The Melancholic Bond and an Insufficient Daughter

“So, I am leaving on this Sunday night.  .  . ”

“Alone?”

“Yea . . . It’s the Air India flight, so the luggage thing is sorted. Also, Anita aunty will come to pick me up.”

(Silence)

“It feels like yesterday was your first day in school. You chose to go to school while you were still underage and we never had to convince you about it.  .  .  You know, on your first day you didn’t eat your lunch (laughs). . .”

My incapacity to respond to it muted our conversation. But I was amused by the emotions flickering in her eyes. Still, it was unbearable for me to know her closer and I turned away into thoughts.

                        

My reality, since the age of one was that of being raised by grandparents and away from parents. To me, parents were a holiday destination or freedom from the rules imposed by grandparents. Being with them on vacations meant waking up late or choosing jalebi over breakfast or to devour chocolates and ice-creams to my heart’s content or to be loud! I was more of a Daddy’s little girl, until my parents separated 12 years ago. One rainy evening, when I was nine, I realized that I no more have a family of my own, even though no one ever acknowledged it (how smart of me!). Looking at the rain slipping down the hibiscus tree, I explained to my little sister (who was then barely seven) that our lives have changed forever; without any verbal complications! Amma and my little sister found some comfort in each other but I was drifting away from them to my solitude and intensified belief of being an undesirable existence. Ever since then, I am revolting; with myself and them. It took me years to learn to love my very own sister and still, I don’t know how to be sufficient for her. 

Amma and I, share a complicated relationship. My childhood was all about an unfulfilled craving for her warmth but as I grew up to become more of me, I sought less of her. Being a single parent, strained her a lot because that was the first ever real responsibility she had to shoulder. She raised us telling how the gold ore becomes gold but not about the prince who rides on his horse to help the imprisoned girl. She was a normal human being who derived strength from the hostility around her. Thus, she was a crude mother who forced us to do things against our will. She made us believe in education and independence. There were never any words of appreciation or consolation but fierce demands. That was stressful but that chiseled the best out of us. Our ideologies are in constant conflict and sometimes we froth with hatred to each other. Also, there are moments of affection that I consciously avoid and she interprets pathetically. 

Yes, we are two insufficient people with messy lives. We tried to satiate each other’s emotional voids but ended up becoming victims to each other’s mental traumas. Quoting Nayyirah Waheed, “mothers are humans who sometimes give birth to their pain instead of their children”, I admit that I am fully aware of the indismissbale pain that I am to her because physically and emotionally (to some extent) I am a replication of my father- the man she loved the most and the man who ripped her apart. I am their first born whom she cannot ever hate but I am every square inch his stubbornness that she cannot ever love. To be very truthful, our hearts have muted.

 At nights, drugged by painful memories, I ask myself, how could she abandon that tiny me and believe that I will survive the silence and punishments. Then it suddenly occurs to me, maybe she has suffered more anguish and disappointments than that I have ever known and how can I measure the love and pain in her heart!

I am not an acquiescent daughter (Honestly, I do not regret that). I may not be the daughter who cannot pass a day without hearing her mother. I may not be the daughter who want to rush back to home on holidays. Maybe, I am less of a daughter. Maybe, I am Catherine of Tarun Tejpal’s The Alchemy of Desire. But I have learnt to accept and embrace our melancholic bond. I have learnt to long and to exist without seeking anything. I have learnt to be myself without any male nomenclature to secure my existence. I have learnt to not fail her.

Yes, my first wisdom shall be named "mother" and everything else are its offshoots.