Hey guys, sorry for the delay!
The movement Mrinal describes here is in the first episode, when Onu sees the sweets Taani has brought with her, and then again after choti Taani tells him that if he falls for anyone in the future, she will help him break the marriage. After that conversation, Onu follows her downstairs, looks at her talking to everyone, smiles, remembers the Mishti dialogue and says, Mishti is truly very sweet. And then he strokes his chest 😃😃😃
--
Ain't No Sunshine...
Ain't no sunshine when she's gone...
It was him and Mrinal again, in the same room, and with the same lump of flesh that was looking strangely stiller than usual now...he was a little distance away from the two of them, watching as Mrinal gently stroked her mother's hair, hoping that even in the depths of her coma she could feel her daughter's touch.
It's not warm when she's away...
There were times, like right now, when Onu wondered whether Mrinal was right. Whether it would have been easier - for Asha Aunty and for themselves - if she had died just six months ago...a quicker, more merciful death, than the long-drawn agony she was going to now. When they would finally cremate her, Onu imagined, she would burn away the way she once was...leaving behind memories of the woman who had fed and over-fed them, the strong woman who taught her daughters to think for themselves, the woman who believed that everyone had a chance to be themselves, as long as they respected other people for who they were.
They wouldn't have had to remember her...not like this.
Mrinal and Gigi didn't have to go through the everyday hell of comforting someone they barely recognized now, wondering if she would ever hear them.
Ain't no sunshine when she's gone,
and she's always gone too long
any time she goes away...
And she was almost close to going...it was as if they were all being cruelly dangled upon a very thin thread, with no hope of knowing anything for certain. Asha Aunty was neither dead nor alive, and they didn't know whether to be glad she was still living, or sad that her death was taking so long.
"Where are Nupur and Jerry?" Mrinal asked him.
"In the kitchen," Onu replied, "Nupur insisted on making something for the two of you, and Jerry insisted on making sure she doesn't make a disaster of your kitchen."
"I heard that!" a masculine, slightly bellowing voice belted out from the kitchen.
Mrinal giggled a little, still absently stroking her mother's hand. Jeremy now came sometime in the afternoons, always leaving by late evening. He was working at Bel-Aire now and renting out a dirt-cheap flat somewhere in Astoria. Mrinal was too full of the problems her mother and sister faced to really ponder over it, and Jeremy was only too happy to keep things that way. He didn't want her worrying about him living alone when she was going through a phase as bad as this one, and Onu hoped she wouldn't yet either.
Right now, he wasn't sure he knew what he wanted for the Sengupta sisters themselves. Or for Asha Aunty.
Wonder this time where she's gone,
Wonder if she's gone to stay...
"Rags?"
"Yeah, Mini?" She was looking at a spot on his left shoulder, a frown marring her forehead.
"Why do you always do that?"
"What?"
"Well...this!" At this she demonstrated a move he was all-too familiar with. She placed her right hand over her left shoulder, stroking it like she was wiping that hand clean. "You always do that, I've noticed. Mostly when you're lost or sad or don't know what to do...and you've been doing it more often this year..."
Onu felt an acute pang somewhere in his midsection. When was the last time he'd actually remembered stroking his chest that way? At Ananya Di's sagaai, on the staircase, watching Taani and feeling at ease because he knew she would always be around.
How safe he'd felt then. How filled with hope that things would turn out better. Had Taani been here with him, she would have surely pushed him to go ahead and admit to Nupur that he liked her...
"I do that to feel safe," he said finally, "It calms me down. It gives me hope."
Mrinal's face fell. Her eyes, dry since the day they discovered her mother had slipped into a coma, were devoid of hope, devoid of pain, devoid of anything.
"Stop hoping, Rags..." Mrinal whispered, "You'll hope and hope and keep hoping, and eventually things will go entirely the way you never wanted them to."
Ain't no sunshine when she's gone,
and she's always gone too long,
anytime she goes away...
"Miracles can always happen, Mini."
"Not to everyone," she turned her mother's wrist over, stroking the inside of her wrist, "that's why they're called miracles."
...and then she stopped.
She kept a finger on where Asha Aunty's pulse should have been.
"No..." she said, shaking her head in denail, "No, Mom...no...not now."
She shook her mother, yet all Asha Aunty seemed to do was loll from side to side. Like an empty sake, like a lifeless doll.
Nupur and Jerry sprang out of the kitchen hearing the noises...only to find Mrinal desparately searching for a pulse. They looked at each other.
"Arnab Uncle," Nupur said.
"Gigi," Jerry said.
Nupur went towards the phone, first calling for their family doctor and then calling up Arnab Uncle, who now lived 20 minutes away from their own house. Jerry had taken the next bus to school, probably to get Gigi out of class as soon as possible.
By this time, Mrinal and Onu had stopped checking for a pulse, stopped calling out to Asha Aunty, stopped moving. Mrinal did nothing but stare at the lifeless body on the bed, before relaxing completely. Rubbing her back the way he did now, Onu never realised one could feel so helpless.
Mrinal looked calmer now. As if she'd climbed a great mountain, stumbled, crashed downwards, and realised she couldn't go any further.
She smoothed down her mother's hair...as if nothing had happened...and bent down to kiss her forehead.
The figure lay still. Mrinal patted her hand and got up.
"Goodbye, Mom," she said.
Her voice was as lifeless as her mother was.
Ain't so sunshine when she's gone,
and this house just ain't no home,
anytime she goes away...
--
September 10, 2002.
Mishti,
They left yesterday. Arnab Uncle got them tickets and made all the arrangements...and in the meantime Mrinal and Gigi could hardly meet any of us before our farewell at the airport...
The body was brought down to Jalpaiguri a few days earlier, so that their Dida could prepare it for cremation. Everyone knew that her husband had left her but glossed it over, and Mrinal told me that since he'd never really legally divorced her either...just disappeared. As far as everyone else was concerned Asha Aunty had died a suhagan and Mrinal says that several people thought it was a good thing. Your mother is lucky, they say, not many women out there have the good fortune of dying before their husbands do.
I remember Asha Aunty and how she'd regularly try to feed me sweets from Chappan Bhog...and wonder whether she would have thought that a good thing at all. All her life she'd been trying to make her daughters into the self-sufficient woman that she hadn't been...that she had learned to be, the hard way.
Would you have really, really believed that, Asha Aunty? I know you're out there, reading my letters and knowing what I'm going to write before I write it.
In the midst of all this...I'm still stroking my heart with my hand. Hoping something good will come out of all of thing. Or maybe like Mrinal I should just stop hoping and take everything as it comes.
I wish I could get the memories of these few months right out of my mind, Mishti, and remember her for what she was...
Motu.
P. S. Gigi gave us drawings before she left. She told us she wanted us all at the airport when they came back, because without us she'd keep forgetting America was home.
P. P. S. I hugged her and didn't say anything. What could I say?
P. P. P. S. She drew one of our entire group, all of us stick figures...Jerry's stick had an untidy mop of brown hair, Nupur's had a purple mohawk (she'd brought it at a tattoo stall somewhere), Mini's had long black hair that reached her waist and mine had my favourite sneakers on.
P. P. P. P. S. She drew another one of me and her, holding hands. We had big smiles on our faces, and her mother was floating above us, smiling too.
P. P. P. P. P. S. I know you're smiling out there somewhere too, Asha Aunty.
Edited by Elizabeth Darcy - 13 years ago
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