“Hey, what happened out there?” Anjali asked while I cooked lunch. Mumbai was undergoing a heat wave and all I wanted to do was stand in the sitting room with cold AC air hitting me. I focussed on chopping vegetables for a pulao and accompanying curry.
“Where?” I muttered, trying to see through the sudden blur – a drop of sweat fell into my eye.
“Uncle John and Aunty Glory seemed to be giving each other the third degree yesterday. Now, it’s business as usual.”
I stiffened and stopped myself from looking out of the kitchen window. I felt singed by Uncle’s disapproval yesterday and felt bad thinking about the family in the next building –Aunty and I had been watching an amour du coeur unfold between two neighbours for the past year or more. Now the cheating husband had been caught out and the whole thing had upset Uncle, who had in the gentlest way made known his displeasure over our dubious activities.
This morning Uncle John had insisted I come in and have tea with them, and I had managed to chat to the man in flat 502 (FC63)… and his wife. She had pushed her head out past him when he opened the door… and with a look of embarrassment he had introduced her and himself.
Wife could also mean girlfriend, I reasoned unnecessarily. Girlfriends became wives to circumvent 21st century prudery in housing societies such as mine. I thought of my cousin Mona, thus named because his enthusiastic parents Moncy and Neena wanted a syllable each of their names to make up their son’s – a particularly Malayali habit. They could have gone with Monee, Neecy, Ceeny or Nemon. Or Nomen.
Anyway, Mona had apparently managed to get past the travesty that was his first name and get the girls. He had had a live-in relationship with a classmate on a campus in Karnataka, but eventually married someone his parents chose. Roma and I got to know about Mona’s romance while eavesdropping on his calls during our holidays in Kerala.
Post breakfast Aunty stood near me in the kitchen, while Uncle stood at a window to enjoy the morning sunshine.
“Is Uncle still angry?” I asked Aunty Glory.
“No. We had a fight yesterday… he gave me a lecture. I thought I’d never have to hear one at this age, but I guess I got complacent.”
“Is Uncle angry with me?”
Aunty snorted out a laugh. “Oh, no, darling. He’s angry with me for leading you on.”
“Oh.” I felt relieved I could salvage a useless reputation with Uncle.
“Of course, he knows very well what a con job and rabble rouser you are.” I squawked in protest. “But he has a soft corner for you. You are perfect. If you weren’t already an adult, we would have adopted you.”
“Awww. All lies, for sure.”
“Is my tea ready?”
“Would you have adopted me, Aunty?”
“Yes. In a manner. Your parents asked us to take care of you if they died prematurely. Did you know?”
I stopped straining the tea. “What?”
“In your early teens, when your father had his first heart attack, he had a talk with John and me. Apparently, your parents didn’t quite see you being happy with anyone else.”
“Oh! But they never told me.”
“I’m sure they had their reasons.”
“But even if they had died earlier, I would have probably gone to a relative.”
“No. Your father consulted a lawyer and drew up papers. He was that serious.”
I stared at Aunty, questions flooding my mind about my father’s sudden fears and inexplicable actions. I had never had a sense of it. Only that my patient father had started losing his patience more often, brooding, sometimes watching me and my mother intensely. He had begun to insist we handle the family’s financial matters and erupted when we didn’t co-operate.
I remembered a rant. “You can’t expect Joychyan to do everything for you! You have to stand on your own feet when I’m gone!” Uncle Joy was Papa’s older brother and Roma’s dad.
“Please, Papa. You’ll live forever,” I had teased him. He had given me a blistering stare and I had shut up. Even my mother had kept silent and the air had grown still and tense. After that we quietly went with him to the bank. I filled out all the pay-in slips, making mistakes and having to fill them out several times every visit. I regularly updated the notebook Papa had on his investments. He sent me to the bank on my own to renew fixed deposits, insisting I take the bus. I did not know then if he had so many interests or just wanted to get me out of my comfort zone, but he made me visit the post office, make enquiries about bonds at banks and made me spend hours filling out all manner of forms and reading out the accompanying literature. If the people at the post office were rude and I left without making enquiries or opening the kind of account Papa wanted, I was forced to go back the next day.
I felt Aunty’s hand on my arm. “Are you upset, my dear?”
“N-No, Aunty. Nothing like that. Just didn’t realise Papa felt that way. They never said anything to me… a-about this.”
“Hmm. Well, he thought Joy would be unhappy.”
“Er, but there was nothing in Papa’s papers…”
“Probably destroyed it once you came of age.”
“Maybe.”
“You turned out fine,” Aunty said reaching up to brush the hair off my forehead, a smile on her face.
“Broken and divorced.”
“Silly girl. Broken heals. Divorcées fall in love again… if they want to. There’s so much to do. You should enjoy life. That is some kind of work too, darling – to enjoy life!”
“Have you enjoyed life, Aunty?”
“Yes, I think John and I have. At least, I don’t have regrets. Some, not too many. But yes, we’re happy.”
And not on drugs. Happy because they knew how to be happy.
******
This is a fictional series about the 30-something narrator, based in Mumbai. Her former pet fish and parents’ former man Friday have returned to stay indefinitely, leading to a series of interesting situations.
After watching a wife discover her husband is cheating (FC64), Aunty Glory and the narrator are disturbed by what they have seen and their unhealthy interest in someone else’s torment. They take a break from watching members of their housing society.
******
I was now in
bed, tossing and turning and a tad jealous of Anjali in blissful slumber beside me. My
mind churned.I had taken Anjali out for a walk around my building in the evening, and told her about the conversation I had with Aunty Glory.
“Hmm, I can believe it. Your dad thought of everything,” Anjali said.
“You don’t think it’s odd that he wanted me to live with them, rather than with Uncle Joy?”
“It is unusual. But he seems to have worried about your emotional well-being. Your EQ.”
“EQ? Where do you get this crap.”
“You asked me to tell you what I thought!”
“Yes, but you can tell me what you really think instead of giving me such nonsense gyaan.”
“The truth is… no one can handle the truth. Including you. Your dad’s reasoning seems to have been unusual. I don’t know if Uncle Joy would have wanted you, considering he had three kids of his own already.”
“Thanks!”
“Just the truth. And, as long as I’ve known you, Uncle Joy and you have fought like idiots… like cats and dogs. You hate being controlled, he loves to control. I think your relationship would have exploded in time. Think about it. Wouldn’t you have preferred John and Glory? Uncle John's saneness would have tempered all of Aunty Glory’s madness. And you would have turned out a hippie, not the repressed mess you are now. I say that in a nice way,” she said, holding her hands up. Fiery Anjali was taking pains to explain things as she saw them.
“Why do you think Papa did that?”
“May have had a sixth sense about his... er. Didn’t want you to become lost. You’d have been lost if you were with Uncle Joy. You’d have been happy with the Gonsalveses.”
“Even though they have kids?”
“By then the children were grown up, no?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know when Papa decided all this.”
“Aunty told you that it was after his first heart attack.”
“I was 13.”
“Okay. So there you have it. Uncle may have had a premonition. He was doing the right thing about tying loose ends.”
“Yeah. Why didn’t Mom say anything?”
“Really? Did you think they wanted to discuss their deaths with you?”
“Remember how Papa made me do all his bank work. I was only about 14 or so.”
“And I have to thank him so much for it all. I got trained in the process.”
“Hmm.”
“Look at it this way. If Uncle wanted you to be able to handle life without him, he succeeded. No?”
Everything pointed to that. He had made me aware. He had made me independent. He had given me hope and good sense, despite the odds.
I lay sweating in my bed, thinking of my parents. Loss was hard. My grief sometimes felt like an unmoveable mountain. But their choice of the Gonsalveses as adoptive parents surprised me. My parents were inexplicable. I hadn’t really known them. Or they had known me well.
******
Yes, grief does feel something like that, as I'm learning.
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