“You say it to spite someone, to plead with someone, to hit someone where it hurts; you say wife when you want to draw upon all the ridiculous meaning people make of marriage to hit you on the head.”
My grandmother couldn’t even think of this. She’d felt it, but feeling something is not the same as saying it. Words crystallize a feeling, harden it into an individual truth.
“You say it with love sometimes. Those are rare times.” My mother conceded this one evening when she sat up late, waiting for Dad to come back from work, mending our clothes.
“Usually, its all the duty you ever owed to your ancestors - for bringing you into this world,protecting your growth so you can bring another generation into the world - that concentrates into this word and is thrown all over you.”
My father is too much of a romantic – the kind who likes to fall in love – a love that is accompanied by a feeling of buoyancy and security he doesn’t have to question. Love is an absolute for him.
“Having a husband has its traps. You’re to be dutiful - to have to give them what they want – take care of them, feed them otherwise they go wild on packaged food, pick up after them(because they have work – other work, more important work – it-gets-in-the-money kinda work - to do).” My sister, who’s been married and divorced tells me this. “You have to give up on love, sit and watch a movie when you really want to have a slow bath, go out for dinner when what you really want is to stay in. Make sure to be liked by his family. Ensure being liked by his friends. Especially when there’s nothing in common. You have to talk when you don’t want to, open your legs when you don’t want to – it’s part of taking care of them. Otherwise, they’ll die in depression and drown in late-night maggie eating.”
My grandfather only knew about going out into the world and helping other people. He preferred to stay out of the house, leaving my grandmother fully in charge of the place. He liked his clothes, taken out – ironed and ready before he came out of a bath. He liked his food hot, on the table, before he got there. He liked many such things that my grandmother spent her life repeating, for his sake. Then she became too old to repeat them, he became too old to go out. He lost everything he knew – because, for him, home wasn’t a place you stayed in at – it was a place you came back to. Now there was nothing to go away from, to come back to. There was only a static wetland, which he was slipping into.
*
“To answer your question, Sir,” Radhika, my cousin, leaned forward on her chair, “I’ve learnt about teamwork and leadership at home.”
When the man raised his eyebrows, she continued, “I live in a joint family of fifteen people. If we don’t manage relations properly, they strain sir.” The silent room echoed her voice back to her so she shivered, “We’ve learnt to live with each other’s idioysncracies. We let the person with vision lead, let the hard workers clean, scrub and cook – do the dirty work – in corporate lingo sir.” He smiled at the comparison. “We let children – the researchers in an organization – do what they will in their studies, as long as they do a good job.” Her palms were sweaty. “Shall I go on?” she asked quizzically.
*
We needed to make money because the partition had ensured we came to India with only our bodies intact. When dad started a business in the ground floor of the house, we used to huddle on the first floor and hear the goings-on underneath. Our mother made everything at home – it saved money. We were three brothers and two sisters. My father wanted daughters. We were the youngest. The twins. We wore the same coloured dresses till we were married off. Packed off to the houses of strange men like luggage. We didn’t know it at the time, but we found out soon enough.
*
“The net is strong, isn’t it?” Rai said, looking up at the bedsheet we’d spread over a circle of chairs and hidden under.
“I like paneer.” I said. Our plates had been given to us inside our ‘tent’.
“I like camping.” Radhika is a couple of years younger to me.
“Lets play scrabble after dinner.” I like making words on a wooden board.
“I want to play business,” Deep, my brother, likes numbers, buying houses and money-lending. He thinks he’s a grown up.
When we get together in the summer, everything is colossal. The ancestral house, which my mum says came out of a small business in the ground floor of their oldest house. The food – there’s so much good food. The cousins – half the time we don’t know each others’ parents by name. We can place them by face. Days are a blur of games. I get to choose which game to play when I complain about Deep.
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