The Private Life of Mrs Sharma (9 page)

11

Monday, 27 June 2011

There is nothing in the whole world as nice as riding in an auto in the rain. The air is cool, the sky is the colour of grey pearls, the trees are clean, clean and green, and nothing, not one bad thought, not even the auto's side flap, can keep the happiness of the pre-monsoon away. What a nice time we had yesterday, my Bobby and I. Even though it was Sunday, it was so nice. It was probably the best Sunday in the nineteen months since my husband left us. The morning, obviously, was spent at home. Bobby completed his holiday homework, because his school opens in just two weeks, and I cleaned the prayer room and opened out the hems of Bobby's school pants. And because my in-laws have left for Canada, I also put away their folding cots. But afterwards, my Bobby and I went for an outing.

The truth is that I wanted to see my son smile. I wanted to see his eyebrows jump halfway up his forehead and his eyes shine as he smiled. And so I suggested to him that we dress
up nicely and go to the mall to watch a film and eat dinner in a restaurant. Bobby shaved, and he wore a smart collared t-shirt and clean jeans. I think that Bobby also likes to make his mother smile.

The film we watched was just some mindless comedy about four stupid robbers, but the seats in the hall were covered in some type of soft, beautiful red velvet and the air-conditioning was so good that I just rested my head on Bobby's shoulder and had the most peaceful sleep of my life.

After the film we went to the food court for dinner. We actually don't go out to eat these days because my in-laws think that restaurant food is too oily and costly, and that most of it can be made at home anyway, but I think, and I don't want to disrespect my in-laws, but I think that from time to time everybody needs to have a change, everybody needs to have a little bit of fun. And my husband also always thought that. When he was here we would go out to eat each and every weekend without fail.

The food court is something to be seen. I have come to this mall many times, but I have never actually eaten at the food court. And what a nice place it is! Even though there were hundreds and hundreds of people, it was all so properly organised, everybody standing in lines at the food counters, everybody waiting so patiently for their orders. And to have so many different types of food in one place! There was Chinese and South Indian and Italian, and there was American, obviously, and then tandoori items and parathas, and what not. All in one place. It actually took us almost half an hour to decide what we wanted to eat.

We talked a lot, my Bobby and I. Obviously we first talked about the dishes we were eating, because that is what Bobby likes to talk about. So, we talked about all the whole masalas and powdered spices that would have been used in them, the types of utensils that they were cooked in, whether they were cooked on high or low flame, and what not. Then we talked about my husband. I told Bobby about what a good father my husband is, what a good husband he is to me, because from time to time I think that it is important to say such things to one's children, and I told him how I am sure that one day Bobby himself will also be like that. I also told him, and I asked him to listen to me very carefully while I talked, that we will never ever be a burden on him, that we will never ever ask him for even one rupee, and that that is one of the main reasons why his father is away from us in Dubai. Then I told him about my future business plans, about how I plan to start a training institute or academy for office management, where youngsters will learn to use the latest word-processing and spreadsheet software on the latest computers, where they will learn Business English and how to conduct themselves in job interviews. I said that I plan to open the business after eight or ten years, after my husband comes back from Dubai, and that I plan to rent a place for it in Begumpur, since Malviya Nagar and Shivalik have become too costly.

I asked Bobby what he thought of all this. He was quiet for some time, his eyes were fixed on his plate, so I asked him again.

Ma, you are always planning, he said, with his head still bent over his plate.

So what is wrong with that? I said.

Nothing, he said quietly.

So then? I said. Everybody plans. Do you know that even a man like Doctor Sahib plans for his retirement? All these people keep coming to meet him from different banks, selling him life insurance policies and ULIPs and SIPs and what not. It is financial planning. Planning. That is why he is so rich.

Now Bobby lifted his head up and rested his eyes on my eyes. Ma, he said, those people have to plan, but people like us don't have to.

What do you mean? I said.

They have many more years to live than we have.

Stop talking such nonsense, I said.

But now he kept talking. Look at how you work, he said. Day and night, at home, at the clinic. Work, work, work. And Papa also. Double-shifts in the hospital, hardly eating, working, working, working.

Everybody has to work, I said. Your grandfather always used to say that great things can only be achieved with great effort.

What great things, Ma? Bobby said. And are your bodies supposed to pay such a great price for it? You are thirty-seven years of age now, no? And Papa is how old? Forty? Forty-one? After all the work that you both have done, do you actually think that your poor bodies will survive long enough to enjoy these great things?

The truth is that for one second I wanted to cry. Forgetting, just for that one second, that he is only a child and that children always say all types of foolish things, forgetting all this I wanted to run to the washroom to cry. But I did some deep breathing
as fast as I could, and then I laughed and I said, You want to kill off your poor parents so quickly?

Now, obviously, I realise, after one long day, that it was foolish of me to talk to Bobby about such things, and it was even more foolish of me to ask him for his thoughts. This is not how you treat your child. You should not allow him entry into your world by talking about grown up topics. And the future is a grown up topic, just like money is a grown up topic. They are complicated ideas. To enter into the world of grown ups, to understand the complicated ideas that make this world, you first have to have the mind of a grown up. If you bring a child into a grown up's world, you will surely disturb his unprepared mind. What is the future for a child? It is one hour from the present. What is money for a child? The latest phone. This is different from our ideas about the future, our ideas about money. So why talk about such things with our children? Why trouble them? Just like you have to study and take exams to qualify for a job, you have to take some tests and do some training to prepare for the world of grown ups. We should wait for them to be prepared. And we also should not rush them into such preparations. As it is a child has such a short time in his child's world. Why not let him enjoy that short, trouble-free time?

I will not make such a mistake again.

Another thing happened there at the mall. While we were eating, I suddenly saw Mrs Khanna, Mrs Something Khanna. I have forgotten her name but I have it in my files. She was Doctor Sahib's patient for many years. Mrs Khanna was there at the food court, sitting just three or four tables away from
us, with three ladies, all of them dressed in long blouses and those odd capri pants that seem to be in fashion these days, the ones that stop, just like that, somewhere halfway down the lower legs, as if all the cloth at the factory had got finished. So, she was there with her friends, all skinny ladies with fat bags, all of them with their hair dyed in a foreigner-brown colour, and I have to say that I sometimes wonder how these type of people spend such a lot of money on their hair, on the clothes that they wear, only to look like a photocopy of the person sitting next to them, so, she was sitting there with her photocopies when she also saw me, and then she smiled. Mrs Khanna actually smiled. She raised her hand up a little bit, waved and smiled at me.

She looked so old. She could not have been more than forty-four or forty-five years of age, but if you saw her you would have surely thought that she was sixty years of age. Her face was covered in fancy cosmetics, her hair was dyed in a goldeny-brown colour and her body was as slim as a film star's, but all that did not matter. Mrs Khanna looked older than my mother-in-law. She looked so bad that I actually felt sad. I smiled back at her.

I remember her case clearly because she came to the clinic for so many years. The problem was that she could not have a child. Week after week she came, even her husband came, and they did test after test and every type of procedure, and rounds and rounds of IVF, but even a big doctor like Doctor Sahib could not grant her a child. I think that it was for six or seven years that she tried before she finally gave up. And now here she was, a woman ageing without a child.

Before I started working at the clinic I don't think that I had actually ever met any woman, any grown up woman, without a child. I am sure that they were there in Meerut, but I had not actually ever thought about this idea until I started working at the clinic, this idea of a childless woman. Now, when I see these ladies lining up one after another at the clinic, I wonder sometimes what it means to not be a mother. I wonder how it feels to not have to carry the weight of another life for each and every second that God grants you on this earth. Does it feel good or bad? Do you fly freely without any worry in the world or do you just float around without any purpose at all? Most of the time I feel sorry for such women who will never feel that special type of happiness that only a mother can feel, who will never feel that special type of pride in a child that only a mother can feel, feel deep in the womb that held her child long ago. Still, the truth is, and I don't want to be ungrateful, and I feel well and truly blessed that I was granted such a beautiful boy, but the truth is that from time to time I also feel jealous. Even if you are just floating here and there without any purpose, at least you are not pulled down by the weight of your child.

So, when I saw Mrs Khanna, when I saw her ageing face ageing very much before it was time for it to age, I wondered what had made her so old. If she had no children, who had drawn those lines on her face?

But why speak of such things any more? Why not let the lovely wet wind blow away such thoughts? You have to see the peepul
tree outside. Its leaves are silver now in the rainy wet light. It seems that this pre-monsoon rain has come from God. It has come to bless me before I start my work on fixing Bobby. Now that my in-laws are gone, I have to start my work immediately.

My in-laws left the day before yesterday. Our neighbour's son Kamal works in a travel agency that has contacts at the RPO, so we had no problems in making their passports. Kamal is a good person to know. One day I will also have to get a passport to go abroad. I will travel in a plane. Maybe I will go to Dubai to meet my husband. But then he says that it hardly feels like a foreign place. He says that even though there are some white people here and there, it actually just feels like some fancier type of India, an India that has been cleaned up nicely. And, obviously, it also does not snow there. So, what is the use in spending such a lot of money to go to such a place? Instead of Dubai, maybe we should go to Switzerland. Or maybe we should wait a little bit more, until Bobby is happily settled in America or England, and go to meet our son. Yes, we will go to meet our son in America or England, we will go to meet our son and his family, and Bobby will bring our grandchildren to the airport to pick us up, and then he will drive us back to his beautiful house in his big SUV, and our daughter-in-law will have a hot and tasty meal prepared for us after our long plane journey, and after we have eaten, after we have sat down and eaten and exchanged all the news, after that I will go out into Bobby's garden and play with my grandchildren in the snow.

Yes, that is where we will go. But before Bobby's parents can make that journey, Bobby has to make another type of journey first. Maybe it will be a little bit long and a little bit difficult, but with his mother by his side he will, by God's grace, surely make it.