry to her mother-in-law for what had happened, for once, when she knew that the elderly woman was forgiving and pliable in nature anyway? Her egoism, her stubborn pride had always come in between her own self, Tanmay his mother, in all the ten years she had been married. And now, in these insomniac nights, when her restless body oscillated between the sofa and the bed, the stale leftovers in the kitchen and the living space, the demons of self-loathing countered her, time and again. She hated her name these days, symbolising the ultimate absence of envy, ego and pride. The name mocked her, made ugly faces at her even as she tried to carry on with the daily rigmarole of life during the busy daytimes, sandwiched between the numerous pressures and responsibilities of her home and office. How would she be able to forgive herself, burying her feet in the quagmire of her own wrongdoings, her karma? Wouldn’t karma punish her, after all?

Two years back, on a stormy, fateful night, Anasuya, young, conceited, brimming with the pride of being a self-reliant, independent working woman, had left Tanmay’s small apartment in Salt Lake, Kolkata, along with her toddler son Kittu, who was barely eighteen months old then.

“It is a ritual since ages, generations in Hindu families to shave off the baby hairs, after a child turns eighteen months, didn’t you know that Anu?” Mira, her mother-in-law blocked her way one day.

“Where is it written anyway? The scriptures that you boast of. I just went to the Jagannath temple in Puri with Kittu at your insistence, Ma…. Didn’t you notice the obnoxious environment inside the dark shrine? The child was being choked to death! You just didn’t care enough, chanting your prayers all the time.” Anasuya retorted.

“You are not supposed to talk like that about the holy temple of Jagannath…doesn’t seem like you were ever respectful about the Gods. In our upbringing, we never…”

Anasuya cut her mid-sentence. “I am sick of hearing this over and over again, Ma! All you ever want to talk about is how poor my upbringing has been…. Yes, our families are totally mismatched, and you have left no stone unturned to hammer that in my brain at the slightest pretext. Not that I myself don’t regret it, what to do?”

Mira trembled, looking at the defiance of her stubborn daughter-in-law as she stormed inside the house, picked up the playful Kittu in her lap from the door that divided the two bedrooms, gushing like a sudden tsunami in the drawing area where Tanmay sat, sipping tea, burying his face in the pages of the morning newspaper.

“It is a nuisance to live under the same roof with your regressive, backdated mother, day after day. It is being increasingly difficult to tolerate her whims!” She roared in rage.

“But whatever new happened today? Can’t you talk and sort it between yourselves?” Tanmay pleaded.

“No…nothing to be sorted. I can’t take it any further. Either she stays, and I go out, or I stay, and you make a different arrangement for her. You have to choose either of us, Tanmay.” She hissed.

Tossed by the opposing tides of love wreaking havoc in his battered soul, Tanmay smiled faintly, in his last desperate attempt to explain his situation to his wife.

“How can I convince you, that I want both of you with the same intensity? Don’t you understand that my mother is a lonely woman, a single parent, with nobody else in her world other than us? She might be a bit old-fashioned in her sensibilities, but is it too difficult to adjust a bit and stay with her? Why be so impulsive …”

“Adjust…my foot! As if I didn’t, till now, as if it is the only medicine! So, is this final, that you’ll make no arrangements for your mother whatsoever? What about the numerous old-age homes in the city where many women like her live in peace for the rest of their lives? We can bear all the expenses of her accommodation in one of those decent homes! I would never object to that!”

Tanmay gulped a lump in his throat as she spoke, unabashed, remorseless. He gathered all his senses and replied in his usual steadfast voice: “Listen Anu, I can’t do that. I can’t keep my mother away from me, in a god forsaken old-age home. All her life, she has dedicated herself to our wellbeing, and she will live with me for the rest of her life. If you really consider yourself a part of us, our family, you have to adjust and stay with her.”

“Ah, I see…so that is your final word? Let me tell you Tanmay, I don’t intend to stay for a single day in this house then. Me and Kittu are leaving today, right now…. It will be a much better decision to live with my Dada (elder brother) and join as his business partner in our Dumdum factory. No wonder I wasted the precious years of my life, contrary to his wishes, catering to the useless needs of your stupid family!” Anasuya stepped out of the room, blinded in rage.

Tanmay’s silence, a perpetual phenomenon, added fuel to the fire that had already been ravaging Anasuya’s heart. But in his heart of hearts, he knew he would have to remain the peacemaker, the silent negotiator who had it in his destiny to take the ire of his wife and the tears of his mother, unable to unify the two, his wife, the redolent sunlight and his mother, the fading twilight. He knew his mother, with her widowhood, her age-old inhibitions, ancient ideologies, superstitions was not somebody whom Anasuya would ever look up to for guidance or advice. He knew his mother sometimes talked unreasonably and he had learnt to live with that since years now. She was getting old, after all. But then, who would stop Anasuya from throwing darts at her with her words every now and then? Did she on her part ever think about the woman who made Tanmay what he was today, who bore all hardships for the sake of her only son? How much did Anasuya know about their past, their excruciating journey of being uprooted from their native village in Medinipur in search of a better life, ending up in the unknown fringes of Kolkata, changing one home after the other as tenants? How would she ever know, being the daughter of a wealthy business family, how much his mother had to toil in her young age to provide two square meals for herself and her son? She had lived in her own bubble for years, protected by her parents and her elder brother, always having more than enough, and had met Tanmay only after he had gained everything that his mother had toiled for—success, prosperity, decent amount of money for livelihood.

And yes, there was disparity in the thoughts, principles, a sea of difference in the ideologies of both his mother and his wife right from the beginning of their marriage. Tanmay had always blamed it on the generation gap, and had even tried to bridge the gap in his own way, but his endeavors never seemed to please Anasuya much. God knows what his mother Mira Debi thought about him, probably that he was being a henpecked husband, bit by bit.

“Tanmay, can’t you tell Anu to wear sindoor in her forehead some days at least? Ah, well, I don’t think I have seen her mother wear sindoor or sankha-pola either.…They belong to a different culture, maybe! But in our household, we’ve always believed a wife must wear these for the wellbeing of the husband.” Mira would sometimes ask her son, albeit a bit hesitantly.

“Ma, how could I tell her? You know she doesn’t believe in such practices. She has had a very modern outlook in her life, right from the start.” Tanmay would reply.

“In our marriage, there will be no bounds, no shackles, nothing that can limit me from being what I can explore, Tanmay. Tell me, do you agree?” He remembered Anu’s love-filled words during the magical days of their courtship.

That night, just before retiring to bed, when Anasuya was rubbing body lotion all over her supple arms and neck, she broached the topic herself. After all, there was a limit to what she could ingest, and keep within herself, when she had overheard parts of the conversation between Tanmay and his mother while entering home from office.

“What does your mother think? Would I now have to apply that horrible red vermillion in my forehead, wear those awkward red bangles and conch shells in both my hands and move around all over the office like a clown? Is that what will make her happy? Listen, come what may, I can’t make myself do the things she wants me to. Why didn’t you get a docile, uneducated village girl for yourself?” She fumed.

Tanmay sensed danger. “Listen, Anu, I never said you have to do all this.…But don’t you make a big deal out of everything she says? Just a little bit of adjustment, and…”

“And, what? What do I gain out of those compromises that I am being brainwashed into? Be in her good books? Why is that so important? Isn’t it enough that you already listen to every rubbish that she imposes on you? Spraying ganga water just about everywhere in the house, washing the washed utensils and clothes over and over again, changing into that horrible, stinking red gamcha every time she goes to the toilet, the list just goes on and on. What a fanatic old woman! Can you deny she makes you do the same, and you comply happily?”

“Look, some things are just done, out of love, not compulsion, no matter if you don’t like those actions personally.”

“Then go on showing as much love as you are capable of. And let me be the disobedient outsider that she thinks I am. No harm in that, and honestly, I have been quite used to her jibes and digs at me in all these years. I have flushed it out of my system these days, to remain sane.”

She stormed into the attached bathroom and banged the door shut after she had blurted out all that she was nursing in her mind. This disgraceful life of a bride who was labelled a ‘black sheep’ just because she didn’t confirm to those meaningless rituals, those crazy whims of a regressive household killed her, suffocated her every single day.

II

For the first five years after getting married to Tanmay, Anasuya was using birth control methods on her own, consulted by her own cousin sister, a reputed gynecologist. The plan to not conceive a baby till she got a hike in her existing job, or till she got a better job was mostly her own, never fully supported by Tanmay, at least vocally. Didn’t he know that she was something beyond just a child-bearing machine, a woman with her own dreams, her own ambitions? Moreover, he was fully aware of some minor issues in her thyroids for which she was on some medications, and the doctor advised her to exercise caution and patience for a couple of years. Why then, didn’t he protest when there were ensuing demands of Anasuya bearing a child without any further delay? Wasn’t her mother-in-law insistent in her allegations for years?

“God knows when Tanmay and Anu will give me a grandson! Seems like I’ll have to die without having one, the way Anu is avoiding motherhood. A modern woman she is, baba, so much to do in life! No time for kids!”

Didn’t she tell such awful stuff whenever her relatives from Naihati, Chinsura, Chandannagar came to visit her in their Salt Lake apartment? What did the woman gain from those lies? She wondered, dismayed. And all the while, didn’t Tanmay, her son only subscribe to her negative views while remaining mum?

But then, as a beautiful miracle, the baby did arrive, almost seven years into their marriage, a beautiful white bundle of joy cuddled in the inviting arms of Anasuya. Her patience had paid off at last. Once she was back from the hospital, taking a one-year sabbatical from her job, she had sworn to tend to the baby’s needs all by herself; she felt sick of her mother-in-law’s interventions in the tiniest everyday matters concerning the infant Kittu. Why would the woman barge in now, when she had accused that Anu didn’t even want the baby in her life in the first place? The sharp pang of the accusations, their memories still stung her, cut through her like the sharp stab of a knife. Mira Debi, on the other hand, was elated to have the baby cooing, wailing on top of its voice all over the house. She had become a grandmother, after all, and which grandmother has ever liked giving up her rights of parenting her grandchild? Wasn’t it supposed to be her birthright?

The constant tug of war between the two women and the unforgiving demeanor of his wife, all of which was now centered on the kid, Kittu, would pain Tanmay from time to time. But he had learnt to make a pact with it by staying silent, or going away from home temporarily when matters seemed to take a bitter turn. That was his defense mechanism.

Alone with his wife at night, he would sometimes try to pacify her. “Anu, don’t you be so hard on Ma always. Please understand how pained she might feel.” He would say, caressing Anu’s hair with his fingers.

Anasuya was startled and sat upright within seconds. “Listen, don’t give me sermons on how to behave whenever I am alone with you. How can I forget the words she said before Kittu was born, that how I abhorred motherhood? Now that I am blessed with the baby, all she wants is to snatch him away from me at the slightest chance.”

“Have you gone crazy? It’s not that, Anu. But Kittu must be so special to her as well, her first grandchild. Please try and understand…. Try and be a little kinder…” Tanmay pleaded.

“Ah yes, I am unkind, incapable of being a good wife, and a thousand other things, right? Just because I had to supplement my milk with other baby food suggested by the doctor, I heard your mother fill your ears with rubbish again! This cannot continue for long, don’t you both see?” 

“But it’s difficult for me too, isn’t it? I told you many times, she’s old fashioned, and I can’t help it. So sometimes, just let her be. You’re unnecessarily hard on her too, aren’t you? All I want to say is, a little adjustment might be good…”

“So, go and tell your mother to make those adjustments…why burden me alone with them?”

The tug of war continued with renewed vigor and ended at the dead of the night with the infant’s insistent cries.

Then that fateful Sunday noon, it was Mira, Tanmay’s mother who was responsible for the furor created in the household, the furor that ended it all for both Tanmay and Anasuya. At least that was what Anu herself thought. It was a hot, tepid summer noon in June, and they both had gone to a common friend’s home for an emergency visit, leaving little Kittu to the care of his grandma and the regular household help, Shikha. Not that Anu wanted to, but the timing was odd and the friend had some problems that needed to be addressed by them both, in person. After a couple of hours, when they returned home, they were startled to see their little toddler boy roaming alone in the corridor leading to the lift, naked, greasy with oil. The front door of their flat was left ajar, and Shikha was after the kid with her broom and her little pail of water.

“Shikha…Shikha… who applied oil on Kittu’s body? Hadn’t I forbidden you to? Have you forgotten what happened?” Anasuya picked up her kid in her arms forcefully, slapping him on the cheek when he kicked and protested to be set free.

“I didn’t, Boudi…Ma did it. You know, I reminded her that you have forbidden it, but she insisted….” The maid blurted out, scared, knowing fully well what was coming.

The tsunami of angry words, spewing venom was inevitable, as soon as Anasuya stepped foot inside the house. Tanmay stood, gulping it all, unable to decipher whose side he should take.

“It’s just a bit of mustard oil, plain and simple, what many mothers and grandmothers still apply on children. Why, I had applied it on Khokon (Tanmay) too when he was a kid, and he still has a glowing skin.”

“Are you crazy? Are you incapable of understanding the consequences? Have you forgotten Kittu has dry skin eczema, and oil can damage his skin permanently? The doctor has forbidden the use of any kind of oil for him whatsoever!”

“Do the doctors know everything, Anu? Do I know nothing at all, raising a son and a daughter all by myself years back?

“I don’t want any argument on this, Ma. Better be quiet on the matters you don’t understand.” Anger was now spilling all over her body, and Mira Debi knew there would be no limits to the venom she would spit out if she didn’t go away from the scene immediately.

She retreated to the balcony, her whole-body trembling with the onslaught of the insult she had just suffered. “Whatever do I say in your matters these days, Anu? Don’t I remain mum, so that my son can breathe in peace? God only knows…let him teach you one day that bookish knowledge isn’t everything…I have gained my own wisdom, my insight with my age, immersing my whole life in the family. You won’t ever do that; your knowledge will remain shallow and half-hearted forever.” She muttered slowly, inaudibly in between her heaving breaths.

She breathed in the moist essence of the flowers and the plants that she had tended to in the balcony. She prayed to the Gods to have mercy on her at this age, so that she can leave the world with some iota of dignity. “This home…this beautiful home that I built bit by bit, with such tender care…isn’t it mine after all? Why am I being cornered and treated as an outcast in my own dear shelter?” She asked herself, her wrinkled cheeks soaked with incessant tears.

III

Two years back, on that fateful day, the home became a broken one, with Anasuya gone to her brother’s house in Dum Dum with Kittu in an uncontrollable fit of anger. Had Tanmay taken a middle path to pacify his wife, had he arranged for an old-age home for his mother right away, as Anu had insisted, perhaps she would have stayed on. Was she such a cruel, inconsiderate soul, or was it only a mad outburst in her psychotic state, he didn’t know till this date. A few months earlier, when he had stepped inside Anasuya’s brother’s house with a clear intention to talk to her about returning, her brother and his sister-in-law were visibly unwelcoming. Anu and Kittu had gone to the nearby mall to get gifts for Kittu’s upcoming birthday.

“Is that why you’re here? So Anu returns to your home with Kittu right in time for his birthday? Let me tell you, Anu is doing really well in the family business, as a 50% partner and shareholder, and we’ve arranged for a good international school for Kittu where he can go to, in the next session. Why pain yourself unnecessarily? It will be more convenient for you both, if you come and visit them when you want.” Her brother said, chewing an imported pipe.

While returning home in his car, his mother’s imploring words kept ringing in his ears.

“Please bring Anu and Kittu shona back home, Khokon, my dear son. Please tell Anu, it’s her own home, her place belongs here. If it is my intervention which is keeping her away, tell her I won’t even touch Kittu if she doesn’t want it.”

“Let them stay where they want to, Ma. It’s just that Kittu isn’t here and I sometimes feel his absence so much.” He replied, with a lump in his throat. How could he explain how the child’s absence in his daily life, the absence of his big hugs and naughty pranks, his shrill, dramatic screams stung his heart? Didn’t the absence pierce his mother’s soul too?

…Back from the office, in her brother’s house, Anasuya’s heart craved for the warmth of Tanmay’s bare, inviting chest in the long, sleepless nights, for the minutest things she had left behind at her old den. As the days passed by, and Kittu slowly adjusted to the new environment of the local play school-cum-daycare center, she silently felt the pangs of the absence of her mother-in-law too. Which play school would nurture the constant demands of a playful toddler, one that was irregular with his food and threw tantrums every now and then? Would that ever be a substitute for a grandmother’s unconditioned love? She realised bit by bit, and sighed.

Tanmay visited Anu in her office sometimes, after his sudden visit in her brother’s house that day. The visits were mostly curt and formal, as his phone calls, and they were almost always surrounded by her brother and the other colleagues. Tanmay would look in her eyes sometimes, and in them Anasuya often searched for his hunger to renew their love, pleading her to return. But he never said it, ever. Anu’s stubborn pride, her ego deterred her from asking him about the same. Ever. What was her fault anyway? Being a woman with modern outlook, challenging his mother’s regressive ways? Couldn’t the old woman forgive her anyway for her sudden temper, her outbursts? What if she had been Mira Debi’s own daughter, her own blood? Could she remain as uncompromising, as unforgiving and hard on her own daughter?

…It had been two months now, and Anu hadn’t met Tanmay even once, in between the chaos and madness of the incredibly disastrous Covid-19 pandemic that had crept in the whole world, an uninvited guest. The city of Kolkata, the whole of West Bengal was trembling, panicked under the sway of the never-ending pandemic, life was at an utter standstill, following phases after phases of government-imposed lockdown, a necessary step to curb the spread of the deadly virus. At home, Anu felt helpless with the sudden onslaughts of the temporary shutdown of the factory, their family business, more so, with the shutdown of Kittu’s playschool. What was she going to do with the little, truant kid stuck at home, shouting and demanding impossible things day and night? What was she going to do with little or no income from the factory and her office now? With a child in tow?

The thought of getting in touch with Tanmay would strike her every now and then amid these deep hours of crisis. How could she call him and tell him her precarious situation when he himself replied in curt text messages, only notifying that he had tested himself and got Covid negative? And yes, he never failed to ask about Kittu’s health, being the father of the child, and these days, about her health too. Everything else faded into oblivion. His job at Sector five, the IT sector in Salt Lake hadn’t been impacted that much, apart from transitioning to work from home. But wasn’t he supposed to know that like many homes, the pandemic had created a deep, irreparable dent in her home and hearth too? Would he care to think of the storm that was ravaging her heart day in and day out, the storm of separation between both of them, that had never happened in the legal, or the worldly way?

…. At the wake of dawn, when the sun awoke from its good night’s sleep one fine Sunday morning, following yet another disaster of the cyclone Amphan tearing apart the heart of the city, Anasuya woke up the sleeping Kittu and got him ready to step out with him to Salt Lake, to get back to his father and grandmother. No driver was there to help them journey the distance, following the cyclone, so she got her brother’s car which she had learnt to drive a few months back, asked his permission to use it and set out to settle a score with Tanmay. He was the father of their child, after all, and it was high time she went to him and demanded him to share the responsibilities of fatherhood, which he had evaded for two years now. She had to break the shackles of her pride, for the sake of her son.

Her hands were wobbly at the steering wheel the whole way from Dum Dum to Salt Lake as her mind hopscotched between haywire thoughts. The car stumbled on one big puddle after the other, remnants of the cyclone and the ravaging rain a week back. Everything was the same in their neighborhood as she reached the lanes, looking at the apartment buildings, the shops and the tree line.

Shoes…whose are those shoes and sandals outside their flat, so early in the morning? Did they have guests in the house suddenly, amid such crazy, unsettling times? Why, even neighbours and relatives aren’t visiting without immediate reason. Anu thought, puzzled, taken aback. She quietly took Kittu in her lap and was contemplating whether to leave right now. To her surprise, Kittu pressed the bell.

The door opened, and a distraught, bearded Tanmay emerged in front of her, bare-chested, with only a white cloth wrapped around his loins, covering his legs. They both looked into each other’s eyes, speechless for some time, which seemed like an eternity.

“Ma, no more in this world? Why didn’t you let me know, Tanmay?” Anu said, in the midst of muffled tears.

“Would you come if I told you, Anu? You were busy with your own life, your business with your brother, while she was suffering from severe pneumonia. Couldn’t secure a bed for her in any hospital due to the rampant Covid situation. Was running from pillar to post for all these two weeks, nothing was working, and the cyclone made it worse…. Just when we managed to get a spot for her, she breathed her last at home. It’s been a week.” Tanmay paused as he spoke, his breath heavy with his sighs.

“Come inside, Anu. There is only Tania and her husband and daughter inside, and the priest who just came to speak of some rituals for the sraddha. We will have a very small ceremony with our own people.”

With trembling feet, Anasuya stepped inside and released Kittu from her lap. The kid was happy to find his own territory, happy to hug his father after long.

Just then, her sister-in-law Tania came from the other room and held her hands. “Get yourself dressed in the white-and-red cotton sari, boudi, now that you’re here at last. We’re relieved. Now you can do all the necessary rituals.”

Anu took the sari from her sister-in-law’s hands and went to the other room to change. “Oh yes, forgot to tell you, last month when Ma started to feel sick, she stitched a new design in a quilt. She told us to give it to you, and Kittu.” Tania came to her and said.

In the bedroom where she was changing into the new sari, she saw the rust-colored quilt, with patterns of a home strung in it, the home, one of the last vestiges of her mother-in-law’s memory. With tears drenching her face, she went and hugged the quilt tightly. She was back at home, finally.

Visuals by Different Truths