This was during mid January 2010, when I spent a weeklong Sankranti vacation at my native place. My brother and I came back from a movie at around 1 AM in the night, while he went in to sleep I sneaked out silently and went on to the terrace to review the film for my would-be wife, among other things that youngsters like us had to discuss at the most inopportune moments like that. I can’t recall what we were talking about, not then, certainly not now, but it felt like a lot of time. The weather was mildly unsettling, with the kind of wind that doesn’t cut savagely into your bones, but gently slicing about your skin, almost as if it was admonishing for my impertinence. The fog surrounding me was as dense as the quilt I wrapped myself in, and it was virtually impossible for me to look at anyone 2 meters away. Not that I wanted to notice.

I was pacing around, talking into the phone, smiling at myself, and willing the wind to take a halt, when I saw my mother, coming out of that fog, fixing me with her stare. She asked me who I was talking to, and I said it was a friend. She pressed on further, and asked if it was a boy or a girl, and what was it that I was talking that could not wait till the next morning. I mumbled some incoherent, indignant words, climbed down the stairs with my mobile tucked in my track pocket, and shut myself in our bedroom. My brother was sleeping peacefully, when I took my mobile out again and dialed the number that was first in the list of the dialed calls.

This went on for the rest of the vacation, and I started facing my mother lesser, and spent more time talking on my cell phone, as the days went on. There was a sense of discomfort, with I, trying to hide the fact that I was talking to my girlfriend, for we never discussed those sorts of things at home, and my mother unable to digest the fact that I had grown up and had things to do, and words to say to someone at night.

The day, before I was to leave, I was pacing around the terrace, disconnecting the calls on my phone. My brother called up to me saying that my travel was confirmed for the next day. My mother came up again, grunting with the effort of climbing each step, locking her eyes with mine as I stood in front of her looking at the ground beneath my feet. Her small talk was making me feel edgy, nervous, and almost guilty of something I don’t even know I had done. It was around 7 PM in the evening; the day yet hadn’t cooled off while she started fanning herself with the edge of her saree, on her face where beads of perspiration showed like molten wax about to be hardened by habitual negligence.


I had to say something. I had to face her. I did. I told her I was talking to my girlfriend. I did not feel relief, as I waited for the next question, I knew there were more to come. But the conversation was not like the opening of floodgates, its’ basic and mostly staccato, and it continues to be the same till date.

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