The Private Life of Mrs Sharma (6 page)

6

Sunday, 5 June 2011

That front-office woman from Vineet's hotel, Neha, called me up. I answered her call only because I did not recognise her number. She said that Vineet thought that something had happened to me because he had not seen me at the station for ten days and I had not answered his calls or replied to his smses. He was very, very worried about me, she said, and that is why she called me up. I knew that I should never have given her my number. Even the first time that I met her I thought that there was something odd about her. What does she think? Why is she interfering like this? And what does Vineet think? So what if he has not seen me? Who is he to me that I have to call him up every time I see a missed call from him or reply to every sms he sends? The man does not even know that I am a married woman with a fifteen-year-old son, and Neha tells me that he is worried about me? It is such a joke. Worried about me? Do any of them actually know the meaning of worry? These people are like children, they behave just like children.
But then without a husband or wife, without children and in-laws, you are always a child, no matter how old you are.

I am tired. I am tired in my heart, I am tired in my mind. The truth is that worrying about people makes me tired. I can feed a person and I can give him a bath, and I can do it day after day. I can go all the way to Shahdara to buy the purest herbal medicines and run off to the Jhandewalan temple every evening to seek Mother's blessings. I have done these things. I have done these things for my husband, my son and my father-in-law. But these things only make my body tired, and my body can recover quickly. What is actually difficult is trying to understand what a person needs day in and day out. What is difficult is the worrying day in and day out. Is he fine? Why is he sleeping such a lot? Why are his eyes looking like that? And it never stops. It never ever stops. Like his father, and even his father's father for that matter, that boy Bobby will never ask for anything, never say anything at all. He will lie around the house with a long face, he will lie around with his headphones stuffed in his ears, but he will not speak one word. And so you spend every second of every day and every second of every sleepless night trying your level best to understand what he needs, what he wants, what he is feeling, trying your level best to find some signs in his voice, in his breathing, in his eyes. This makes me very tired. Sometimes I want to shout at him. Bobby! I want to shout. Give me peace for just one day so that maybe I could sleep in peace for just one night! But who am I trying to fool? I think that it will only be the sleep of death that will grant me that peace.

It is a little bit odd, but when I think about my mother's illness I can't actually remember feeling this tired. I went to school in the mornings, because my father never ever let me miss one day except when we brought her to Delhi, and then I came back home and cooked and looked after my mother while my father was at the shop, and even then I don't think that I ever felt this tired. For almost one year I fed my mother, sponged her, gave her medicines, and I was only thirteen years of age, but I never ever felt like this, and it seems that it was because of the type of person that my mother was. She was a simple person, and her demands were always simple and direct. Get me a cup of tea, Renu, she used to say. Press my legs, Renu. Help me sit up, Renu. The demands were only made on my body. The demands on my head and heart did come afterwards, obviously, but that was after she was gone.

Then there was my father, my father and his lifelong heart problem, his four heart attacks. I did not actually have to look after him. He would have a heart attack, admit himself into the hospital for three or four days' time, come back home, rest for some time and go back to the shop. He never ever let me go to the hospital to meet him, he never ever let me fuss over him at home. The only thing that mattered to him was that I went to school daily and did my homework daily. Still, I always felt tired with worry. I never had to attend to him, but I always felt tired. Why? Because this sick and quiet man never directly told me what he was feeling, he never directly told me what he needed, and so I tired myself thinking day in and day out about what he could be feeling, what he could need, what I could do. Even when I got married and shifted to Delhi I was
still always worried. He did not allow me to come to Meerut to take care of him, and, obviously, he would never come and stay in his daughter's house, my father would not even agree to one sip of water in his daughter's house, so from far away in Delhi I just kept worrying about him. Day in and day out I used to think, Is his chest hurting? Is he breathless? Does he need better medicines? Is he dying? For years and years I remained tired, tired from thinking that any minute my father could die. And the truth is that it was only the night after my father died that I actually got my first full night of sleep.

But for how long could that peace last? For how long could my head and heart remain light enough that I could float through my days and sleep peacefully at night? After my father was gone, it was my father-in-law next. And in this case it was diabetes. Even now my father-in-law takes two insulin injections daily, and if he does not eat immediately after his injection, his blood sugar falls, and then he falls down to the floor, thud, just like that. He will not warn you of that sinking feeling, he won't tell you that he is feeling uncomfortable and needs to eat. No. And so, like with all these men, you have to be alert, you always have to be alert. You have to watch out carefully for signs, signs that don't come out from the mouth in the form of words, but in the small, little movements of the body, signs that demand your attention day in and day out. And now that he and my mother-in-law live in my house, in my care, it is my duty to understand his needs before he or anybody else does. It is my duty to make sure that he eats his meals on time, that there are always at least four doses of insulin in the fridge, and to keep all sweets and fried foods hidden from him as if he was a child.

And then, obviously, there is my real child, Bobby. But Bobby is fine now. By God's grace, Bobby is well and truly fine now.

But who will need me next? Who will I have to worry about next? Who else is standing in line waiting for my attention? I sometimes think that the head and heart that God gave me don't actually belong to me, that even though they live inside me, I don't actually own them. Sometimes I just want to shout. Give me back my head! I want to say. Give me back my heart! When I talk to my husband about this, he tells me that I have to learn to take a little holiday from all the demands in my life. He says that I worry about everything too much, he says that I worry without reason, and that the sky won't fall down if I sit down and relax for some time. And then he tells me that stupid story about the house lizards, about how two lizard-friends on the ceiling of a room were talking one day and one of them suggested that they go on a little outing. Absolutely not! the other friend said. Who will hold up the ceiling?

Maybe it is a funny story, maybe it is also a lesson for some people, but it does not apply to my life. Maybe the sky or the ceiling won't come crashing down, but if I took a little holiday, if I took two or three days off as my husband tells me to, my house would become a garbage dump, and in this dump my son would be starving to death, my father-in-law would be lying on the floor in a diabetic coma and my poor mother-in-law would just be sitting in one corner watching everything around her break down, until, obviously, she called up her son, who would jump on to the first plane back to Delhi, come back home and look at the mess helplessly, and then, when
I would come back from my little holiday, he would gently put his hands on my shoulders, and look at me and say, Renu, what have you done?

Still, my husband is probably right. From time to time everybody has to take a little holiday from his life, from all the big and small everyday things. Maybe that is why I enjoyed that evening alone at home when everybody went for the cricket match. Maybe that is why I enjoy meeting Vineet. During those times, all the small, little difficulties of everyday seem far away. When I am with Vineet it seems that I can just forget everything, everybody, just like that.

But how can I meet Vineet again? What would I tell him? Will I tell him that my son, Mrs Renuka Sharma's son, got drunk on some cheap country liquor with his friends and he became so sick that he was in hospital for one full week? Is this what I will tell him because this is what actually happened? It was not food poisoning. It was alcohol poisoning. Yes, alcohol. My sweet Bobby did not eat bad momos on the roadside. That boy drank alcohol. Alcohol. So, what will I say to Vineet? Will I say, Oh, did you know, Vineetji, that I have a son called Bobby? Oh, and let me tell you about something a little bit odd that happened ten days ago. Is that how I am supposed to start? See, Vineet, my son went out with some friends one Wednesday afternoon, then he came back home around seven o'clock in the evening and sat at the computer for some time, and then just like that he went to sleep quietly. And it was not even nine o'clock. He refused to have dinner, he did not even have a glass of milk. He just went to sleep. Then what would I say? Maybe I could tell Vineet how at ten thirty
Bobby suddenly woke up screaming in pain. He was suddenly screaming in pain, vomiting, running to the bathroom. First I thought that it was some type of food poisoning, something bad that he ate when he had gone out to the market with his friends. But when I saw blood in his vomit I became very scared. I quickly called up Rosie. She told me what medicines to give him so I ran to the chemist and bought all the tablets and gave them to Bobby, but then and there he vomited all of them out. He could not even keep one drop of water in him. Yes, I could tell Vineet about the buckets of vomit. And the pain. How my son kept screaming in pain, how he kept pulling my arm and screaming, Ma, do something! He was twisting around on the floor like somebody who is possessed, and screaming and crying, Ma, do something! I had never ever seen my Bobby like that. I did not know what to do. Then I finally called up Doctor Sahib. I told him what was happening and he told me to take Bobby to the emergency room at Safdarjang Hospital immediately.

My Bobby was in hospital for one week. One full week. One full week of stomach cramps, vomiting, diarrhoea, blood. What can I say? It was horrible. All around there was blood. All around there was vomit. And for the first two or three days the pain was so bad, so bad, that my Bobby could not lie down quietly even for one minute. He would sit up for half a minute, then stand up, then he would crawl around the hospital bed like a mad dog, like a mad dog mad with pain. So, am I supposed to tell Vineet all of this? Am I supposed to tell Vineet how the other two boys that Bobby was drinking with almost died, and how the doctors said that it was only by God's grace
that my son did not have to suffer as much as they did? Bobby was drinking alcohol. Is this what I will tell Vineet?

Nobody in our family, not even my uncle who gambled, nobody has ever, ever touched alcohol. Not one drop. Am I going to tell Vineet about how my fifteen-year-old son drank cheap liquor like some cheap labourer? I could not tell my own husband, and, obviously, I could not tell Papaji or Mummyji. So how can I tell some man that I met on the Metro just because his stupid friend told me that he is worried about me?

I beat Bobby. I waited until he was fine, and I waited until Papaji and Mummyji went out for their evening walk yesterday, and then I beat him. I beat him with a man's hands. I beat him with his father's hands and his grandfathers' hands. It seemed that my hands had received their strength from all these men, it seemed that I was beating him on behalf of these men who were not here themselves to do the beating. Bobby said nothing. As I beat him, as I beat my words into him, he sat on the bed with his head down, and not one sound came out of his mouth. Not one sound. But Bobby understood. That boy understood in his bones that what he had done was horrible, horrible and shameful, that nobody in the family, not from his mother's side or his father's side, has ever touched alcohol, and that even though he was saved this time, if he ever went anywhere near that poison again his mother would break his legs. He also understood, he understood once and for all, that he could never ever speak about this horrible and shameful
act to anybody, especially not to his father or his grandparents. And when I finished, Bobby quietly got up and left the room.