Puny Fingers

Skin Palette

2017-11-22T10:48:00.000-05:00

My high school friend and neighbor, Juhi, and her elder sister, Komal Di, had skins the color of milk, so pristine and flawless that I used to think my brown fingers would leave a mark if I touched them. Her family hailed from the Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh in Northern India, the natives of which had the characteristic light skin tone. It could be attributed to the indigenous gene pool or the watery sun of the mountains that lacked the intensity to elicit the fierceness of melanin.

Juhi, with her long golden tresses, big brown eyes, porcelain skin and tiny gold earrings was well aware of everyone’s gaze, in our predominantly brown state of Uttar Pradesh, pausing at her face. She was a good friend but her pride in her pulchritude was evident in her comportment − sometimes subtly and sometimes glaringly.

I didn’t despise her hubris at the time. I even thought it was justified. Maybe my head would be in the clouds too if I were that white and pretty, I used to think.

I remember her being very upset and angry when her parents arranged the marriage of her fair sister, Komal Di, to an Air Force officer who was the color of coffee. Upon meeting her preordained fiance, Komal Di liked him and was happy with the engagement. She was married and was pregnant soon.

Juhi confessed to me that she was frenetically praying to God that her sister’s baby be born white like her or it would be hard for her to love her own nephew or niece. I told her she was being silly and unreasonable.

When she got the news of the birth, she did not want to know whether it was a boy or a girl but whether he/she was light or dark-skinned.

Her niece, she told me, with a hand on her heart and a sigh of relief, was born the purest white. Thereafter, she went to the temple and even fasted on Tuesdays to thank God for answering her prayers.

At times,when Komal Di visited, Juhi, the fawning aunt, used to sashay around our neighborhood with the angel-faced baby girl in the stroller, showing her off. I remember her beautiful face then, all red and puffed up.

After a few years, Juhi’s family moved out of state because of her father’s job transfer. She and I wrote letters to each other for some time and then lost touch. That was the fate of the best of friendships of that time because cellphones and Facebook were not ubiquitous.

Recently, I received a Facebook friend request from Juhi and hence the story. Her beautiful face in her profile picture had me stare in awe and admiration. In all these years, I had almost forgotten how pretty she was. She is clearly the prettiest face in my current friends’ list.

After accepting her request, I began poring through her uploaded photo albums. I clicked every picture, where she was with others, twice, with bated breath, but those two faces smiled with her in each one: her husband, with skin the color of coffee with little creamer, and her adolescent daughter, just a few drops of creamer lighter. But they looked happy together.

I wanted to ask for her number to find out the whys and hows but the decades that hung between us marred my questions. I simply commented, ‘Gorgeous You!’ on her pictures and ‘Beautiful Family!’ on the ones with her immediate family.

No Tattoos

2017-11-21T12:50:00.001-05:00

“Your turn,ready?” I display his name on my collarbone.

“No. Because this is all so stupid. Ink shouldn’t hold us.”

a 21-word story for #MicroMondays-6

The day of gold

2017-11-15T12:05:00.000-05:00

Everything is a scintillating gold

Jasmines and beads shroud my eyes

But my taut lips stifle my dimples

There’s no tinkle on Mother’s wrists

She smiles, placid in soft pastel. Not

Everything is a scintillating gold

Banquet tables are laid heavy

Locked tunes escape the shehnais

Jasmines and beads shroud my eyes

Without your hand on my head, Father

I say ‘Qubool Hai,’ when asked thrice

But my taut lips stifle my dimples

** Translations

Qubool hai - I accept

Shehnai -a wind musical instrument

Another cascade poem for:

Denied

2017-11-13T13:24:00.001-05:00

This piece first appeared on Mutha Magazine

I don’t know how many times I tried to convince father, but he loathed travel or any other disruption in the routine and predictability that defined his life. Now, he is no more.

Ma, you have always been the family’s representative for life events—happy ones like marriages; the sad ones like funerals. You come.

Just once—hop on the plane, I say. Visit me. Bring India to me.

Your first reaction is always to persuade me, coerce me, and pressure me to save my money.

“I see you when you visit. Save it for your son’s college,” you’ll say.

I have been building a life in this land, oceans away, for thirteen years. You don’t know how superficial it feels without your touch and validation. I want you rocking in the chair on the porch, your voice to ricochet from the living room walls, your presence at the dining table, and your footfalls in the backyard. I want to see your face awash with joy looking at my rosebush and the potted tiger lilies. You have always loved nature. I want you to sit on the patio with me to watch the geese and family swim in the pond across the way.

Also please, I want to be able to serve you. All your life you have toiled. Let me make you a cup of tea after your morning prayers. Let me massage coconut oil in your scalp, working it to the hair ends. Let me run a hot bath and have you soak. Let me play your favorite Urdu serials on Netflix while you relax on the couch.

I want to show you the assortment of frozen Indian parathas in my freezer— the stuffing ranging from radish to paneer. I know you will chide me for being lethargic, not cooking fresh bread for my family every day. I will show you my cabinet rack brimming with store bought spice powders for different curries. You will tell me that these boxes don’t lend flavor to dishes, precision of process and patience do.

Then I will show you a tiny jar hidden behind the panoply. This is the garam masala you ground for me when I visited you last year. I wrapped this jar in layers and layers of Ziplocs to preserve its aroma and your touch.

I will show you the sweater you knit sitting on my nightstand. I wear it when I am cold while reading late into the night.

You have restless fingers, so I will buy you a hand sewing machine and we can rummage Joann’s for some fabric for sewing pajama bottoms for my son or a magazine holder for the Sports Illustrated magazines strewn about in his room. He has grown facial hair since you saw him last. You have only seen him seven times in his fifteen years.

I begin to convince you. You don’t have to do anything; I will fill out the application forms for the tourist visa, take the visa interview appointment at the US Embassy, and send you an invitation letter and affidavit of support. I am an American citizen now, so it should be easy. Don’t worry, I will choose the interview language as Hindi.

“You think I can’t reply in English? Who taught you?” you retort, clenching your teeth in fake anger. I can see that expression, eyes smiling in stark contradiction to the words, as I listen over the phone.

“You won’t understand the American accent. I have selected Hindi. And memorize my name, address and your relationship to me,” I chuckle.

It took me twelve years to get my mother to apply. And it took three months for the application process. In that time, I dreamed of my mother in my house.

And then she called me again.

“My visa is denied,” she said.

“Did they give a reason? Did they ask for any documents?”

She paused, a long time.

“No, they did not ask for a single paper. Rules are strict now, try next time. That is all they said.”

I didn’t know what to say.

I only ask myself, what does it mean to be a mother of an American, but living in a place where my mother is not allowed?

Take Notes

2017-11-10T09:34:00.000-05:00

“This is urgent. Take notes.” He said.“Your fragrant breath...”

She bent deeper into her steno pad.

“ Your milky skin and sugary lips could melt under…”

“I got it here, sir.” She rose, waving her iPhone.

The room folded flat around him.

Written in 42 words for #MicroMondays4

Across My Window

2017-11-08T13:26:00.001-05:00

I want us to be the pair of geese, sailing in love

in that little pond across my kitchen window.

My idle imagination begins to soar.

My eyes holding the sun, you, and your reflection,

your neck arching towards the rustle of my breath,

I want us to be the pair of geese, sailing in love.

Watchful for interlopers, evil eyes and intentions,

we steer to safety, our brood lined in a neat row,

in that little pond across my kitchen window.

The Marimba tune trills in my apron pocket:

"Something came up, don’t wait," you hurriedly say. Again

my idle imagination begins to soar.

Trying Cascade-style poetry for :

A Tale of Growing Up

2017-11-06T14:14:00.002-05:00

This piece first appeared on Parent.com

“Mama, can you stop at MacDonald’s drive-through? I’m super hungry.” says my 14-year old son.

It’s Thursday evening and we are returning home from his Taekwondo class.

“It’s a week night. I cooked stir fry okra today. Your favorite.” I tell him.

“I don’t want to eat that. Please.”

Why is he refusing to eat at home? He knows our family’s rules: we only eat out on weekends. My son is an only child, so I worry about him growing into a selfish and insensitive adult.

I was born and raised in India in a middle class family. My family did not own a car; my siblings and I bicycled to school, exposed to the sun in summer, buttoned up in raincoats in monsoon, bundled up in scarves and hats in winter. Eating out was restricted to an ice-cream cone once a year, on the evening our final exams culminated. I never tried to bend or question my parents’ rules.

I talk to him about spending wisely and saving hard-earned money. I eulogize the benefits of eating fresh, home cooked food. I demonize the empty-calorie comestibles sold by fast food restaurants.

My son pulls a long face. That and the fact that he will be fleeing my nest in another three years soften my heart. He is a good kid. It’s not his fault that he has not seen poverty and longing up close.

I have to accede to his request today.

The thought of placing a drive through order gives me the jitters. I tell my son that I have never, in my 15 years of life in the US, done a drive-through.

“What? Don’t worry, I will place the order.” he says, his tenor that of an adult, resolving a puerile conflict.

I glance at my son in the passenger seat. His head is bent into his phone. The line of black hair on his upper lip appears thicker and darker. Pimples and their remnants dot his forehead and sideburns. A whiff of Axe deodorant escapes from his underarms.

This boy, who came from the smiley shaped incision on my abdomen, now towers over me. He has never noticed that his dad has been on the wheel anytime we have done a drive-through. What else does he not know about the machinery of our life as a family?

What does he mean by he will place the order? He doubts my spoken English. He corrects my pronunciations, tells me which syllables to stress in words like Indianapolis and Kentucky. But I am an Information Technology professional and am gainfully employed by an American business.

My mind begins to wander. We recently watched an Indian movie ‘English Vinglish’ on Netflix, in which the protagonist is an Indian mom who visits the USA to attend her niece’s wedding. This woman, who has a tremulous command over English, tries to order a coffee at Starbucks and ends up being insulted by the barista.

My son is unconsciously drawing parallels between that woman and me. I have never heard Starbucks baristas speak in a condescending tone. The plot is implausible to me.

My hesitation is not because of my lack of language but because of my short arms. I am a tiny person. My mind is mired in doubts—what if my arms don’t reach the window and I drop my credit card or the food packet?

Finally, I scrape out courage from each cell of my puny body and pull into the drive-through lane, approach the microphone and rattle off the order of one Filet Fish sandwich with a medium fries. The person on the other side does not say repeat or pardon.

My son looks up from his phone. I approach the payment window, steering carefully. The window guy’s fingers reach mine and I hand him my credit card. Success. We then float—my son, my Lexus and I— as an autumn leaf to the next window, where another oblivious partner hands me the paper package.

I hand over the steaming package to my son, without even looking at him, like it was a mundane activity.

“Thank you, mama.” my son says, looking at me with eyes brimming with pride.

My son narrates the story to my husband that evening. “Mama is brave,” he says, “She just needs to try.” Animated conversations and moments of levity have become rare in our house.

The teenage years have pulled my son into a shell of reticence. He answers in deep sighs, bored monosyllables like ‘Yeah’ and ‘No’ or boorish phrases like ‘Kind of’ and ‘Not really’.

My son has stopped lingering in the kitchen. Before, he used to turn over the parathas for me or shell the boiled eggs for curry, all the time chattering. I had to ask him to stop the blabber or my fingers would forget to add some vital ingredient, like the ginger-garlic paste to the egg curry.

He has moved his homework station from my kitchen island to the den. He leaves the den only when called. He eats with us every night and heads upstairs to his room soon as he is finished.

I don’t complain but I have not stopped missing him. I miss trimming his nails every weekend and pouring eye drops in his eyes every night. I miss helping him with his homework. I miss his telling me of his tummy aches. I miss his asking me simple questions.

As I lie in bed, I feel accomplished and happy. I have conquered a fear and I have built a strong memory with my son. This memory is most precious.

My son might forget how I raced in my heels to his daycare. He might forget how I wracked my brains over his Math Counts problems long after he went to bed. He might forget how I folded his laundry and placed it neatly in his closet when his dad asked him to do it.

He will never be able to forget this drive-through experience that we shared. Perhaps, he will narrate this tale of his puny mother’s courage to his kids.

Grief and Motherhood

2017-11-03T09:26:00.000-04:00

This piece first appeared on Mothers Always Write:

My sister calls to tell me our dad is ill. I book a flight to India the next morning.

Now, my sister and I are in a renowned hospital at Dehradun, India where our eighty-year-old father lies in the ICU post his abdominal surgery. The doctors don’t give us much hope and ask us to pray. We hold on to hope and pray in our hearts, every moment.

We hang around in the ICU lounge all day waiting for the visiting hours when we might catch a glimpse of our father, his rising and falling chest, or hear his name called over the PA system for consents, X-rays, or other scans, or for any bills to be paid. We engage in conversation with other patient’s family members who are also waiting for their sick loved one to get better. All of us strangers are bound by a twine of anticipation, pain, and anxiety.

One pretty woman, exuding the kind of natural beauty that holds your gaze, arrives every morning with her long, wet and washed hair touching her waist, a cotton dupatta pulled over her head. She lays down a durrie on the floor and sits quietly with her back against the wall, acknowledging no one, staring at nothing. Either she is a quiet person or pain has her tongue-tied.

My sister and I decide to approach her. We kneel down beside her on the freshly mopped floor, tell her about our ailing father, and she starts talking. Her skin, the color of freshly-harvested wheat, suffuses with red as she speaks. Her lip quivers. Her six-year-old son is suffering from Japanese fever and has been in coma in the ICU for three weeks. She is from a peasant family, native of a nearby village. She can’t answer our questions related to the disease, so we stop asking and just listen.

She dabs her eyes with her dupatta once but quickly regains her composure. I place my right arm around her shoulder. “My child is beautiful but naughty,” she says. He lies still now, that restless boy who would run all day and night if sleep never gathered him. So many tubes and wires run to and from his body. Last night, they performed surgery on his throat to ease breathing, she tells us.

Tracheostomy, I think to myself.

Her husband can’t be there with her. He has to work on the farms so they can eat and possibly pay the hospital bills.

Later, I google Japanese fever on my phone and find out that his illness is, in fact, Japanese Encephalitis, a disease borne by mosquitoes. The disease causes swelling in the brain and has a high mortality rate, especially in children.

Next morning, she is not there in her usual corner, and we worry whether doom had befallen overnight.

The morning after, she appears again, clean and placid and pretty in a lime-colored dupatta. We rush to her; she smiles and offers us sweet laddoos from a round steel box. It was her four-year old son’s birthday yesterday, she tells us. The child wouldn’t let her go, so she stayed home at the village and sent another relative to the hospital in her place. I point to the bandage on her hand. She says she burnt it while making the birthday boy’s favorite laddoos. “My mind was elsewhere,” she says with faraway eyes. She did not feel the heat until her skin was already burnt.

I am amazed at her fortitude, her divided mother’s heart—cooking for one child while another one struggles for life. The heartrending roles she has to play in the line of duty as a mother make me, an outsider, shudder. The calm sits unfazed on his face.

Later that day we hear a curdling wail from another woman whose face is so crumpled that her features become indiscernible. She beats at her chest inconsolably. There are men with her, maybe her husband or perhaps her neighbors, but no women. She needs to be held. We sisters and some other women rush to her aid,

“My daughter,” she says, “only fourteen years old. Only last week she was so beautiful, dressed in pink with bangles adorning her arms. Henna tattoos decorated her palms for her uncle’s wedding.” Then her daughter came down with a fever that refused to budge. The local doctors said she needed more platelets. Another mosquitoe-born illness. They brought her to the hospital at dawn, and now she’s gone. Her wails succumb to sobs. She speaks to let the world know of the injustice.

I have started to hate mosquitoes.

My sister and I walk to the cafeteria while other women console her. We bring back a bottle of water and a cup of tea. She sips the water but refuses the tea.

“What will everyone say?” she explains. My daughter just died and I’m drinking tea?

Her world is collapsing; she wants the petty comfort a cup of tea can bring but can’t take it because of what people might say. Because that could set some tongues wagging and malign her motherhood?

We do not press her further, but the unreasonable demands on her motherhood stay with me. Why are there rules that a mother must to adhere to at all times—even in times of grief? My own mother would nod her head and say that’s how things are. That it’s the price of being a woman.

My sister and I are mothers too. We show a brave face in front of other sad mothers, but we weep in private, thinking of our father, our mother, our children and these breaking women.

We women who play such the central role in giving life to our children are asked to wait at the sidelines when those lives are leaving us. Why we are not allowed a bigger role here? Why can’t we transfer our breaths to our dying children? We can’t live anyway after seeing them pass on.

After two weeks in the hospital, we accompanied father in the ambulance on his last journey home to our mother. Our shoulders slumped under our grief and the grief of others that we witnessed so closely—especially the mothers.

The Red

2017-11-01T12:07:00.000-04:00

She bleated at my rhymes. I picked her droppings.

She was nowhere, the morning of Eid-al-adha.

Father returned, hauling the bulk in his arms. A stray dog followed, sniffing.

Her blood on his sleeve still haunts me.

Vegan, since.

Little Hunter

2017-10-18T09:42:00.002-04:00

She purrs, slides from my lap, walks towards the kitchen.
Hunkers down -- ears thrust forward,back raised, tail twitching.
I start. I am curious too.

Written for #MicroMondays

My Essay on The Same

2017-10-09T11:46:00.001-04:00

Thrilled to be on The Same.Read here

Kiss Rehearsal

2017-10-01T13:26:00.000-04:00

All eyes fix on the groom, Rob, as he enters the stage from the right. The tuxedo makes him look taller and handsomer. His light smile like his gelled hair does not leave its place.The whiff of his woody perfume reaches the front pews.

Laura is happy for Megan, her elder one, marrying Rob but her lips sag a little.There will just be Annie and her for dinner every night.Two places instead of three.

The lavender clad bridesmaids start to walk through the center aisle. Laura stares unblinkingly at Annie, the maid of honor— the daughter she bore in her serotinal years. She is a little stooped but resplendent in the pickled ginger pink dress and a touch of makeup. She is the shortest because she is wearing matching Mary Janes. Could not trust her with stilletos.

The girls keep her in the middle. They pat her hand gently if she lifts her dress to scratch her thigh or pulls out bobby pins from her coiffed hair.

“Rob!” Annie shouts as the girls’ procession nears the stage and rushes forward.

She hoists herself on her toes, pulling Rob's face towards herself. Rob flinches, pries his neck from her fingers.

“Kiss Rehearsal.Like yesterday”, she says with urgency.

Trying some fiction for

‘This post is a part of Write Over the Weekend, an initiative for Indian Bloggers by BlogAdda.’ Prompt:Shh!Don't tell anyone.

Unadapted

2017-09-27T11:54:00.000-04:00

Since I first held a pencil
Sun's been perched between two mountains
Sentries guarding its glare
Until one erodes, meets with Earth
Dates show a year has passed although
My eyes squint and blind everyday

Attempted Sijo for

Today on ParagraphPlanet

2017-09-22T15:44:00.000-04:00

Excited to be on ParagraphPlanet today

On Ms. Magazine

2017-09-22T15:26:00.001-04:00

Happy to have my essay on Ms. Magazine blog:

Teen Mom Lesson

2017-09-20T13:41:00.001-04:00

I absorbed each word

Relieved and exultant

And silently imbibed

The priceless

Mom lesson I had learned:

Never force a trickle

Wait for the shower....

To read more visit ColumbusCityMomsBlog

Finally...

2017-09-18T11:07:00.000-04:00

'You recognize me?’ a voice asks on the telephone.

The conversation dredges up twelve years of hurt, longings and unmet needs. Days of concession lunches and pointy fingers. Springs spent donning the bunny costume, waving at strangers. Winters of mom juggling multiple jobs. Sunday afternoons of unknown men in mom’ s bedroom, the creaking of her bed and the fistful of dollars she put into my piggy bank, eons of age running crisscross across her forehead.

I have been waiting for this day. My body and determination feel strong.

Yes, I will meet you in the evening, closer to the twilight hour. Away from the swarming city--out in the mountains, over the cliff where I often sit to quell myself down. I will let you hold my hand if you want.

And I will yell 'Goodbye, dad’, while directing my body's strength to my sinewy hands for the push.

Linking to Tina's and Mayuri's #FridayFotoFiction

Before Sunrise

2017-09-10T13:47:00.000-04:00

I look out the window at the chilly October night in the hilly city of Dehradun, India. An eerie silence pervades the otherwise bustling parking lot of the hospital.

It is 4 AM and I haven't slept a wink. My father is in the ICU entangled in a web of wires and tubes. My sister and I are in the hospital room that was allotted to him before the surgery. She sleeps; her conscience is clear.

It has been a week since father’s abdominal surgery but he hasn’t opened his eyes. His heart functioning is at a tremulous 30%, they say. He is not in pain, they say.

I slip on my sweatshirt, cover my head with the hood and set out. I walk past the nurses’ station lined with drooping heads, onto the citadel of the ICU. The security guard outside is in a deep slumber with his hat pulled over his eyes and his feet resting on a stool. They do not allow anybody in the ICU outside of the visiting hours but luckily father's bed is near the door, so I can peek through the window sometimes before being shooed away.

I open the door slowly and sneak inside. A gelid calm prevails.The sounds of snores are punctuated by the hums and beeps of machines. The vitals of the patients must be stable because there are no shrieking alarms.

I pull the blanket over father’s shoulders--the nurses have left his torso open after checking on him. They don’t know how he likes to bundle up in scarves and sweaters at the slightest breeze.

I readjust his oxygen mask, which is etching grooves on his face and blow on my hands before I place the left one on his head and the right one on his hand, careful not to disturb the IV.

His pupils seem to move under his eyelids at my touch. I’ve read numerous stories of people who have survived coma and near-death experiences.They say that they can see and hear everything around them in that state.

Hope is what reading brings you.

So, I whisper apologies as my lips falter. Apologies for marrying outside the boundaries. Apologies for tainting his name.Apologies for not being a good child. Apologies for being oceans away when he needed me.Apologies for not being able to serve him in the past two years of his illness. And I kiss him goodbye on the forehead.

I see a pinkish tinge in the sky as I walk outside in the corridor leading to the rooms and my eyelids feel heavy.

Prompted by BlogAdda's 'The Day Before Sunrise'
Linking with #ChattyBlogs

Again

2017-09-06T16:05:00.000-04:00

He shouts.I stare.

He snores.I'm awake.

Dawn.

I dust a suitcase. He appears, a leviathan looming over the closet.Kisses my pupils, pulls my hair into a ponytail.

Rivulets soak his beard.

I slip.

Auguries

2017-08-23T15:34:00.000-04:00

Night:

Transmission trembles

Little brother’s voice crackles

Over Oceans

His wife

Hemoglobin's heaving

The day is critical

Two succulents

The hardiest of plants

Nestled in a vase

On my dresser

Left looks limp

I make it lean

Against the upright

Place them

Under my bedside lamp

In the light of which

I read and read and read

Gets tiring

But the bookmark doesn’t budge

Morning:

Still slumping

I break a bamboo skewer

Plant it in the vase

Tied to the tremulous one

With a black thread

Evening:

Away from the skewer

Broken at a right angle

Lays listless

I gently pluck it out

Wipe off the soil

From its roots

Lay it on a paper towel

Sluiced by my eyes

Linking to MondayMusings

The Unsung Heroes

2017-08-13T10:07:00.000-04:00

This Independence Day of India, the 15th of August, I want to talk about those unacknowledged Indians that run like a network of capillaries beneath the skin. The underlying support system. Those men and are often berated as being greedy and opportunistic but then who isn’t?

***

Some 14 years ago, I was a new mom in India who wanted to pursue her career. Working from home was unheard of. Clock-in and out times were strictly enforced and monitored. Work and motherhood loomed like a nebulous cloud.

Then, this woman named Sandhya was referred to me by a friend. Could I trust her deep-set black eyes and the quick smile?

This woman became the sunbeam to me and the first mother to my son. He used to happily wave goodbye to me in the morning from the crook of her elbow but wailed inconsolably when she left in the evening.

I was a tad jealous, but so content. Love’s touch and tenor are not lost on babies.

She also made me a cup of tea in the evenings though it was not her job. She knit colorful hats and socks for my son from yarn she brought from her home.

Sometimes, she asked me for Dettol or Band-Aids to tend to the purple and red wounds inflicted by her husband in his drunken rage under the cloak of the night. The morning after, she stood smiling at my doorstep ─ hands around the newspaper, hair in a neat bun ─ extending her arms for my son.

I saw India in the bright vermilion she wore in the parting of her hair and in the dancing knitting needles in her hands.

***

Three years ago, my father broke his hip and was bedridden. My sister hired a nurse, Alice, who arrived promptly at 7:00 AM, sponged him, changed his diaper and left him smelling fresh and fragrant. She was also called other times when his sheets were soiled.

Sometimes her starched sari was drenched under her raincoat when she arrived on a rainy monsoon day but rain or shine did not deter her.

I heard India in the distinct sound of the brakes of Alice’s scooter at our gate every morning when I visited.

***

A year later, when fathers health worsened and he needed a full-time attendant, Alice referred this young and sturdy man, Arvind.

By that time, dementia had corroded father’s brain. He used to shout and lambast anyone who approached him. This man ignored the invectives and patiently helped exercise father’s limbs, emptied his urine bag and tended to his bedsores.

He also ran errands for mother, took care of beehives and pigeon nests that lurked in the nooks of air coolers.

Mother rolled her eyes when he pleaded her to lock the gate when he was leaving. Times are bad Amma, he always said.

I remember the day when mother asked Arvind to accompany her to the hospital for father’s check-up. He eased father into the car, loaded the wheelchair and then came running back in to get father’s shoes because his feet often slid from the footrests on the chair. None of us, his family, remembered that detail.

He read the newspaper to father and shared highs and lows of life with mother over a cup of tea when father slept.

I tasted India in the homemade walnut cake he brought us in a hand-decorated bag on Christmas. I was lucky to have visited that time of the year.

‘This post is a part of Write Over the Weekend, an initiative for Indian Bloggers by BlogAdda.’

Linking up with #MondayMusings

Pre-Ordered?

2017-08-04T11:35:00.001-04:00

The doorbell rang. She crawled out of the warm quilt, yanked her hair in a quick ponytail and scrambled for slippers.

Outside, in a glass vase, sat an assortment of colorful flowers. She glanced at the newspaper that lay beside: the 14th of February. She had always dismissed red roses as a cliche and he knew that.

Her head felt heavy and she shut the door tight, buckling down on the floor, against the door.

A mélange of emotions: confusion, disbelief and then the one that dwarfed them all—grief.

Had he pre-ordered them? Will they arrive every year?

Picture Credit: Dale Rogerson

Linking to Friday Fictioneers

Delusional

2017-08-02T13:54:00.000-04:00

Dressing up for their anniversary dinner-- flowing chiffon with a ruby pendant around her neck. Smoked salmon, chardonnay, his loving gaze!

Doorbell interrupts the piano playing in her head. Cheeks ablaze, she peeks through the keyhole.

A white lily stares.

No red roses?

Mom?

Yes, darling.

Mascara runs.

Any Males?

2017-08-01T13:14:00.000-04:00

Himalayan Hospital, Dehradun, India

“Who is with Siddiqui?”, an irate voice calls out on the microphone. I flinch briefly at the absence of a respectful prefix before my father’s name. My sister nudges me and I rise from the hard plastic chair in the waiting room and swiftly walk towards the voice.

“I am—Mr. Siddiqui’s daughter”, I hoist myself on my toes to reach the speak-hole in the giant polycarbonate window around the mustached man with the angry voice.

“Any men with you? Brother?Uncle? Who’s going to make the payment for Siddiqui’s admission?”, he says inspecting my face like a detective.I quickly unzip my cross-body purse and hand him my debit card and he diverts himself to the computer screen in front of him.

I want to yell yes, I have brothers but today we sisters are here to take care of our father.The gender discrimination here is going to be stronger than the antiseptic smell but I am not going to complain or challenge. Not here.

If father wasn’t lying helpless in the steel stretcher, his commanding voice would have put this sexist man in place. He had raised daughters like sons against all societal barriers and kibitzer pieces of advice. He had cordoned us off the kitchen and sent us out of town for higher studies—which was unprecedented in the extended family.

***

“Room No 309 attendant, report to the nurses’ station”, a woman’s voice thundered on the loudspeaker. My sister and I slipped on our shoes and ran before the “I repeat....”

“Any men with you? This medicine has to be bought from outside”, the tall head-nurse stared at us from her kohl-rimmed eyes bulging out of her oval glasses. I grab the prescription, ask her where it could be purchased and we run towards the sign saying exit.

***

“Siddiqui attendant, report to the ICU immediately!” a hurried voice calls out before quickly jumping to the next announcement. We brace ourselves, take off our shoes and enter the otherwise forbidden territory.

We stand face-to-face with a senior resident doctor beside father’s bed. “Any men with you? Someone has to sign this high-risk consent form”, he pushed a paper towards us. I detect some intimidating words with translucent eyes and sign at the vacant underlined space with stone fingers.

He continues to say something we could neither hear nor discern which ends with ‘Understand?’ We nod our heads like puppets and stare at father’s rising and falling chest beneath the stark white sheet.

***

My brother helps the driver ease the stretcher into the rickety ambulance. My sister and I sit on the opposite wooden bench.

“Is Bhaiyya (brother) not riding with you? Any other man?” the driver asks with an astonishment that could be meted out to a road splitting open autonomously.

“Bhaiyya will follow in his car. You can start and drive carefully”, my sister curtly tells him. I am amazed at her mountainous courage to still speak but am thankful she does because my lips are sealed.

We pull the bench close, bolstering our father against the bumps and potholes en route his last journey home.

We were the men he raised.

Linking with #MondayMusings

Editors' Feedback:

Any Males? by Sara

Blah blah “show don’t tell” blah. You’ve heard it before. But this essay is exactly what I’m talking about when I say it. Instead of repeating how tiresome it is to be constantly told you’re lesser based on your gender, Sara uses techniques like repetition and time jumps to show the reader how tiring it really is to hear that on all sides, when you’re just trying to live your life and take care of business. Ultimately this is a story about grief, but one about power, too, about what it takes to get through a day when you should be supported by the people who instead constantly question your worth and ability, what it takes to prove, again and again, that you can do simple tasks like buying medicine even when you know that you’re a perfectly capable human. By the end of the essay my jaw was set and my teeth were gritted in a real, physical reaction to the constant stream of microaggressions she laid out for us without asking for sympathy or telling us what she was writing about. And that’s what we want to do as essayists: put our readers so deeply in our own shoes that they share our emotions without us having to explain what we’re feeling.

Little People

2017-07-19T16:19:00.000-04:00

My husband has two 25-inch hard-cover stroller luggage bags, gray and green, splayed open on the queen guest bed. One bag is to carry clothes for his 6 feet and 3 inches frame; the second one is for our 15-year old son who is already 6 feet tall. Dad and son fought for the green one and I don’t know who won. These bags will accompany us on our upcoming 10-day Europe vacation. Son is at a summer camp, returning on the night before we leave—so dad is trudging through his packing too.

He is running from the ironing board to the guest room with armfuls of shorts and T-shirts. I tell him to pack a pair of jeans for the Vatican visit and he flounces back to son’s closet, bringing back 3 pairs.

He always errs on the side of over packing, having to trim down after the scale test that I mandate before flights. I hate it when our luggage crosses 50 pounds at the airport and we have to shuffle things around under the staff’s judgmental eyes.

But I don’t influence his packing as much as I used to. After 17 years of marriage, only some battles are worth the fight.

“10 days. At least, 12 or 14 shirts? It will be hot and sweaty.Now how many did I pack already”, He takes them out and starts counting again.

“Socks! Look the boy has all of them torn at the toes. Doesn’t ever clip his nails.”

“There’s no room for sandals now!”

I sit relaxed on the couch and continue browsing TripAdvisor for things-to-do and skip-the-line tickets while he unfolds and refolds the clothes to compress them enough to fit the bags.

“Why did you iron them? Your heavy hands would squeeze out the wrinkles anyway. You should consider folding clothes at Abercrombie and Fitch stores in your free time or give Martha Stewart some classes. Such a folder you are!” I enjoy sprinkling benign pepper that he brushes off. Something I can’t do that easily.

“Why are you not packing, by the way”, he asks after some time.

“Oh, mine won’t take 5 minutes”, I say and leave the room to fill in my small cabin-size bag.I return after about 10 minutes triumphantly, my bag in tow.

“Is that it for you? Such a small bag? ” he asks with a mix of skepticism and jealousy in his voice.

“Little people, little clothes, little needs, little baggage.I can fold my legs on the airplane’s narrow seat and doze off while you stretch your long legs in the aisle only to be admonished by the flight attendant. You know that is so embarrassing”, I extol the virtues of my small (barely 5-feet) dimensions, although all my life, I've wished I had couple more inches so I wouldn’t have to stand on my toes to reach ticket windows.

“Little people, ironically, have always been the bosses of me”, he says zipping up both the bags shut and standing them upright.