THE SOUND OF SILENCE

Pray, do not mock me:

I am a very foolish fond old man,

Fourscore and upward, not an hour more nor less;

And, to deal plainly,

I fear I am not in my perfect mind.

(Shakespeare, King Lear)

“Happy Birthday, Ma”.

My daughter greets me with a kiss. Today is special. They are saying it is my eighty second birthday. Does it really make any difference… 81^st or 82^nd or 85^th.Everyday is the same. It starts with a tablet and ends with a capsule.

Someone has kept fresh flowers in my room. My son-in-law must have got them.

The telephone rings. It’s my son calling…my first born….he is nearing sixty, they say, but he is still my little boy. I accept his wishes, exchange some small talk. What a beautiful child he was…he got his father’s complexion, thankfully not mine. I remember people telling me how handsome he was. I wonder how he is managing without me…he could not move a step without my being around. All his clothes had to be kept in place, his socks, his handkerchief; I would also have to keep good, clean, new currency notes separately for him. How he hated handling soiled notes! My daughter says you have spoilt him. May be I have, but what could I do? He needed me all his life. He has always been like that. He apologized for not being able to send a birthday card; the card shops, he knew of, have all closed down. He sounded sad. My daughter explained, people don’t send cards any more. The mobile does everything. Good. Yes, I quite like it, you don’t have to go and pick up the phone any more. They bring it to you. In my house, I was the one to first answer the phone for everyone, call the person, receive messages for him and pass on messages. Fortunately, in those days I never forgot anything.

When I was younger, I never forgot anybody’s birthday or anniversary. They would all make fun of me. My mother-in-law used to joke, “She must have been the nurse who brought us all into this world.”

Yes, nowadays I find it difficult to remember so many things. My daughter says she is tired of repeating the same instructions to me. I don’t blame her. Strangely, I do remember going with my father to Beleghata at a meeting where Gandhiji had come. I remember touching his feet. I was in school then. I was telling her about it. She smiled, “It is strange how you still remember the incident.” It is one of the few memories that I have of my father.

What was I thinking of…oh yes, my son. My daughter says I should have learnt from the innumerable movies that I watched all my life and should have kicked up a storm, left house or even tried threatening my son with committing suicide in true ‘filmy’ style. She says only then would he have agreed to get married. May be.  May be not. I am not so sure. I listen quietly.

Yes, it is true I was very fond of movies… Uttam – Suchitra were my favourites. Then came Soumitra, Amitabh, Madhuri, Shashi Kapoor, Dharmendra, Meena Kumari, Audrey Hepburn, Clark Gable. I could watch any and every movie. With anybody-friend, cousin, children, neighbour….they used to make fun of my craze for films. Even now they search the channels to find some interesting movie for me to watch..but now I lose track…ads, breaks, sleep…too many interruptions. I can’t remember where it stopped and where it began again.

My daughter gives me the phone again..it is my niece calling. We grew up together in Dover Lane in Calcutta in my eldest brother’s house. I had lost my father when I was not even fifteen. My nieces and nephews were around my age, a few months older or younger. They used to call me by my name. On some occasions they still call me up. I recognize her voice- the same drawl, the same stress on certain syllables. There is nothing that comes to mind, nothing new, so we talk of growing older, being a burden and waiting to die. My daughter is irritated with me, “Don’t you all have anything interesting to say to each other. If someone recorded your conversations, it would be the same thing playing over and over again”. She forgets that we are the scratched and old long playing records of yesteryear, repeating the same thing over and over again, stuck at one point.

It is now time for me to do some free hand exercise. I am supposed to follow a time-table—exercise, bath, fruits, meals, sleep, TV, walk—but I can’t remember. I can’t even remember which month or year it is. She tried making me calculate my age. I failed, as usual…The poor girl gets exasperated with me, “You can recognize Manoj Kumar  and Mukri  when you see them on TV and you can’t remember that it is time for you to do your exercise?” Why can’t she leave me alone…no matter how much I move my legs or arms, my twisted, bent, shrivelled body will not be the same again. “No, it is because you don’t try enough.” It is no point trying to say anything to her, she has always been adamant. She would argue, even as a child.

My daughter has made some payesh for me. She said something about baking a cake. Why is she even bothering? In our time, we never cut cakes. Even when I was a kid, my nieces used to gorge on Swiss and Belgian chocolates and other confectionery from Flurys but I never liked them and used to give them my share. I still love samosas, though I am not allowed to touch them these days. She gets angry with me for not talking to her the whole day. “You just listen, Ma, why don’t you say anything? Or can’t you hear me?” I can hear her, but sometimes I pretend not to. It is better that way. There is peace.

I remember getting married six days after my 21^st birthday. That month there were three weddings in the family, one after another. Imagine, in the peak of summer. Mine, my niece’s, followed by my fourth brother’s- all in our family home in Baidyabati, in the Hooghly District. This was where my father built our home some years after moving from Bikrampur, Dhaka. This house has seen the footfalls of several distinguished leaders from history- Rajendra Prasad, Sarojini Naidu, Subhas Bose. I was born in this house. I was the youngest of eight children. I had five brothers and two sisters, now only one is alive and he is still living in this very house. Sometimes, my daughter connects me with him. Usually his wife does all the talking and if she gives the phone to him, he only cries. There was a time, I remember my mother saying, when at least forty people would be sitting at a meal on a normal day. My father ended his teaching career by quitting his job at Presidency College to join the Non-cooperation Movement when called upon by C.R.Das, and the whole burden of running the show in the Baidyabati house fell on my mother. A small, stout woman but she stood like a huge, old banyan tree and kept the extended family together. Later in life, whenever any of us were in need of a little rest or succour, in sickness or in crisis, all would run to her. See I have again lost track… what was I thinking about… this happens ever so often. Yes, the three weddings. The guests stayed on, the pandal was not dismantled for a month and the soulful music of the shehnai reverberated through the house for days. I went to my in-laws’ place in Calcutta for two days post my wedding and then I was back again – how could I miss out on all the fun?

Uff..there comes my daughter again shaking me out of my reverie. She really has some problem. “It is time to walk around a bit. Why do I have to remind you every time?”  Who is asking her to? I was not one for walking much. Even my husband knew that. Everyone knew that- I liked to talk, have fun, relax and enjoy life.

A few days after my marriage was fixed, I had my B.A. examination. My husband wanted to come and meet me at the test centre during the lunch hour. I remember saying no, please don’t, very vehemently. I did not want my friends from Lady Brabourne to tease me later. My days in the Brabourne hostel were the best days of my life. My daughter loves to hear me talking about my college days. My best friends then were Zeenat and Aruna and we had such pleasant times together. After marriage we kept in touch for some years and then we lost contact. I used to be cash-rich in those days- thanks to one of my brothers, who happened to be very magnanimous with the pocket money. I still remember buying a pair of high heeled sandals and some pretty georgette saris. My granddaughter refuses to believe- Dimma and georgette saris with high heeled shoes! Yes, who will believe it seeing me in these drab cotton nightgowns most of the days?

 My husband’s family wanted me to pursue MA. But I flatly refused. I told my husband, I did not get married to study. Actually, his elder brother’s wife had got married after her matriculation and had completed her M.Sc in Physics and was teaching in a college. “But all this was never part of my dream when I said yes to marriage”, I said very clearly. They were surprised with my decision since my father and eldest brother were well known names in the academic circles.

There comes my daughter telling me it is time for my afternoon siesta. Why can’t I sleep when I feel like? No, she decides everything.

My mother-in-law, widowed at twenty one with four small children, had only her old father-in- law to fall back on for support. When her brothers came to take her back, she refused, saying she wanted her children to grow up in their own house, not in their uncles’. My husband, fatherless at four, was a self-made man, who worked his way from the age of sixteen. When I was married to him, he was a Chartered Accountant, working in a small private firm. Soon after he cleared the UPSC examination and joined the Indian Railway Accounts Service. I came into their family when they were financially stable. It was from my mother-in-law that I heard the stories of their struggle- there was a time when all three, my husband, his brother and his wife would leave the house every morning pursuing their post- graduate studies and part-time jobs. Today I am the only one left behind…they have all gone, one by one.

I enjoyed moving with my husband all over India, from small houses to sprawling bungalows; from insignificant small towns, known only in the Railway circle, to big cosmopolitan cities. My husband, a sports lover, was a good sportsman too. He was a very good badminton player but in the railway clubs he changed the rules about husband -wife partnership in mixed doubles. Reason, my dismal performance on the court! He was a truly handsome man! I remember how the spinster sister of another Railway Officer, living in our building, would watch him walking back home from her balcony every day and once remarked to me, “Your husband is so handsome, they should have made him the Chairman Railway Board”. It still makes me laugh even to this day!

Yes, I have lived, loved and laughed. As I sit by the window, broken, twisted, uprooted, I sometimes retrace this journey. My daughter asks me “Ma, what are you thinking of?” I just reply, “Nothing much.” My home, my children, my precious garden, the sudden twists and turns of fate, the little joys and sorrows, friends and family, all come back to me in sudden flashes, in bits and pieces of scattered memory. I have reached the end of the room, very close to the exit door. It is now a matter of crossing over, a time to let go.

My daughter has turned on the music player and the faint music of “ Jibono moroner shimana chharaye, bondhu hey amar, royechho daraye..” wafts through the air. I fall asleep.

DS