SUNBURNT

A long story. You may need good patience to start and finish. First time in my writing career I composed a strongly female-oriented story. The story has the touch of our Bengali culture.

Background:

There finally came a full day to spend with her mother.

Sreela was the only one to be left out in Kolkata among the siblings but without the luxury or pain to stay under the same roof with their seventy-plus, widowed mother.

Both mother and daughter were staunchly independent women.

Sreela, some years back was allocated a delicately furnished and spacious apartment in New Alipore after her whopping promotion in the company. But her mother didn’t show any interest to shift to her daughter’s place from their old den of Golf Green. Her mother’s investment was maximum after the house of Golf Green. Her ardent feeling for her own home didn’t see a drift over years.

Sreela’s current job required extensive travel across a large region of India including some of the neighboring South-East Asian countries. She never disliked travelling as she always loved it, a knack that she had inherited from her thoroughly Bohemian father.

Anuradha, Sreela’s mother was a gynecologist. She had married a man who was miles behind her in academics. Sanjay was a medical representative. He had the job to visit the medical practitioners at their clinics and promote the products of the pharmaceutical companies. But his mind always craved for creative works. He wanted to be a painter. His highly dominating father didn’t recommend that. Sanjay was almost forced to pursue science graduation after he had failed to seek admission to much hyped professional courses like medicine or engineering. He landed on the job of medical salesman after his graduation that subsequently brought him close to Anuradha, a young, dashing and beautiful gynecologist in the making that time. She had then a full throng of admirers from different layers of medical school; high-profile clinical tutors and post-graduate students including the budding junior residents and interns. The list was pretty long.  Anuradha put them under severe shock when she had decided to marry a petty medical representative. Her family raised strong objection and literally shunned the newly-wed couple after the marriage. However, Anuradha had no second thought. She was adamant to execute her decision. She married Sanjay and contrary to popular assumption had a well-balanced married-life with him and mothered two daughters and one son. Sanjay died of a tragic road traffic accident on the fifteenth year of their marriage leaving his wife and children under a state of doom but not despair as Anuradha was an established gynecologist by that time with a steady flow of income. They already had their own home raised mostly on Anuradha’s financial stability.

This is so far the brief background of our main story.

The story begins…………

A bright and breezy Sunday morning of early autumn should be preferably enjoyed in a greenery-facing balcony over a mug of fuming black coffee and selected musical compositions close to one’s heart.

But as usual I had no time for such luxury. I got up late after an awful late-night desk work. And I missed the much-desired morning gym. All because I promised to Mom that I will be visiting our Golf Green home and spend the entire day with her.

We live in the same city, not distanced much from each other. New Alipore and Golf Green are not poles apart. Still we need to make plans to spend time together well in advance.

I just laugh at myself time to time.

What are you doing, Sreela?

Doing some sort of balancing act to cope up with Mom’s empowerment model that she had experimented on her children, especially Didi and me?

Or striving for a life that can mostly center around my very own convictions and contradictions on a platform endowed by once again, none other than Mom?

Or at least making an absorbing attempt of bridging the gaps created by my apparently abortive father?

The rest of the world always felt about my father in that way. A thoroughly off-colored and ill-fitted man whose short-lived life was led mostly at the mercy of his exorbitantly successful wife.

The morning gave the first jolt when I couldn’t start my new Skoda Octavia, and subsequently failed to hire Ola/Uber online due to an unexpected internet failure in my mobile, couldn’t even find a traditional yellow cab near-by without knowing that today is one of their high-pitched and unusual strike days, finally pushed myself inside a shabby-looking private bus which I did after years. The bus, fortunately with not many people inside on a Sunday dropped me at Tollygunge Thana after an awfully slow cum bumpy ride. I took a paddling rickshaw from there and reached Mom’s place totally exhausted.

To escalate my agony further Mom was still in her clinic downstairs attending her patients. I never knew that she runs her home-clinic even on a Sunday. The domestic help whom I met first time in Mom’s house offered me coconut water like a well-groomed hospitality staff. Then she placed the list of breakfast-items before me in professional perfection and waited to take my order with a fake smile of a typical restaurant-attendant. Every bit of her behavior made me feel like a stranger in a house still loaded with memories of my first eighteen years of life. I told her to prepare vegetable sandwiches in the tone of a well-mannered guest.

I started feeling a bit piqued already. First it was the withering bus journey followed by tangible artificiality in the treatment of a well-nurtured housemaid and above all Mom’s unexpected professional engagement on a Sunday.

She came upstairs after twelve but didn’t throw a ‘sorry’ to me as usual. I neither expected that. The time is still fresh in my memories when she used to return home late nights after nights after attending her patients and operations. Her bag was filled with cashes and face with a big, shining smile that never bothered to utter something like ‘sorry’ to our silently waiting and worrying father.

She taught us not to say sorry. ‘Saying sorry for understandable reasons doesn’t make any sense.’ If a man can be late from work why not a woman? Does a man ever bother to say ‘sorry’ to his family after getting late from his office? Why then a woman should say ‘sorry’?

I got a mild rebuke from her the moment she heard about my bus travel. ‘Couldn’t you just dart an SMS, silly girl? I could have sent one of my cars to pick you up.’

My Mom, still maintains three cars for her movements in the city.

She chided me again when I told her I missed morning gym. ‘I taught my children to exercise in the morning. You are yet to take that seriously. Look at me. I never start my days without morning walk and yoga. Why can’t you?’

Why can’t you?

Mom expected her children to do everything that she is capable to do. Didi and Dada are much better placed in this regards. Didi is a successful, practicing child-specialist settled in UK with her cardiologist husband. Mom was always candid about her overwhelming pride over her elder daughter who followed her stride in perfection to evolve as an accomplished medical professional. Dada is a cancer-specialist working in Australia and married one of his nurse colleagues. Mom was not very happy about his marital decision as she always felt that Indian women are the best in the world to marry and start the family with. When I pursued marketing after completing my MBA she was severely disappointed but did never disclose her feelings to me. After all I chose my father’s profession who was never a role model in his family.

Last year Didi came down from Liverpool to Kolkata for a fortnight vacation. Mom kept all her clinics closed to ensure Didi should never feel left alone.

Was I feeling jealous? Were my eyes burning? Didn’t I know that Didi always remained so special to Mom? What such restlessness for, Sreela?

Before initiating conversation she asked me the same old question that she usually pinches between our regular phone-chats.

‘When are you getting married, Mitu?’

I came prepared with the answer.

‘I have no plan to marry now.’

Her forehead was frowned for seconds. ‘Why you want to avoid marriage?’

My answer was again ready. ‘I couldn’t find someone till now to marry than whom I am professionally better-off.’

Mom’s eyes remained glued to me for a while. Years back when Didi and I were in college and high school respectively and Baba was no more with us Mom told us something during a joint dinner that still creeps in my mind. ‘Marriage is essential for any successful woman but select your husband carefully. Try to find out someone who is less successful than you so that the grip of the family always remains in your hand.’

‘Have I ever stopped you from marrying a man who is better than you?’ she snapped me immediately. ‘I always taught you to be independent and take decisions of your own, but not to make a blind trail of your mother.’

I smiled to keep the moment light.

 ‘Look at Ritu (Didi) and Biman (her husband). Biman is one of the leading cardiologists of not only UK but Europe today. Does it ever undermine what Ritu is doing as a pediatrician?’

Years back just following Didi’s marriage the same Mom once made a statement in a family gathering that pediatricians are much better placed in UK, even better than doctors treating heart and brain ailments.

Hasn’t she just contradicted herself now?

Mom, I found her moving with many contradictions in her life. Possibly that’s true for most of the humans; more they grow, mature and age more they strive to redefine and re-establish themselves.

May be a kind of starting point of senile degeneration? It’s so difficult to think about Mom in that way. She always remained so sharp and agile throughout her life and strongly established herself as the role model of her children.

I yearned to take the instance of Dada whose wife is supposed to be not at par with the professional status of her husband but checked myself at the last second. Mom doesn’t like Dada’s wife because she is not an Indian. She hardly named or discussed about her son’s wife during family meets.

‘What’s the plan for the evening, Mom?’ I tried to divert the topic. ‘Let’s watch a Bengali movie in the multiplex and have dinner outside. We didn’t have an outing for long!’

It was rather essential to bring some lighter moments in an about-to-be tense conversation between mother and daughter.

‘I am worried about you Mitu. You are thirty-five, damn it! Still single! Moving around in all the places alone! There is no plan of settling down! Why don’t you understand that you are no more in the adventuring age of life? You are already overdue to start a family! Do you have any ideas how many complications can crop up during the pregnancies of the elderly women?’

That’s how she used to frame the structure of her debate. The gynecologist has to appear in the mid-way as an important resort to convince the adamant daughter about marriage. Criticality of a healthy pregnancy and safe child-birth after marriage subsequently occupies the main flow of conversation without a second thought.

Dada and Didi got married when they were below thirties with two children each for them by now, exactly the way Mom wanted from them.

Experiences of a daughter of a highly successful gynecologist mother made many things easy for me these days to interpret and reciprocate.

I knew I need to be quiet at this stage as my proposition for an exciting outing was completely overlooked and overheard by Mom. She might have some other thought around me for today! It appeared like that.

‘Listen carefully, Mitu,’ After a long time I heard the same commanding tone in her voice that she had often applied on us during our school days. ‘I have invited one of my gynecologist colleagues to dinner at my place tonight. He is around forty with roaring practice in Behala. I want you to socialize with him.’

I just couldn’t believe my ears. Mom is facilitating a match-making for me and that’s also so directly! Unbelievable!

‘Debasish is my junior and a real talent in gynecology. He has other skills and hobbies like wild-life photography, creative writing and trekking that you often seek in a man. So he won’t disappoint you from any angle. He is healthy and good-looking. What else you want in a man?’

Really! What else I want?

‘So my proposal of evening outing is cancelled!’ I tried for the final time to bring out the lighter note of our conversation.

‘Mitu, please, I am saying you something very serious dear!’ Mom sounded firm this time. ‘Meet Debashish and make up your mind. It’s high time to start the family. And I talked to him about your marketing job. He has no objection to it.’

So the marital proposition was almost finalized. Mom’s most eligible candidate Debashish was liberal enough to go with my marketing job.

Marketing jobs! They can never reach the height and standard of a medico, especially a gynecologist!

She discharged the notion strongly once more.

But I remained casual as much as possible.

‘I don’t understand one thing Mom. How come the most eligible Debashish still remaining single? Break-up? Divorce?’

‘Neither of that.’ Mom sounded resentful. ‘How could you think that I would select a divorcee for you? Debashish had a plethora of family responsibilities like brothers’ education, sisters’ marriage that he had accomplished successfully and geared up for marriage now. He is a gem of a person. I am sure that he will make you happy.’

I was speechless. Mom is saying like this? The same Mom who always taught us to marry following her principle?

Her subsequent words left me totally stunned and speechless.

‘Take a nap after lunch. You should look fresh in the evening. I told Asha (Mom’s well-nurtured maid) to make Thai-fish curry and sticky rice that you always love to eat in lunch. Favorite dishes are good enhancer of sleep.’

I could never imagine such comments from Mom in my wildest dream. Is something seriously wrong with her?

I didn’t reply.  My head was boiling in rancorous agitation. Mom wants me to sit before the lusty eyes of a middle-aged, unmarried man as a mere pleasure item that most of the men seek out of their wives after the marriages?

She is so desperate to see me married that there is now no inhibition on her side to go against her own constitution of women’s independence and empowerment? She doesn’t even bother to display minimum respect for my independent decision of remaining without wedlock. She has no hesitation to violate her own set of rules that she had consciously imposed on her children throughout the past.

Why such U-turn at the f*g-end of life? Why Mom? Why? Can’t you see you are slowly falling from the eyes of your child? You were our ‘Hero’, Mom?

I was dying to tell her that but couldn’t as my mind was constantly being occupied by my father.

My father was a surprising exception in the general format of marriage. He dared to love a highly empowered and exorbitantly ambitious woman. His love was silent, static and unconditional. His love overlooked her obvious superiority and domination in every sphere of their conjugal life. His love never became an obligation to the development process of his spouse. The rest of the world mistook his love as inevitable, face-saving loyalty in a situation like professional and economic incompatibility that neither excluded his own spouse. Mom even took the advantage of that by keeping the entire control of the family and children in her hand.

Mom soon got into my envying list for her stupendous luck. She was lucky enough to have a unique man by her side in the shoes of life-partner.

I had been remaining a bit restless for several days as I was fumbling to take a decision on my life. The ongoing conversation with Mom made that suddenly easy.

‘I want something from you, Mom.’ I said as politely as possible as I had lost the mind to lengthen the debate of marriage. I learnt the trick of keeping myself cool and down from my professional upbringing. I was thankful to my marketing job for that. I was equally grateful to my dead father for helping me to inherit his nature.

‘What do you want?’ Mom frowned exactly the way she used to frown at me when my marks of the school exams didn’t reach up to her satisfaction.

‘I want Dad’s paintings. I want to keep them with me.’

‘I had no idea where they are lying.’ She said in a flat voice.

‘I know where they are.’ I brought the smile back. ‘In the big wooden box that is still lying under the bed of Dad in your store-room on the terrace. It should also have some diaries that contain Dad’s poetries and short-stories. I discovered them last time when I came here. But couldn’t tell you.’

She looked straight at me. I knew she has been reading my mind.

‘What should I then say to Debasish?’

‘Tell him he will definitely find someone younger and more desirable than me. A rich, successful man has no dearth of good women in our society. Today I learnt that once again, but in a hard way.’ I took a pause to give her a chance to speak but she didn’t respond. ‘Let me by that time, please Mom, find out someone like Dad to fall in love with. Hope you don’t mind that. I am just obeying what you wanted us to do…..marry someone less successful than me. But I will do that differently. I will give love the most priority in our relationship.’

She remained quiet. Her face turned red and stone-like.

I got up from my seat. Time to move to the store-room of the terrace to take over my father’s last memories.

‘One last thing Mom. I didn’t tell you till now. I am leaving my job and moving to Paris to take a crash course on painting. I want to switch over to painting and pursue a career there. You know I always loved painting from my early school days which you had never encouraged neither allowed Dad to mentor me. We did everything so far the way you wanted us to do, but now I must live my life on my choices and priorities. Otherwise that would be a severe form of self-humiliation. I also have a plan to publish Dad’s poetries and stories. Already initiated discussions with an overseas publisher about that who is willing on principle to publish them.’

She didn’t say a word.

I moved towards her and bent down to touch her feet.

She lightly placed her hand on my head. Her eyes were glistening with tears as I looked up and saw her face.

‘When you will be coming back to me again?’ She murmured.

‘After fulfilling my dreams.’ I said to her.

 

‘After fulfilling some of Dad’s dreams as well.’ I didn’t tell her that.

She understood, probably in a bit hard way.

 

 

Reviews

[Coyote Poetry]

A very good story written. I liked the real life feel of the people and the characters. You create real situations and real decisions. I did like the ending. We must seek self-happiness and find people who make us feel okay. Thank you dear friend for sharing the amazing story.
Coyote