My little daughter asks me, when I see her at the end of the school day—Do you have something for me to eat? I say no. Maybe I should have brought her something. When we reach the car in the parking lot, she asks again—Do you have something in the car? No, I say, let’s go home and I will give you something to eat. She is not excited and loses interest in the conversation about food.
Years ago, coming home after a day of attending classes at the University, I think of the food waiting for me. My father, hearing me, would come downstairs and try to make conversation. All I wanted to know was—Where was Mother? Brushing past my father I would look for my mother, for that rustle of silk, for that aroma of food just cooked, and for the aroma of something savory. My father, who during the day, would retreat upstairs to do his reading and writing, would emerge during meal and tea times and look for someone to make light conversation with. He was most useful to my mother when he was out of her way, especially in the morning. She with her hustle and bustle, and her trips from the street to the kitchen, often to buy something from the hawker who brought vegetables and fruits door-to-door. Having to pay the hawker and having spotted our milk-lady making her way to our house, my mother, worrying about the food on her lit stove, would come back for small change to pay the hawker and bump into my father who had come downstairs, many a time without intention, being deep in thought and pre-occupied with his writing. Take a look at my stove, she would tell him. Eh, what stove? he would ask.
My father would come downstairs when he noticed that the house had gone quiet. Having looked through all the rooms he would peer outside across our doorway and across the narrow passage that separated my aunt’s house and ours, in the same compound, to see if my mother was chatting with my aunt. He would stand in the doorway, straining to hear their conversation. My mother seeing him, would ask—What? Why are you here? It is not lunch-time yet. Yes, I know, my father would reply—I came to see what was on the stove, and whether you had left it on. When his daughters came home, he would be in the mood for conversation. My mother, often in a lighter mood, would hide behind the kitchen door having instructed my father to tell us that she had gone to visit relatives. My father would readily participate in any kind of trickery. He boasted of many an April fool’s day prank he had played on my mother, sending her to my aunt’s house, telling her that my aunt had wanted to talk to her (I believe that it actually did happen once or twice). My father took pleasure in telling us of our mother’s betrayal, when we came home, saying she had left for a cousin’s house where she would be treated to a mouth-watering meal. My sister and I would protest at this news, and would search under the table and behind doors, though we knew that my mother was not given to playing games.
Early evenings would find my mother bustling about, getting dressed, after cooking ‘tiffin’, the late afternoon snack, for her home-returning children. My mother would be well dressed in one of her better saris, often a silk one. She would say—Why look shabby when one owned so many saris? I will wear a different one each day and will not keep them for my children and grand-children, like some of the other women do. God gives you your looks, and it is up to you, what you do with them.
My mother was playful when we were younger and would hide behind the kitchen door eating a mango. The mango season was her favorite just as the monsoon season was mine. You could be forgiven for being forgetful when you were watching the rain, as it drenched rooftops, and settled the dust once and for all. The red rooftops were brighter and their slant sharper. Who could dislike such rain after the hot summer? Just when the weather pundits would predict that the monsoon would fail, the sky would become cloud-swollen, thunder-laden. The rain soaked through, until the wet-earth smell filled the air. The colorful rangoli designs drawn in front of the outermost door of the house would run in little rivulets to meet those from the house next door. My aunt who lived in the house across from us in the same compound, drew them early in the morning every day with dried rice powder, light and white, and in later years with chalk. Before the monsoon season arrived, would come the mangos. My mother delighted in the yellow fragrant fruit as much as the unripe green ones which she quartered, salted and pickled. She enjoyed the constant wrangling with our milk-lady, who also brought us mangoes during the season, asking her when her trees would be ready for the picking and urging her to bring us the very best of the mangoes at a reasonable price. The ownership of the mango trees from which she obtained the fruit was never clear to us. Sometimes our milk-lady would say that the trees belonged to her, and sometimes she said that the trees were the property of a greedy cousin, who sold the mangoes that they bore, at unreasonably high prices in the city. If I didn’t bring them to you, who would I bring them to, our milk-lady would say to my mother, soothingly. After taking the bus from the village into town and having carried her cans of milk from the bus-stand to our house, our milk-lady would sit, breathing heavily, across the door-sill, wanting to make small talk. Many years later, I heard from my mother, that our milk-lady who often showed up in a ragged and torn sari, and asked for clothes for herself and her daughter, a girl of slight build who would not fill out, however much her mother fed her, is a land owner, a home-owner, owner of cows and a car, and has much clout in her village.
Even when my mother painfully twisted her foot, by stepping on my high heeled sandal that was lying in the middle of the landing at the bottom of the narrow staircase, she hobbled about and cooked for us. When my father complained that a meal had too few dishes or that he knew that my mother was just ‘making do’ for dinner, she said—What do you think? Is today the last day that you will eat? There is always tomorrow and the day after. Does eating ever end?
My little daughter, playing by herself at the other end of the house wants to know where I am. Mo-mmy. What? I ask. Wheraryou, she calls. I’d been waiting for this question. I’m here, I say. Oh, Okay, she says. I call to her—Why don’t you come here and eat something.
