13 March 1999
I met my least favourite person today, my Didimaa, Maa’s mother. She’s eighty-three and her brain is mush. She took to the bed two decades ago following a massive heart attack. Though she got better, she got used to people fussing over her. She now spends her days lying around on a musty sofa watching television, soiling her diapers—even though she’s fully capable of walking around—and rebuking all her five children, especially Maa. Only Mama could afford to be around her. He was the only one of Didimaa’s children who was rich enough to hire a full-time nurse and busy enough to not see her often. Didimaa might have been a good woman when she was young but twenty years is a long time to undo all the goodness. Twenty years is enough to overhaul a personality, to shed your old skin, and wear a new one.
Even my earliest memories of Didimaa’s are of an emotionally abusive woman, calling Dada and me filthy cockroaches, wishing us to be struck down by polio and smallpox.
‘You’ve come?’ Didimaa said as I entered Mama’s house. ‘Go now, go in the kitchen and eat what your Mama has earned. Go, eat it all and leave us to starve. Petni works all day and sends her children here to eat. What does your Baba do? Oh, yes, prays all day to wash away your family’s sins. Your Maa’s a whore, a shakchunni. She goes and sleeps with her colleagues while her mother dies here. Is this why I kept her in my womb for nine months? Gave her my share of the food? I should have never let her go to college, that ungrateful petni. She will only rest when I die.’
The insults she hurled today were blunt when compared to the things I have heard from her before. Didimaa’s the reason why I know how to curse in my mother tongue and why I don’t like old people.
Her full-time nurse smiled awkwardly at me.
‘If you want to take a break, you can go. I am here,’ I said.
The nurse nodded and left us alone.
‘She steals,’ whispered Didimaa.
‘Didimaa, you have nothing left to steal. What can she possibly steal from you?’
Didimaa started to cry. She said, ‘My son, your Mama, hits me when no one’s there. You know what he does? You know? He wraps little stones in a handkerchief and swings them at me. He sleeps with the nurse when I’m sleeping. People think I don’t see things but I see everything, I know everything.’
To her credit, she’s a masterful storyteller. But the best stories come pouring out of her when she is asked about the long misshapen scar on her right hand. The story, the context, the characters change every few months.
‘But Didimaa, how did you get that scar?’
‘Oh, this? You wouldn’t believe me even if I tell you.’
‘Tell me, Didimaa.’
‘World War 2, before your wretched Maa was born. Your brave Dadu had just came back injured from his posting in Egypt. Three bullets, three bullets had hit him! They wanted to amputate his hand at the hospital but he refused! He ran from the hospital with his hand dangling by just a few tendons. It was I who took out the bullets and wrapped his hand with bandages made out of my wedding sarees. And then like Gandhari, you know Gandhari, from the Mahabharata, yes yes, like her, I took a hot knife and cut through my hand and left my wound to fester and fasted till your Dadu was all better!’
She fell silent for dramatic effect, and waited for me to show any sign of having believed this bullshit story. Dadu, sixteen years Didimaa’s senior, died in 1962, having fought in both the World Wars and the Kashmir skirmish of 1948. Some say he died of a broken heart after finding out that the Indian Army was decimated by the Chinese in the ’62 war.
Didimaa’s the only one who knows how I am wholly responsible for Sami’s death. Only mad people can keep secrets. No one believes them.
‘Are you here to cry again? Tell me how you watched your friend die?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Do you think I don’t remember?! I remember everything! You let him die! You and your mother—both murderers!’
‘Whatever, Didimaa. I just came to tell you that I think I like a girl,’ I said.
‘Ish!’ exclaimed Didimaa, suddenly soft. ‘You’re so young! Why? Who’s the prostitute who’s trying to snatch my sweet grandson away from me? Who’s she? Ish. Who’s it? Tell me? I will slap her with my chappal, drag her to the streets and parade her naked.’
‘Didimaa, she’s a nice girl, very smart and very beautiful,’ I said.
‘Nice girl, my foot. I will thrash her and then shave her head. I am going to tell your Maa–Baba. I am going to tell them to change your school. Ish! All this because your Maa–Baba are too busy working—’
‘Didimaa, who’s going to believe you? They will think it’s one of your stories,’ I said, more calm than I felt.
Then I turned to the TV and put on The Jetsons. A little later, without warning, Didimaa relieved herself in her diapers.
‘My sweet grandson. Change me?’ said she and looked at me, her eyes flickering with hope and tears. I looked away, turned up the volume of the television and waited for the nurse. It was thirty minutes before she came and cleaned Didimaa who levelled the choicest abuses against me, Maa and Baba. ‘You will all die poor and unhappy. Worms will eat out your eyes,’ she said while I was leaving.
‘Thank you, Didimaa.’
We all ate alone today. Maa doesn’t eat till Dada gets home and he’s rarely home before 11 p.m. Baba can’t wait that long but he tries his best and gives up at 10 p.m. I am made to eat early. I wonder what toll this high-pressure job is taking on Dada’s heart. I have to remind Maa–Baba to goad him into getting a full-body health check-up.