It was one of those rush hours in the morning when the roads of the city are packed with the noisiest of traffic...numerous buses, cars, autos, taxis and bikes speeding on the tarred roads, deafening sounds of horns and the cluttering sounds of purses heavy with coins, course tip-top sounds of high heels or thumping of sneakers against the rough roads and the shouts of the conductors peeping out of the buses calling out for passengers.
Sree, like everyday, had walked down the lane from her house towards the bus stop. Her lane was a quieter place as it was away from the main road. Trees lined the lane and the whole road was naturally shaded against the harsh summer sun. She flipped opened her umbrella as she came near the bus stop. As Sree waited for a bus to come, which she would board to reach college, she saw a woman crossing the road and coming towards her. No, she was no normal woman. She was half naked, her hair in a mess with dirt and dryness, untidy, apparently smelly, she was murmuring to herself. Sree felt uneasy as this woman drew nearer. She stepped back and looked around. The woman came nearer, stared at Sree hard...and then murmured something in a way as if she expected a reply. Sree walked away to the other side of the bus stop. From there she could see this weird woman walking in a daze among the crowds in the bus stop, everyone stepping back and getting out of her way.
Thankfully the bus came, and Sree jumped onto it. "Mad women!" she muttered to herself. "Who lets them out on the streets?!"
While Sree goes to her college which is around 15 kilometers away from her home, let's take a look around her house. Her house is a small old construction in a quieter part of a place called Salt Lake. Her father is an old banker. Mr. Lahiri had a late marriage and a late child. Mrs. Lahiri stayed at home, hardly contributing anything to home-making. She was a nerve patient, had a weak heart and was diabetic. Added to this she used to be eternally tensed for her daughter, Sree. She wanted her to get married to a well-settled guy, who will take care of her in her absence. For some weird reason, she didn't trust her husband as much to take care of her daughter and she feared an early death would befall her, orphaning her child. Fights between the parents was something that Sree had been seeing regularly. Her mother used to shout at her father for everything - if their daughter returned late, if the bathroom tap didn't work, if the household help didn't come on time...Sree hated it and hated her mother for saying these to her father. For the past ten years, she had been seeing her father cook food when the maid wouldn't come, wash clothes when the washing machine refused to work, take care of the finances by working from day to night and being the only person at home who would talk normally to Sree. Sree hated returning home after college...home has become a living hell for her. She hardly recollects why the change happened.
Ten years back, she remembers it was raining heavily outside after a hot summers' day. Mr. Lahiri had come home very late. Sree and her little sister Trisha were in their room. They could hear their mother's voice over the thunders outside. They heard things being broken, they could feel the hostility and the grimness. Soon afterwards, Trisha had been put into a hostel. Sree had hardly seen her parents sitting together and talking pleasantly after that evening. A few months after that, Mrs. Lahiri had been terribly sick. She was sick and in hospital for days and days. And, when she came back, she was told to be in complete bed rest. Things changed all the more. Mrs. Lahiri never entered the kitchen after that, and became all the more grumpy and irritated. Sree grew up in such a place. She made through school and now into college.
After years of darkness, of a grumpy mother, an over-worked father, a lonely home, a missing sister, Sree found happiness in college. She found happiness in a guy whom she started dating soon after she joined college. Subham made life easier for Sree. Sree used to look forward to meeting him, to going for movies with him, to talk to him every night. Subham was 2 years senior to her and the matured way he dealt with things made Sree happy.
Like everyday, after college, Sree went to meet Subham at their usual meeting point, by the lake. Subham sounded happy yet low as he gave her the news. He has got through his dream company and would have to join in a couple of months. But this job meant he going away from Kolkata and working in another city, which means, staying away from Sree. Sree didn't know how to react. She didn't want to let go of him, yet she knew how much he needed this job, even for the smallest reason to approach her parents for their daughter's hand.
For days after that, Sree and Subham started planning...planning their future, how Sree can finish her college and come to the same city as him, and eventually get married. Things seemed nicely chalked out and by the end of that week, Sree was looking forward to a planned future, where she just meant to be happy.
It rained the previous night and the weather was nicer in the morning. Sree wasn't going to college that day. She was going to spend the whole day with Subham. "Just a few more days", thought she with a heavy heart. Her eyes suddenly went towards that mad woman. She was making a home for herself under the bridge. She had rugs around her, some leftover food, a broken mirror and a bottle of water. Sree suddenly noticed something that she had not noticed the day before. The woman was heavily pregnant. "Who would have done that!" she thought, and felt disgusted.
That night, she returned to a grim environment at home. Her father was sitting in front of the TV, solemn and quiet. She could hear the sobbing sounds of her mother coming from inside. She preferred not to ask anyone and silently went to her room. She felt weak. She wondered for the hundredth time what is it that made her home into such broken bits, what made her smiling mother change to someone so drastic, what made a jolly father suddenly become so old and tired, what made them send Trisha to hostel and never let her come home, even during vacations. Ten years back, her mother had told her that the sisters were separated as they fought so much. Sree knows that can't be the reason...where do sisters never fight?
Two months flew past, and Subham left for his job. He left early in the morning after a kiss a goodbye on phone to Sree. Sree had been awake and crying since early morning. When the morning rolled and the sun came out, she dressed to go for college. She felt miserable, lonely and knew how much she had started depending on this boy for the past three years. She felt tearful as she stood at the bus stop. She looked for the mad woman and saw her sitting in a comfortable position, trying to comb her hair, peeping into the mirror. Sree looked and thought how did it exactly feel to sit under a bridge, look into a broken mirror and comb a messy bunch of hair! Happiness is hand-made may be, thought Sree...and she tried to look beyond the sudden emptiness in her life.
She used to call up Trisha at times. She called her today, spoke about how she was missing Subham, how she hated coming back home all the more, how she felt Trisha was lucky to be staying away from all this mess...After Subham left the city, Sree's calls to Trisha increased, and they spoke more often, shared more often.
***
A year passed by. Sree was in her final year, looking for a job. A lot had changed in this one year. Subham was a full-fledged working man now, earning well, settled well. He had come down twice in the course of this one year. Sree and Subham had met then, gone for dates...not by the lake now, but to ac restaurants now, spoken, loved, planned...and fought. Somewhere Sree felt that Subham was changing, changing everyday. He had less time now, more friends...he didn't like speaking about marriage anymore, he hardly had the patience to listen to Sree's teary stories about her home. Sree could feel the distance, emotionally, more than physically. Trisha used to give her sensible advice and tried to make Sree happier. Sree and Trisha had actually, once planned to meet. Sree went to Trisha's place, telling at home that she was going for a college tour. Trisha was a big girl now, she had started college. She had a refreshing time with her sister and wished they had stayed together.
Sree's mother's condition became worse. She had regular migraine headaches, nervous breakdowns, high pressure. She became all the more grumpy and started searching for Sree's suitors frantically. Her only aim and goal in life seemed to be in getting her daughter married off to a good family. Mr. Lahiri started to come back home really late, to avoid his wife's regular tantrums and the darkness of a dark home.
The mad woman by the bus stop had a cute little baby boy. Sree used to see the woman caressing her boy, feeding him, lulling him off to sleep among the rugs. She wondered, "What a life this little boy has! A mad mother, a betraying father."
It was an August evening. Sree had been trying to call Subham the whole day, but he didn't pick up the phone. She was worried. At last, when she got the phone, she started screaming, a result of her tension. He got irritated on the other side and hung up. She called again. Calling, cutting calls, re-calling...shouting, abusing, cursing...it went on the whole evening. Sree had dinner with puffed eyes and when she went back to her room, she started on the phone once again. This time her mother saw it and she came to her room and started screaming. She was already sensing an affair in Sree's life. She didn't want Sree to choose her life partner...what if she chose the wrong guy! She was hysteric as she shouted and scolded Sree. Sree, for the first time, shouted back at her mother. Down as she was, she out poured all her buried distress.
"Stop it Ma! It's my business whom I talk to, whom i decide to marry...isn't it enough that I put up with a mad mother like you, a home which is anything but a home!"
Mrs. Lahiri stared in shock at her. "Enough" said she. "This is what I get to hear from an ungrateful daughter like you." She walked away, half sobbing, trembling and inwardly in great pain.
The next morning Sree went out for college. The mad woman at the bus stop was still there, her baby in her lap, her eyes fixed on him. She could sense a suppressed affection for her baby, behind the madness, behind some hidden pain, that none at this bus stop knew.
Sree got a call from her father around midday that day, telling her to come back home. She came back to find her mother lying silent in the hall. Several people had gathered around her. Sree fell on her knees, groping the air in front...
Trisha came reached around evening. It was a sudden heart attack when no one was at home. She just managed to call on her husband's phone and drop dead forever. Sree did all the rituals...everything in a daze. She couldn't believe it.
Trisha went back to her college a week after. Sree joined back in college for her final semesters. The first day she came back home, she found the house darker. She realized that now there's no one to light the lights of the lawn, no one to light incense sticks every afternoon, no one to shout at her father for the plumber didn't come, no one to murmur about Sree's growing age and her marriage...She sat on her mother's bed, in the darkness and sighed.
Things changed rapidly after this. Subham broke off with Sree, Mr. Lahiri retired, Sree finished college and joined a small start-up in Kolkata. Mr. Lahiri's health started growing worse. He had a high pressure and he seemed much older than his age. One evening, he called Sree to his room.
"Sree, I need to tell you this. I am scared I might leave all of you suddenly one day like your mother did...so, I need to tell this to you before anything like that happens"
Sree stared at him, stoned...she could sense a strangeness in her father's voice and she felt uneasy.
He went on, "Sree, Trisha is you Mashi's dauughter. Your mashi conceived her while she was still unmarried".
Sree knew her Mashi had died of cancer when she and Trisha were small. This piece of news shocked her...So, Trisha was her cousin?
Mr Lahiri cleared his throat. "So you mother was only yours. She wasn't Trisha's." A brief pause. "But Sree, I was her father."
There was a long silence. Sree looked at her father, lost, drowned in the reality that just unfolded in front of her.
Her father said more, "Sree do you understand what I am saying? Your mother didn't know about this. She knew we were adopting Trisha just because she was fatherless and orphaned as her mother died when she was just three months old."
The truth had come out later, through some wills, and legal documents...the truth which saw the Lahiri home shattered, that rainy night when the happy family broke forever.
Sree stood up and walked into her mother's room. She stared at her photo, now garlanded and smiling. She wondered when she had last seen her mother smiling. She stared across the room, to the bookshelves, to the albums where they had photos of the once happy family they were, photos of a Digha trip, photos of hers and Trisha's growing up years. Sree looked at her mother's sarees stacked on the chair, her medicines and the numerous matrimonial pages of newspapers that she used to go through regularly. Sree stared at these with tears in her eyes, and a pain within her...a pain that she knew her mother had been carrying along all these ten years. She could now see the darkness her soul had been much more than the darkness that Sree had grown up in.
That night, Sree thought a lot. And, in the morning she went to her father.
"Baba, can we have a new start? Let's have Trisha with us again, let's have a home again...and let us live again. I am tired of being dead, Baba."
Mr. Lahiri looked at his daughter with tears in his eyes. For eleven long years he had waited for forgiveness, he had craved for a new start. And, now, here stands his own daughter, who has grown to be a woman...who has done something that her mother couldn't do. Mr. Lahiri would never blame his wife...but, today, he was happy that Sree was his daughter.
That day, the mad woman at the bus stop was playing with her son with some broken toy parts she had found somewhere. Sree looked at her, her broken home, her shabby rags, her scattered possessions...and her baby, and the love in her eyes.
The bus has come. Before she put up her feet on the bus steps, Sree looked back. The mad woman looked at her. Sree looked and smiled at her...
Happiness is indeed hand-made...
***
Ma: Mother
Baba: Father
Mashi: Maternal aunt (mother's sister)
1 Comment:
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- Somebody said...
July 4, 2010 at 10:30 AMThe title is also so appropriate and perhaps summarizes your philosophy on life and happiness: "Hand-made". I am tempted to agree :)
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