IT IS A TRUTH UNIVERSALLY ACKNOWLEDGED THAT A SINGLE WOMAN IN POSSESSION OF HERSELF, shall be repeatedly hounded by societal and familial questions regarding this hyper specific life-altering occasion hovering everyday life like a grumbling phantom. You know, the one.
For Ira, there were no exceptions.
The black analog clock on the wall had a purple sheen, she’d never known. Not had she realized when the third cup of coffee this day had gone cold. The sun here in Gujarat was immaculate in his gilded splendour, even as he retired to his own abode, orange and red (yes, too similar to a ripe kapuri mango. Who could even blame Lord Hanumana?)
“—yes, yes! I keep telling her. Not all men are like that. In fact, neither her father nor I have had issues with love marriage either,” Her mother with her phone pressed between her ear and shoulder, was prancing around the living room with the vivacity that had lacked in her youth. Nutan was grateful, and thoroughly fortunate, for the privacy she had so coveted since forever, without the chatter of a humongous Indian family directing her every move. No men with weaponizing incompetence sprawled around now. That had come with Ira, her eldest one.
“Wise men say . . . only fools rush in,” hummed Ira, partly a soliloquy and partly to her mother. Except this was no rushing. She was almost into her blissful middle age now, only three more years to tick off. “But I can’t help falling in love with you,” she sang, a lilt in her voice, a teasing even as she advanced an arm towards Nutan who avoided it with the grace of a peacock and swaggered away.
Ira promptly retrieved her hand and dramatically put it on her heart. “Ouch! How very unaffectionate, Mother. You wound me.”
“She hasn’t brought a single boy home. No- not a date or even a mention! God knows what she is to do with all her life ahead alone, Bhabhi. Didn’t your two angels find their princes charming? She would too, if she were to put in the effort.” In this humble span of an hour long call, Nutan had managed to dust the dining table and arrange the kitchen spice boxes to her liking, scrutinize all the new ostentatious hardcovers on her daughter’s spruce oakwood table, estimated the price of the new fairy lights dangling the gargantuan bookshelves, and shoot her daughter at least forty-seven different flavours of mom stares. Ira distinguished a few (five stages of grief to be precise), then quietly brushed off the rest.
The woman had put plenty of effort already. Especially today. As soon as she was out of the University, she had scuttled to the house in a beeline. Changed into her maroon satin PJs. Flopped herself on the sofa and surfed the internet on her laptop in search of a new murder documentary her best friend had suggested on their last day out. She was wine pooled into golden brown chalice, liquid and wayward. Not to mention, she had also bought healthy baked snacks and laid them out beside her so Mama Kaushik could pick some in her trance and she wouldn’t have to move a muscle anymore. Extra classes today. Her third year undergrad students, such knaves! Wouldn’t shut up. And she, who had a naturally low voice, had to nearly shout the entire time to address all thirty-five of them, get them to comprehend the introduction of phonetic transcriptions. She’d been such an obedient thing back in her days, unlike them. Physically incapable of 7 am classes, but morally punctual.
Now she’d have to prepare a report of the two hours and send it to the department head at the earliest too. Her mom’s cold stares had frozen her evening coffee.
The call ceased somewhere between the swirl of deliciously bitter dark chocolate in her mouth and the strike of temple bells nearby, dusk dark blue and silver. Once in a while, preteen kids would snicker and scream playing cricket. The day had been fairly serene, the usual. No change, no discomfort. The Mrs. and Ms. Kaushik residence thrived on predictability.
“Ho gaya?” Audaciously, she lifted an arched brow and looked above the doomed screen to glance at Nutan. The sun could have been dimmed through her glasses, but not her mother. She glowered. “Mami needs to worry about her youngest now. He’s only a few years behind me. I know she means no harm but seriously, this topic of conversation has begun to rot. Worse, I see fungi bubbling on it.” And truly, her Aunt was a kind, sweet lady; if only a little nosy and gossipy like all aunts. Ira had managed to scandalize all her father’s side of nefarious relatives and half of her mother’s with her lifestyle. Fortunately no major family unions would happen for everyone to meet and conspire against her dear peace, but this thing called cell phone needed to bugger off.
Nutan took her seat on the couch, with all the dignity of a queen-mother entrusting the weight of legacy on her heir, engendering a more lady-like posture as Ira snapped the laptop shut (lie, she did it most tenderly. One doesn’t even handle bone china with such care). The sixty-one year old countenance of her mother had aged a few more years in this one hour, trepidation in the downturn of her lips and the slump of her shoulders. Nutan would never wish a life like hers for anyone, let alone Ira, who stood at the exact opposite end of this spectrum with her mien. Sure, Nutan was once as spirited if not more — Ira, however, would rather break than bend any further.
“Bhabhi’s son has a girlfriend. When I was your age, you were already three. And such a sweet child, you never gave me any trouble, if only too many curious questions to answer. But then you grew up to be so quiet and wise. You’re doing it now- the troubling,” she said, with a tenderness only she could muster. I don’t want you to be alone, don’t you understand? I won’t be here too long and you have already been too picky with your choice of company.
Ira chuckled perfunctorily, willing the awkwardness away but who was she fooling? She was the very embodiment of it. “Agastya did. He even committed my share of shenanigans for you to dote over.”
“He too has a beloved. I’ve seen her, so much like him. Won’t marry before you do, that boy. Seriously, think of it now, child. Not as a compulsion or a bondage, but like every accomplishment you’ve owned anyway. A milestone, a celebration. To have someone worthy to love, to let someone love you.” Nutan had now taken Ira’s slim hands in hers, and only now the latter seemed to have realized how wrinkly and paper thin the former’s were — as opposed to the mildly calloused ones that had once braided her dense tenacious hair. She had smooth ones, one of her mother’s sparse genetic contributions to her looks apart from her almond eyes and straight nose. Most of her looked like her father.
Something in the touch made her wish she could shrink and retreat into herself, unobtrusive to the common eye. Nothing to see, just a woman. Ordinary Ira, self sufficient and busy.
It seemed, however, that there was no escaping it today.
Ira took a deep breath in, “If-”
She sighed, defeated, “When I find someone, or you do for me, I’ll try and if it works it works. Once. If not, we shall never be extending this discursion. Hmm?”
Nutan had that wet, soft sort of look that wounded animals do, “But you’ll genuinely try before giving up, promise?”
The coffee mug warm in her hands again, her feet dangling against her bed, Ira would admit: that she had grown to find loneliness safe. The predictability. The fairly huge apartment. Her degree choices. The tedious routine and job of an associate professor at a prestigious university, fostering young minds to believe in themselves and subsequently, in goodness and reason. Especially in a time wherein intellectualism rapidly declined, capitalism fed on their very souls, and everything became relative — even literature (post-modernism, you see? Lacked substance). Safe was her room, crowded with everything and everyone she had ever loved — whimsical floral lamps, a small dollhouse she had never asked for as a child, a family picture frame, a candid polaroid of her best friend, Maya, stuck at the frame over her study table, some dried red roses from the temple in a delicate glass vase. A few suspicious looking crystals (glowing blue, third time this week) with scented candles (picking scents on their own, so it was earthy musk today), and a lone resin bust frame of a smug-looking goddess.
She screwed her eyes shut. “No. Go away.”
The paraphernalia alive fizzed out, taking the flicker of fairy lights with itself.
The last daring thing she’d committed to was her doctorate. Rest, even the heavens wouldn’t be able to bribe her into another degree. Or another habitation. Another place to call home. That would mean starting something anew. A tentative reinvention of Ira’s concept of safety, with no assurance of everything falling perfectly together ever again. This initiative of her mother carried no such promise either.
Only that she’ll grow to like it. She’ll learn to find it beautiful. Things change, my child. Change is inevitable, and uncomfortable. You understand everything, don’t you? Why be so headstrong now?
But she could not let anyone have so much agency over herself.
This godforsaken living-breathing force called magic froze her coffee again.
