Byju, J’s nephew, his wife Tanya, the children and the three of us were in the new apartment we were going to move into. They loved the house and thought it spacious.
“Where do you think we should place the TV and the music system?” J asked Byju.
He looked around the drawing room and said, “I think this spot would be right” and he pointed towards the corner next to the wall, “That would also ensure that children did not sit too close to the TV.”
“I was thinking this spot” J said moving in front of the huge French windows in the room.
“But that would block the windows and prevent light from coming in” I objected.
“Anyway we put curtains in front of the windows, that is what I see in all houses” J said.
“But curtains don’t block views, it just prevent people from seeing into our house while letting us look out.”
“Don’t talk nonsense woman” J was getting agitated and he looked angry. He did not like being challenged and told he is wrong. He is Mister right, the Kottayam Achayan who can never be wrong, the embodiment of sense and ultimate taste, the master interior decorator whose masterpiece is boarding up the windows with a huge TV stand and a huge TV.
“ But the view will be blocked and it will look ugly, why can’t we have it on the other side like you said before” I ask realizing he is going to flare up and start verbal abuse at any point now but not in the mood to back off myself.
“That is how it is done in all houses and that is how we are going to do it.”
Byju and Tanya are wary, they have seen J like this before but they also know they are helpless. He tries to calm things down.
“So where do you think the dining table should go?” J asks.
The lobby is big and that would be the ideal place and Byju thinks the same. “What do you think, Sneha aunty? Byju asks trying to involve me too in the discussion.
“I think that place is right, but then J thought we might not have enough space to walk if we put the dining table there, so I am not so sure now.” I reply
“We are holding a barbecue here once we move in.” J said.
“But the smoke will blacken the walls and I don’t think the building management will let you do it.” Byju said
“Nonsense, I will hold it wherever I want.” J replied.
“It would be better to hold barbecue on the terrace and eat it here.”
J was in a combative mood, picking up fights even when there were no fights to be picked up.
Later we get dinner and Tanya finishes first, and starts washing the dishes.
“Damn you, you have no manners, guests come and you make them wash plates” J shouted at me.
“Tanya please leave the plates, I will do it.” I tell her, thinking about all the time when we are invited to a dinner at some house and he forces me to wash all the dishes in that house. I have even been made to wash weeks old dishes a friend of his left in the sink when his wife left on vacation.
“All you think about is eating” He is still angry.
Byju realizes things are getting out of hand and tells Tanya to leave everything in the sink as it is, “Really what is the harm if Tanya helps with the dishes.” He asks.
Soon they leave and we go to bed without anymore fighting.
In the morning, J says, “Oh I forgot to tell you, your father’s death certificate has arrived. Who faxed it?”
“Must be Veena.”
“What about the photos?” he wanted to know.
“She said she is sending it by courier, but first I suppose they will need to take the photos and get it developed and all that is a slow process in our town.” I replied.
“You are bringing her on a visit visa now aren’t you?” I ask
“No, No I am taking a residence visa”
“Don’t do that now. Let her come here on a visit visa now and after the death anniversary, we can get the residence visa, that will give her time.” I say.
“Don’t talk about impossible things. We will tell her she is on a visit visa and once she is here then we will tell her that she has to stay here.”
“No, I can’t do that, I cannot trick my mother like that.”
“Don’t talk nonsense.”
“Really, in our community, after the husbands death, there are certain rules to be followed. Otherwise people will talk and it being such a small closed community, we will have to be very careful.”
It isn’t as if she is running off or anything, she is just coming to stay with her daughter, isn’t she?”
“Still it is not like Kottayam where these things don’t matter. There is no way she is going to come and stay before the first death anniversary. Every Sunday she has to get the priest to say the prayers at the grave, all that will be impossible.”
“Nonsense.”
I know it is nonsense for him, because after his father’s death, the next time they visited the grave was on the death anniversary. The month after the death, they actually celebrated his mother’s birthday in a big way, when it is common practice to abstain from all celebrations until after the first death anniversary. For them their father’s death was good riddance of a real pain in the ass. Here we celebrated that year’s Christmas with the biggest party we ever had. Actually everyone seemed so happy about his death that we celebrated every festival like never before. So I knew what I was saying sounded like non-sense to him. Besides he was not bringing my mother here because he liked her or anything, but because he wanted a caretaker for his son. There was no love anywhere in this. And when she did come, he would have no problems insulting her and belittling her. So to I preferred her not to have to go through all these humiliations just because she is a widow. And anyway he had made me promise once that if he were to die I would not allow my father to come and stay with me. I had at that point decided that if he were to die I too would not live in the house that he wanted to keep my father away from. Now with that attitude towards my father, how dare he think he can turn my mother into a maid in my own house? To hell with him.
Sometime later we went out, it was raining heavily and very old outside. Little Thom had a bad cold and infected tonsils and so I dressed him up in very warm clothes – pants, thermal underwear, T-shirt and a sweater. I also wore a sweater. Once out of the house, we realized it was really colder than we imagined. The winter was finally here. We were joined by Siraj and after we checked out the electronics shop we came back home. Peter, J’s cousin was waiting for us. As usual J started drinking and we were discussing general things when I said, “Oh, We have a gift voucher from Jashanmall. We haven’t bought anything yet.”
“They have a sale there now.”
“But I don’t think we can use it in combination with a sale.”
“What can you buy from there?”
“We will have to go and check, I don’t think we can buy anything for daily use there. Its all expensive stuff there.”
“But I think we will find things we can get beautiful things to display in our new house.”
“Yes, things like that.”
“You know, Peter, it is more difficult when you have a big house. If the interior is not done well, everyone will say he is a village bumpkin, so we need to buy things to show others that we are smart.”
“Nonsense,” I said, “ We don’t need to buy things to prove anything to anyone. I think we should buy things we like and enjoy, not for other people’s approval.”
“You are real trash, with no sense about anything. Why so you think these expensive things are made and sold, naturally it for being bought and displayed to show off.”
I did not realize he was turning into his combative ugly verbally abusive self, so I pushed on, “ Actually when we do things to score points, rather than because we enjoy it, it is called Keeping up with the Joneses in English, in a situation like that one can never win, someone somewhere is going to do it better than you.”
“There is trash uncultured talk, you come from trashy background that is why you are talking like. You should have married some trashy bastard and then you would learn your lesson. You have no sense in anything, no dress sense at all. You, your people all are just the scum of the earth.” He was screaming and also using a lot of unmentionable expletives in Malayalam.
My eyes were burning, and the tears would come flooding at any moment now, but I kept telling myself “Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t give him that satisfaction.”
“Please achaya, you should never say things like that.”
“Hm you know nothing about her. She thinks she is a big shot, studied in big schools abroad, and knows English well. Whenever I come home I find her watching English channels, she does not watch any Malayalam. Well if she is so good in English, let her draft a letter in English, I who watch only Malayalam channels can draft better letters than her.”
Okay I need to explain this comment. His father completed 10th grade and then worked in Union carbide with the Americans, and it is said he could draft great letters in English. It seems he drafted a leave letter for someone working here in UAE and that person’s manager asked him about who drafted this letter and said that it was very good. From then on letter drafting has come to be considered the ultimate skill in J’s house. So now if you were to ask anyone in their family, ‘ Why did Einstein get the Nobel Prize?” the answer would probably be “He drafted a letter in science.” The letter drafting being the ultimate skill anyone can master.
Now back to J, he was getting angrier and angrier, “ She has no dress sense, you should see the rubbish she wears, and when she goes out she dresses like a beggar.”
I was not getting this thing about the dresses, so I said, “But none of my dresses are bought by me, it is all selected, patterns designed and got stitched by people with a lot of sense.”
Actually his younger sister, who is considered by him and his family to be a connoisseur of highly sophisticated taste, did it all. I was just a model, who dressed up in things they provided. I had no complaints about the arrangement too, as her tastes were certainly better than mine. So the reason for his complaining was not clear to me.
“You should have seen the way she dressed our son, he was wearing pants short for him, everything he wore was too small. It was cold outside it seems.”
Well it was not my fault. J’s idea was the right size was three sizes too big. The shirt had to come down to the knee; the shoulder stitch was at the elbow and he, being reed thin looked horrible in things J bought for him. Worse, everyone laughed at Thom when he dressed like that. Even in India when we went on vacation, everyone would ask why we make him wear such over sized clothes, and often they all blame me because J is infallible and can never go wrong. Besides J did not believe in wearing sweater, the child might die of pneumonia but as long as he looked smart in the coffin that was okay. No sweater please, we are Kottayam Achayans. He also refused to buy pants for Thom so I end up having to dress him up in pants that were gifted to him when he was two. And anyway he was there when I dressed Thom, why did he not tell me he did not like the dress I had selected. J himself dressed in three sizes big. He is a small man barely five feet 6 inches but he wears clothes that a six feeter would find loose fitting.
The verbal abuse continued for a long time. I waited for it all to end and then left the room. I felt like crying but did not.
After lunch we went into the bedroom and I knew I would now get a lecture on my behavior. And it came, “You are always questioning my authority. If you want to live with me, you will have to do it on my conditions, otherwise you can leave; go back home (Home being my parents house). Anyway I have decided not to bring your mother here. I will get someone else for my son. After all Byju has a maid for his child, so I will also get one. I don’t want to have to grovel in front anyone for anything. You can keep your culture which happens to be different from Kottayam culture as you said.”
So that was it, it was the amma discussion that triggered the abuse. But then what about yesterday. It was actually this verbal abuse that made me scared to get amma here. I wanted her here very much for Thom’s sake but J would get abusive with her. It has happened before and it will happen again, which is why amma and everyone else close to her are, as reluctant as I am, about her coming here. No matter what, I really don’t want her to have to go through this madness. I am stuck for life in this but it is unfair to make her go through this hell just because she happens to be my mother.
