Trip To Mom-land: IV

My Bhadarwah massi’s old house was a bit of a puzzle to understand.

You entered through a concrete pathway which was adjacent to the walls of the house on the left and had a patch of corn to the right. You had to pass the cow’s dismal shed and then go past the entrance to the main, ground floor kitchen to go up the stairs for the first floor. This ground floor area I remember from childhood.

A tiny room with a very low ceiling where my massi would squat and cook. It was a confined space but felt familiar, like all the utensils and shelves in the dark corners were made of good memories and love. There was a narrow really low-roofed exit into what should’ve been a central area but was a bedroom, to the left was another room and at another end was the entry into the prayer room.

Thirteen years ago this room had beds too. We’d slept there. Now it looked like it was a part-time store room and full-time prayer room. I looked at the idols and the pictures and remembered all the tales that my cousins used to tell me of how one of my Bhadarwah massi’s sons was blessed by ‘mata’ (mother), the goddess because he’d seen her eyes move rapidly from left to right in her photo frame. As a child I’d always been fascinated and wondered if I was blessed enough to see mata speak to me, but she never did.

We didn’t go to this kitchen though, we were led to the first floor from the stairs outside. Here there was a ramshackle kitchen whose light didn’t work at night, the tiniest washing sink and an overflowing dustbin. Outside the kitchen was a lobby area where we removed our shoes and placed our luggage and then went to the central area where there was a bed and thick carpet laid out for general assembly of residents. Beyond this was the living room (I don’t understand the point of a living room at the very end of the house past the bedrooms but I’d gotten into a go-with-the-flow zone as far as housing in Bhadarwah was concerned). And yes to the right, before the living room was a door that led into a bedroom which was assigned to us.

All of this was fine. Then came more children. Now my eldest cousin and his wife (my bhabhi’s) kids were quiet, well mannered and sedate. It pained me to think that it was probably because of the horrors they’d witnessed growing up with an alcoholic father being physically violent to their mother. My cousin was sober now, but I looked at my beautiful, smart bhabhi and wished the world was different here.

“What a waste,” my mom would sigh when we’d left the place.

“Her life is not a waste,” sis had refused to allow her life to be dubbed that term. She saw more than that and it was true. She saw a woman fighting for herself, enjoying the small offerings of life and working to earn her keep and run her house her way. Same as I how I saw her. Bhabhi had burst into tears when we’d left. I don’t know what we’d represented or how she’d seen us being there but watching her cry made me cry too.

I’m jumping through timelines.

But yes, we arrived. Firefly the poor pup had taken ill, but would any illness stop him from trying to bite any slipper in his path? Nu-uh.

It was beginning to get a little chilly as evening set in.

Let me explain the family here. My Bhadarwah massi has two daughters and two brothers (I am wracking my brain to figure out if I’m forgetting any cousins. Help). Yes, so I’m nearly sure that’s correct. The eldest cousin I remembered as an affectionate brother but the stories of his alcoholism and violence have definitely put up a barrier in my head apart from evoking empathy because addiction is a problem that deserves understanding and help, not judgement and censure. It’s a complicated situation. The second eldest cousin had a short marriage with an asshole and a messy divorce which consumed most of her late twenties and early thirties. A waif of a woman with beautiful, princess-length tresses and a thin, wavering voice. One would think one could blow on her and she’d fly off. One would be wrong.

While she could be caustic but she was also the kind of person to single-handedly stay in a small, government hospital’s covid ward for her not exactly grateful younger brother for days and somehow not get covid. Why was she forced to do that? This was at the height of the worst covid wave in India. Mainly because there were no doctors or attendants, so if you didn’t have your own attendant you might as well be dead in a small city. She stayed, battled that place, and survived. That’s what she is like.

The third youngest cousin was born with an eye defect but that didn’t stop her from having a full life with a love marriage and two children. She has a bright, no-filter, dramatic personality and is impulsive to say the least. She’s also very generous and sweet, which is why it boggles my mind how she gave birth to not one, but two demon children. Her boys are another level of problematic and of course much of it comes from the way she’s treated them too. Corporal punishment for kids is not uncommon in India.

The youngest cousin was the one who’d been so scared for his life that he wouldn’t let the second eldest cousin leave his hospital ward. Why was he selfish? Because he wouldn’t ask his wife to be by his side, but was okay to put his sister in harm’s way if needed. Now truth be told I’m simply repeating what I’ve been told by my mother who is also one of the harshest judges as a person so a pinch of salt may be necessary. Apparently he doesn’t contribute to the running of his parents household but is quick to ask them for money for his own needs. I don’t remember him like that. He was an affectionate, bubbly and caring elder brother – the one touched by the Goddess. But then it’s easy to be that when you see someone once in thirteen years. He was not there then, he was in Jammu with his family.

Now, meeting the nieces and nephews is a bit of an ordeal for one technical reason: the feet touching. Like even my Jammu cousin does that! And I’m his elder sister. Wait, let me explain to those of you who don’t understand. In India, touching the feet is a sign of humility in youngsters and the elders are supposed to bless them in return. It’s an old tradition and is followed in villages and some old-fashioned households. The first time he touched my feet at the airport I spluttered and squawked awkwardly, trying to fend him off or wave him away, I’m not sure what my hands were doing but it didn’t work. Throughout the trip, this did not improve, because the little kids everywhere did the same. I just couldn’t bring myself to say bless you or some such trite thing. I did however tell my Jammu massi not to say a blessing like Sada Suhaagan Raho which translated means, “May you stay a married woman forever.” Actually it’s a literal translation but what it actually means is to wish for a long life for the woman’s husband. I told her to say, “Bless you,” as a direct blessing to the woman actually touching her feet.

Once settled in, our plan was to work from home. And that’s why it was a cause for great concern when we woke up next day to find no electricity in the house.

“But you’d said light isn’t an issue,” my sister told both the female cousins, not for the last time.

“It doesn’t. I don’t know why it went away today,” said the dramatic one, worried. My sister is the kind of personality who when stressed passes it on to everyone around her, blaming everyone for her bad attitude.

I had other problems. The room I was working out of was the lair of the demon children. I had to keep throwing them out, with each time becoming less and less polite than the last. What were these children made of? Stone? Did they reset every five minutes?

My sister on the other hand played games with them and then regretted it because they wouldn’t leave her for a minute. The light eventually came towards the evening much to our relief. Our cousins told us to charge our phones and laptops overnight in anticipation of an electricity cut the next day as well. We were mulling over the option of leaving but decided to hang on for the next two days. I’d already decided that Thursday would be the day I’d take a sick leave and Friday was off due to a festival so that’d give us time for our trips to Jai valley and Padri which was apparently like Switzerland.

Of course work had to be extra heavy during this week but we were going to manage this!

Trip To Mom-land: Part III

So first night in a new bed wasn’t exactly comfortable but I did get some amount of sleep.

The morning view through the window was snowy mountains wearing clouds as accessories under a blue, blue sky. The sun woke us up to behold this view by 7 am. I stepped out of my room and contemplated the two pathways I could take to get to the ground floor:

a) A door that led outside the house, onto a dirt path to the left, down the stairs to the verandah and through the main door of the house.

or

b) A narrow, insane staircase made of stone somehow arranged beneath a narrow rectangular cut in the floor. The middle cousin – the one intent on making a ‘real’ dog out of our poor pup, Firefly – had already tripped on this staircase and hurt his eye.

Because I felt like indulging in an adventure sport I decided to go with the narrow trap door. I had to angle my body to go down the infernal thing and really hold on to the sides of the opening at first. The steps were not just steep they swerved into an angle that was surely meant to kill you. But I said, “Not today evil stairs!” and twisted my body at the right moment to land outside the washroom and on the ground floor.

Of course this trap door was cut into the first floor right after the option a) doorway. I had almost placed my foot into this opening while entering through that door. Just safety violation number 96 in the house.

Anyway, after freshening up I was busy taking pictures of the view, post which we lazed about and soaked in the sun. The little girls, basically the daughters of my cousins, seemed so wise and grown up for their age, even the boys a little too mature. What about their lives makes kids these days grow up so much faster? I’m wont to say social media but families play a huge role too.

My sis is the one who really gets along with children. I wave and smile at them from a distance and can only tolerate them in small doses. So when I clambered upstairs to my room after a heavy breakfast contemplating the sweet possibility of sleep, to my dismay I found it occupied by my sister and three children.

One girl was my middle cousin’s daughter and the other one was my fourth cousin’s daughter and the third was her little brother. Wow. I have entirely missed mentioning a cousin. My mami has FOUR children! Three sons and one daughter. All of them married with kids. In my previous entry, I’d said she has only three children. RIP my knowledge/memory of my extended family. In my defence, I’ve met her once! I feel like a terrible human being.

Moving on, my sister had got these children into our sacred, hard-fought space.

“Come over, I am asking them about horror stories,” she said gleefully. She’d taken an unhealthy fascination to the stories of black magic and daayans (demonesses) ever since my Jammu massi’s son had told her about one living next door to my Bhadarwah massi’s house. Also I wasn’t sure if it was appropriate to ask these young girls about it.

“We don’t know any such stories,” one of them said.

“Really? None at all?” my sister’s disappointment was palpable. The girls squirmed a little. Now even if they didn’t know such tales they’d begin to conjure stuff up.

“Have you ever tried Bloody Mary in the mirror?” one of them asked, “You shouldn’t because it’s true!”

Urban legends from the west had made their way to this little village. They spoke about another Christian ghost who comes looking for her baby or something. The specifics escape me.

“We found an animal bone once!” declared one.

“Oh right, tell me about the…dlagh,” It would definitely be a weird tongue twister for anyone not used to our kind of languages. But this was one story even I was interested in because it was true and not mythical. Also because mom had told me not to be wandering outside at night because of the dlagh.

“Yea, it attacked a girl! And then one man tried to stop it and it tore his arm! That dlagh!”

“I heard, but what does it look like?” I asked, no one knew what it was called in English.

“It’s huge and strong and white and can kill dogs. It has killed so many of our dogs,” the girls got a little sad here.

“Wait, is it like a cat or a dog?” I asked, whipping out my phone.

“Like a cat,” said one.

I looked up certain species of wild cats in India and showed them the pictures. It was exactly some form of a jungle cat. Safety violation number 245.

Soon after lunch, all of us decked up in finery and took pictures. Thankfully very few people came by to visit as a part of the festival. My mom had been dreaming of one thing since we left Delhi – the Bhadarwahi band. She wanted to dance to the band.

But that part didn’t turn out so well. When the band finally arrived, Mom and everyone started dancing. I joined in though for the life of me, I’d never been able to figure out how to dance to the music of a Bhadarwahi band. My sister had gone up to rest to the room as she wasn’t feeling too well and was talking to one of her beaus. Mom in her zeal to get her to experience one of the highlights of the trip went to the room to get her. When she returned her face looked wounded and she declared that sis had been rude to her in front of the person she was talking to. Her mood soured and she didn’t look like she was enjoying anymore. I felt bad as this was really her trip. My sister on the other hand felt that mom didn’t care that she was sick and I, as always, got dragged in the middle. More so by my sister than mom. Everyone was upset.

This part was not fun. I was trying to placate both but if I have to be honest, it stresses me to be anywhere around my sister during such a time. I get tired of being blamed for shit I didn’t do, or blamed for making others feel whatever they feel simply by existing. At times, I genuinely want to be alone. Without anyone. No family, no friends. Like I feel like I can’t handle people anymore, their emotions, mine when I’m around them. I just want peace.

Anyway, things got a little better with dinner where our youngest cousin and Jammu massi’s son spoke about my Jammu massi’s son’s love life and how the girl’s family hated him. Mom and sister had cooled down some fortunately and were able to be at the very least civil bordering on cordial. Finally late at night when the kids played the Bhadarwahi band through YouTube we had another, more fun round of dancing.

“Mama, this time dance like there is no one else here,” I said to mom before she joined the happy little circle of revellers. And she did. Her face aglow she twirled and clapped and moved freely. Sis and I joined in as well. Even the eldest cousin did.

Speaking of him, his face was always ruddy and he seemed to avoid us a lot. I asked mom what was his deal, although I knew the answer. He was an alcoholic like his father (my uncle) had been. Like my Bhadarwah massi’s eldest son was, though he was doing better now. Villages here don’t have any programs to help people with addiction. No wonder my mom over reacts when my sister and I drink even though we always drink in moderation and only in social settings if at all. Apart from reflections of this kind, all in all things ended on a better note than I’d have predicted that night.

Next day, owing to my work, we left Hanga after lunch, the little boys carried some of our heavy bags down to where the dirt road begins and our brothers helped. I was grateful for the help if a bit guilty because usually I like to carry my own weight. But the hike was really tricky. The insane middle cousin who was coming along with us was making a joke about my mom not being pahadi ladki enough, basically not a mountain girl since she was climbing down slowly. As he said it, he slipped and fell much to our delight. Somewhat abashed he stood up and pretended like we were laughing at the scenery. I did slip and fall on my cushy bum too but that’s entirely because my sports shoes are not built even one little bit for hikes. I really need proper hiking shoes in life.

It was not the best idea to get into the car with the insane middle cousin. The entire trip on that dirt road with one edge offering the potential for a swift descent into darkness was mired with the periodic struggle of him increasing the volume of his music and me in the passenger seat decreasing the volume. And when we weren’t doing that we were trying to encourage him not to drive like a maniac. Luckily, we made it back to my Bhadarwah massi’s place without hurtling off the edge of the path.

Their family cow welcomed us with a mournful moo.

Trip To Mom-land: Part II

So there we were, resting every two minutes because we were with three of mom’s sisters – all in the range of late 50s to 60s, my mom being the youngest in her early 50s. The hike was definitely steep. But each pause made us take a whole 360 degree view of everything around: the hill right opposite to the one the village was built on, cloaked by the lush green pine trees, to the left and right were the snow-tipped mountains hobnobbing with the clouds.

“Don’t touch this plant,” Mom pointed out a regular looking plant, “It’s soi.”

“What?!” my sister and I were agog, pulling out our phones for a picture as one would of a celebrity albeit a scandalous one. So this sad looking vegetation was the notorious plant we’d heard about and decried as the main instrument of corporal punishment for children in our father’s stories?

“Hey, isn’t that…bhaang?” my sister was amused by how wild and free the drug often used in the festival of Holi was growing here.

“It’s weed,” I corrected her with a laugh. Well, no one cared here.

“Don’t touch that plant either,” Mom pointed out another unremarkable plant, “You’ll get rashes.”

“Wow, they’re literally close to the path, anyone could really,” I muttered.

We passed by some bright, hue-mismatched houses. How were they built on such a slope? Had to hiss and ensure all my aunts wore their masks, especially my mother when they stopped to chit chat with the inhabitants of the homes. It’s a village, everybody obviously knows everybody and people were curious about the outsiders traipsing up the trail. I suppose my sister and I were outsiders, they knew my mom and her sisters.

The last part of the climb was tricky but through persistence where no one was of the mind to stop midway and not carry on, we managed and arrived at my late uncle’s (my mom’s brother’s) home. He would be called my mama. His wife my mami was holding her youngest son’s one year old kid and smiling at us from the verandah overlooking the hills and mountains. Mami had three sons, each married with children of their own. This was my second time even meeting these three cousins. I barely recalled what they looked like, forget their wives and children (so many children!). This home which was the youngest cousin’s home was to be the base for the tiny festival we were supposed to be attending.

Hugs with people I did not necessarily know. Smiles at whoever smiled at me. A brother’s wife in India is called a Bhabhi. But somehow I’ve always called any Bhabhi, Didi. The way I’ve seen it, when women marry into a family, they are treated so differently by their in-laws compared to how they are treated in their own homes, that it makes me wonder if people marry to get convenient slave labour. My mom would be the perfect case in point. So I just thought I’d call these women who’d married into our family by the term we use for elder sisters rather than sisters-in-law. They ought to feel as close as any daughter of the family. But this time, I kept switching between the terms because no one understood the concept.

Sis was ill. So the hike was strenuous for her. She was excited though so was running on it, along with the beagle pup Firefly, who was constantly being run after by either my aunt or her son when not being terrorised by the middle cousin (I tried not to feel terrible about mixing his and the eldest cousin’s names up). In the village, dogs were reared rough, and by rough I mean they grow up to be huge, muscular, can-fight-off-a-bear-if-needed kind of creatures and fiercely loyal. Downside: they don’t turn out cuddly. Case in point was a fluffy black mountain pup with xanadu color eyes. He was, like Firefly, also happy to bite everything in his path. He’d get a lot of whacks for his trouble much to our horror. Everyone there looked amused by our outburst and told us that this was the ideal way to raise good dogs.

Contrast to this pup was our Firefly, a pampered lil creature with a tummy nearly touching the ground as he trotted about trying to wrestle down slippers and eat anything he could find. My Jammu massi (maternal aunt) said, “That is a mountain dog rough and ready, this baby looks like someone’s lovingly applied kohl to his eyes.” All of us were keen on keeping him away from our middle cousin who was clearly a fun-loving, provocateur.

I was not expecting a dining table or a geyser or a shower. I mean my Bhadarwah aunt didn’t have these amenities and Bhadarwah was a small town. So we were pleasantly surprised to be proved wrong. The bhabhis cooked up a wholesome meal, again everything from our own fields. The food tasted different, fresher, more delicious. I felt guilty about how hard they were working, waiting on us hand and foot. But frankly we had zero clue about how things worked there so it wasn’t like we could help ourselves either, at least on the first day.

This was a very different life, for starters, my sister taking a bath was a collective decision – where everyone weighed in much to her frustration and amusement. Here, things were not individual. It was collective living and decision-making on the small things and the big. A very different concept to women used to their space. For instance, we weren’t even given a room until the night when we actually needed a room to sleep in. Because until then why would we need a room? Chill with everyone, move about everywhere, settle down wherever you feel like. Mom also wasn’t inclined on asking about it even though we had asked once or twice through the evening and then just given up.

Finally we were assigned a room, it was the main bedroom of my cousin and his wife on the first floor. You guys understand the generosity we were showered with? The home of course had multiple storeys and several bedrooms, but they gave us this room with windows that opened out into a lovely view of the far-off mountains and sky and clouds. This room also faced the backyard of the house.

Settling in with sis was a bit hard. We had issues yet unsorted but here we were sleeping, sharing, compromising in close quarters and she was ill too, so I was trying to be as accommodating as I could. We were behaving as people close to each other do when faced with an issue too big to solve, by pretending to be normal and shoving it into a box.

I’ll continue with more stories in the next post. Pardon me if there are any typos, I’ll try to correct them ToT

Trip To Mom-land: Part I

It’s been a while! I’ve been travelling since the 3rd of September and have had neither the time nor the energy to do any kind of writing. It’s all I’ve been able to do to manage basic things like work and health.

It was a beautiful trip to the countryside with mountains and clouds and sunshine and rain. Flowers impudently blooming and bobbing about in all their multicoloured glory. A life so ethereal, it takes city girls to actually appreciate it. My cousins there don’t realise the magic of where they live but then that’s how it usually goes.

During this period I also lost touch of things important to me: writing, friends, even my dad (well we were mad at him). I do have these phases of being lost, just flowing along the tide of life, doing only the most necessary to survive and not even and a half more. It comes from time to time, where I don’t feel like talking to friends or reaching out to family (when I was staying alone). It just descends upon me, this state, and usually goes away through a forced reconnection. Like a spark ignited. It takes a loved one’s persistent concern or anger or both to do that. It’s odd. But I try to reduce these periods. Sometimes though they don’t take no for an answer.

I think this happens when I’m overtly sad or stressed about something like I was about my situation with mom and dad. It feels better to swat life away and focus on the present – the present was a lot of distant family members, surfing on their conversations plus a living a physically harder life.

Anyway, let me talk about the trip. The drive to Bhadarwah was so much better than what I remember from my last visit thirteen years ago. There were state-of-the-art tunnels en route now, cutting down on time taken to reach the little picturesque town nestled between the mountains. Chenab however, disappointed me. It was not that piercing emerald green that I’d marvelled at and kept close in my memories. It was a gray-green.

“The government has built a dam,” explained Mom. Why must human beings ruin it all?

What I also missed was a point at which the earlier road would come down to the level of the river. We’d stopped at such a point all those years ago, dipped our feet in the frigid water and taken pictures. Mom would always warn us of how ferocious and deceptive the river was.

“It may look slow moving from here, but it has powerful currents that even the most experienced swimmers cannot fight,” she’d tell us. I never understood why because neither of us soft, coddled children would ever jump into the spine-freezing water of the river even if we weren’t warned about the sinister current.

We stopped at two famous eating joints. One was to have “kaladi” I have no English word to offer for this seeing as I became aware of the existence of such a food item on this trip. It was some form of milk product – rather like cottage cheese but not exactly. They make a sandwich out of it and it was delicious.

The trip was also made enjoyable by a rather naughty beagle pup, Firefly, travelling with us. My aunt and cousin had brought him along. Every stop he’d be put out to do his business and his nose was in overdrive trying to figure out all the new smells the world had exploded into. Closer to our destination, we stopped at a place called Usher, or well pronounced that way anyway. There the rajma-chaval (kidney beans stew with rice) topped off by dollops of clarified butter was amazing. We even had corn on the cob after. My sister remarked that we were eating like we had a twelve hour journey ahead of us when it was just two hours left.

Anyway we reached my Bhadarwah aunt’s house. To my surprise, very few things had changed there. I’d thought there’d be a more functional washroom but frankly my aunt wasn’t as well off so couldn’t afford it. They’d spent a lot of money on their children (my cousins) who were rather in their own worlds. It was a hard life out there. Trips to fill up water from the nearby watering well (?) You needed to heat water separately either through a boiler or on the gas to take a bath as there were no geysers. The old bathroom had no flush and needed to be flushed with buckets of water. The new bathroom was way up on the second floor and was tiny.

But the charming parts were these: everything we ate was from our own gardens or farms. The water was from a running water well where the algae purified the water further. To me algae in water meant some form of terrible water borne disease, but no one fell sick as long as we avoided any of it in the water. Cousins were taking such good care of us, in fact I felt like we were spoilt and made into utter slobs for the trip. We were fed constantly. I think I forgot what hunger even feels like. Every shade, shape, type of flower I’ve made friends with over there. Perhaps that’s exaggeration, the flowers were in a whole league of their own.

We then made our way further up to what is a proper village called Hanga, a place where my mother lived out her earliest years with my grandparents and her siblings. Most of the way we went in a car with my Hanga cousin driving. It’s a dirt road and we thoroughly enjoyed the jostling about, shaded by tall, sleek deciduous trees. At one point we had to get off and begin a steep climb up to the family homes of my three cousins and their families. Hill homes are painted in colours that are screaming loud and do not go well with one another. Bright blue goes with bright purple and bright red goes with a bright yellow. I realised that it was because during the cold months of grey and white winter, these colours would quite literally brighten up life.

Hanga has an even more beautiful view of the snow-capped mountains and forests on hills with clone like trees making for a gorgeous cloak of green. It’s the kind of view influencers gun for and pay for in hotel rooms. I’ll talk more about this in my next post.