Divorce…

…continued … The Tree that remembered everything…30

This the tree does not know. I don’t know whether the tree is still there. Even if it is the tree wouldn’t know because it is not here. This is happening now.

The call did not come to me; it did not come for me. Dada spoke to Dot matrix.

We call her Dot matrix. When she starts she goes khat…khat…khat…khat! Sometimes we call her Dotty. She shows displeasure at being called Dot Matrix. She is not unpleased with Dotty. We, our son and I, think she sort of likes the name. So lets call her Dotty, she will not mind.

Dada called Dotty and had a chit chat. We, dada and I, are not talking. He sent me a Whatsapp what’s up a couple of weeks ago. It was as if nothing had happened. As if nothing was the matter. I ignored the message. I read it but did not reply. The blue tick, I think, suitably conveyed my continuing displeasure.

“He did not say anything about Ma” Dotty called me soon after Dada spoke to her. I was in office.

“He said that they have let Manju di go”

“Why” it was upsetting. Manju di had been there since I was yet to be a teen. Dotty had known her from when she was still a student.

“He said there was no work for her to do anymore”

Dotty called Manju di. She called me back to tell me what Manju di said. I was still in office.

“36 years she has spent in that house. She was crying because she has not seen Ma for 4 weeks now”

“4 weeks?”

“Yes, they asked her to leave a month ago. Imagine and no one told us even to pass on the information. Forget discussing with us; forget involving us in the decision. But that we have already seen that we have no say. And not just that your Mother is not yet dead, she may not remember anybody or anything but she is very much present. What bothers me is that Manju di was possibly the only continuity that Ma would connect if ever there are moments of lucidity. And what do they mean she has no work? What work does anyone have?”

There is a reason we call her Dot Matrix. But all her points were true. We had discussed them so many times.

“She has vascular dementia” Dotty has spent hours and days and weeks analysing and researching Ma’s symptoms. She is now convinced that what Ma has is this.

Ma has been forgetting for at least 3 years now, everyone there forgot to mention that to us. On the telephone Ma would seem distracted. Then it slowly dawned on us that she had these spells when she forgot.

“It is age” the Calcutta people kept saying “It is normal”

The penny dropped when she asked me how Papa died. She asked me “when did he die?”

I was there for a day. We were alone in the room. I was reading a book lying down beside her. She was sitting on the bed. There was some music playing. Then she turned towards me and asked me those questions. Her brows furrowed in concentration, the effort of trying to remember and failing writ large across her expression. She asked hesitatingly as if unsure of the question itself. Unsure if the question made sense.

Had there been a Papa at all?

The spells began to grow and join up with each other. New memory stopped being created. Then the recent past began to go. People began disappearing from her life. The newer and younger the acquaintances the earlier they went. The fog started stretching backwards reaching out to her past and obliterating her life bit by bit. We became strangers to her. She no longer tried to cover up.

Speech or language has not left her. Now she converses as one does meeting an absolute stranger for the first time. But no one speaks to her anymore. The gaps in her memory are no longer separated by moments of lucidity.

Every moment is new to Ma. Everyone still in her life is a stranger. To her I too am as irrelevant as Manju di’s dismissal.

“They gave her the month’s pay and a bonus of 15 days and said you need not come from tomorrow”

We talked and cried and could not stop lamenting.

“Through the worst of times Manju di stood by the family. I cannot remember the house without Manju di coming in the morning or leaving in the evening.”

It hurt.

We knew movies had such story lines. We read books and heard tell of incidents where such things happened. It didn’t happen to us. My family cannot treat people like this.

“When the lockdown was there and no one was allowed to move, she fought with the police and took back roads to come to work everyday because Ma depended on her. She told the police that an 84 year old blind woman was waiting for Manju di to come, who is going to feed her and wash her and clean her if the police don’t allow Manju di to go? Will the police men go and do that or do they want that old grandmother to just die?”

Dotty filled me up on other information that she had gleaned from various sources.

“They have 3 other maids from the agency, one comes in the morning and one is for the night. God knows what the 3rd one does. They also have the 2 who come and clean the house and cook. Then they tell Manju di we can’t afford to keep so many people.”

I have known Dada all my life. He has not known me all his life. He is older by 7 years. He does not have sentiment. People say that is being practical. Dotty says that is being heartless. When Bula didi, Boudi, was there this practical side was kept in check. He cannot feel. He has to be told to feel. It is easy to tell him that what he is doing is the right thing.

Boudi’s mother had said “He is a vessel, he accepts whatever is poured in”

“Manju di said that the loss of income is secondary, it is the sudden pruning of her life that she is finding difficult to accept. It is more than relationships, it is habit. It is like the seasons; like the rising sun; like the wind blowing. The house still stands, Ma still lives but Manju di is no longer a part of it. It is a sudden divorce. “

We worried how would she manage? She was in her 70’s. Her husband can no longer pull the rickshaw or his profession. Their sons too have moved away. There is no difference between how her family treated her and how mine did. For the sake of a few thousand rupees a month we let her go.

“We did not” corrected Dotty. “Dada did. They did”

…to continue…