The virus roamed about outside, waiting to sink its claws into anyone foolish enough to walk around without adequate protection. It was invisible but had the strength to stay alive for over forty-eight hours.
Maya’s maid was waxing eloquent over the graphic descriptions floating around as freely as the virus itself.
“Madamji, the virus is powerful. Some say it’s a punishment from God because we have been torturing Mother Nature.”
Maya smiled at the animated expression on Lakshmi’s lined face. Nowadays, all she could do was talk about the virus. When the neighbour’s maids stopped coming for work, Maya was unconcerned. Lakshmi and her family stayed in their servant’s quarters. So, she continued working, and talking!
Of late, Maya had found herself flagging. She, who could do housework without a break, now found it difficult to even clean out the refrigerator, a chore that she didn’t trust Lakshmi to do. Maya would sit down on a low stool and clean section by section, wiping down the interiors till they shone. Nowadays, she found herself short of breath.
The doorbell rang, startling her. Lakshmi ran to open the door. Maya could hear muffled voices.
A young man walked into the living room, smiling. “Hello, Maya Aunty.”
Maya tried to place him. Why did he look so familiar? Those eyes, that smile? Who did he remind her of?
“Hello,” she replied, a tiny frown on her face.
The young man laughed, and again she could see the resemblance to a face from her past.
“Aunty, I’m Samir, Archana’s son.”
Archana, her closest friend in college and her confidant… her soul twin. Her heart soared.
“Come here and give me a hug,” she said, involuntary tears blinding her for a moment.
“Aunty, after I wash my hands,” he smiled again. He was in town for an interview, but suddenly the Prime Minister had announced a lockdown. There was no place he could go to as he was stuck for the next twenty-one days.
The afternoon flew by in the retelling of anecdotes, the days gone by and the bonds that still shone bright.
As the clock struck four, Maya got up with a start.
“Sorry, Samir, let me show you to your room.”
“Aunty, will it be a problem for you? I could always shift to a hotel, you know?”
“Don’t be silly! Archana’s son, a problem?” She placed a gentle hand on his head, and he was struck at her weary expression.
This was not how his mother had described her friend, Maya, who had been a girl filled with vivacity, willing to take any dare and turn it around. The old Maya had broken rules with impunity and even climbed up to the roof of the college. The Principal himself had ordered her to come down, as the whole college applauded her for her daring.
This Maya seemed to be wrapped in a mantle of sorrow that revealed itself in her careworn face and stooped shoulders.
The answer was not long in coming.
“So, you’re Archana’s son, are you?” Maya’s husband, Amit, had a brusque manner about him, a tall, imposing man with an air of importance. “I have heard Maya speak of Archana and the good old days. I have never believed half the things she has told me.”
Samir smiled even though the statement irked him. However, he could not afford to argue with his brand-new host.
Shalini was lounging in a chair, while Shivani was rummaging through some files in the study. They were twins, identical enough to be mistaken for each other.
“Ma, where is my homework file?”Samir was taken aback at her impatient tone. It held a world of frustration, almost dislike in it.
“It was there in the morning, Shivani,” replied Maya.
“I know, Mom. It isn’t there now. Did you shift it, as you always do?” The tone had turned aggressive.
Amit joined in. “Shivani, don’t you know your mother? She is incapable of keeping things where they belong. She will have no idea if you ask her.”
The two girls snickered, looking at their dad with raised eyebrows. Samir was shocked. Why was Maya keeping quiet while the whole family carped at her? He wanted to step in badly, but he wasn’t part of the family. He glanced at Maya, who was fumbling around, looking for her daughter’s precious file. Two spots of red stood out on her cheeks.
The next few days were a revelation to Samir. He had heard so much about the firebrand Maya from his mother, and yet, she seemed to have disappeared altogether into the skin of another woman who didn’t resemble her in the least. She had turned into a darts board for her family. Sadly, neither her husband nor her daughters thought they were doing anything wrong.
“Maya, could I have a decent cup of coffee?”Amit would begin early in the morning, as he lounged around in the living room, reading his newspaper as though his life depended on it. The doorbell would ring continuously… the milkman, the fish monger, the newspaperman. The twins would also be around, but neither of them would open the door. Maya would drop all that she was doing and rush to the door. For as her family said openly, “You’re at home all day. What work do you have? Just a bit of cooking. The maid comes to clean up anyway.” Ironically, now that they were all at home due to the national lockdown, they felt no need to exert themselves in the least.
Samir went for a walk every morning in the terrace as the virus had ensured that the streets were deserted. Once he was back home, he tried to help Maya as much as possible.
“Samir, I’ll do it. I’m used to it, dear boy,” she would say.
“Aunty, I help Mom at home all the time. I can even cook a little. You sit down and let me make you my famed elaichi tea. You’ll never drink normal tea after that.”
Maya allowed herself to be led to a comfortable chair. As she sipped at the steaming cup of tea, her eyes grew wide in wonder.
“Samir, this is the best tea I’ve had, cross my heart!”
Cross my heart! How had that slipped out, she wondered. It was a pet phrase when she and Archana were growing up. She hadn’t said it in a long time. She looked at the young man who sat alongside her, as he stared at her, a strange sadness in his eyes.
“I know, Aunty. Mom used to talk about the catch phrase … the jokes and the fun you had together.” She smiled at him and there was a tiny twinkle in her eye. He fancied hecould see a trace of the young girl she had been.
“Mom, have you ironed my skirt?” came an imperious call from inside. Shalini was obviously ransacking her cupboard, turning everything higgledy-piggledy in her fury.
“MOM!!!” the call came again. Maya started to get up, but Samir held her down.
“Let me go and check, Aunty,” he said, ignoring the harassed look on her face.
Shalini was pulling out everything from her cupboard as Samir walked in. She turned, red-faced, her temper having got the best of her.
“Where on earth is Mom?” she asked him, trying to tone down her anger.
“She is busy in the kitchen.Can I help you?”
“You’re a boy. How can you help?” Her tone was scornful.
“Oh, I help my mom and my sisters all the time. I do my own cupboard too, so I am a bit of an expert.” he smiled at her astonished expression.
He picked up her clothes and began folding them with an expert hand.
“Have you heard of Marie Kondo?” he asked her. She shook her head.
“Well, she has this fabulous method of folding clothes. See, you smoothen out the crease, and then you begin to fold every piece in this manner.” In no time at all, he had cleared a space on the bed and placed a bundle of perfectly folded clothes, one on top of the other.
Shalini’s mouth was open as she watched him in something resembling awe.
“Try one,” he offered. Soon, the two of them were folding clothes, even having a contest on who could do it faster, when Shivani walked in.
“What are you doing?” she exclaimed.
“What does it look like, pudding-head?” her sister retorted. Shivani couldn’t believe her eyes at how neat Shalini’s cupboard looked.
“Hey, could you help me too?” she asked.
“Of course, let’s get started.”
“And now, have you found that skirt of yours, the one you were asking your Mom to hunt for?” he finally asked.
Shalini held it out, shame-facedly.
“Let me iron it for you. I am also an expert at that.”
He took it from her and smoothed out the creases and ironed it out for her. The two girls watched him in silence. The obvious question lurked in both their minds. Finally, Shivani could not resist.
“How is it that you are good at all these things? Being a boy?”
Samir chuckled. “I have a tough nut of a mother who made it clear from the start that I should not consider myself privileged just because I am a boy. I have always ironed my clothes, washed my underclothes and kept my room clean.”
“What about your sisters?” asked Shalini.
“Oh, they do the same. All three of us have duties. We go buy groceries, pick up the milk and the newspaper and take it in turns on weekends to cook.”
“WHAT???” Both the girls shouted so loudly that Maya came scrambling in to see what the matter was. She looked at the two cupboards of the girls in shock. Never ever had she seen them so tidy, with clothes perfectly folded.
“Samir, did you do that?” she quavered.
“Well, all three of us did it, Aunty,” Samir grinned.
That was a start.
The next chore Samir wanted to tackle was cooking. There were times when he wanted to shake up the girls for the way they disparaged their mother’s cooking. However, he would have to be tactful.
That evening, Maya was kneading dough for rotis. Samir loved the aroma of freshly made rotis, an aroma that reminded him of his mother.
“Let me make a special egg curry, Aunty,” he remarked.
“No, son, you’re a guest. How can I make you cook?” smiled Maya.
“Please, Aunty, I have a really delicious recipe. I make it at home all the time.”
Maya smiled at him. “Archana was always the brave one. Even when she was in college, she had strong views on gender equality. I remember one speech that she made, where she proclaimed that if she had a son, she would make him proficient, not only at his career, but also at home chores. She said that she would not want a parasite, be it a son or daughter.”
“Well, she stuck to her stand and now, all three of us have knuckled under it,” Samir laughed. Maya knew that he was proud of his mother and that he was trying to pass on a message to her as well.
“Mmm, what’s that amazing smell?” The girls walked into the kitchen, something they never did.
“Just some egg curry that I am making… plus all the other amazing smells from Aunty’s rajma curry and bhindi-alu.” Samir watched the girls’ faces change.
“Ma always makes the same old things. We are sick and tired of her cooking!” Shalini was the vocal one, and Shivani just nodded.
This was Samir’s cue. He turned to them, a challenge in his sparkling eyes.
“Ok, tomorrow, let’s cook some new dishes. We will give Aunty a rest and the three of us will take over the kitchen. What do you say?”
“But we don’t know how to cook,” pouted Shivani.
“There is nothing to cooking… just a matter of placing ingredients together and coming up with a dish. We could go into the Internet right now and create a menu. What do you both say?”
The girls glanced at each other. It sounded exciting.
“Will you help us?”
“Of course, I will,” whooped Samir. “Let’s do it!”
The evening went by as the three pored over recipes.
“How about a Chinese menu?” suggested Samir.
“Wow, we love Chinese,” came the answer.
The next morning went in a flurry of slicing vegetables, creating sauces and making noodles and chilli chicken. The girls went up and down from the laptop to the kitchen, measuring out everything as though in a lab. When Maya tried to help, she was sent away firmly.
“Go and put your feet up, Aunty. We are having loads of fun.”
Amit came in, wondering at all the activity. He turned to Maya.
“Get me a cup of tea,” he said in his normal brusque tone.
“Uncle, can I make you a cup of elaichi tea?” asked Samir. “There is no place in the kitchen with all three of us in there.”
Soon, Amit was sipping at elaichi tea, dazed at the sight of his lazy daughters working in the kitchen. He stole a glance at Maya who was, for a change, reading the newspaper and looking at ease, very unlike her normal worried self. A pang of compunction tore through him, but he was too conditioned to needling her to let it really matter.
“So, Madam, you’re having a rest, are you? Wait till these guys get out of the kitchen. They will leave it a mess and you’ll be cleaning it up.”
At the end of the cooking session, Samir rounded the two girls up. “Time to clean up!”
“Oh, Ma can do that. She has been sitting doing nothing, after all,” replied Shivani.
“And I am exhausted!” added Shalini.
“Really? Then imagine how exhausted your mother gets. She does this, day in and day out, with not a soul to help her,” Samir remarked slyly. He did not wait to see the effect this statement had on the girls, but set about getting them to clean up the kitchen.
Lunch was a spectacular success. Samir made the girls take out their good crockery and cutlery. After a good clean-up, he showed them how to lay the table, the way he and his sisters did at home. The dishes looked and tasted wonderful, and Amit and Maya applauded them for their efforts.
That evening, they had the leftovers for dinner. Amit went into the study to catch up on his office work, and the girls went to bed, exhausted but happy. Maya and Samir sat outside on garden chairs, in perfect silence, looking up at the stars. They could see fireflies at a distance as the balmy cool breeze swept over them.
“Aunty, what are you thinking?” he asked.
“You know, Samir, remember that speech that I mentioned? The one that your mother made in college?”
He nodded. She went on, dreamily, “I wish I could hear it all over again.”
Samir smiled in the darkness. “And you shall. I will ask Mom to email the video to me.”
Maya ruffled his hair gently, a world of emotion running through her. Such a dear boy, so like her Archana! They sat there in silence as a sense of peace entered their souls.
“What do we do today?” asked Shivani.
“Let’s do some gardening?” suggested Samir.
“No, that’s boring!” remarked Shalini.
“My mom would whack you for that,” remarked Samir.
“What for?” asked an affronted Shalini.
“For using the word ‘boring’… Mom made sure that she whacked the word out of us. Every time we used it, she would cut off our privileges – no television, no Internet, no playing with friends. We soon stopped using it at all – the taboo word, as we refer to it even now.”
“Your mom sounds really tough,” Shivani looked at Samir. “You must have been terrified of her.”
“Ah, that’s where you’re mistaken. We adore our Mom. If we are all well-balanced young people, it is because she was strict with us. And yet, we had the most fun times with her as well. She celebrated every festival with gusto. She played cards and board games with us. She gave away food and clothes to strangers just so we would learn the importance of giving. She is the most fun mom ever. And from what she has told me, Maya Aunty was just like her, even funnier than she was.”
The girls were silent. Their mother was not strict in the least and yet, they could not think of her as a fun mom. There was a noise behind them, and there stood Amit, a strange expression in his eyes.
Samir stood up suddenly. “Actually, I have a better idea. I would like to show you all something on my laptop.”
The family sat together in the study, watching in silence.
“I believe in gender equality. A man and a woman hold up equal parts of the sky. Anything a man can do, a woman can do. In fact, there are things that a woman can do, that a man cannot.
I live my life in perfect freedom. I will continue to do so. I will marry a man who respects me for what I am. When I have children, I will make them proficient at their professions and at home chores. That will make them balanced human beings fit to survive in the world. I will not bring up a parasite, be it a son or a daughter. That much will I promise myself.”
The speech ended, the camera zoomed around the campus, where hundreds were applauding. Archana was in the frame, a smile on her face, but she too was applauding as the camera panned on to the speaker, her soul twin and her friend, Maya.
Writer: Deepti Menon
Artist: Pratiksha Dhanik
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