Beloved Strangers

by Maria Chaudhuri

  Sometime in the middle of second grade, I discovered a pair of scissors in Nanu’s knitting basket and felt an overpowering urge to rip to shreds the curtains and sheets and upholstery that Mother so hated. I adopted a very particular style of destruction, always cutting a perfect little triangle into the fabric, lifting it up ever so gently and then smoothing it back into place so no one would notice. As soon as I destroyed something, I was horribly plagued by the need to repair the damage and reverse the imperfection I had created. What would it take to mend the tear as seamlessly as possible? I raided Nanu’s basket for scraps of thread, which exactly matched the various fabrics I had vandalised and begged her to show me how to do a neat chain-stitch or a flawless hem. Nanu, an avid seamstress, was happy to teach me, pleased that I was showing signs of domesticity. It was hard not to get caught in my acts of treason but I managed to get away with it for a few weeks. Upon discovery, my weapon was confiscated and myself reprimanded although I thought I had been doing Mother a favour by giving her the opportunity to discard what she already disliked.

  My quest for perfection was hardly over. The following year, I changed strategy. I found myself agonising over infinitesimal details of my room, my closet, my possessions. I never allowed anyone to touch my things. When I got my first Barbie doll, a long-haired blonde in a silver dress, I took her out of the pink paper box once a day to brush her hair and straighten her clothes, before putting her back inside. No matter how much Tilat cried, I would never place the glittering doll into her eager little hands. I got up extra early in the mornings to make my bed, clean out my desk and pack and re-pack my schoolbag. I tucked and re-tucked the bedsheets until my fingers became sore. I borrowed an old rag from the kitchen cupboard and each time I washed my hands or face I wiped both sink and counter clean of the last drop of water. I spent hours placing chairs and tables back at exactly the right angles and making sure all the shoes in the shoe rack were perfectly lined up. I organised my clothes until my palms were stiff from folding and refolding them. I never finished my schoolwork because I was too busy erasing every line I wrote. The inclination to perfect the imperfect began to affect my ability to concentrate on anything for long periods of time. Whereas before I spent only my idle time cleaning and refining, the obsession began to leak into my various other activities. As soon as I sat down with my textbooks, my eyes would start roaming and I’d run my fingers along the surface of my wooden desk for possible undulations. I would notice and feel distracted every time by the faint horizontal line on the wall where my books leaned against it and which I had washed a million times with soap and warm water. I would have to fight the stubborn urge to run for my cleaning rags for I knew that if I washed the wall any more the paint was likely to peel off. I collected different shades of brown magic markers with which I concealed the scrapes and chips on the old wooden desk, spots that only I could see. They swam before me like jagged obstacles in the path of my vision.

  By the time I started high school, my handwriting improved dramatically although my notes grew sparse and full of gaps. In my green pencil box I carried a medley of sharpened pencils, ballpoint pens, four different erasers and a bottle of white correction fluid. In comparison to the other kids’ workbooks, all of mine looked rickety thin, having torn out pages and pages due to crossed-out words or lines. One year, our class teacher convinced me to represent the school in a city-wide handwriting competition. It was my worst nightmare. I did not have the courage to say no to her, nor did I possess the nerves to survive the ordeal.

  On the morning of the competition I arrived at Dhaka Art College where girls and boys sat cross-legged across the open courtyard, pieces of crisp white paper stuck to their writing boards. For the purpose of the contest, we had to copy a long newspaper article but we were allowed only one side of one piece of paper. Even before I began, visions of catastrophe froze me in my tracks: a leaking pen, sweat stains from my clammy palms, my white correction fluid overspilling and drying into uneven little ridges across the uniform surface of the paper . . . on and on my mind conjured torrid schemes of disaster. I watched the other contestants writing furiously, while I sat unable to start.

  I may have earned more than an honourable mention if it hadn’t been for the incomplete assignment I turned in. By the time I managed to overcome my fear of ravaging the white paper there were only fifteen minutes left of the thirty-five-minute contest. I wanted to forget the whole thing. What benefit was there to the artistry of handwriting when I could not boast mastery over the content of my books? But Mother, in a rare burst of pride, framed the certificate of honour and hung it on the wall. Would she have been proud if she knew the truth about my fears, my fixations? How many of her favourite things had I ruined only to mend them and alleviate my twisted need for neatness, the very quality that was now being celebrated within a framed certificate? How many times had I lied to her about losing my workbooks so that she would buy me new, clean ones? How many times had I deceived her into thinking that I was studying when I was simply rearranging my books yet again? And how would she feel if she caught me eyeing with secret disapproval the way she left stray hairs on her comb or cracked the brand-new spines of her books by leaving them open and face-down on the coffee table.

  I wanted, very much, to end the Herculean task of tidying up the whole world but I was sickened, maddened, harassed by the need for balance, for equilibrium, for sparseness and symmetry. My mother, on the other hand, imagined the extreme, the impossible, anything to tip the scale from mundane to miraculous. In our own ways, we were both trying to achieve perfection. A perfection too crude, too literal.

  If I am to paint a picture based on all the stories my mother discloses about her wedding and early years of marriage, it will be of a woman standing on a busy platform, alone, fervently waiting for her train to arrive. With passing years, the fervent look on her lovely face is tarnished by anger, panic, and finally, fatigue. For me, the question in this picture is not when the train will arrive but whether it will take her where she wants to go.

  My mother said she wanted fame and stardom. ‘Star’ was the word she always used in reference to her music, not vocal artist, nor singer. At eight or nine years of age, I could somewhat grasp the glamour associated with fame. On the TV screen I saw famous stars walking up to sparkling podiums to receive gold and silver statues. From Mother, I heard stories about the popular music stars of our country performing all over the world, signing autographs for thousands of fans.

  ‘The day someone asks for my autograph is the day I’ll know I’m famous,’ Mother used to say.

  ‘Even if just one person asks you for it?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, even if one person asks for it,’ she replied.

  Mother got her wish. But even though she signed a number of autographs for her fans, it never gratified her. The kind of fame she craved could not be gratified by ten, twenty or even a hundred applauding fans. The kind of fame she craved could never be gratified by several monthly performances on radio and television. She wanted her whole life to be centre stage, the spotlight on her, while she sang her heart out. She wanted trophies, foreign tours, newspaper articles, and an overbooked calendar to prove her worth and she wanted to be free to do all that.

  I admired her ambition, the way it flashed across her features, the way it lifted her delicate chin. It was her despair that I had trouble with. Her despair, compelling her to banish everyone in her vicinity when she practised her music, as if she needed to guard her music, as if the very presence of another soul would derange her rhythm. The same despair made her clench her jaw when we crowded around her, vying for her attention as she tried to rest before a recording session.

  When she despaired, so did I. Which is why, that afternoon, looking through the crack in the half-open door, I decided to send my mother a cryptic message. As soon as her practice ended, I crept up to her harmonium, found her music book and scribbled a note to her with my name signed underneath. ‘You are my stepmother,’ I wrote in my
crooked handwriting. In my mind were the stepmothers of the fairy tales I’d read – unkind, unloving, neglectful.

  A few days later, when she flipped through her notebook, my mother’s face seemed to grow serious for a moment. I held my breath. If she were to ask me why I wrote what I wrote, I would tell her that I didn’t really think she was unloving or unkind. I just wanted her to see me, behind my message, beyond my words. But she never asked.

  Being kept away from my mother’s music did not undermine my urge to sing; in fact, it had just the opposite effect. By the time I was nine years old, my favourite and secret pastime was to pretend play at being a singer. Once again, television fed my fantasies and I picked up enough moves to practise on my own. I flapped around in front of the bathroom mirror, using a pencil as a mike, my lips and eyelids slathered with my mother’s maroon lipstick and glittery eye shadow. I played a wonderful audience to myself, clapping in rapt admiration at the end of each performance. Then I’d take a deep bow of appreciation. The joy of those moments was incomparable. When I sang, I felt free, my body inflated with possibility. Unlike my mother and her need to be alone with her music, I wanted to invite the whole world to share my joy with me when I sang. Of course I couldn’t, because I knew Mother would not approve.

  Outside my stuffy pink bathroom, reality became ineluctable. Mother and Father constantly argued about my mother’s musical aspirations. It never occurred to me that my father was opposed to her music. Often, I caught him staring at her when she sang, a tender faraway look in his eyes, as if he was watching again his frail young bride-to-be with her enigmatic voice. Yet what brought forth his reticence when her music led her out of the house? How could he not see that she wanted to immerse herself in music as he immersed himself in his work? That she was as determined as he was to chart her territory and leave her mark?

  Did he fear that if both of them were engrossed in their separate worlds the children would suffer? Or did he fear that the woman he loved so fiercely would be lost to him, if consumed by music? And he did love her fiercely. If he had his way, he would always have her around him. If my mother went out for a long time, my father grew increasingly restless. He hardly paid us any attention, staring hard at the television, though we knew his thoughts were elsewhere. He would jump at every sound or movement and, after a few hours had passed, would make repetitive queries on her whereabouts.

  My mother, on the other hand, enjoyed her time alone. She hummed and pranced about the house. Often she dragged her harmonium from the music room to her bedroom, shut the door and spent hours singing or listening to music and reading. Her affection for my father was more subtle, reserved in special signs. Like the way she never called Father by his name, referring to him only as Jaanu, meaning heart. The far-too-obvious way in which she tried to suppress her excitement on the days he returned from a work tour abroad. The way she looked at their wedding photographs, sighed and said the same thing every time, ‘Look how handsome your father was.’

  Heaven forbid if mother had a radio programme or television shoot. Between her nervousness and my father’s stubbornness, the conversations at meal times were poisonous.

  ‘I may be gone for most of the day today,’ my mother announced one morning. ‘I’m not sure how long the shoot will last.’

  ‘How late will you be?’ my father asked immediately.

  ‘I told you, it’s hard to say.’

  ‘Well you should at least try to make it back by dinner,’ he said. There was an edge to his voice.

  ‘What if I can’t make it?’ came the sharp reply.

  Soon their voices sizzled louder than the eggs frying in the saucepan.

  ‘Don’t you work late when you have to?’ snapped Mother.

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘But it isn’t the same for me. Is that it?’

  ‘It’s not so black and white. There’s a right time for everything. We have children to take care of.’

  ‘I’m twenty-five years old; I’ve been singing since I was five. This is all I know how to do. If not now, then when is the right time for me?’

  ‘It’s not like you don’t sing. You have music lessons every week.’

  ‘Listen to you. I’m supposed to be happy with only my lessons? Why don’t you just put a leash around me?’

  ‘That’s not fair.’

  ‘Just say it. You think this is a hobby, not a career.’

  ‘Bloody hell!’ shouted my father, ‘Don’t pretend like you don’t know what I’m talking about.’

  ‘Bullshit!’ screamed Mother, ‘Every single day I have to deal with your bullshit.’

  ‘You’re calling our life bullshit?’

  ‘I’m calling my life bullshit.’

  ‘So you hate your life?’

  ‘I just want to sing. Why won’t you let me?’

  ‘That is not true! You have one of the best gurus coming in twice a week to train you. You have your television programmes—’

  She cut him off. ‘I don’t need any more training. And I don’t want to do small-time television shows for ever. I want stage shows, my own albums, movie soundtracks. I want to tour the world. All the real stuff.’

  ‘Nothing will ever satisfy you,’ my father said bitterly, throwing a half-eaten piece of toast back onto his plate.

  ‘You fell in love with my music,’ she said, suddenly lowering her voice.

  My father cradled his head in his hands for a minute before angrily pushing his chair backwards. It screeched loudly against the grey cement floor, dropping his blazer from its back. He picked up the blazer and rushed towards the door.

  ‘Go! Escape! Run away and leave me in hell,’ my mother yelled at his retreating back. Then she turned to us. ‘You girls aren’t growing up to be singers. Or anything for that matter. I’ll see to that.’

  Naveen and I both raised our lowered heads. The woman who sat before us was a fire goddess. There was fire coming out of her eyes and ears and mouth, even her hair looked ablaze in the morning sunlight. We must have looked stunned.

  ‘Don’t look at me like that,’ she said, ‘You are girls and girls ought to get married. God knows marriage is the death of an artist.’

  There was a shuffling noise as Amol came in with a plate full of eggs, sunny side up. He had been waiting near the door, unsure of when to make his entrance. The minute he placed the eggs on the table, mother picked up her fork and stabbed the egg sitting in the middle of the plate, making it leak yellow goo everywhere. My sister and I sat helplessly, unwilling to eat the sullied eggs but too afraid to leave the table.

  Every time I look back on that morning, my mind tends to skip over the screams and tears and hurtful words, coming to rest on the image of a sodden eggy mess. It makes me wish that my parents could have been gentler to each other. It makes me wish that we could have all had our eggs that morning, together, cheerfully, sunny side up.

  Even though Mother made it clear that she no longer benefitted from her lessons, she nevertheless continued to take them. Her zeal and dedication for Guru Azim Khan and his every instruction were evident in the very way she looked at him, nodded frequently when he spoke, lowered her eyes when she sang for him, blushed in silence when he smiled at her or crumbled under his judicious stare. On Sundays, she let me and Tilat accompany her to Azim Khan’s house as we were close in age to Zubair and Amina, his two children. On these days, Azim Khan’s wife squatted in front of their woodfire stove and cooked lunch while Mother finished her lesson and Zubair, Amina, Tilat and I played on their expansive roof. We made a little makeshift kitchen out of cardboard boxes and played a game of pretending to be street-food vendors. We found discarded clay pots, which we filled with water. We ripped heart-shaped leaves from moneyplant creepers and slipped them into the water-filled pots, one by one, making sizzling sounds with our tongues, pretending to fry samosas and parathas in boiling hot oil. By the time the adults ushered us inside for real food, we were dirty, sunburnt and exhilarated.

  Inside the Khans’
home, however, it was hard not to notice the strict order of things. Our unruly games were not allowed inside. We had to take off our shoes, wash our hands and feet and speak softly. Amina’s mother stood erect and monitored our every movement. She stood guard until every morsel of food had been wiped off our plates. Watching her clear the table afterwards, her husband would smile at her benevolently, sending a rush of colour to her cheeks. We called her Khan Auntie, unwittingly destroying the last shred of her identity but she never seemed to mind. The compliant tone of her voice, the forever-upturned corners of her mouth, the way her able hands produced magnificent feasts out of meagre means – it was all as if she lived to please and placate.

  Still, it was Khan Auntie’s warm laughter and delightful meals that brightened up those Sundays. We did not dare tell Mother, but we were petrified of Azim Khan. His face was eternally puckered up in a rude sneer. His sardonic jokes about how spoiled her children were did not seem to bother our mother but they made us shrink further and further away from him. As the years passed and I became more attuned to his sarcasm, I heard him make many startling remarks to my mother. He brought his small mouth close to her ears and spoke softly, meaningfully, with minimum consideration and maximum impact.

  According to her beloved guru, my mother was never quite ready to present her music to the world. The lessons continued in earnest but she never became the star pupil or even the capable student. Before every lesson, Mother pored over her music notes, trying to master whatever assignment had been given to her. But Azim Khan had successfully planted in her the ever-growing seed of self-doubt. She never felt satisfied with her own efforts, just as he expected her not to.