RECOGNIZING YELLOW PELLETS

Hi,

I will share a story I wrote. Basically want to gauge how full or not full of shit is this.
Hope it's readable  -_-
yup in case you're wondering it is called- recognizing yellow pellets!

Someone once told me water is the most convenient form since it can flow anywhere but anything else displaced lends itself closer to death. When I heard that I felt a momentary stab -I wasn't anything like water. Then I thought of water moulding rocks into smoother forms and realized other forms changed around water and this is the story of my life. My life and its truth twisted itself around the ethos of modernity and its precociousness while I pined away on nostalgia. 

My mother was a pretty slight woman and my father was a hulking fellow and I took after her in every way. We lived in Bhoi, a small village below Shillong and my father told me stories about Assam and our home in Titabor and how we'd soon go visit his brothers. We never did go to Titabor but I live in Assam now with my son and his family in Guwahati. My parents raised me to be a woman of conviction and virtue. I could sing well and I cooked using minimal ingrediants saving on curd, sugar etc. Frugality, after all bought the fruits in the living room of my childhood home. 

"No way i'm giving you 50 anna for that. It's worth 35 anna," my mother said. "no more." . My mother fought every vegetable vendor for 15 annas off a dozen and she mostly won her battles. The rickshaw drivers knew better than to overcharge our colony since my mother bullied down the rates for every ride. Her haggling exploits went into the folds of an embroidered handkerchief that she locked away in a drawer every day. Month after month we watched her win her battles and come October she would finally count these shiny coins and crumpled notes while we'd wait outside her door. They formed the budget allocated to our Puja gifts and every year we waited on the weight of that embroidered handkerchief.

thud, thud, thud! 

If she clicked her tongue irritably then we'd get lozenges and sweets but if we heard the thud of her leg hitting the bed then we'd get new clothes and trinkets.

Thud, Thud, Thud! 

It was a good year and the five of us children excitedly left for the fields to discuss what we could ask her to buy us this Puja. That Puja was important for me because I bled onto my cotton underdress for the first time right after returning home from the festivities. My mother took me to the kitchen and asked me to sit down. She looked at me solemnly and talked while tidying the pleats on my mekhela. "Your journey begins now. You will be married to a man and you will have children. You can choose to be purposeful in living that life. I have been living for you and your father. Soon you will live for your husband and his children." 

I listened to her and I only had one question which I didn't ask her -will he be like my father?- and I sat listening it seemed, till the day I got married. 

My husband was nothing like my father. He was born into a rich Bengali family, he had been educated abroad and he didn't love me. I married him and went to Guwahati to stay in a big building his family owned. They had a telephone, an Ambassador and in my second year there they even bought a television. We became one of the five families in all of Guwahati to own a television and even the neighbours, the Sharmas weren't invited to dinner anymore since they didn't own one. I remember my husband but it was his washstand that occupied my mind more so. 

Hand pressed oils, talcum powder, cologne, shampoo, soaps, his comb; my husband's obscene vanity and bathing routine put my femininity to shame.

 He would begin by lathering his hair with shampoo, caressing it with a fervor he never afforded my body. Then he'd use scented soap after which he's use the pumice stone for his feet and elbows. Finally he'd emerge from the well employed bathroom to dab cologne under his ears, pat himself with powder and comb his oiled hair. This entire exercise lasted three hours and rejected memories of my father's sweat. He was a handsome man and we played the marriage well. I bore him a son and daughter over some complacent weekend and I managed monthly accounts. In this home we regularly bought butter, eggs, meat and vegetables and never carried food over to the next meal. They ate poached eggs and meats already cooked at a shop and drank juice and called it an English breakfast. I was an alien to such excesses but my pretty face helped mask my uneasiness. Then one day their paper factory caught fire and suddenly creditors rushed in and bankruptcy was in order. Now the english breakfast tapered down to egg and toast and butter could only be bought twice a week. My mother's words came back to me- "you can choose to be purposeful"- and so I did what I knew best how to. I found my feet again soaring above the mire of wealth to successfully cutting costs. My husband however found it difficult to reconcile to just soap and talcum powder; he missed his shampoo so much so that he took to alcohol and began hitting me. I watched him waste away on cigarettes and alcohol but it was his beloved shampoo that had the last laugh a couple of years later. With my haggling exploits I had managed to save enough to buy him shampoo and the next morning he passed away in his sanctuary reeking of the shampoo. I rushed to the bathroom when I heard the loud noise. He had managed to slip under the shampoo's lather and crack his neck against the bathtub. He died instantly and there was a little blood but it was the expression on his face that deeply stirred me. An annoyed grimace held his death in comic timing as if he knew when he was falling that he would be laughed at in death. 

After his death and several change of maids in an empty house I moved in with my son and his family. I was so far removed from their youth and its happy illusions that they excluded me. This exclusion found its prefect expression in the dining table, It was a square table with eight seats and two of those were always unoccupied- that left the five of us and everyone had their specific place on the table except for me. The children sat next to each other and my son sat with his wife. I sat alone with interchangeable company in the form of different guests who came to visit. My son was a sensible businessman and he ignored me out of indifference. Guwahati with its affectations made my transparent morals seem flimsy and so my very identity struck my son and his family as deficient. Maybe I should have lived alone but the building- as my son had decided- was to become a shopping center so I was without a home. 

A year after living with them I joined a welfare association which was a pitiable excuse conjured for rich wives and widows to monger gossip. There, Mrs. Das' anecdotes were famous for her inadvertent sobbing during recitations about her husband's infidelity. I always tried my best to hide my smirk when everyone clambered to console her. I thought weakness was a handicap and vulnerability never seemed a fair weapon to use against your family, not when it gives you a dull advantage. I think sometimes that my husband hated me more so for these philosophies I endorsed so publicly. I didn't smile much and my laugh was brittle; even my pretty face couldn't hide these absences of vivacity. Guwahati's whims only inspired apathy in me so I held onto my mother's convictions with fierce loyalty. I fought every rickshaw driver for my three rupees and I was infamous in 2nd Gate market, Paltan Bazaar and even in the fancy Pan bazaar area for my haggling.  Haggling however is now considered miserly and unethical and I am a monolith of that uncivilized time. I wasted my breath on every single one of the vendors and drivers and with resigned sighs they absently pocketed my bargained price. They went on doing their business treating me with the slight malignancy wasted on mosquitoes every time I went shopping but it wouldn't deter me.

I thought back to Bhoi more often these days and every time I thought of the day Monty ran away I felt nostalgia warm me all the way to my toes. I had chased after her, the truant cow that managed to sever itself from the tether and run into the wild. It was my turn to milk her and I was an obedient child so I saw it as a duty to get Monty back. Everyone else saw her absconding but they didn't chase her because they were afraid. However when they saw me running after her, my anklets sounding off brass tacks they followed suit. I ran after her for almost an hour and I made sure I milked her that evening when I quietly put her back in the shed. My father was proud of my tenacity but this same quality now poisoned me to the present and it called me-

"foolish," "nag," and "illiterate."

These were the words my grand children likened to me. They loved me with a halfhearted zeal that would perk up every time I bought back lozenges after a shopping trip and retract back to sulking when I summoned them for meals. They had perfected maintaining some form of employment just when it was time for a meal and so that resulted in separate eating times. It worried me because dinner was the most important meal in my childhood where my father told us fables of good and bad, Sometimes it would be about his friends who fought in the civil war and other times it would be about my mother's clairvoyance which saved our family from doom several times. He'd always end with a joke we didn't find funny but we were kinder than the children today and so we laughed along with him. My son sometimes decided that it was family time and they'd go out for dinner but I wasn't invited so I'd stay up in bed waiting for their return, all the while thinking whether he would tell a joke at the end of dinner- and if they'd laugh. The virtues of today revolved around something they call honesty but I think cruelty wielded this petty disguise. My son and his wife bickered, other times they would make love furiously and then again they'd be indifferent to the other's presence and the children saw them through all these since they never bothered to keep their business private. I even caught them kissing in the kitchen once. Maybe this is a better way to straddle relationships but my understanding was limited to my experiences. Even so I went about trying to make sure we'd eat a meal together everyday no matter how futile it seemed sometimes. 

Isha and Mainak were beautiful children borne off good looking parents and they were clever with schoolwork. They weren't rebellious or difficult but they lacked respect and their obsession with computers and television made them insensitive. They had queer traditions of dismantling their mother's collection of cosmetics, looking through drawers they had no business with and eating with sullen faces. One day they came up to me and asked me a question I had no idea how to answer.

 "Aita, why do you never reply when you're in the bathroom? I just want to know if you're shitting or peeing so that I can wait accordingly for my turn." 

Isha backed Mainak up with an even more insolent  query "And we never know if you fart. Do you go into the bathroom to fart?" 

They both had such sincere expressions that I just didn't know if I should just tell them but I know this wasn't fair to my sensibilities and so I didn't answer. Then I caught them waiting outside the bathroom door a couple of days later and realized they were trying to gauge my activities in that private space and I didn't agree with this assault so I formulated a plan. I used the bathroom for exactly the same amount of time every time I went in, mirrored all actions for both my businesses and this way I managed to evade their games and soon they tired of it anyway. Isha kept buying frocks and skirts and ridiculous hairbands in all colors and her pretty head bobbed away in excitement every time she went out shopping with her mother. Mainak would accompany them and end up buying another computer game that would ensure he skipped more meals and stayed locked up in his room. They never wanted to listen to my fables and complained about the heroes saying they were stupid for wanting to marry the princess even though she is a swan. They asked me questions about my life that I didn't wish to tell them and they thought I was queer and poked fun at me. Sometimes we'd have a good time when I told them about my father. My home in Bhoi made them curious and stories from my childhood fascinated them mildly so we found some ground to lay the premise for love. 

It's October and I've been very particularly aggressive in my haggling exercises to make sure I could get Chini and Geet some nice gifts. Additionally Baba had promised me some extra money this month because it was Puja. I thought I could use both these funds and be a little extravagant. I had planned to buy myself a sewing machine and thereby save on Chini's expenses by making her frocks. 

Of course my son was a successful man and he didn't need to cut costs but I have been a woman of habit. And water I'd never become- if evolution meant disrespect and apathy and more consumer durables I'd long chosen to wash my hands off that humanity. The children - the evolved ones- sneaked away and watched television to avoid the ceremonial rites during Pujas and only participated when we went shopping for new clothes. It vexed me but I worked instead upon buying them the nicest gifts. The day came and we decided to go to the fancy Pan Bazaar, We finally decided upon a frock for Isha and a t-shirt for Mainak but we walked around the market to make sure there weren't better clothes we were forfeiting. When we went around the corner to cut across to Babu Enclave, Mainak stopped at a shop window and he pulled me in after him. It was a toy shop and he wanted a particler gun. It was a fancy toy gun with a box of cartridges that had these little yellow pellets. 

"Aita, I don't want the t shirt. I want this gun." he said.

I looked at him and I knew I wouldn't buy him that ridiculous gun. He continued since he couldn't hear my thoughts. 

"Ronny bought this last week and everyone in school wanted it but he told us his father got it for him from Delhi. He said there's nothing like it in Guwahati. I'll show that idiot. Everybody thinks he's such a great guy but he's just a liar." 

Maybe he wanted to keep talking about this classmate but he stopped and just hugged me in that selfish way children use their warmth to get their way. I didn't budge.

I said, "I don't have the money to get you the gun. It's durga puja and we're Bengalis so we have to make sure we follow our traditions with more zeal. For the Doshomi Puja you have to wear new clothes." He looked at me and unrelenting, went on about how much he liked the gun and that if the gift is for him then he should be able to decide what he wants. His argument wasn't without grace but we went back to the shop and purchased the frock and t shirt regardless. He sulked all the way back home and I was glad we lived so close to pan bazaar so he could get away from me and be angry with more ease.

They were in the study when I heard them. Chini was trying to console him. 

"It's just a gun. She bought you a nice t-shirt. She's so miserly with money and she still buys us these gifts. She's got ideas about god and religion." 

"I just wanted the gun. If it's about money then the shirt costs as much as the gun. She's so stupid. I hate her."

I didn't listen to the rest of their conversation but I found myself taking a rickshaw to the market. They didn't know I had haggled the whole year only to buy them gifts and I didn't like explaining myself so I decided to resolve this crisis by buying the gun with the money I had kept for the sewing machine, I called him to my room and presented him with the gun. His face looked somewhat disfigured because it couldn't accommodate the former resignation and present ecstacy at the same time. He quickly shook off the bitterness and with a promiscuous deliberation hugged me very tight. After saying his thanks he ran around the house showing off his gun.  Isha came up to me and gave me a hug and I didn't understand how a plastic gun could be such a source of comfort to these children. I was admittedly a little warm inside and the sewing machine retreated into the recesses of unsolicited memories. It was the Ashtami and so it was the night we all feasted together as a family. I went about cooking fish in the traditional spices and all the while I could hear Mainak's footsteps energetically echo around the house shouting "bang bang". 

Everybody had washed themselves and there was a general energy in the city that had found its way into our house. I went to call everyone for dinner and they were all ready but Mainak was playing a computer game. It was the one I hated the most. It required him to shoot various creatures and walk towards more such creatures only to shoot them. It seemed a ridiculous preoccupation and I had read in Panorama that violent games  were a catalyst for the school gun violence in America. I reiterated this fact to him and he didn't even look at me. With a studied reflex he shut the door to his room and said he'll be out in five minutes. I was used to this behavior but today was the Ashtami dinner and we always ate this meal together. I went back to his room in five minutes to call him and he shouted at me. He said he'll be done soon and if I keep calling him then he can't concentrate and it'll take him longer to finish the level to come for dinner. So I left him alone for a subsequent five minutes and this time when I went back I had decided I wouldn't leave till he came along with me. Suddenly -and it was all a moment of madness- he took the plastic gun lying next to him on the table and shot me in the face. 

The yellow pellet hit me squarely on my forehead.

I looked at his face as he said sorry several times but his eyes boasted a vacant glaze from playing the computer game too long. After dinner I went out to the terrace. There I watched the cars pass by and the city lights till I couldn't watch any longer. My eyes blurred and I cried for myself. In that moment of desperation I made a temporary resolve to evolve; maybe try and see through other eyes because I had worn mine out. I stood there for a while but nobody came out to look for me and this was a consolation.