My project for course: Creative Writing for Beginners: Bringing Your Story to Life

Meeting Ma

Meera was lucky to have managed a seat in the last flight out of Nagpur to Kolkata before the airport closed down indefinitely in the first wave of the Covid pandemic. Two days back her father, eighty three years old, had called to inform that he had tested positive and the doctor wanted him hospitalised. Meera spent frantic hours trying to find a ticket to Kolkata. She knew it would be disastrous to leave her Ma alone at home - the maids might stop coming any day. It had been a nightmare but eventually the travel agent had called her with a confirmed ticket in hand. She had meanwhile completed the required tests and had the doctor’s certificate.

Kolkata was not as badly affected as Nagpur, although a police patrol stopped her taxi on the way. She reached home at midnight. Thankfully Archana, her mother’s maid had agreed to stay till she arrived. Her father had been hospitalised that afternoon. Archana let her in and then retired to the room on the mezzanine floor. Meera washed herself carefully, disinfected her luggage and peeped in her mother’s room. Ma was sleeping peacefully and Meera did not wake her up. She made herself a cup of tea with milk and sugar and checked her messages. She wrote a couple of lines to her husband - she had reached safely, she loved him and Ru, xxx.

Next morning she woke to find Ma pottering about in the room, as if searching for something. ‘Good morning Ma!’ She said yawning.
“Hey, sleepy head good morning. When did you come? Do you know Baba has Corona?”
“Yes Ma, I know. He is in the hospital.”
“These people are all telling lies you know. Your father never went out, so how did he catch the germ? I don’t believe a word these people are saying.”
“Yes Ma,” smiled Meera. By this time they were in the kitchen and Meera set the kettle boiling while Ma sat at the kitchen table.
“Where is that girl Archana?”
“She’s gone home Ma. She will not come for fifteen days - till the quarantine period is over.”
“Fifteen days! What are we paying her for? She should be here.”
“Ma, that’s the protocol. She has to protect herself you know. That’s the directive from the government.” Meera poured the tea in two neat cups and brought out the biscuits from Ma’s old cookie tin.
“What protocol?” Ma grumbled, “These people are all lying. Did you know they said Baba has Corona? How could he get it? He never goes out.”

Cooking was Meera’s least favourite task, but she had little option. After washing the cups and cleaning the rooms she asked Ma what she would like for lunch.
“I would eat anything you know sweetheart. But why are you cooking? Where is that girl Archana? Anyway since you are cooking for a change, remember to deep fry a couple of fish cutlets for your father.”
“Ma, he’s in the hospital and we aren’t allowed to visit him,” Meera explained patiently.

Slowly Meera fell into the household routine - washing, cooking, cleaning, ordering groceries and vegetables online. Thrice a day she called the hospital for updates and was relieved to learn that her father’s oxygen level was stable. The fever had gone down. He was breathing normally.

She told Ma the doctor’s report and Ma was delighted to hear that he was better. A little later she would ask Meera whether she had remembered to call the hospital.
“Ma tomake bollam toh phone korechhilam…Ma I told you I had called. Baba is better,” Meera was say.
Sometimes Ma would remember or pretend to remember and other times she would insist that Meera hadn’t told her at all.

The newspaperman had stopped delivering newspapers but that didn’t stop Ma from reading the old ones. She discussed the news in detail with Meera - she was happy that the. Chief Minister Mamta Banerjee had strongly warned private clinics against looting patients. In the mornings and evenings she religiously watered her plants. Sharp at five in the evening she turned on the television for her favourite quiz programme Didi No.1 and she her TV time extended till dinner at nine. Meera used this time to catch up with her work, talk to Kay and Ru, or catch up with her reading.

By the end of the week, Meera started to feel the strain. She was not used to doing so much house work. She wasn’t used to staying continuously indoors. She spent time with Ma - discussing the news, books, playing Ludo, watching T.V - but some things bothered her. Ma remembered her childhood and youth and bringing up her three kids and living in so many different cities because of Baba’s job that entailed moving every couple of years. But increasingly her dark, negative memories overshadowed the happy ones. She remembered her mother in her deathbed, she missed her siblings, she harboured grudges against relatives who had given her a difficult time, she intensely disliked her son’s first wife. Meera asked Ma for the stories she liked to hear - Ma’s adventurous youth, how Ma learned mountaineering from Tenzing Norgay or the funny story about how she mixed up the dialogues in a theatre she had acted in.

By the tenth day, Meera was bone tired. She was waiting for Baba to come back home. She wanted Archana and the other maid to return. She wanted to see her daughter. Her conversations with Ma had become frustrating. Ma couldn’t remember why the newspaperman hadn’t delivered the newspaper, why the maids weren’t around and often forgot why Meera was at home. She asked a question and forgot the answer and asked again. She was irritated when Meera did not allow her to step out for a walk or to meet a friend. It was a strange space Ma inhabited - a space that was part real, part imaginary, part present, part memory. Sometimes Ma wanted to cook a dish, other times she didn’t want to enter the kitchen at all. Sometimes Meera felt a strong bond with her, a deep love and tenderness, other times she controlled herself and answered the same question for the fourth time in an even tone.

Meera’s brother, an army officer, called from his unit in the Indo-China border. He was trying to come home, maybe in a day or two. Meera wished either of her two siblings were here. She kept the phone down and decided to dust the cupboards in the sitting room. Ma had been quiet since morning, except for asking a couple of times who she was talking to and thrice about why Archana had not come in yet. There was so much dust in the cupboards where Ma kept her collection of knick-knacks, small objects collected from her travels, pictures of the children and grandchildren in frames, Ma collection of Ganapatis in various sizes. Meera set them out carefully on the table and started cleaning the shelves.

“This isn’t the best specimen,” Meera heard Ma entering the room. She turned to see Ma at the doorway holding her handbag.
Suddenly Meera felt an immense frustration. “Ma,” she cried, “how can you find something negative to say about my handbag? It is old but I like it. It is spacious. It holds my things. I am sorry you don’t think it lives up to your handbag standards!”
“Why are you angry child? I didn’t mean it like that at all. It’s a beautiful Shantinikatani leather bag, but it is not embossed you know. The painting is lovely of course …”
“Ma!” Meera wanted to say something.
“Anyway, anything from Shantiniketan is worth having... You know when Tagore built the Vishwa Bharati university - in the 1920s - he wanted it to be a confluence between India and the world. He wanted to engage with the best of the outer world and at the same time he wanted the university to work for the poor people in the villages in that area. Your handbag for instance - it is crafted by local leather workers. But this batik work is not local - the art of batik was brought from Indonesia and taught to the artisans by the university. What do you think Meeru? Your handbag carries far more riches than you can imagine. Of course, if only it would have been embossed… Do you remember the time we went to Shantiniketan - for Dol?. You were still in school. All three of you enjoyed the music and the colours so much …” Ma sat down on her favourite chair.
Then she continued, as if to herself, “Tagore was such a visionary you know, a poet, a builder of institutions, a nationalist, a philosopher. ”

Meera felt as if she was meeting her Ma after a long time. She went near Ma’s chair and knelt down beside her. Then she took the handbag from her mother and kept it aside. Then she put her head on Ma’s lap and burst into tears.