It was an early winter morning; the thick fog had not allowed in the sunshine yet. The birds hadn’t chosen to sing atop the concrete high-rise towerﷺs and the air was laden heavy with the last day’s industrial smoke. Yet, there was something good about it just being a morning. Such are city mornings! She was already tired — having hurriedly prepared breakfast, packing lunch boxes, feeding the little toddler, giving her a bath and then herself ܫgetting ready for office. She was struggling to keep herself from falling as she bent her knees to pick up the car keys, while holding a shoulder bag, a laptop, toddler’s bag, a sling, some food and the toddler in her arms.
“Sunil, we are leaving, please lock the door!”, turning back she shoutedꩲ, picking up t🐽he last packet, her breakfast packed in an aluminum foil.
The elevator was swiftly taking all of them down to the car parking — Anisha, little Ammu and the many bags. She brushed her wet hair looking into the elevator mirror, and lovingly admired her little girl, who she had dressed in a little red jacket with fringes on her forehead, li🏅ttle pigtails and matching hair clips, with a doll in her hands.
Anisha put the toddler on the front seat, tied the safetyﷺ belt around her and then, after carefully putti💜ng all the bags on the rear seat, counting hastily, if she had missed anything from the list in her head, sat with an audible exhaling of breath, tightening her driver belt. As she started the car to drop Ammu to the day care and then drive to work, she unconsciously took a wrong turn — to her mother’s, not to the office, as if the steering knew where to take her. She didn’t seem to mind the wheel’s decision either.
At the traffic signal, she hurriedly called her mot𒈔her to announce he𒆙r sudden plan.
“Ma, I am just reaching you in about an hour”, she said,🌃 grabbing the sandwich.
“Alꦬl well between yo💫u and Sunil?” she asked anxiously.
“What, Ma! Why do you do this? Eᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚverything is fine. Can’t I come just like that?” Anisha said, annoyed.
The next call was to a colleague to inform the boss for leave, while she wrote an email managing to finish it after stopping at three signals. Ma was too happy to have them over. She to𝐆ok out Ammu’s toys and started cooking in excitement for both of them.
At the signal where they turned rightward for the house, she already felt entering home. She could close her eyes and walk that road to reach home, like the bunch of friends had once done it — walking backwards from the playground. While she waited at the crossing, a little girl knocked on the window, asking for some money. Anisha handed her down a ten rupee note and then instinctively looked back at her dressed-up daughter in all the fineries that her guilt-ridden salary had bought. As the signal turned green, she took the next turn and swiftly parked the car in the little space available between two cars. As she was taking out all the bags from the car, she found her mother already there to greet them. They hugged, and she lovingly took Ammu on her shoulder while Anishඣa walked in with the bags after them.
Anisha carelessly threw the bags on the bed, much like she used to fling her school bag after coming back home. They sat, Ma made tea and laid out an elaborate breakfast, as if she hadn’t eaten ꧃in ages. And she did eat like she hadn’t.
She crossed her legs on the table and sank into the sofa, while the doting grandma was feeding Ammu’s favourite pancakes to her. It had always been like that, Anisha never had to atte♚nd to Ammu when Ma was around. Sometimes she didn’t know if it was her or Ammu Ma was playing with as she watched them.
Stretching hersel🧔f, she started complaining, like the little girl she had been, just back from the swings ridꦦe, denied a rightful chance.
“Ma, I don’t know when the day begins, and when today’s twenty fifth hour merges with tomorrow, announ💫cing the💞 next day.”
Ma listened intently, and nodding knowingly.
“Amm💟u, the house, Sunil, the job — all drain away myself from me. I have not a minute to myself. I feel like a machine, I mean I work likeꦕ one.”
The mother nodded again. Knowingly once again.
“I want to know a sunrise from the sunset, so I can breatඣhe. I am tired, Ma.”
The mother massaged her head, stroking her gentle f🗹ingers, ru𒀰nning them softly through her soft, uncared-for hair. Anisha closed her eyes, revelling in the moment.
“How I envy you, Ma, I wish I could move ahead several years in a blink and I could be like you. I too could sit, retired🌱 from work, relaxed.”
“ꦯAh, hmm…”, Ma nodded yet again, now with a clear dislike for what she said. Her fingers stopped 🔯suddenly. Cleaning her hands, she came and sat on the sofa facing Anisha.
“I guess I quit. I need to, from the job that is, the least guilty of all burdens. ᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚMaybe for a few years. I can struggle no more,” said the daughter.
“I can’t … I don’t know… I mean… You understand, right? I ha💙ven’t talked to Sunil either. But that’s because I know he won’t understand.” She buried her face in her palms, and rubbed her eyes, looking into nothing.
Ma just listened, in silence and anxiety. She nodded, hurt and disapprovingly. Then silently ag🥂reed and disagreed with Anisha.
She picked up the empty cups and leftovers from the table and walked to the kitchen. Her hands moving quicker with the dishes, her walk a little faster and heavier. She could feel her ears and cheeks gettin🎉g warmer. Anisha💦 was waiting for her to return, eagerly, her stomach churning - that familiar feeling she would get when waiting for an exam result.
She returned to 🦂the table with a faint, reluctant smile, as if betrayed.
“What about my struggles?”, she asked sternly, feeling a choke in her throat, forcing her voice doꦆwn, and failiಌngly hiding the quiver.
Anisha, stunned, watched her as she cleaned Ammu’s face and hands. Ammu suddenly looked like an old black-and-white photograph of herself Ma had so carefully preserved, framed and kept on her table. She looked around the perfectly clean house, her room still as orderly and organized that it had always been kept by her. The clock swiftly jumped back to the time💜 the photograph was clicked, and an entire reel started running in her head, with faint voices and coming from years ago amidst the smell of those long-gone summer evenings. She could reminisce Ma getting up at dawn as she would be half asleep, working at home and at her school, seamlessly shifting roles. Alone, all alone. Anisha was overcome by a terrible guilt. “How did I never see what I can see now? How did I never know she was tired? How did I never ask her if I could help?”
“What a🔯bout my struggles”, she repeated, breaking Anisha’s reel play. “That I got you here? Don’t you owe it 🍬to me to keep going?”
“But then, it is your decision. Why should you take another burden, of my struggles?” she said looking away, trying to hold back her tears of di𒁃sappointment. Flashes of her own breaking down at times, and꧂ then gathering herself to keep going on stopped her from saying anything further.
And as Ma laid her healing hand on her back, Anisha felt like she had magically inserted some fallen, missing piece of a little bone back into her column of stacked vertebrae, something that immediatelꦰy held her up — straight, steady and strong. Just then she imagined generations of mothers coiling up together inside her backbone as 🍎she smiled to herself.
They hugged tight, sil൲ently hailing each other’s struggles even when weary bodies and fatigued minds wanted to give up sometimes.
“I will pick up Ammu on my way back from oꦉffice.”
“Bye!” she said with a smile.
And when she started the car, th𒀰e steering somehow 🌳knew again where to drive along.
(Vineeta Sharma is Associate Professor (Econoꦐmics) at Kirori Mal College, University of Delhi.)
