Translated short fiction: Swadesh Deepak’s short story about a troubled mother-son relationship

All she needed was a dupatta to cover her face. And then, my mother, Shobha, could sleep anytime, anywhere. The dupatta was always white, even when her husband was alive.

When I came home that day, she was on a bed placed in the long verandah. Her translucent face was covered. I think she was born wrinkled. She lived with her middle son and made it a point never to tell anyone when she would be coming. I had once dared to ask her why her visits were always a surprise. Shocked, she had said, “Why would I bother?” What followed was a string of abuses in Punjabi, directed at no one in particular. The middle brother had often asked her why she made so many trips to my house, considering there could hardly be any communication with my wife, children… different worlds, times and languages. She insisted that it was important to see me – what if I had fallen ill?

Before me, two stillborn siblings. Nobody knows how I survived, not even my father, a doctor. Mother would not let visitors, including relatives from my father’s side, see me for the first few months, lest somebody cast an evil eye on me. She once told me that she had asked him to keep his sisters away. “They were really evil, bitches of the first order.” I wasn’t allowed to go out much, lest I contract some disease.

My father was obviously the most educated in the family, and was, therefore, asked to give me a name. “Sarthak. But I will kill anyone who calls him Sattu or anything like that. Punjabis love distorting everything, including names.”

Yes, he could kill. Partition never left him. Nor did his memory of massacring eleven people from the rooftop with his German rifle. Not that he regretted it. Though he had said once, “I wish most of them had not been from our mohalla.” He would recall how a feudal lord like him, who had never worked before the country was split into two, was forced to live in a refugee camp. In Rawalpindi, mother clearly remembered, he would take his horse and rifle to patrol the fields late into the night. The clinic remained closed on most days. He didn’t like waking up early.

I made tea for us before waking her up. She looked at me for a few seconds, “You look weak. Are you sleeping with your wife every night? Don’t you know it can sap all your energy?” She could say anything, anytime – just like she could sleep. I smiled and said, ‘Never mind sleeping together, we don’t even look at each other properly nowadays.’ She was suddenly concerned, ‘What is the point of all this education if you don’t know that a woman will make life your life hell if she is not satisfied?’

She also wanted me to work “harder”. The fact that I came back in two hours from the college always disturbed her. “Believe me, they will kick you out one day. No one respects a man without work, no matter how talented he is.” It did not really matter how many times I told her that being a professor of English who taught master’s level classes, I wasn’t expected to stay in the college for long. “Yes, I know those who know English don’t have to work hard. But you must save your job, no? Remember what happened to your father’s brother? He went insane listening to his wife’s taunts after losing his job.”

I offered her some biscuits with the tea. She pressed the biscuits and complained they were too hard. She saw me dipping mine in the tea and eating them. She smiled and dunked hers too.

At first, she didn’t seem happy on seeing the four young women who came unannounced. But Rekha, who came every other day, managed to break the ice soon. She told her that I was one of their favourite teachers and that they seldom missed my classes. She was pleased. A reassurance that I was not going to lose my job anytime soon. Rekha also boiled an egg for her. The toothless old woman couldn’t be happier.

Mother spoke about her husband to the girls. How the doctor would spend more time with women patients. “I once asked him why he would keep holding their hands. He insisted that he was checking their pulse. Of course, I knew the bastard too well to believe that.”

After my father’s death, I made it a point to send her money every month. She had never asked me to and had even opposed it once. I just said, “The money order will stop only after my death.” We never talked about it again.

After the students went away, she decided to remember that I had a family. I told her that they had gone to Delhi and would come back after a week. She looked at me, relieved, and smiled.

It was time for me to go for a walk. I asked her if she needed anything. “Yes, get some pears. I suddenly want to have them.” She was quiet again. I know, on many levels she could not relate to anyone in this house, including me.

After all, she laughed loudly, cried shamelessly. We were the educated middle class, measured in everything. We didn’t waste time. Even the kids were mostly in their rooms, reading. She lived in the magical world of irrelevant conversations.

I asked the partially blind fruit seller about the pears. He had none. I didn’t ask anyone else. There was a small famous chhole-kulche shop. She loved them and would always say the same thing about them. “This taste reminds me of Pindi.” She meant Rawalpindi in Pakistan. Nobody called it by its official name, after all, for those who truly love that city never address it like a postman.

She asked me if I remembered Jawaharlal Nehru’s sister’s name. I was scared…she had begun talking way too much about the past. What if she really started living there? Not that the present was up to much, but still…

“I’d gone to meet his sister after your father contracted TB. He’d asked me to go and live with my brothers, but how could I do that? After all, I too was a landlord’s wife. I don’t know why he forgot that. After he was admitted to a hospital, a social worker got me a pension of Rs 100 a month.”

Shobha, my mother, went back after four days. For years, I didn’t get in touch with her. She stopped coming too. My dreams had retired. All desires and relations too. I didn’t ask anyone if she was alive. I didn’t ask anyone if I was. During those long winter years of mental illness, my heart knew the shortest route to the nearest mortuary; it would often go and mourn for itself there.

One day, the telephone rang. It was my middle sister. She asked me to come and see my mother. Perhaps for the final time. I did go. Shobha had shrunk. She looked at me. Her blank stare didn’t break my heart. Her expressions had lost their language, but so had mine. I could see a bridge with missing planks with Shobha crawling on it. As one day, I would crawl.

I could not pray. I would not. I was not allowed to.

She finally spoke. “If you had to come only once, you should have waited for my death, no?” There was a smile on her face when she called me a “bastard”. The middle sister told her that I was unwell, had been in the hospital for months. “But why didn’t anyone tell me? I could have gone and deflected the evil eye.” All was quiet. Someone handed me tea. I lit a cigarette.

Mother: What happened to all your hair?

I was quiet.

Mother: Where is that intense gaze?

I kept smoking.

Mother: And who stole your colour?

This time, I smiled.

“You must start praying,” she told me. I lit another cigarette and said, “Now listen, you will never ask about my illness again. No one is to talk about it.” I addressed everyone in the room. There was quiet. It felt good to be cruel again.

Now she started crying. A long howl without a sound. It carried on. Everyone was startled. I looked at her calmly. She was looking at me. Her eyes were wide open. The middle sister broke down. She knew Death had entered the house. She was whispering something. I asked her to repeat it. “I know you haven’t brought the pears. Don’t worry, I’ll get them from Pindi.”

Excerpted with permission from ‘Pears from Rawalpindi’, translated from the Hindi by Sukant Deepak in A Bouquet of Dead Flowers: Stories, Swadesh Deepak, Speaking Tiger Books.