Original story: ‘Douhitra’, from the collection of short stories ‘Tavare detu’, Published by Ananya Prakashana, 2014
Translation by: Preethi Narasimhan
I was engrossed in my morning chores when my nineteen-year-old son walked in and reported, “Amma,
somebody’s here. Two men with an ajji are asking for thata. They are waiting in the living room. That ajji is very beautiful ma, reminds you of Sathyajit Ray – she is very wrinkled is her face with not a hint of black
in her hair, but has quite a sharp nose.” “Who could it be? Hope you’ve invited them in before you
came here”, I said washing my hands and walked out wiping my wet hands with my saree. At the edge of the sofa was seated a shrunken old lady! I didn’t quite recognise her immediately. One of the two people
who had accompanied her, a short middle-aged man had made himself at home and was stretching on
the red oxide floor of our living room, fanning himself with his towel. A little irritated at the liberty he’d
assumed, “Who do you want?” I asked rather curtly. By then, a very faint memory of the old lady had
started surfacing in my mind.
“Ayyo, awware, it is Kalyanamma! Have you forgotten? She was repeatedly asking me to get her here
and has troubled me a great deal for it. I wasn’t free until now. She made such a fuss to see ayynoru that we finally had to make some time today and got here on the morning bus”. I instantly remembered everything. How she had changed! It must have been nearly eighteen years since I last saw her. Arvinda was just a year-old baby when she last visited us. Kalyanajji – my father-in-law’s aunt. That time, my mother in-law was still alive. She had stayed with us for over a month much to my mother-in-law’s annoyance. She wasn’t like this then. She was a plump despotic woman, quite active and chatty. Commanding me about the kitchen, leering, smirking about everybody and mocking my slow and clumsy mother in-law…she was a stock of contempt and sarcasm. I was not exempt from serving her in her bodily care and pampering rituals in spite of having house help. ‘She is the wife of my grand-son, the daughter in-law of the house, so what if I ask her to help me a bit,’ such was her entitlement and snobbery!
“Oh, Kalyanajji, how are you? You look tired,” I said.
“Yes ma, who are you? Are you Sridhara’s wife? I’m not able to recognise at all, my eyes and ears have
totally given up,” she muttered as if to herself as she squinted. “Have you been travelling for long? I dont suppose you have eaten anything yet. Why don’t you wash your feet and come inside, upma is ready,” I invited. To which she said, “Why don’t you make lunch, I haven’t had a bath yet. So, I’ll have a bath first and
then lunch directly”, resuming liberties right where she’d left off.
“Alright, come in then,” I said and walked her slowly to the bathroom and filled a brass bucket with hot
water that was boiling in the slow fire under the barrel.
The previous time she came, she had come with the intention of staying with us for good. Amma, my
mother in-law however, strictly refused and sent her back after a bitter exchange of words. The way I
served Kalyannajji and provided her with all that she fancied would annoy amma a great deal. “Are you
out of your senses? Why do you overindulge that woman? It looks like you and your father in-law are a
perfect pair! Have you any idea what that woman, that old hag, has done to our family? It serves her
quite right that she’s in this state now, for all her pettiness. Widowed and childless, thrown out
of her house by her own father, she deserves all of it. It’s a mean, vicious creature! I’m sure she’ll insist upon staying with us, but I won’t be a very nice person if you agree to it. If she stays, I won’t!” she would go on pouring her bitter feelings in relentless streams of words. On the other hand, “look my dear, don’t let your mother in-law’s prejudice get the better of you. She’s a poor lonely woman at the verge of her old age. She doesn’t have a husband or a child she can turn to. Morally speaking, I must be taking care of her, but as you know, your mother in-law can’t stand her. But don’t let that affect you, please take good care of her at least as long as she is here. You’ll be blessed,” anna, my father in-law, had told me in confidence.
One of those days, Kalyanajji had come to me when I was alone and asked, “where is Lakshmi?”, looking for amma. “She’s asleep”. “Thank heavens! Let her sleep!”, she said removing four gold bangles from her hand and placed it in mine. “Why?” I looked up at her quite confused. “Look, you keep these four bangles. I don’t have anything else to offer other than these. In exchange, just let me stay here and take care of me. I won’t
trouble you much. I’ll just get on with my prayers to Rama and Krishna until I die and live out my last
days peacefully under your roof,” she said. Returning the gold bangles to her, “Oh no, I don’t want any
of these. I have no problem if you stay here. But there is no use in telling me all this. It is best if you
speak to amma and anna about this,” I said and slipped out of the tough spot. Anna had failed
intermittently in his attempts to convince amma in this regard. Kalyanajji was an adamant woman and
had stayed here close to a month and a half in her perseverance on the matter. One fine day, when
anna had gone out of town, amma called her son and a helper, gave him a 500 Rs note and ordered,
“Have that old woman board the first bus back home,” so resolute that it is only today that Kalyanajji has returned after she packed her bags that day. She probably feared the ugly humiliation that she may be faced with again, if she ever returned while amma was alive. Anna nonetheless, had visited her often when she was ill and made arrangements for her medical treatments. He also used to regularly send her some money for maintenance. Amma never objected to any of these, she just didn’t want her to be staying in the same house and be reminded of all the bitterness that had passed. And she had had substantial reasons for her displeasure and aversion towards Kalyanajji.
Anna’s grandparents didn’t have a male child but had three daughters- Balamani, Godamani and
Kalyani. My father in-law was Balamani’s only son. The second daughter Godamani had two sons. The
third daughter Kalyani didn’t have children and was widowed at an early age. Balamani was married into
a prosperous jagirdar’s family. Godamani too was wedded to a well-to-do family in far off Mumbai city.
Not blessed with beauty like her sisters, and having a reputation of being ‘adamant and stubborn’,
Kalyani had not gotten marriage alliances as favorably as those of her sisters. After a long pursuit, she
too was wedded to a poor farmer in a village just about eight miles from her parents’ ancestral home.
Being so close to her parents’ house, she visited them repeatedly never losing control of her authority
over the ancestral household while she lived her carefree life. She had little competition or opposition at her parents’ house as there was hardly anybody to challenge her. Once a year, over the pournime (full moon day) of the kaartika maasa(november), all the daughters along with their families got together at their parent’s house for celebrations. The two daughters, their husbands and grandchildren were all rare guests at the house and they were looked after and treated with great care during their visits. “When I visit, nobody bothers. I have to cook my own dinners! When they visit, look how many maids and servants are
appointed to look after them- one for cooking, one for cleaning- ah, such a parade! Every meal is a feast;
endless supply of milk and ghee! It is just me that’s unwanted,” she used to crib behind everyone’s back
and often quite openly too.
Kalyani was more intimate with Godamani who lived in Bombay and visited only once a year, than with
Balamani who was an occasional visitor living closer to home than her other sister. There was no
particular reason for this. However, it is possible that Balamani being a very straight forward person, her
unclouded openness in criticizing many of Kalyani’s faults, had become unwelcome to her over the
years in contrast to Godamani who had turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to her pettiness and meanness.
For some reason, Kalyani was deeply fond of Apprameya, Godamani’s first son. Like a spring beneath a
barren boulder, it was rather strange to understand her exclusive feelings for that boy.
Soon after her husband’s death, Kalyani returned permanently to her father’s house and settled down
like she had never left and became the sole beneficiary to all the comforts of the house. She stamped
her authority over the house and gradually took charge of the entire household, finally undermining her
own father. But it is just unbelievable to think of the game plan she schemed to ensure that the entire
ancestral property should go to Apprameya instead of anna, the heir apparent. That is not only a proof
of her cunning, deceitful and furtive mind but also a reflection of her grit and unwavering determination
to get what she wanted.
In those days, when a man didn’t have any male children, the eldest grandson was
considered his heir. And customarily, this meant that my father in-law was naturally the heir apparent to
his grandfather’s properties.
Over those years when she was like an unproclaimed queen of the house, she became indignant of any
visitors. After the untimely death of her eldest sister Balamani, all links with her family began to
dwindle. Anna was not only the eldest of the grandsons, but also the fondest to the grandfather. He had
a special affection for my father in-law for his remarkable academic achievements and kind heartedness.
He had cleared his LLB exams in flying colours, securing a gold medal and was known for his good
nature. They both had shared a very special bond. Many elders of the town still talk about the will that
his grandfather had drafted expressing his wishes to make him the sole heir to all his assets including the
ancestral home and the agricultural lands attached to it. Nobody knows what happened to that will, for
it never saw the light of day after his death.
It was also established by tradition that for a man with no sons, the grandson who performs his funeral rites
is the heir to his assets. By the norms of those days, being the eldest male child of the family, anna was
to perform the last rights at his grandfather’s death.
When the grandfather died, Kalyanamma had telegrams sent to all the family members through the
elders of the village. It was a time when there were no telephones. My father in-law had started immediately after receiving the telegram and since he lived in Bangalore, he had reached the village the
next morning. It would be evening by the time his cousins Apprameya and his brothers along with their mother would reach there as they had a longer journey to make from Bombay. On seeing that my young father-in law had come alone, Kalyanajji very affectionately consoled him. “When did you come dear, come wash your feet. You must be tired after the journey. What can we do, nobody can evade death, we should be fortunate to have ever had him in our lives…” she spent some time with him. After a while, she left him
where he was, slipped into the kitchen and mixed some stale rice from the previous night with some
fresh creamy curd from the pot and garnished it with tempered ghee, hing and curry leaves and offered
it to my father in-law on a banana leaf along with a piece of pickle saying, “here, have this. It might be
quite late by the time the rest of the family arrives, why should you starve? I suggest you eat and rest for
a while.” Hunger was beyond his senses to my grieving father-in-law and when he declined it saying
“No chikkamma, I don’t think I can eat anything now.” Kalyanajji was quick in convincing him. “Oh, come
on, do you recon your mother would let you stay hungry like this if she was alive? Come on now, eat
this,” she said as she made small balls of the curd rice with her own hand and forcefully fed it to him. A
few relatives and elders of the village walked into the room as she was feeding him and were quite
surprised and taken aback to see it. “What have you done! You’ve fed this innocent boy with rice! There is no one to perform the last rites, he’s the eldest male child and it has to be him, don’t you know? Shouldn’t you know better boy? Aren’t you aware that you are not supposed to light the funeral pyre after eating rice? Cha…” they reprimanded with great disappointment. Kalyanamma was yearning for precisely this opportunity. Immediately she said, “Oh no! I didn’t think of it that way at all. The boy has had a long journey and I didn’t want him to starve in his grief. I was just so concerned for him that it didn’t occur to me that he has to light the funeral pier. So naïve of me, I didn’t know, what do we do now! There is no other way I guess – Apprameya will be on his way from Bombay, he should perform the last rites then, that’s the only way” and concluded firmly.
Anna was overcome with guilt and regret for failing his grandfather in his duties, for he was a very
disciplined and religious man. He was so deeply agonized about not being able to perform the last rites that he did not even realise the implications of Kalyanajji’s actions on his inheritance.
In her last days however, Kalyanajji had come back here having no one to turn to except anna. When she was counting her days in her death bed, she had held anna’s hands tightly and confessed with tears running down her face, “I betrayed you my dear. But god took care of you. I ensured that you couldn’t perform your beloved grand father’s funeral rites, but I now beg you, shamelessly, to perform mine. I’m so sorry, I have nothing to give you in return”. Anna not only consoled her that day and freed her of her guilt, but also fulfilled her last wishes by performing her funeral.