Fifty Years A Wife, Five Seconds A Stranger

The noon grew stronger and the bookshelf somehow started morphing itself into absurd objects. Nani jumped out of her reverie and opened her eyes. She scrambled to fold the bed cover and positioned it at the foot of the bed. Glancing at the clock, she realised that it was almost evening.

What if death did not ride in on one huge buffalo but on thousands of tiny ants that crept silently under the door as I kept my eye on the peephole?

I remembered another one of my earliest memories. I had seen a beautiful, bright, metallic, shiny beetle in the grass upturned and floating magically across the grass while all of its limbs were still. It was so disappointing to discover that the majestic, magical bug was dead, and it seemed to move because it was being carried by tiny red ants to their anthill. What could look like royalty being carried on a palanquin by tiny slaves was really death, carrying its dinner.

Her mind is playing tricks.

Nani hurried to the other room to check up on Nana. He was still fast asleep, his mouth slightly parted open. She found herself marveling at the sight of him sleeping, silent on the foreground of the bustling city. She had always wondered where he went when he fell asleep. She wondered if he was caught up in an adventure or just a simple conversation. But be that as it may, the only thing she now knew for sure, was that she wasn’t a part of it.

She placed herself beside him and quietly patted on his cheek to wake him up. He groaned at the sound of her voice and turned away his cheek.

“You need to wake up now, or you won’t be able to sleep at night”, she said , her voice becoming stern.

Nana always had trouble falling asleep at night when he overslept in the evening. She has tried many times to discourage him from his mid-day siesta, but he never heeded her. In turn with time she found herself quickly sliding beside him to rest her eyes.

“Who are you?” Nana exclaimed, having taken a look at her. “What are you doing in my room?” He thrusted away and suddenly sat up.

“Well at least you are awake”, she scoffed, picking herself up from the bed and heading outside. She stood just outside of his bedroom, witnessing as he ferociously circled the space, shooting angry side-glances at her from time to time. She knew that his physical exercise was to be accompanied with a barrage of perplexing questions. Well today, Nana wanted to know who she was.

Nani had known Nana for 50 years now, forty-five of them, as his wife, yet this simple fact never sounded enough of an answer to even her, let alone his mind buzzing with the jolting suspicions accompanying typical Alzheimer’s.

Nani recalled an old conversation soaked in Nana’s childhood naivety.

‘But weren’t you lonely here? Your husband must’ve been at work in the library during the day.’ Nana exclaimed with gullibilty  to enquire about Nani, whom he considered a new mate, he befriended one morning at a park.

“Yes, he was. And I was lonely. For almost a year. When my son was two years old, I started making sweaters. I’d knit these sweaters every afternoon, taking sips of chai and bites of onion fritters in between. At the end of the month, I gave them away to a local store that sold them to tourists.” Nani responded fondly.

‘And how did you spend that money?’

“I would buy movie tickets for him and I. I would surprise him. He would be back from the library, take off his coat, wash his face and sit on the armchair. The old brown one, in our living room . He’d sit there and the first thing he asked was, ‘How was your day, Monimala?’ Just then, I’d walk up to him and say, “Was thinking of going to the movies.” He would ask, ‘Oh, but the ticket?’ Back in those days, there was only one movie hall nearby and the ticket queue was quite long in the evening. You had to stand for half an hour. The easier way was to collect your ticket in the morning. I would smile like a child, flash the two tiny tickets and his face would cheer up. All the day’s tiredness would just be wiped off from his face at once. When he fell very sick during his last days, I asked him, “Why would you be surprised every time I’d tell you about the tickets? You must’ve been able to guess after a few times. And his face would glow up, so I knew he wasn’t pretending to be surprised.” He touched my palms and gently said to me, ‘Moni, I wasn’t pretending. But my face would glow, if not for the tickets. I knew you got them beforehand. But when you flashed them before my eyes, your eyes would light up and looking at you then, my heart would be the happiest. That’s the secret of the glow.’ I could only break into a smile.”

Movie tickets and my grandparents went a long way. Nana and Nani met in a Bombay movie hall with soft yellow lights, a wide screen and the magic of Gulzar. The curfews were early and the pocket money came late. However, amidst staring at the screen, there were glimpses, grinning, stolen kisses and Kanda Poha in a steel tiffin box. After thirty years now,  all those movie tickets, some torn and some faded, sleep safely inside Nani’s almirah. She opens her almirah once in a while, runs her wrinkled palms over the frail paper, breaking into a strange smile. Nani told me once that she does this to remember the touch of those old tickets.

‘But why do you have to remember them? You can just open your almirah and take out the tickets when you want to.’ Nana was perplexed.

“Well, old people go through strange things sometimes. The thing is, our sense of touch diminishes with age and we all lose touch receptors slowly over the course of life. I will, you will, everyone will. When they’re old, very old. Don’t worry, it’s a long time from now,” she laughed.

‘Is it really true? I never thought I could lose my sense of touch.’

“Sometimes, you think that there is this one thing that you can never lose. You know it so well that you don’t ever question it or think about it. You’re used to its presence. And then, one day, it’s just gone.”

‘Will I ever lose you? I don’t want to live in a world where you aren’t there. I don’t think I can…’, Nana eyed for an affirmation.

In these moments, Nani has always believed that his pain was greater than hers, the pain of being a lone ranger in the barren island. But no matter how hard she tried, the lump in her throat when he asked her who she was always threatened to choke her. She saw Nana writhing in agony, unaware of where he was, and even who he himself was.

As days would pass, he would look at himself in the mirror and not recognise who it was. But she knew that in those moments, she would be standing beside him, reminding Nana, his name over and over again. But here she was, apparently unable to even  repeat her own name, for words, as she discovered start sounding meaningless if one repeats them too many times.

She kept watch as he rummaged through all his belongings, terrified of someone stealing his shaving blade or mobile phone. It was funny to her actually, witnessing him agonising over material things. Their entire married life, she was the one who fret over breaking chinamatir plates. But with time, somehow his disdain for clinging to material had gotten to her as well.

Nana had always been the more impressive one out of them, the genius painter, with an eye for even the tiniest speck of beauty in the panorama of ordinary. Nani would watch him in front of his canvas for days on end, painting things that had always been far beyond her comprehension.

Once on a trip to Shillong, they had hiked all the way to a point where happy couples went to witness the sunset. While she was enticed by the evening mountain ambience, cradling a cup of tea in her hands, Nana was engrossed in a piece of paper, drawing random strokes that she knew had to be an art even costlier than the moment right there. As the cup of tea beside him grew colder, Nani nudged and poked him several times to no avail.

When he finally showed her the piece of paper, she caught a twinkle in her eye. He drew her, clutching the paper cup. It was the highest graphite she had ever seen, allure that she had never even imagined in herself. There was a small smile as he finally picked up the cup of tea that she was so sure had gone cold.

“Well, you look very beautiful today”, he had said, not looking at her and Nani, in the habit of always agreeing with him, thought the same.

Nani watched him palpitating as he settled himself to catch his breath. All of his little episodes had the tendency to leave both of them out of breath. Hers was more emotional, than physical, for it was heartbreaking for her to imagine that the person she had respected for so long, couldn’t even be called a person anymore.

It was more than just the toll of him not recognising her. It was literally as if a person drifted away bit by bit, in front of her own eyes.

 “Moni, bring me tea”, Nana called out.

Yes, he always remembered her when he missed his evening adaa-golmorich diye dudh cha . It was amazing how he could swim in and out of the memory of her existence. It would have been miraculous, if it were intentional.

Oftentimes, while boiling milk to make tea, Nani found herself wondering if she preferred his quietude to the curses. Nani knew that either way he was drifting away, it was just that sound of Nana’s voice, tethered her to reality, without which she was afraid she would drift apart soon.

She added sugar granules and tea leaves, turning the clear brown of the piping hot tea, greyish like a pair of eyes slowly clouding with cataract. She placed the tray with the cup of tea in front of him, on the table outside of the kitchen. He was sitting quietly, a pencil held between his fingers. His hands shook as he tried to draw random circles in the spaces of the newspaper.

She sipped the tea as she watched him engrossed in something that kept him calmer than she ever could.

“Drink the tea”, she said, ” it’s getting cold”.

Nana looked up from the object of his momentary amusement and opened his mouth, as if to say something; but decided against it at the last moment. He picked up the cup of tea with one hand and stared into it.

“You look very beautiful today, you know”, Nana said, still staring at the cup.

Her lips curled into a small smile as she realised for some reason that she had indeed aged; she knew that she neither preferred his quietude nor his curses. Nani promised to remind herself that, the next day as well. Till then, she would watch him enjoying his caricatures.

This post is written by one of the winners of the writing contest on Love And Desire In All Forms in collaboration with Youth Ki Awaaz.