Confessions Of The Lady Next Door (From The Scrap Shop: I)

My house is on an island, half a kilometer in radius, in the middle of the city. To the north and east, development took away the places that I used to haunt. To the west, the graveyard is still there but the old mint is gone. I rarely go in these directions. When I venture out, I go a kilometer to the south.

At the junction, there are a few shops with no names. Paalukkada (this milk-shop is supposed to be one of the best-sellers in the city), the vegetable shop (the old guy and his wife committed suicide and now it’s the son-in-law who’s there), the hairdresser (“All Hair Cut”), the grocery shop (owned by two Muslim brothers who have always looked fifty-ish), the hotel and tea-shop (“veg no-veg / meals ready / special beefu- / llathu”) and then, the scrap shop run by a silent lad named Raman. His father was a brilliant raconteur and people say that his stories were picked up from the scrap. This Onam, Raman’s father would have been missing for twenty years. Some say that he ran away with a heroine in a story; some say that he is in Poojappura jail for killing someone; some say that they have seen him in Oolampara mental asylum.

A few days back, I had a month’s load of scrap to sell: twelve kilos of paper, few cardboard boxes, bottles and so on. As usual, I could collect in kind or in cash. I rummaged within the shop and found a Popular Penguin (2009) edition of “Farewell My Lovely” by Raymond Chandler with an introduction by Colin Dexter. Though covered with stained newspaper, all the pages were intact, including the first page describing Philip Marlowe “…I’m a lone wolf, unmarried, getting middle-aged, and not rich...when I get knocked off in a dark alley sometime…nobody will feel that the bottom has dropped out of his or her life.” When I got home, I removed the cover and within the folds, found a scrap of paper with this:

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I am a woman. Thirty going on forty very fast, happy and successful. I am married, twice rather. I do not want to remember the first. And the second is all that I wanted to remember. I have two kids, a boy and a girl. For a long time, I lived with the superstition or belief that I wouldn’t have kids. A neighbour had read my palm and said so. These days, I trust people much less and I feel less miserable.

I was a nice person then. Friends used to invite me for parties and I used to cook. They used to think that I am a little kid waiting to be led by the hand. I did not know how to say No.

Anyway, my main goal in life was to be successful. I did very well in school and college. And now I manage a team and get a hefty pay. I had to struggle and fight for everything to get there. My parents were poor and the priorities were different. I still cherish the first luxury I got – privacy.

Now, I have the choice – even expensive holidays or costly gifts to please a world too difficult to teach. But, we have a rule in the family: to give each other only what we have made on our own. I get burned chicken, sautéed vegetable without salt, poems and sketches. I prepare mutton chops, give sketches or a bouquet I have arranged with some meaning I forget with time or just secrets.

My little kids are turning out to be like their parents even though we have tried not to impose our thoughts. My girl keeps diaries full of poems, essays and hopeless longing. My boy needs recognition from time to time. I envy them at times: they have no excuse not to love. Their parents do not have any social status to guard; and, they are not poor enough not to take that responsibility. I think they have tried. I can see the bruises once in a while. And the number of friends reduce day by day. We try our best to remind them not to forget to laugh.

Recently, we were driving to the seaside (we had been to the hills in the last trip and it was now his turn to choose). He was narrating a story, partly true probably, about a son who had done some mischief on his mother’s birthday; his mother crying for some reason; the son thrashed by his father for some other reason; and, the son made to touch his mother’s feet and promise that he would never make her cry again. Though he was not the cause for the tears, the son did not know and kept his promise till he died and, of course, he died before his parents. What’s the moral of the story, he asked the kids. My daughter looked at her brother and told us that mothers should cry in private. Asked why, my son explained that otherwise such stories would bore a few generations that come after. Thankfully, our kids have not caused us any real grief – so far.

The situation is tougher at work. The bosses try not to be tyrannical and the juniors try to stick to the schedule. They know that I am good at my work. None have tried making a pass at me. There were a few who used to enjoy passing crude remarks in my presence. Put an end to that when I told them to tell such stuff to their mothers and sisters. Long time back, I used to cry. I have changed. Sometime back, a colleague referred to me as a feminist. I do not know what it means.

Why haven’t I written about my husband? Well, it is simply because he hates being talked or written about. He says that he wants to be invisible – unnoticed by anyone. I like his crazy ideas though they are wrong. What is he like? He says he is selfish, cold and just one of the masses. I laugh. And when I do that, he asks me with a glint in his lovely eyes whether I am mocking him. No, I tell him, I trust you. We still write letters to each other and leave it on the other’s table though we share the same study room. He certainly knows how to touch me at the right places. There are times when I like being told what to do and there are times when I tell him that it is his turn. Most of the time, it is like being an anxious virgin who knows that she might be pleased with new ways. When I am in some other world, he has this silly but cute habit of pinching my bottoms. When I complain, he tells me that I should not go away and that I should stay with him forever.